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Answerman - How Will Netflix Producing Anime Change the Industry?

ninjamitsuki wrote:

If more anime for a more global audience means more stuff like Space Dandy, and less moe imouto crap, I for one welcome our new Netflix overlords

Space Dandy isn't what it is because it was made for "global audience", it's because Watanabe was the director and he had a team of creative people.

Erebus25 wrote:

ninjamitsuki wrote: If more anime for a more global audience means more stuff like Space Dandy, and less moe imouto crap, I for one welcome our new Netflix overlords Space Dandy isn't what it is because it was made for "global audience", it's because Watanabe was the director and he had a team of creative people.

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.

The problem is that radical feminism seems to be the one that gets its way lately. People see the principal figures of the movement calling for censorship of foreign games, for a different way of portraying women in games men like, for gamer culture to die, equating sex appeal with objectification, wanting to fundamentally change games that they play, not wanting game for both men and women but instead games that always have to appeal to women and then they see companies listening to them and they don't like it. Political Correctness scares more people than ever before and with good reasons. As long as those who advocate to micromanage the lives and hobbies of people continue to force their "good intentions" then this trend of walking away from feminism will continue to grow.

As for Harvey Weinstein, the metoo trend is starting to disturbingly look like a witch hunt. Its now gotten to a point where a single unsubstantiated tweet about an almost-crime from 30 years ago can ruin an actor's career and no one waits for the courts to figure out whose lying and who isn't.

I thought after this, there would be at least tons of artistically inclined fans who would want to do their own works in the North American continent, if not in the entire Western Hemisphere as well into the early/mid 2000s.

Further adding to this, undeniably, anime has its own connotations as a cultural property all its own to us too, not just to us in the US and Canada, but to everywhere outside of Japan and possibly Eastern Asia. The question remains whether not on just Japan being able to recognize this, but for those who grew up with anime in that other perspective of that cultural experience- ie, us,- to properly grasp this. I honestly feel like that's going to be key if anyone wants to start anime's western counterpart, especially if they're going to be Netflix.

So.... Thoughts? I know that Castlevania is amazing, and Neo Yokio is a horrid joke that has no right to be near The Boondocks. Rooster Teeth has it just about right with RWBY, and the legacy that the people behind Avatar, Korra, and Voltron are keeping it strong but.... hrm. I can't pin why they aren't leading it. It's almost like they got everything right. What's up with that?

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.

My one fear about Netflix misunderstanding the anime fandom is them thinking its some boys only club and thus skimping out on the shojo and josei.

The problem is that radical feminism seems to be the one that gets its way lately. People see the principal figures of the movement calling for censorship of foreign games, for a different way of portraying women in games men like, for gamer culture to die, equating sex appeal with objectification, wanting to fundamentally change games that they play, not wanting game for both men and women but instead games that always have to appeal to women and then they see companies listening to them and they don't like it. Political Correctness scares more people than ever before and with good reasons. As long as those who advocate to micromanage the lives and hobbies of people continue to force their "good intentions" then this trend of walking away from feminism will continue to grow.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

there are cases where the producers really WERE out of line and the executives stepped in to put them back (such as George Broussard's disregard for deadlines and Gearbox putting him on an actual schedule with consequences for late work;

for gamer culture to die,

As for Harvey Weinstein, the metoo trend is starting to disturbingly look like a witch hunt. Its now gotten to a point where a single unsubstantiated tweet about an almost-crime from 30 years ago can ruin an actor's career and no one waits for the courts to figure out whose lying and who isn't.

For anime, I think what happened was that the boom in the 90's was a fad.

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.)

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".

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.

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

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.

Disney thwarted the popularity of anime in the 90s [here in Mexico]. 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.

Everything