Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Will Netflix Producing Anime Change the Industry?
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
Author | Message | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ninjamitsuki
Posts: 628 Location: Anywhere (Thanks, technology) |
|
|||||||||||
I've read an interview stating that it owes its existence to the western anime fandom, hence why it aired in the states before Japan, and that it was difficult to get made due to not being considered marketable in Japan. |
||||||||||||
Erebus25
Posts: 10 |
|
|||||||||||
link please |
||||||||||||
leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||||||||
Fair enough. I won't discuss this matter further (even though I'd like to) because politics gets everyone pointlessly angry and it'd be going off-topic, but I'd like to say that you have some very good points and I can definitely understand your perspective on the matter. (Such people have always been around though; I think they're just now more visible because the Internet and social media has given everyone a platform to speak to the whole world, and I would say the bigger problem right now is increasing extremism on both ends of the political spectrum--if people were more willing to see things from the other side's perspective and udnerstand why they believe that they do, there'd be a lot less bile and vitriol tossed about.)
As a fan of all animation, not just anime, I will say that the presence of anime in the mainstream in the 90's has had a substantial effect on how western animation appears and how it's written, even if most of these are subtle and indirect. Some of the early attempts to imitate the style and aesthetic, sch as Teen Titans and Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi, were a lot more blunt about it, but what happened over time is an adoption of art and narrative techniques into the greater fold of western animation, particularly those aimed at younger viewers and by younger producers, writers, and artists/animators. The biggest change to happen is continuity accumulation, which happened gradually enough as to not be noticeable until you watch western animated TV from the 90's and compare it with a TV show of today. Prior to the rise of anime on TV, programming had every episode be entirely self-contained, ending exactly where they started. Every episode had to be written like it was the first episode. The idea is that not only were writers afraid that viewers would get lost if they skipped episodes, but networks rerun TV shows in a random order (which was disastrous when Kids' WB! aired Dragon Ball Z in a random order). The Simpsons was actually being quite subversive for its time in the episode "A Milhouse Divided" by letting Milhouse's parents stay divorced at the end of the episode and REMAIN divorced for subsequent episodes (and only a show with as much clout as The Simpsons could get away with this). Anime's serial nature proved to writers, producers, and executives that even kids were able to follow an ongoing narrative. Now, it's rarer to find a western animated TV show that DOESN'T have its characters accomplish things, fail at things, obtain things, or various other tasks and have it carry over into later episodes, as well as sequel episodes. I refer to it as "continuity accumulation" because that's exactly what it is. Shows like Steven Universe are pretty much all about this (each episode has a self-contained story but is also part of a larger ongoing narrative), Regular Show has character development spanning the entire series to where the main characters were unrecognizable towards the end than towards the beginning, and more recent seasons of South Park have season-long story arcs. Could you imagine a series like Korra or Archer aired out of order and still making any sense? It's such an omnipresent thing now that animation fans who have just gotten into western animation over the past several years are often baffled watching older cartoons and their worship of the status quo. There are a number of other factors in which anime has influenced western animation as well, such as the acceptance of female protagonists among boys (though male sidekicks are still pretty common), an increase in western magical girl characters, an overall increase in teenage main characters and fewer grade-school children main characters, more diverse hair color and hairstyles, more serious and threatening villains (nearly extinct is the ineffectual villain unless that villain is designed specifically to be ineffectual--no more Captain Planet effortlessly stomping the villains every episode), a shift out of the "medieval stasis" setting of fantasy stories and into more surreal environments, more shows with colorful post-apocalyptic settings (most notably Adventure Time), more creative use of powers instead of just throwing them around (wisely choosing not to follow Bleach's style of fight choreography), and a trend towards a cute visual style and away from tough and gritty. However, what makes western animation what it is has not been discarded; anime sensibilities have simply been added on based on whatever would make for better storytelling. You'll find that the most talked-about western animated TV shows DO have a lot of what I've described here. They just aren't explicitly western animation trying to be an anime. That just doesn't work. There was an Answerman column some time back asking about why western animation can't get the anime look correctly, and the answer was that western animators and Japanese animators grow up on and are taught different things, meaning neither can replicate the other's look and feel quite right even if they're very good at their own work. (Inversely, you won't be fooling any western animation fans showing them the English dub of Panty & Stocking, for instance.) And frankly, they shouldn't be imitating someone else's work. They should be doing their own thing while keeping aware of anything other creators make that can help make their TV shows better, which is exactly what's going on. Think about this: Codename: Kids Next Door, which on the surface seems to be one of the most aggressively American among western animated TV shows, has a Fullmetal Alchemist parody that preceded the official English language release of the manga (and preceded Brotherhood by a few years). It takes a special kind of savvy for a writer to do this and a special kind of savvy for a viewer to pick up on it. |
||||||||||||
Heishi
Posts: 1345 |
|
|||||||||||
I remember an article in CR where the creator of KND did something as a tribute to One Piece because he was a big fan of the show. That's when I first discovered that the creator of KND has a thing for anime. [EDIT: Don't quote an entire long post if you're only responding to a brief part of it ~Zalis] |
||||||||||||
Chrono1000
|
|
|||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
Xiximaro
Posts: 151 |
|
|||||||||||
If anybody is gonna follow Netflix? Well it's the same as always, some big company tries to do something new and succeeds than the other companies of it's king follow suit. If they fail than they fail alone, so Hulu, Amazon, etc... will only follow Netflix if they don't implode I think.
Regarding globalization... well I'm against it, things right now are perfect Netflix backing some studios as they are doing now is perfect. Now they dabbling in it more, makes me fear they will screw the market. We like anime as it is, not a westerned/americanized version of it. If the quality of the show remains good or better fine by me. Now if they go full Marvel/DC universe on anime(as I think it will happen, in Japan only the fans matter in Hollywood well... it's not the same) it will suck balls, just think about how many bitching will be about censoring something that some stupid group of retarded activists is against. |
||||||||||||
Jonny Mendes
Posts: 997 Location: Europe |
|
|||||||||||
Like was said before, don't worry about that. Netflix will be making this Originals for a global audience, but Japan will continuing to do Japanese anime for the Japanese audience. All things Japanese anime fans love, will still be there. If westerned/americanized version of anime bothers you, don't need to watch the Netflix originals if they go that way. You just have to look in other places for Japanese anime. Crunchyroll will continue to license Japanese anime, as will Amazon or Funi. With more than 100 Japanese anime series every season made, you will find what you looking for. |
||||||||||||
Xiximaro
Posts: 151 |
|
|||||||||||
If it goes like you said than I have no problem with it then. |
||||||||||||
TheAnimeRevolutionizer
Posts: 329 |
|
|||||||||||
The main point I was getting at was more along the lines of anime being its own legit thing, rather than overtaking the entire world by storm. It's kind of a peculiar topic, because anime's the one Japanese cultural property that's been as adamant as a bomb shelter as I've seen in terms of cultural growth and branching out; compared to things such as karate and sushi, which have seen varing degrees of cultural syncreticzation and adoption abroad, anime and manga is the one thing that's for the most part squibbed out when attempted elsewhere. (Don't worry about the rest of your contributions; they're still as relevant incoming soon in this end of the discussion.) I can get why and how anime can be butchered to a homogenized unauthentic poor excuse of a substitute (Neo Yokio's obvious, but in the past, dig around, you'll find My Life Me and the Marvel Mangaverse, and for jokes and giggles look up American Akira on Youtube if you haven't), but it still remains a curiosity. For some examples, karate introduced into the west broke some traditions, including allowing colored uniforms and started full contact karate, but as it stands it still desires to honor the spirit of karate nevertheless. Sushi may seem perverted and "bastardized" when you introduce things like exorbitant sprays of dressings and sauce, and using non traditional items like meat and vegetables, but when you read on the history of sushi, you'll discover that the main reason for sushi is to provide a palpable and delicious way to preserve foods and use such preserved foods, and into times when food storage was advanced, to just go back to such time honored tastes. You'll be surprised that there is a kind of sushi where you drench a tub of ingredients and rice with sake, seal it for overnight, and pop it open the next day. Who doesn't want to sing like a star to their favorite songs with karaoke? Even for the origins of anime itself, Osamu Tezuka wanted to express himself using a style adapted from Disney styles; it was thanks to later artists that today that anime has its trademark style. And for a lot of video games these days, it was thanks to the Japanese market that helped keep on video games as a hobby and interest back during the 18 years when the US industry struggled to get back onto its feet again. Don't get me wrong. I sympathize too well with not wanting to see unfaithful knock offs and some anime coated-US PG teenage high school sitcom vomit core centered tripe. Western animation as a whole should keep on keeping on and be itself. But the other thing I know personally, that if there is dedication, sincere efforts to learn and understand, and moreover derived from love, there could possibly be something out there that avoids ruining anime made elsewhere. All over the net, you'll come across very talented artists who do fanart of other series. I'm surprised that hasn't caught on because if they were hired on with the writer of a series they'd do a lot of great work. Drowtales is one example I can name off the top of my head. And wasn't there that kid who won the Canadian Animation awards for doing an anime piece? It's strange. Something just doesn't add up. |
||||||||||||
leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||||||||
I remember seeing that tribute too, though it's been a while so I don't remember where I saw it. But yeah, you got the point: It is not always easy to tell how much influence anime has on some non-Japanese production merely at a glance, and its influence on western animation has been subtle.
Ah, I see what you mean then. Like anything else, certain things from other countries catch on and some other things don't, and some things have caught on in subtler ways, either in a way people don't realize came from another country (like the late-night munchie boxes, most notably Jack in the Box's Munchie Meals, which originated in Scotland) or have remained niche for decades (like capoiera). In addition to karate and sushi, Japan is also still strongly associated with cars and video games. For anime, I think what happened was that the boom in the 90's was a fad. It was the hot thing kids and teenagers were into that mystified adults, and they grew bored with it after a few years. (Anime on American TV seems to have been superseded by live-action Disney Channel sitcoms, which other networks soon copied and led to stuff like iCarly and CN Real. I don't know if the skyrocketing licensing fees were related to it or happened afterwards, but anime was dropping from channels in the United States rapidly until Toonami was eventually removed entirely.) Only now have those kids and teenagers grown up and reached an age to be movers and shakers in western media, which is why it's coming back, albeit in a below-the-mainstream kind of way. In the meantime, it was the most dedicated, the people who would be on sites like these, who continued to consume anime, while the more casual fans moved on to other things. Even now, random people on the street in the United States will think of Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, or Sailor Moon--shows that aired in the 90's--and possibly Naruto. I think as far as today's kids go, the boat has passed for the most part. I've worked with kids frequently, and what I've noticed observing them is that there isn't as much interest in detailed narratives or action as there used to be. What's popular now is rapid-fire, spontaneous slapstick comedy (think Game Grumps, Minions, or Mighty Magiswords). Anime is simply too slow for a lot of today's kids. They live in the Internet Age, where everything is rapid, almost instant, and they want their entertainment to be just as rapid as they are. I consider that as neither a good thing nor a bad thing, just a different thing (and I think that, too, is a fad, and the kids being born now or in preschool will be into something totally different, though I have no idea what it could be). As for sushi, something I noticed is that most sushi places around here seem to put avocado into about 90% of the menu. I'm bizarre and I don't like avocado, so it's pretty offputting to me, but I don't really care much for authenticity (heck, I just ate from Panda Express a few hours ago), and there's no denying the popularity of the likes of the California roll and the Philadelphia roll. In any case, like any other ethnicity of food, it will adapt itself to the local tastes. If you live in North America, it can be hard to imagine a place where pizza is common but pepperoni is rare as a topping, for instance, but that's exactly how it is in Germany (you have to order salami instead, which is different but IS a common topping there). And because pepperoni contains beef, it is almost totally nonexistent in India, but anchovy pizza is quite popular there. And to a German, the way we use sauerkraut in Reuben sandwiches must seem incredibly bizarre to them. And I do like both traditional sushi and Americanized sushi. Heck, I'm a sucker for the sushi burrito and I'd order them more if they weren't so expensive.
A major cause of that is legal issues. Sometimes, fans DO get brought on to work on whatever it is they're a fan of (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic does this a lot), but more commonly, the makers of a western franchise have to keep away from fan-created content, or at least claim that they don't know about it, so they can protect themselves in case the fan sues them for plagiarism, which has happened before (and almost happened twice with Sonic the Hedgehog: The Babylon Rogues in Sonic Riders resembled fan-made characters but SEGA was able to claim coincidence; actual fanart was used in Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing but was removed quickly enough to avoid a lawsuit) and is why producers are so wary of it. If you write an episode of a TV show and it's a lot like some fanfiction somewhere, if you never made any mention of it, you could claim in court it's entirely coincidential. If there is evidence that you HAVE read it, you're likely going to lose if the fan takes you to court. If you mean artists and writers going to work on unrelated stuff, that DOES happen too. For instance, Matt Chapman was one of the head writers for Gravity Falls. If that name sounds familiar, he's one of the Chapman Brothers who created and wrote Homestar Runner (and Friends). Bryan Newton is a fanartist who was picked up as a director for Rick & Morty. There are a lot of other examples I can't think of at the moment or I don't know about too. |
||||||||||||
BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6251 |
|
|||||||||||
Seems kinda laughable though when you remember what happened with Gearbox and Aliens Colonial Marines. Off topic:
And yet these same people are no more a detriment to the industry and it's base than the base themselves who're constantly at war with each other over trite nonsense....which is pretty much not too dissimilar to other industries like the Anime industry where we fans crap on other fans for daring to like something we don't like or not watching a show in the same way as we do.
With Spacey having pretty much admitted it (and then deflecting from the accusations horribly) it's pretty hard to equate his issues to a witch hunt. Secondly leaving it to the courts to decide who's lying and telling the truth along with, what kind of punishment to be metted out has been shown over the years to not exactly be much better since of course the Criminal Justice is flawed. |
||||||||||||
mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
|
|||||||||||
If you are talking about broadcast TV I will have to disagree, at least here in Mexico, Disney thwarted the popularity of anime in the 90s. The second biggest TV broadcaster (TV Azteca) scored big back then with series like Saint Seiya, Sailor Moon and Magical Knight Rayearth, Escaflowne (among others) and the top broadcaster (Televisa) fought back with DBZ, Ranma 1/2 and even broadcasted the first One Piece season. The future of anime (which had already been popular in the past with series like Astroboy, Mazinger Z, G-force and Golden Bat) looked unstoppable. But then TV azteca made a deal with Disney, which included not only cartoons, but movie and live action series rights. Suddenly ALL anime disappeared from TV azteca, they even blocked other stations from getting the rights to Salor Moon. Then Televisa no longer had to fight fire with fire and only DBZ was repeated now and then, the last worthwhile anime shown was Shaman King on 2008. I do not live in the USA but I suppose something similar happened over there, albeit less obvious since you have more TV broadcasters and anime never became as popular over there as in latinamerica. The beauty of streaming is that it can't be easily blocked so the same trick can't work twice. |
||||||||||||
animefanworried
Posts: 126 |
|
|||||||||||
For me, the real question is: Will Netflix use Japan for animation and essentially have their own staff make the content? Because I wouldn't call that anime at all. If they do plan on hiring other studios to fund projects they will simply be directly involved with, my main concern is this becoming a trend with other major companies. Anime is what it is because it caters to a niche fanbase and converting to mainstream could do significant harm to its uniqueness or even its cultural elements.
Agreed. For all the fighting over this issue I've found that most gamers actually get along. Vocal minoritiy aside, most guys don't have a problem with girls having a presence in the game industry and having games made for them. And most girls usually don't care if men have games targeted at them and they both meet in the middle with mainstream stuff too. The problem are the extremists. When radical feminists got involved, suddenly men couldn't have the games they liked anymore; things had to change whether they liked it or not. It got worse when Breitbart also got involved. Suddenly, the same news outlet that two weeks prior had been insulting gamers for being idiots and basement dwellers was "defending" them when in reality they just saw an opportunity to score political points. And its because of the crowd they brought over, many not even playing video games and just being there for a fight, that stuff like "Games aren't for girls, they're a boys' club" started being thrown around with regularity. The problem is that even if most gamers do get along on this topic, the two radical groups happen to be the ones with a presence in the media as well as political and, in some cases, industry influence. I've rambled about off-topics things long enough. I just wanted to say that I have a great disdain for those who believe others can't have something because they don't like it and I don't care which side they're on. One last side note: I question the need today for important feminist figures and leaders who do little but grandstanding. I don't think they're needed anymore. Just take a look at anime: We now have more anime made for women than ever before and their tastes are taken into account even within mainstream as well. This was not achieve because of an organised political campaign nor because certain groups complained. It was achieved by women themselves who let their presence in the industry be known and as a result managed to get producers of anime, manga and video games to know that their was a demand to be filled. This to me, is an impressive victory for women to assert their place in the fandom without the need for anyone to speak for them and what more could be achieved by having professional feminists get involved? Campaigns to stop fanservice, a need for political correctness, forcing the way characters are portrayed to change... We don't need this. And the truth is, as women continue to be a part of the industry, anime aimed at them will continue to be made and the amount will increase as well and the content will refine itself as the fanbase and those making it continue to participate in the industry. Its how anime became what it is for its current fans and how it will be for its future fans as well, of both gender. And there's not even a need for divisive politics to achieve the change that's already happening nor a need to take away from one group of fans what they like. Which is why I'm hoping American companies will continue to exert limited control. If they gain too much ground we all know certain groups will move in to influence how anime gets made; and that's not even counting how female Japanese fans could end up getting the short end of the stick if their anime is altered to be more "western friendly". |
||||||||||||
Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
|
|||||||||||
That's the ironic thing, isn't it? Japan is hated by feminists, yet it does so much better in appealing to women or having female creators. Shoujo and josei have typically flopped here in America, and there's still so many people who think Sailor Moon is the first or only magical girl or shoujo series, and have never heard of anything since then despite cutthroat franchises fighting each other in Japan all the time. Precu- sorry, Glitter Force flopping on Netflix doesn't set a good omen for where their investments might go, does it. Western friendly seems to be limited to guns and action, so basically shounen and seinen stuff. |
||||||||||||
TheAnimeRevolutionizer
Posts: 329 |
|
|||||||||||
I am actually glad that Anime isn't exactly mainstream. While I have been asking about what factors that didn't get anime to go explosively mainstream, that is true; much of that is centered around societal factors. If anything, anime here in the States seems more in line with being associated with being off norm and being an element of somewhat rebellious disposition. I think that's what makes anime anime here in the States considering a lot of the history of animation and sequential art in general here.
Wooughf. Yikes. I'm also into fast paced action and zaniness, but that sounds like the kind of scenario that Fred Rogers (ie Mr. Rogers of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood) would come back from the dead over (bless that man). I've got a few young nieces and nephews who watch PBS, and that balances out the viewings of Youtube they consume, but that worries me for a lot of other people. They're not entirely into anime, but they love Pokemon.
That would originate from the California Roll. Originally, the California Roll was based off of a luxurious roll of crab and toro, but the toro got subsituted for the avocado. Not a big fan here of avocado either, but I could just ask for the original. heh
Yikes. I think I worded that badly. I actually meant to say people applying their talents to things that aren't exactly fanwork based and for a grassroots "original English language manga" community/industry/congregation. Tying in with the first response of mine up there and your analysis of what animators here got out of it, Anime provided this headstrong, revolutionary sort of inspiration that just crashed into the States that came at the right time and place. It's an adventure to want to discover and see what anime has in the history and cultural importance elsewhere in the world, and to see what influences and effects it has on the future.
If I recall, it was a mix of many things economically and interest wise. It had to do with US based publishers raising licensing fees, pushing out more series and material than could be possibly bought, and with fans going to the net to get a more authentic experience, as well as being caught up with what's hot in Japan. Because of the piracy like nature of online anime fan providers (ie bittorennts and whatnot) and that there wasn't a streaming service due to the level of tech back then, this was one major factor that got anime phased out from TV and was partially responsible for the Great Anime Bubble Crash of the Late 2000s. The others I can tell were the companies wanting to jump on with (as mentioned above) live action to get on that money ball.
I have a lot to say myself on that topic, but if anything I want to let you know you're not alone on that. It's very true that those who have glass houses should not throw stones, lest do onto others you will receive in return. There should be concern for the rest of the world, but until one has their problems under control and with legit profound solutions, there is absolutely no right to go about another's personal business. |
||||||||||||
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
||
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group