Forum - View topicAnswerman - Anime Has Left the Building (And Moved Into Yours)
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mdo7
 Posts: 8248 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I believe ANN's Answerman has previously talked about this last year (sort of). To be honest, I was surprised to see anime (both mainstream, and non-mainstream titles) entering the mainstream even if the anime title is not well-known amongst general casual fan like for example I believe last year HBO Max's Bookie directly referenced D-Gray Man in the premiere episode, and let me remind you, that anime series wasn't even shown on Adult Swim or doesn't hold the same mainstream prestige or awareness in the US on the same level as Dragonball, One Piece, or Naruto. And yep, an HBO Max show was able to get away with it. That wasn't the only one, I found out that the CW's The 100 referenced D-Gray Man in one of the episode (in season 6, from what I was told). So yeah, that's really surprising to see a non-mainstream anime in the US like D-Gray Man getting referenced on a mainstream show like The 100 or Bookie. But then again, we had Star Trek particularly TNG referencing niche anime titles (ie: Kei/Yuri factor, and here's a screenshot of what looks like Urusei Yatsura name-dropped appearing on a screen in one TNG episode) even before anime became cool or mainstream some 2 decades later (but then again, several anime did referenced Star Trek in there too, so I guess that's fair game).
So yeah, we had a lot of anime references appearing in American pop culture which can extend to lesser well-known or very niche anime titles too. So, it's hard to believe many decade ago, that anime as a medium was so niche that no general audiences except anime fans/nerds like us on ANN would've picked up on the reference. And now today you can MLB, and NBA dropping anime references every now and then. Man, I don't know how to react to anime getting more reference or name-dropped to be honest, but that's a big leap since the late 90's/2000's/early 2010's. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4664 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Anime is absolutely everywhere these days.
(Except for a lot of the retailers from which I used to be able to buy it on BluRay a decade ago.) |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2571 Location: Online Terminal |
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I think a less-fun-but-still-correct answer to the question of "what are some of the ways it is seeping into the popular consciousness that were never intended" is "all of them, and yet none of them." Anime succeeds wherever it goes because it tells stories that resonate with people, regardless of who they are or what they do, so the fact that it affects global culture in similar ways to how it affects Japanese culture shouldn't be terribly surprising. That being said, I can't imagine that when Nintendo and its partners were getting ready in 1996 to show off their new thing called "Pokemon," they could ever perceive how it would shape the world 30 years later.
I think the real underlying shock is the realization of which generation now holds the powers of Tastemakers and also the main purchasing power (such that it is). |
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