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Answerman - Categorization Is Death

I'm with Alan45 and MrBonk- demographic categorizations are meaningless to me. I'll watch any show that catches my interest.

I am another who does not find the demographics to be useful. I usually do not know, or care about, the demographic of the manga that I read or anime that I watch.

I appreciate the time and effort that some people here have invested in trying to explain the demographics, unfortunately that does not change my opinion.

I really do not care who it was made for because I already know that it was not made for me.
Even though I am a male I was never the male that manga is aimed at. I am just as likely to enjoy something that was made for females.

Saying that demographic categorization is meaningless because you read from all demographics is the same as saying that genre categorization is meaningless because you read from all genres.

Demographic categorization is meaningless because it does not tell me anything about the nature of the show. It does not provide information that is useful to me.

Saying that something is a shoujo comedy tells me that it is a comedy, but nothing more than that.

I know that shonen science fiction is science fiction, but that is all that I know about it.

Both of those descriptions are useful, but they are useful because of the genre, not because of the demographic.

In the pictured case of the Avengers, that's true:
Even "Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes"--probably the second-best Marvel cartoon ever made behind the 90's X-Men--had to be cancelled by Disney because it didn't "fit" with Marvel's corporate-wide unified canon with the movie imagery.

(So, now, instead of classic print-comic canon, they have to be wisecracking goofs joking about snacks every third line.)

Demographic categorization is meaningless because it does not tell me anything about the nature of the show. It does not provide information that is useful to me.

I know that shonen science fiction is science fiction, but that is all that I know about it.

It's true that the Japanese music industry is both ridiculously luddite, and ruled by thuggish talent agencies with delusions of worldwide grandeur. They want to hold back their precious artists from America until they're ready to make a big splashy debut, but when they do, they refuse to play ball with American media and expect their completely unknown artists to be able to throw their weight around like they do back home. But even if that weren't the case, I can't blame them for not jumping on board with services like Spotify just yet. An on-demand streaming service that comes so close to ownership that it makes owning music pointless, without providing much revenue to replace ownership, just isn't a functional business model.

Justin wrote:

This forced categorization often does a disservice to those works, because it can add a stigma: male fans are less likely to pick up shoujo and josei works, when they could be something they'd enjoy.

This is depressingly true, but the solution isn't to remove the categorization; it's to remove the stigma. The problem here is sexism, not labels; it's ridiculous that we still accept that male-targeted media is for everyone but female-targeted media has girl cooties ewww.

Same goes for "exploit heavy" series like Diabolik Lovers or Brothers Conflict. The hoity-toity reviewer circle may despise those, but surprisingly there are a lot of fans for these kinds of shows. Why else would more of these come out if they're not bringing in the money?

Even though I am a male I was never the Japanese male that manga is aimed at. I am just as likely to enjoy something that was made for females.

(And now that Rock Band and Guitar Hero are coming back again, maybe there's a 2nd chance - imagine playing to Hatsune Miku's music with your instruments instead of controllers, and multiple instruments with multiple players!)

[*] 4. The illegal download revolution never happened here - There has been no Napster, no Bit Torrent, or anything similar, that was embraced by the Japanese youth.
[*] 5. Physical rules because digital is still in its infancy

Reminds us of the recent Fifty Shades of Grey - panned by most reviewers, box office success, sequel in the works.

Though keep in mind, generally in N. America, the manga consumers are not mainstream but outliers of society, thus follow not mainstream but outlier tastes.

2. Price fixing on CDs - Prices for music product have always been legally protected from discounting — the prices are actually printed onto the product itself, so historically, there has never been any retail price war to drive prices down. The equivalent of Best Buy or Walmart cannot sell CDs at a deep discount in order to get customers in the door.

Except for the problem that arcades still exist in Japan, and most of the Project Diva games were taken from mainstream arcade games.
Much as I wouldn't relish the challenge of actually playing Guitar Hero to "Heat Haze Days", one could argue that air-guitaring on your home console hasn't really caught on in Japan either.

enurtsol wrote:

2. Price fixing on CDs - Prices for music product have always been legally protected from discounting — the prices are actually printed onto the product itself, so historically, there has never been any retail price war to drive prices down. The equivalent of Best Buy or Walmart cannot sell CDs at a deep discount in order to get customers in the door.

How did that law even exist? Did the record labels all lobby for it?

EricJ2 wrote:

Except for the problem that arcades still exist in Japan, and most of the Project Diva games were taken from mainstream arcade games. Much as I wouldn't relish the challenge of actually playing Guitar Hero to "Heat Haze Days", one could argue that air-guitaring on your home console hasn't really caught on in Japan either.

While Japanese arcades haven't taken a nosedive like the ones in North America and Europe have, they seem to be on a steady decline, no doubt because of the rise of the smartphone there.