Forum - View topicWill anime continue to pander to Otaku or not?
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NefariousPlatypus
Posts: 53 |
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So, I've always loved and adored anime, but around 2003-2004 I kinda took a break from it due to work and school. Fast-forward to late 2011, I finally delved back in full force.
Holy crap did some major changes happen. Instead of a flood of titles, being localized on DVD here, things have slowed down. Instead of focusing on works with substance, Moe/incest/harem/fan-service have experienced a huge upswing. I know fanservice has always been present in anime. But it really feels like shows pandering to just that have been taken up to the n-th degree. I'm not knocking any of the otaku/moe/etc works out there. They're not my cup of tea, but I'm glad they exist for people that enjoy them. There's also still some really promising stuff out now and in the pipeline. (Space Brothers, Shirokuma cafe, 3 new Ghibli movies, new GiTS, new Ikuhara project, etc.) Still, projects like these seem to be the minority now. I wonder, will the pendulum swing the other way, and produce more substantial anime, or do you think the medium as a whole will be pushed further and further towards fanservice-y extremes? [EDIT: Made your title less long-winded. -TK] |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18571 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I think the phrase "rose-colored glasses" applies here. The kinds of otakucentric fare that you're complaining about have always been around; the exact form of it has just changed some over the years and/or become more refined. And the "titles with substance" thing you mentioned? Again, they've always been about the same percentage of all released series. It just may seem like there's fewer of them now because a) there's fewer titles in general than in the heyday of the anime market, and b) so much stuff is coming across the Pacific so quickly via simulcast streaming and fansubs that the natural filter which used to exist - which effectively screened out a lot of the crap titles from ever getting much attention outside of Japan - no longer does, effectively allowing fans to see all of the bad stuff, too, rather than just the good.
In other words, immediate or nearly immediate access to everything which comes out every season hasn't always been a Good Thing. |
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Spastic Minnow
 Bargain HunterExempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4640 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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It's an odd question as posed (I didn't see what your longer original version was) but it seems a bit odd to ask if anime is going to continue to be made to the tastes of its largest group of buyers, which Otaku are, more or less by definition.
Even shows that don't have a strict fan-service/moe focus may incorporate such a character to appeal to those that are looking for that. Consider Heaven's Memo Pad. As far as I can tel, not having gone into the light novels, there is no real reason for the main girl to be super-cute loli-looking girl who speads most of her time in pajamas in order to tell the story it tells, but if it draws some people inthat think that IS the main focus only to discover it is a rather substantive story that deals with some nasty little real world problems. I don't think it's a big problem. But Key does pretty much deal with the key issue, and it's one that is heard often from returning fans. A fan back in the day compares the a catalog of the best shows from multiple years with what is coming out "now". The collection of past titles will always outnumber the smaller sample size of current titles. |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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Otaku's have always been pandered to, it's just in the 90s all that stuff was released on OVAs instead of on TV, but now they can release it on late-night TV. It's always existed just the medium has changed from OVAs to TV. Also most of the stuff from the 90s was never licensed because back then not many people cared about anime unless you could market it on TV for kids like Sailor Moon or Dragonball Z. Especially with the rise of the internet, you're more aware of current anime
Also just to correct your definition of thinking otaku = fanservice. Ghost in the Shell is just as otaku as those Moe/incest/harem/fan-service shows. I always thought that was one of the more obvious ones given the Major ran around without any pants. |
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Galap
Moderator
 Posts: 2354 |
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Personally I think it won't. Times change and preferences change with it. I understand the rose colored glasses argument about the past, but I think that the people making those arguments are looking at the past from a perspective that's a little too jaded.
To me, it seems that in bygone times, a lot of bad anime was made (now not that when I say 'bad', I'm also including unoriginal or pandering titles in that), and quite a bit was made with substance, too. Nowadays, a lot of bad anime is made, as well as some with substance. Both always existed, but I really think it's possible to say that the ratio has gotten worse in recent years. Why? I'm not really sure, but things will probably change again in a few years. Any kind of art has periodic shifts in its nature, and anime is no different. I hope that it shifts to align itself more to my sensibilities, and I actually think it just might, to contrast the direction it's been going recently. A lot of people make the argument that the industry makes things a certain way because they sell well that way, and cater to the desires of the fans, and that's true. However, most people don't really realize that it's circular, with the reverse being that the audience forms around the content. If they made productions with more substance, people looking for such things would find them and the fandom would change. Fans who first found anime in the 80s tend to be scifi fans, because more of that was being made then. Now it's less that way, because fewer scifi shows are in the forefront now. Personally, I'm not really worried that anime is going to descend into the moe/harem/loli/imouto abyss. I'm actually more concerned that it might be devoured by the CG abomination that's basically completely engulfed and destroyed US animation. |
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Parse Error
 Posts: 592 |
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A lot of what people expose themselves to nowadays is late-night anime, which exists mostly to pander to otaku anyway, so yes that portion of it will continue to focus on them and other niche markets such as fujoshi. Space Brothers and Shirokuma Cafe aren't late-night anime, so it's not surprising that you would prefer those.
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誤称
Posts: 549 |
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Basically you want more anthropomorphic talking animals and badly animated shows about idiots being shot into space? Nice. I'll pass on those, give me cute girls doing cute things any day.
Isn't it nice when we respect other people's opinions of what is a good anime? |
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1261 |
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Anime hasn't always pandered to otaku; there haven't always been otaku to pander to. That word (in its present use) and the subculture surrounding it emerged in the 1980s. Go back to the 70s and anime was all kids' stuff -- some of it really, really terrific kids stuff, which is why a portion of the audience never outgrew it and developed purchasing habits that eventually brought about the 80s OVA boom and paved the way for the medium as we know it today.
Otaku change with the times, too. An 80's otaku might be be crazy about "real robots," gore, and tough girls with guns, while an early 90's otaku might prefer Sailor Moon and Tenchi-style harems (the whole maid thing having not even started yet). Now that the craze over maid uniforms seems to at last be winding down, the current group is into, well, what we've got now. If the whole otaku subculture were to collapse, late night anime would disappear, and we'd probably never see an OVA again (or at least until another batch of compelling TV anime nurtured a second wave of big-spending otaku). The anime that would survive would be the ones that appeal to children and/or mainstream audiences. I keep waiting for the day that compelling plots, fashions people might actually wear, and realistic body proportions are declared the Latest Creepy Fetishes. When that day comes, I'll say, "Pander away!" |
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RGaspar
 Posts: 245 |
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I'm with Key on this one.
You've a medium case of rose-colored glasses. Things are more or less the same they were before, except back then you had less chances to be exposed to the whole range of stuff that was available at any given time. For a while, the same thing happened to me with videogames. I used to think the late 90s were somewhat special, but it was just me getting mostly good titles from around the world, since distribution and promotion of games weren't as mainstream as it is today. When something made its way from their american or japanese market to my living room, you can rest asssured it was awfully popular and probably interesting. Today, you just need to bookmark the Steam store or any gaming site to have access and awareness of hundreds of titles, most of them forgettable. But those lame titles were still being made in the 90s, I just wasn't aware of them. Same with anime, back in the 80s and 90s only the megahits launched in the western. Today, a site like Crunchyroll let you see the same stuff japanese guys are seeing...at the same day it's released!! It's now up to you to have a filter for the good stuff. |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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Otaku spend a lot of money. they buy anime, manga, games, and probably most importantly they buy merchandise. Anybody who is selling any product will try to appeal to the people who buy that type of product. If you want to call that pandering to otaku then yes, anime will continue to pander to otaku.
But what the otaku want will change over time. You seem to be using "otaku" to mean people who like something that you do not like, but there are otaku who like the same things that you like. there are otaku for everything. There are otaku for "moe" (whatever the trendy definition for that happens to be today). There are otaku for Ghibli movies. There are otaku for Ghost in the Shell. There are otaku for science fiction. There are otaku for "works with substance." I really do not know if there is less anime of the type that you like being made now, relative to ten years ago. But if that is true it is not the fault of otaku. It is just that there are not enough people who want the same thing that you do for them to be a dominant market force, right now. That will probably change. |
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ChibiKangaroo
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I think the argument of "everything is the same now as it was before, you just are exposed to more stuff" is an argument that fails to see the forest for the trees. Even if you accept that argument, it still holds true that fetishy anime used to be more underground stuff that was not widely marketed and disseminated to the general public, and therefore it was not the driving force behind the industry. It was more of a silent guaranteed money maker. Now that all of that stuff has become more mainstream, it isn't a "silent guaranteed money maker," but instead is the giant beast driving the whole anime machine. They've taken the black market, behind the curtains stuff and made it into the face of anime.
This has probably occurred mainly because society as a whole has become less and less prude over the years. Things that we would have not allowed in the mainstream 15-20 years ago are completely acceptable now, especially on the internet. That is not a criticism of anything, but reality. Also, we already know that sex and controversial stuff SELLS. So the point is, the industry has taken advantage of changing societal morals to start pushing the more controversial stuff which used to be more under the radar, because they know it will sell sell sell. Even if the content still existed way back then, it still shows a dramatic shift in the industry if that content has taken its place as the face of anime. |
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danilo07
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Do you ever wonder why there were so many of those ultra violent animes back in the days?It was simply because it sold a lot,no industry ever is going to create unprofitable projects for a big period of time.Now I find it very entertaining that you think society has become less prude over the years.Hvae you ever heard of something called Violence Jack?It was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine(meaning it was meant for kids) and it featured some scenes that would make Yoshiaki Kawajiri blush in embarrassment.Try doing something like that in any popular shonen magazine you will immediately get thrown out there.So no just because we get some anime on TV that has panty shots every three seconds I wouldn't really say that is an indicator of anything. |
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nightjuan
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Leaving aside the issue of our inevitable perception bias, which affects every single one of us, the main driving force behind the industry has always been to make a profit by exploiting popular trends. That clearly hasn't changed, in the end, though the tastes and preferences of both the otaku and the public at large have. Lots of frankly disposable shows were made back in the day, no matter how much we might want to appreciate the highlights of that particular era, even if they may have been less concerned with the specific fetishes that are predominant today. Instead, they were using and recycling another set of common elements and character archetypes, because that's what was working at the time, but without any real pretense of making "high art" or anything of the sort. Many of the creators and producers were still pandering to their audience, to be honest, just in a different way. In other words...the guys making forgettable harem shows today would probably have been making forgettable sci-fi/fantasy shows yesterday.
Actually, the opposite argument could still be made: the real Japanese mainstream has become more, and not less, prude or simply conservative over time with respect to what is or isn't acceptable for kids to watch on TV. Think about the differences between the original Saint Seiya and the current Saint Seiya Omega, for example, which is a lot less bloody. The same thing goes for casual (and not so casual) nudity in the original Dragon Ball, which wouldn't really fly today in series aimed at the same audience. You can definitely see instances of worse content on TV these days, of course, but usually as part of late night productions (and, even then, it's often censored when not shown on certain cable channels). Of course, it can also be said that those types of shows have become more numerous in the process and, in a way, you could argue that's precisely one of the factors that make a lot of such anime more isolated from the current mainstream population even in its nation of origin. |
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Parse Error
Posts: 592 |
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That can easily become a strawman under the wrong circumstances if you really feel that's what people are saying. I pretty sure most if not all of us realize that the popularity of various genres and elements vary over time, but the dramatically increased availability of anime has led to an extremely distorted perception of the extent and nature of such changes.
This really only affects the furthest extremes of ecchi though, where it's basically an arms race of pushing the envelope anyway. Ecchi as an element barely exists outside of a small ghetto nowadays, whereas it used to be very common throughout anime in general, and you had kids' shows like this:
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ChibiKangaroo
Posts: 2941 |
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So essentially you are saying that I am right about the fact that the industry is pushing a different type of anime now than it was pushing back then. You just don't think the stuff it was pushing back then is really that much better than what it is pushing now. That's fine with me, since I didn't make a judgment call on whether stuff from back then was better than stuff from now. I just said it was less controversial. Violence is always less controversial than sex. Look at all of the fighting/martial arts, gunplay, explosions etc we see non-stop on TV and in all forms of media. However, show even a hint of a woman's nipple or ANY part of the male sexuality and it is like setting off a nuclear bomb. Again, I never said the stuff produced back then was better. I said it was more acceptable to mainstream society. Do you remember any big imouto themes or focus on loli characters in Dragon Ball? Were there any mainstreamed shows akin to Strike Witches or Vividred Operation? Were there loads of entire series of shows in the 80s/90s that focused on nothing other than the cute (and often fan-servicy) antics of tons of face-meltingly cute girls who each have a different hardship to suffer for our viewing pleasure? It seems pretty evident that these trends are more on the vanguard of anime these days when back then, like I said, they were more low key. So perhaps my answer to the original poster's question is, yes they will continue to pander, and perhaps the pandering will continue in its current trajectory towards more controversial content. (Perhaps explicit nudity, and possibly semi-explicit sex, will be accepted into the mainstream within the next 20 or so years?) Last edited by ChibiKangaroo on Mon Mar 04, 2013 2:52 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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