Forum - View topicTales Of The Industry - Less Fanboying Is More
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11515 |
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Could you elaborate? What kind of weird attitudes and how do they cause problems? |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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Overfiend, which caused such a stink in the UK tabloids, sold 100 copies for every anime fan in the UK at the time... |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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It doesn't even have to be in a field considered nerdy--there are some business leaders in every field who prefer hiring newcomers to the task rather than veterans because those with experience tend to be dead-set in their own techniques and methods, whereas newcomers and people fresh out of university are much more easily taught to do things the company's way. (In the book Nickel and Dimed, the author found out, for instance, that people who have done housecleaning independently or for competing services are less likely to get hired at Merry Maids. That's because Merry Maids values its image of servitude greatly, and experienced housecleaners will, for instance, refuse to get down on their hands and knees to scrub floors and insist on using mops. Experienced housecleaners also tend to use techniques that genuinely clean houses without necessarily providing the appearance of cleanliness, which is not what Merry Maids wants.) Of course, if said person's attitudes and beliefs DO help the company, and the superiors are open-minded enough to hire this persona dn give him or her a chance, they'll put up with it. Guillermo del Toro is said to be remarkably stubborn and unyielding even to powerful executives, for instance, but he's given a lot of latitude because the public loves him. Rareware was also something of a wild horse for Nintendo during its time as a 2nd-party company to Nintendo, being the only one I can recall where the employees freely swear and curse in public and just doing their own thing most of the time, but their games sold well, got rave reviews, and sometimes even redefined genres, so Nintendo did the wise thing and let them do whatever they wanted. |
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5132 |
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Thank you. |
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bravetailor
Posts: 817 |
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{Damn it, I thought I fixed this..... ~nobahn}
I'd still plunk down good coin for a subtitled, uncensored Cream Lemon box set today. The hentai market in the US fell off for much the same reason as why many of the types of anime from the OVA days don't sell as well anymore today. The market simply changed. The dominant demographic for anime consumers in the U.S. are younger and were weaned on more mainstream friendly anime. A lot of the anime consumers in the U.S. back in the early to late 90s were a little older and had fallen into the anime hobby while looking for something "edgier". It was the Ninja Scroll crowd. Sex and violence. When that crowd left the hobby (as 90% of anime fans eventually do), what was left was a much younger demographic with more conservative tastes in anime. I don't think it has anything to do with "not wanting to pay for porn" either. If that were the case, hentai would be more watched among those fansub watchers and downloaders today, but it isn't. And make no mistake, hentai was watched mostly be people who already liked anime somewhat. I'm not really sure regular porn enthusiasts were ever really part of the hentai-watching demographic in the U.S. The current popularity of hentai manga in the U.S. is very underrated though. Of course, I don't know if they're actually buying those english translated hentai manga releases or just only reading scanlations. Hentai scanlations are pretty popular and there are many extremely active sites to cater to those fans. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Do you think that the main market for anime nowadays in the United States is still kids? Maybe for something like Pokémon and Naruto, but for the most part, I see kids nowadays either watching Let's Plays instead or, as far as TV programming goes, reality television and western animation like SpongeBob SquarePants and Phineas and Ferb. I always had the impression the anime demographic has increased in age, which is why Toonami is firmly planted in the Saturday late late night part of the week.
You're welcome, I guess. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. If the discussion is about differences in perspective between management and the people who work for that management, it'd be natural to bring up that book. (I also realized that the company Barbara Ehrenreich worked for is called The Maids; Merry Maids is a competing service that she simply mentions a handful of times, usually in the footnotes.) |
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jr240483
 Posts: 4416 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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that's a waste of money cause most people tend to download their doujins for free. that is what i do most of the time when getting doujins or ero games since they will never be released in the US. the only thing i would buy are DVDs but only those that are licensed by companies like kitty media instead of importing them since they would be censored while series licensed by kitty media will be uncensored. The only exceptions where i actually download them via free torrents are series that i know will never get licensed in the US (all lilith/pixy titles, OVAs with questionable content like Choisuji & Boku no Pico , and the futabu ovas since every otaku knows the author definitely wont allow his series to be released in the US. though it might be possible that KM might pull a rabbit out of their hats again since they did licensed Discode as well as Aki Sora and didn't edit anything (aka have aki and sora as blood related siblings like in the ero manga instead of having them as stepsiblings like in the sexual pursuit ovas) |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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You cannot download the actual book. You can download the image files and view them, which I often do. You can also edit and print the files to make your own book, which I have done. But that is not acceptable to a collector. Also, as he said, not all doujinshi get scanned. If you just want to look at naughty drawings then downloading doujinshi is fine, though you might do better with Rule 34 sites. But downloading is not good for collectors, of anything. |
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bravetailor
Posts: 817 |
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If you were replying to me, then I meant today's anime fans being younger as basically 12-20...high school kids. Anime fans in the 90s were usually 18-30, college aged fans. But even the older anime fans today were raised on DBZ, Pokémon, Naruto...the Shonen Jump-y type stuff instead of BGC, Gunbuster and Urusei Yatsura and all those hyper gory OVAs from CPM. And for the most part the best selling shows in the U.S. TODAY are still either Shonen Jump-y stuff or those Kyoto-Ani type anime, much more conservative than the gore and sexfests of the 90s. So, the demographic has changed, and moreover tastes have also changed. And Toonami is planted in midnight now because anime isn't as big as it was in the early 2000s. It's a niche audience, so they get a niche timeslot. That said, I haven't checked if anyone here has done a poll asking the ages of the members here on the anime board. Maybe there are a lot of 20-30 year olds now. But considering how many anime fans I run into now online and in cons who haven't seen the ORIGINAL Evangelion and even Cowboy Bebop yet, I doubt it. And if we're talking about anime before 1996, we might as well be in the dark ages for most of the fans I know. Once you start running into fans who aren't aware of anime series that were BIG back in their day, you know generations are passing by. |
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mdo7
 Posts: 6352 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I do agreed with you on that. But there are other problems is that anime are too niche and animation is not really taken seriously like live-action/non-animation (despite Hollywood has been putting anime/manga to live-action adaptation) medium. Another problem is that animation in general is treated like kid stuff despite having mature animation like Family Guy, and South Park but many people still treat animation like kid stuff despite it's potential. Another problem is despite Justin said that anime companies take international market seriously (third question on Answerman), there still plenty of anime that hasn't seen release outside of Japan/Asia that could make a lot of profit or not release in some area (which is the subject of this week Answerman, last question). So yeah I agreed taste not only change, but other pop culture like Japan's neighbor, South Korea has also been making headlines around the world thanks to the popularity of their pop culture. But that's another story and I don't want to derail the topic over this. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9929 Location: Virginia |
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@bravetailor
Check the Polls forum. We did a survey of ages that showed most of the respondents were 20+ It is unfortunately over 2 years old at this point. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11515 |
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I'm not sure when this was done, but I think it was around 2013? |
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bravetailor
Posts: 817 |
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Saw the poll. So basically, 18-24--those people would have watched DBZ and Pokémon back in the day, or One Piece, Bleach and Naruto if a few years later. After that it starts dropping off big time. The ones who were raised on Animeigo, Manga Video, US Renditions and early ADV Films would be 30+ now. Of course, it's difficult to say if those 30+ are leaving the hobby or the simple fact is that the younger demographic is so much larger now than it was in the 90s. Maybe a bit of both. Even though the 2000s boom is over, anime fandom in North America is still at least 2x as big now as it was in 1995. From personal experience, I would say that my 30+ anime fan friends certainly buy LESS than they used to, and are much more selective about what they do buy. The fact remains, though, that the younger demographic has effectively phased out the early 90s demographic both in numbers and buying habits. So obviously as a seller you would cater to the larger anime market. |
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mdo7
Posts: 6352 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Well there's also another factor: We don't know exactly how big the anime fandom in the US is. I've met anime fans online that didn't know (or not aware) or never heard of ANN before. So yeah it could be bigger I will agree with you on that. |
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bravetailor
Posts: 817 |
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There's a chunk of anime fandom that doesn't pay for anything they watch--many casual anime fans would fall into this group too. It may very well be that ANN members here--many of whom actually buy DVDs/BDs, from what I gather--would be considered the minority in anime fandom. But we should probably not include those download-happy types when discussing sales. If we stick strictly to those who do actually buy BD/DVDs, then we can surmise that anime-buying fandom is significant and notable but obviously the average anime title would still never move even close to the same number of units as a DVD/BD of an average mediocre-selling American movie. |
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