Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! - The Vast Wasteland
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Petrea Mitchell
Posts: 438 Location: Near Portland, OR |
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Especially good column this week, particularly the prognostication! Answerman must be feeling better!
If I ran an anime studio, it'd need to be one big enough to do two or more projects at a time, because what I'd absolutely want to do is always have one series or movie in production at any given time that's completely original and making a conscious attempt toward quality. All the rest of what the studio does can be adaptations, sequels, retreads, ripoffs, flavor-of-the-month, or just big wads of otaku bait. Because I get that it's a business, and you've got to make money, and that means sometimes going with a safe bet that you're not entirely proud of. It's fine as long as there is always a place at the table for that one brilliant, original idea that needs someone to take a chance on it. |
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RyanSaotome
 Posts: 4210 Location: Towson, Maryland |
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As anime goes into the future, I see it getting even more and more niche and otaku oriented than it is now. Noitamina is a shell of its former self ratings wise, otaku anime is rising in sales every year and the more mainstream type of titles no longer sell well (like Initial D Part 4 sold 25k a volume in 2004, and the recent Part 5 just sold 6k). I also expect that within 2 or so years, DVDs for most anime will be pretty much gone outside of mainstream titles. Many big series like Fate/Zero, Horizon and Love Live are already ditching DVD since they make up such a miniscule part of the sales these days, so unless the show is being aimed at female audiences, it doesn't really seem to be worth making a separate DVD version anymore.
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Spoofer
 Posts: 356 Location: NY |
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Heh, that's a fairly bad comparison to further your point, given that 90% of Nick Jr.'s cartoon lineup in the 80's was anime. 
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5507 Location: Iscandar |
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On the question about the future of the anime industry. Based on sales of DVD's and BD's on Japan, the industry seems very healthy on that front. The ones that should worried are the markets outside Japan.
As far as R1, it will be healthy if these three things happen: 1. People accept paying 7-10 dollars per episode on physical release. Anime is not cheap to dub and distribute. 2. People stop pirating anime and instead buy official releases and pay for legal streaming. 3. R1 distributors downsize the market. There are too many physical releases and not enough money to buy. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4546 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Sazae-san at this point is pretty much just weekly comfort food for aging Japanese baby boomers and their elderly parents who continue to watch it in huge numbers because, well, it's what they have always watched. The best description I've ever seen of it, and I'm not sure who said it but I'm paraphrasing, is of an animated version of the Donna Reed Show that never went off the air. I'd never begrudge its popularity, but people watch it because it's like visiting a childhood friend who never grew old, not because it's exactly cutting-edge comedy. The small samples of Sazae-san I've seen are about as cutting-edge as Hi and Lois, inoffensive but provoking mild chuckles at best. It's something that will never be licensed in the west (beyond those one or two comic strip collections that were released in the 1990s) because it's nothing anyone who hasn't grown up with it would ever be interested in watching.
As for the future of the region 1 anime market, the distributors can move away from physical releases if they choose so, but my money won't be following them to digital-only if they do. I'm perfectly happy to pay $5 to $10 per episode to continue to get it on physical media; I was doing the same in the 1990s. I'm just not interested in digital distribution at all, and, if it's the future, well, I'll just stick to the past. |
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Chagen46
 Posts: 4377 |
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This will never happen. Just look at /a/. Mention the R1 industry over there and they'll tear into you like you just insulted their mother. |
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TheAncientOne
 Posts: 1893 Location: USA (mid-south) |
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From the article:
If Crunchyroll attained sentience, it would no doubt respond with, "Hey, what am I...chopped liver?" I will assume for the moment this was meant to pertain exclusively to companies that were born with home video distribution as their core business. |
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DuelLadyS
 Posts: 1705 Location: WA state |
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I've often thought, if I had my own anime company, it would be a US liscensing deal- and not for profit. Seriously. I'd have X amount of captial to start with, I'd do 1 show at a time, and any money raised by sales of that show would go back into the start money for the next show. When the cash ran out, I'd shut the whole thing down.
Basically, it's be a big vanity project for shows I like and shows people were willing to donate for... and it'll only happen if I win a massive lotto jackpot for something. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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I can see anime taking the "on demand" exist from the road it's on now. More and more people, especially the young one's using apps on their new fangled 4G then 5G, 6G, (nG?) that give them what ever content, no matter what it is and how "niche" it is, that is available in the global intarweb media. I fear, as a collector, less and less will be available on hard media in a package that can sit on a shelf, unless the attitude of DRM and the old fear of timeshifting are ditched and put back into Pandora's Box whinst it came. It's the only aspect of Streaming that is holding it back to becoming the "new way to print money". I won't live to see it, but that's where it seems to be drifting, from this position I sit at present.
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Lynx Amali
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When Shin Mazinger gets Great-Hen. When Dancougar Nova gets licensed. When Giant Robo gets a sequel. In summary, most likely never gonna happen. Last edited by Lynx Amali on Fri Jan 18, 2013 4:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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Sazae-san probably can't be licensed. The creator forbid her work from ever being release on home video. Unless you record it yourself or download TV rips you're not going to be able to see it. I imagine this extends to other countries as well.
But saying these shows don't look like anime is kind of weird. These look like old anime, and that's because they are old anime. Sazae-san was one of the first manga out there, especially one starring a female and written by a female mangaka. Obviously 40s/50s/60s anime look nothing like anime today, but it's a product of its time. Doraemon looks like anime to me. Maybe it helps to watch it, but it looks just fine. Fujiko Fujio's style is fairly distinct, so they're like Akira Toriyama in that regard in they tend to reuse a lot of designs. It still acts and does tons of anime things.. one of the main gags is giving fanservice to of a 7 year old girl. All of Fujio's works are fairly ecchi when I look back on them. No way you could mistake it for a Nick Jr. cartoon with the execution it does. Actually that's probably why it'll never air in the US. Doraemon's too lewd for American audiences unless they take a Shin-chan approach to it and dub it for adults. But they really shouldn't do that. It's fanservice and ecchi is lighthearted and innocent. |
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Ahiru
 Posts: 62 Location: ...just a duck in Oregon |
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Favorite word of the day 
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Keichitsu0305
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I think Brian means the stereotypical "big eyes" character designs ( more or less replicates Osamu Tezuka's art and earlier shoujo manga) which dominates most current shows. When most 21st century American teenagers think of "anime and manga" they picture this, this, or this. If the characters are male, some fans might think of bishounens (common in shoujo/shounen manga) or muscular guys (common in shounen or a "well-known" seinen like Berserk) Rarely will some newer fans of anime/manga associate the works of, for example, Inio Asano as "manga" or Kaiba as "anime". |
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Mohawk52
Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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All this is academic as any animation shown in Japan, no matter where it was made, is known as anime. It's only outside of Japan that the term means any animation made in Japan.
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Melanchthon
 Posts: 550 Location: Northwest from Here |
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I have never watched a show that I thought I would not like. Never, I mean even in the case of something like Vividred I though there was a non-zero probability that I would like it. However, there are plenty of time when I have watched really bad anime that I thought I would have liked. Like in the case of Vividred. And so if I, or others like me, say, 'Vividred is a god-awful, lolicon cheesecake show with a plot that makes no sense and is just a poorly done rip-off of Strike Witches anyway," for example, then it's because we were tricked into watching something we thought should be better. There is no dishonesty in it, no attempt to ruin your enjoyment, just the truth as I see it. I mean, the job of the critic is to be critical. If only the people that enjoy a show can talk about it, then there is no purpose in talking about it to begin with. It would be like having the one ANN reviewer that likes database shows do all the database show reviews, or something. And as for the Answerfan question, let me tell you something. John Keats is widely regarded as one the greatest English poets, if not the greatest, definitely in the top five. His works only sold a few thousand copies in his lifetime. Stephenie Meyer has sold over 70 million Twilight books, and those are numbers from 2009. I believe it is safe to say that a) quantity does not equal quality and b) the general public has poor taste. So, sales, lists, boxoffice numbers--they are meaningless when evaluating the quality of a piece of art. |
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