Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Did Anime Take So Long To Take Off In America?
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AkaRed
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I have an answer it's Because USA didn't have their Club Dorothée
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Primus
 Posts: 2801 Location: Toronto |
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In regards to mainstream television, the end of the last decade. The only anime currently on English Canadian TV is Beyblade, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!. The same shows also air on French Canadian TV. They just have Chi's Sweet Home on top of it. Of course, lots of fans are being introduced to anime through internet platforms, but I suspect it might not necessarily be as wide a group as before. |
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EricJ2
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Of course, we're still narrowly defining "Catching on" = "Being shown on mainstream TV and getting Hollywood adaptations".
As for the latter, consider that Ghost in the Shell and Netflix's Death Note thought they were two of the more "faithful" adaptations...Moving on. The question of "Why no mainstream TV?" was also asked in the column by those who see anime only as what they grew up with in Latin or European countries that would think nothing of showing foreign import cartoons in afternoon kids' TV, frankly because they didn't HAVE that many of their own. As to why we didn't, that question was already covered by the discussions of 80's-90's US afternoon kids TV: We had enough of our own, anything that was Weird & Foreign had to bring something marketable to the table just to compete with the main powerhouses, and in Pokemon's case--and Sailor Moon's, back when it was "Girl's Power Rangers!", DBZ when it was "Kung-fu Cool!" and Cardcaptors', back when it was "Girl's Pokemon"--that was Marketing. Pokemon had it, Yu-Gi-Oh had it, and if it didn't have it, daytime TV wasn't interested. There's some debate over whether late night TV is really all that sincerely interested in it outside of never-ending One Piece and Fairy Tail serial-demographics, either. Fox tried to get in on Cool Anime for Saturday morning in '00, after they got a little too Digimon-happy, took their pick at random at what the licensors offered, and picked what they were assured was the big Japanese hit at the time: Escaflowne. What happened then, there's ANOTHER whole separate discussion. 
Basically, as US anime fans define "Catching on", it goes back to the roots already described: Is there someone actually getting it out on DVD where people can buy it--or streaming in a market where fans can find it--and don't have to rely on the old grass-roots fan ether? That's the market it's settled into, where those who know what it is can appreciate it on a wine-connoseuir level, and those who don't know what it is are no longer obligated to try and shoehorn it into something it isn't, just to cover a wider base and pay their bills. But, y'know, if you got to watch Card Captor Sakura in Brazilian for free when you were a kid, hey, more power to ya. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
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#1 Blowing up in the 80s vs 90s doesn't seem like that big of a gap imo.
#2 Voltron and Transformers were MASSIVE in the 1980s so I think factual base of the argument might be flat out wrong. Akira wasn't exactly met with a whimper either. Also, weren't Speed Racer and Astro Boy pretty popular over here in the 70s? |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Regarding Speed Racer: Also the absolutely bonkers dubbing, which became just as defining a characteristic of the show as was the very limited animation. (And then...David Hernandez, I think was his name, cameoed on the live-action Wachowskis film as a commentator and I learned he actually CAN speak like a normal actor.) There's also the proto example of Astro Boy, which was presented as just another animated TV show, even more limited animation and all. And what I found interesting was that the Alan Ladd dub kept all of the complex and debatable themes present in the series as it was in Japan.
That's a good point. I did hear from the recent Answerman that other countries' home video tends to cost a lot more than in the United States, and regardless of the product, the US is an enormous market if you can get their attention. So if anime were to take off in a big way, they'd be afraid of cheap, and equally important, abundant home video.
If you mean in the United States, no, the Saturday Morning block was killed off because kids were no longer willing to wake up as early as they used to due to alternatives on cable channels like Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and Disney Channel showing animated programming (and live-action kids programming) at other hours of the day. Cable is not bound to the same limitations as broadcast and can focus on narrower demographics, so cartoons no longer had to be bound to Saturday morning while the parents watched prime time television at all other hours of that day. Educational programming does not necessarily have to mean boring programming, considering shows that were quite obviously educational like Histeria! were ratings hits, though most such successful educational shows were live-action (such as Bill Nye the Science Guy, Beakman's World, the Carmen Sandiego game shows, and Encyclopedia, not to mention Sesame Street, the show to prove to everyone that your kids can learn and be entertained at the same time). Admittedly, it's tougher to make a good show that's also educational, as it requires people of specific backgrounds and fields of knowledge to do it.
I'd say more so than that were animated sitcoms like The Simpsons, which proved to be a cross-demographics hit, so much that every other major American animation studio except Disney tried their hand at it (Hanna-Barbera rolled out Capitol Critters, Klasky-Csupo introduced Duckman, etc.), though rather than destroying the Animation Age Ghetto, it carved out its own segment of it, which persists to this day in that your typical American adult will not watch something animated unless it's a sitcom, which is a bit of a bummer as it goes into the territory of the Comedy Ghetto. That being said, plenty of people in American animation today are hard at work trying to shake off that perception that cartoons must be either for kids or be a comedy and are going for more serial, dramatic storytelling or demonstrate high levels of knowledge. (Gravity Falls, for instance, can only be fully understood by someone who can decrypt Vigenère ciphers, for instance.) Every attempt from Hollywood at a non-comedic theatrical animated film has flopped though
As far as anime goes, it's more that they don't believemainstream Americans would be too interested in it if it's animated. But there is a lot of that "too foreign" stuff that effectively blocks a lot of live-action film, though perhaps it's more accurately "different language," considering the very British film Paddington 2 has hit wide release this past Friday, and we're getting Aardman's Early Man next month.
Unlike anime, though, British television got BBC America, albeit it's not all British programming.
Merchandising creates a whole new snarl all on its own, as you're going to have the Japanese licensors, creators, and manufacturers feuding over the American companies that will ship, distribute, and stock the merchandise (which are rarely the same company for even two of them) over how much money goes to whom, what can they change about the packaging and/or the merchandise itself, and keeping the localized names and logos and such accurate (if they're interested in that at all). I would bet that to avoid this sort of trouble, even a major brand like Pokémon has American companies licensed out to make merchandise. You can get plushes and plastic toys made by Jakks Pacific, or you can search around a bit more and get imported ones from Tomy or Banpresto. (I have a lot of Pokémon plushes, and I get them from all three. Jakks actually makes some good quality stuff sometimes.)
The 80s was also the time of "Japan Takes Over the World," as automobiles from Honda and Toyota were crushing domestic automobiles in sales and quality, Nintendo and SEGA were doing the same from the video game consoles front, and other things. The result was that many Americans at that time had a deep-seated fear of Japan, under the idea that this was a country that was better than the Americans in every way (they weren't, much as some...certain people in the anime fandom might want to think) and that whatever the Americans could produce, Japan would reverse-engineer it and make something better (hasn't happened in key markets even to this day, most notably computers and smartphones). Japan was also the only country at the time running a national surplus rather than a debt. If you've ever seen The Animatrix, what people thought of Japan at the time was much like what humans thought of the robot nation of Zero-One in "The Second Renaissance." This was a mindset that lasted until the economic crash in Japan in the 90s, when people in other countries realized that Japan was not a country populated entirely by nerds and drones. Well, maybe the drones part is more accurate, but still, Japan was proven to not be infallible. It's also a few decades prior, but in the 80's, there were still plenty of people still alive who lived through World War II, the war in which the United States fought against Japan as an enemy. To them, Japan is the country that directly dropped bombs on American territory and would suicide-bomb our soldiers from their jets, and thus a country not to be trusted.
Nah, Hollywood's always been overflowing with remakes and adaptations, as well as whatever is popular at the time. The popular 1939 Wizard of Oz wasn't even the first Hollywood adaptation of the book, for instance. Gone with the Wind was extremely popular, and that's partially because it was riding the coattails of the novel it was based on, which was very popular when the movie came out. When Frank Capra hit it big, everyone else wanted to make romantic comedies and there were like 30 every year through the 1950's. You just don't know about most of them because very few stood the test of time (and most of the ones that did were made by Capra himself). It was immediately followed by the craze in spy films kicked off by the 007 films, so much that the TV show Get Smart could succeed being entirely a parody of spy tropes, most of which would be unrecognizable today except through other parodies. Remember the two equally popular and well-liked versions of Ben-Hur? Or the version of King Kong between the iconic original one and the one made by Peter Jackson (and this isn't even counting Skull Island)? And before superhero movies took off, we had the "kids go into a magical fantasy realm" trend that the Harry Potter movies kicked off (and we're technically not completely out of it yet, as Disney's releasing A Wrinkle in Time later this year). Rather, the one thing Hollywood is doing now that it didn't in previous decades is budget inflation and a reliance on special effects. Movie budgets have gone way up, even when factoring in inflation, as has the use of greenscreens and "green mummies." Revenue-wise, movie studios have shifted from several small successes over the course of a year to a handful of tentpoles that can offset the deficit of the inevitable bombs (with the exception of Disney, which can have many successes over a year). I can't say if this is the cause behind the lower box office numbers in 2017 as opposed to 2016 (the decline was not apparent until 2017), though if you ask me, it's because of China: Chinese viewers prefer "thrill ride" movies and are an ENORMOUS (read: financially lucrative) audience. Case in point: Last year, they gave us The Great Wall, which is more or less what Chinese filmmakers think we Americans like to see. Hollywood studios, seeing the potential money in appealing to Chinese viewers, mold movies to their taste at the expense of, well, everyone else. The problem is that Chinese viewers really only pay attention to a few Hollywood movies per year, and if it isn't Transformers or Fast and Furious, it's extremely difficult to figure out which ones it'll be. That being said, Coco was a smash hit in China despite it being neither a thrill ride movie nor is it set in a place your expected Chinese viewer would be that familiar with. Seems that stories about respecting your ancestors and your family also resonate well with them. |
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shelwyn
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Oh rip colors TV channel that had late night anime lmao.
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Primus
Posts: 2801 Location: Toronto |
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On second thought, it's odd how anime developed in Canada. Justin's point about the US being such a large content producer isn't really true for us. Yes, maybe we do punch above our weight, especially in regards to animation, but that's not really reflected in the way our channels schedule things. Cancon quotas or not, flip through a few channels and you're more than likely to land on a foreign show than a Canadian one. It's just that more often than not, foreign for us means from the United States.
You would think the regulatory conditions would've been ripe for anime (and European animation, for that matter) to be exploited more on Canadian television. We have our local production quotas and anime dubs recorded here do count for that. Yet even comparing mainstream TV channels to mainstream TV channels (since Canada's smaller population would mean our deep cable channels can't really compare to the US), the US still made out far better. I guess our broadcasters are just far less adventurous and adore those big programming deals they sign with US companies. Even a Canadian dub of Dragon Ball Kai couldn't land a TV deal. 
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GOTZFAUST
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Or Berlusconi TV channels. Italian and French versions are the root of spreading anime. However it is not if europeans were so open to Japanese culture. Much like the US, the shows were edited and changed to make them feel western (some people think Lupin III is from the US). Old Anime looked very neutral. |
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Dandylion
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They didn't have their "Bim Bum Bam" either
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CandisWhite
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When linear television was huge, anime WAS big in Canada. Canadian content laws meant that we got a lot of Japanese and European cartoons; Cheap to license and, due to being dubbed in English here, they counted towards quotas: Canadian channels, especially during their early days, leapt all over those shows. We got the classic dubbed-in-America stuff, too, like Kimba and Speed Racer, whose re-releases tended to coincide with those in the States ( I certainly remember watching SR in the early 90's); Voltron and Robotech aired here several times over the decades. Sailor Moon's original 1995 run was WILDLY popular, both amongst school-age kids who tuned into YTV 5 days a week and the college kids who held anime "sleepovers". The merchandise run was fat-fingered and promotion was terrible (In modern times, MLP:FIM has been handled a million times better) but that didn't keep the show from being well-loved. Our access to physical anime hasn't waned in 15 years (changed but not diminished); We still have Best Buy and, recently, Sunrise Records, plus Amazon Canada. Indigo and Amazon have proven how popular manga is. Canada's never been short on anime; That includes now: Anime is no longer on TV in large amounts because it has moved ONLINE. Canadians look to, mostly, the same places as Americans for their anime fix, nowadays. Original Canadian shows are even going online because that's where the eyeballs are. Interesting note: Deep cable (echo-y voice) -Super Channel, Family Channel {sub days}, etc. -was where you DID find a lot of that foreign type stuff, once upon a time. |
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Primus
Posts: 2801 Location: Toronto |
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I wasn't arguing against anime being popular in Canada. Living in Toronto, I'm reminded of that every Anime North. Despite the convention's capped attendance and borderline nonexistent industry presence, it's still one of the largest in North America.
I was commenting on how English Canada's development very much mirrored the US in terms of timing and titles (with a shallower pool of content) despite an environment where you'd think it could've done better. I can't speak from experience to the days prior to the 90s, but I'm aware of things like Fables of the Green Forrest (and its later YTV re-dub), Belle and Sebastian, The Little Prince as well as more commercial shows like Astro Boy 80 (and its Canadian dub), Battle of the Planets and Robotech. It's just that most of the shows we got were things that also aired in the United States. At least from my vantage, our broadcast system didn't really net us as much as you may have expected given the system was more advantageous to anime. Cartoon Network, for example, has almost certainly aired more anime shows than Family, Teletoon and YTV combined (sorry, but I'm not counting them all myself .  ).
That's not to say we didn't get some of our own titles or that there weren't situations unique to Canada. For better or for worse, Gundam SEED probably holds more cache up here than down south. Obviously Sailor Moon was huge and as legend goes, the latter seasons were only dubbed because of YTV and Irwin. Beyblade clearly struck a chord up here more than it did in the US. All three of those were Canadian dubs, which most likely helped they stay on TV up here longer and in a more prominent fashion. |
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