Forum - View topicANNCast Live at Otakon 2018
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3768 |
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Huh, if I had known that it was going to be recorded for the podcast, I might have gone up and asked a question. Oh, well.
While I don’t think I’ll listen to it again, there was one thing I wanted to address. While in recent years the discussion has generally moved on to the newest shows every season, I don’t think not talking about a show or thinking about it regularly is the same as forgetting or no longer caring about a show. I’m certain everyone reading this site can do basic arithmetic, but that’s not because you are constantly thinking about how 2+2=4. You remember when you need it, and I think to some degree this is the same. Am I regularly thinking about Hellsake Yano...er, Pop Team Epic? Not really. But if someone or something brought it up, those memories would come roaring back to the surface. Separately, I think the idea that one would dump one’s merch from the season’s shows in the trash at the end of the season misunderstands the timeline that some of these things are released, particularly figures, which usually don’t ship for months after a show has aired, but one could write that off as hyperbole perhaps. Will people forget a number of shows by the end of the year? Certainly. But I think some are a bit too certain that particular shows will be forgotten or have been forgotten by their biggest fans after they have finished airing. |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2487 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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I'm the one who asked about mobage (around 48:45 in the podcast). I would like to see a "This Week in Mobage", motivated partially by how important the mobage now seem to be to their host franchises. The Princess Principal movies were announced at an event for that mobage, and earlier this week, the Madoka Magica mobage got a gold-medal figure skater to do an ad for them, fercryinoutloud.
Or, to drive home the point further, Think Gaming estimates that Fate/Grand Order is making about $3 million a day, just on iOS. Basically, you could format it like the current This Week in Gaming: a short rundown of this week's events in the most popular games (F/GO, BanG Dream, Love Live, Granblue, etc.), and then an in-depth review. It's pretty easy (and free) to get Japan-only games with a Japanese iTunes or Google Play account, so the in-depth reviews could show off beloved anime franchises that have games there but not here. As for whether you want someone who's "super into gacha", as Zac says, that's kind of what you don't want. You need someone who dispassionately knows how these sorts of games work, and can get the hang of new ones after a few hours and then evaluate whether it's fun, how fair or exploitative the systems are, etc. It took me a long time to get a sense of this myself. At first, I played Love Live School Idol Festival as if it were a DDR or BeatMania, and got nowhere. It was much later, playing the deeply mediocre Muv-Luv Alternative Strike Frontier that I finally got the hang of leveling up, assembling teams, maxing skills, breaking the star limit, etc. When SF died, I switched to BanG Dream Girls Band Party for a while and my understanding of the gacha/grind economy immediately switched over: I was able to get into the Top 5K for events pretty quickly. (Mostly I was doing this for my livestream, and you can really see my growth from not really getting Uta Macross to really knowing my way around Strike Frontier) So, I guess that would be my advice to any "Heidis of gacha" out there, if Zac ever puts out a call for proposals for a feature like this: don't be a drooling addict like Gudako, be someone who has developed insight into the scams these games are, and can show people where the fun is with smart, non-obsessive gameplay. Since some of these franchises are getting new content exclusively in their mobage, greater coverage of the stuff seems practically inevitable. |
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zrnzle500
Posts: 3768 |
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^I think what Zac was going for with that answer was them wanting to find someone who is actually interested in talking about mobage every week, which seems like it could be a steep hurdle. They definitely want to make sure that whoever they pick is savvy and articulate and has an interesting perspective, but they need to find someone who actually wants to do the job first, and that seems to be the challenge that they have for that.
I might be interested in seeing that sort column though. I haven’t really played traditional games in years, having only so much free time and wanting to fill much of that watching anime, but I have been fairly active with mobage in the last few years. While I have generally stuck with one or two at a time, it could be interesting to see what’s out there and how they compare to each other. The two I play now, F/GO (of course) and the DanMachi one are fairly different in their generosity with in-game currency and summons, their relation to their parent franchise, and competition between players, among other things, and I think it would be helpful to sort through these differences, for both veterans and those new to mobage. They would need to have someone who really gets mobage and is interested in examining them but also knows the ins and outs and how best to approach them, and that may be difficult to find, but I would probably check it out if they did try that sort of column. |
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Galap
Moderator
 Posts: 2354 |
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Was at Otakon, but couldn't get in that early on Friday. I keep managing to miss the ANN panels for one reason or another. One day I'll make it to one!
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13626 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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The lack of mentioning "Heat Guy J" at least once sucks.
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CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
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In response to the last question, I believe ANN's large team of writers has significantly helped against the accusation that ANN has an unfair bias/inappropriate tone when it comes to any show. By comparison, sites like Toon Zone or Blu-ray.com might have one or two anime writers who get everything.
Obviously, Zac or Mike won't get put on writing about a slave girl isekai or harem show. For this reason, ANN is one of my favorite places to get anime information/reviews. |
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invalidname
Contributor Posts: 2487 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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The panel was at 9AM Friday, before the dealer's room opened, thereby denying Zac a chance to run around real quick and buy cheap remaindered shitty DVDs to hand out as "prizes". Such as Heat Guy J. |
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CandisWhite
Posts: 282 |
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"Anime runs so quick and is treated as disposable nowadays". It really depends on your sphere. Even when I was a teen, I wasn't like that and those weren't my people. I would argue that there are also more in-it-for-the-long-haul people, nowadays, as more Japanese and American merchandise being made is targeted to them. Plus, disposing-heavy consumers existed before; The hottest things just came out less often and in smaller quantities.
I went with a non-anime, non-animation, following person who enjoyed the hell out of 'your name' and was engaged by the story IN THE THEATRE. The dub was not an anime dub™; It was treated more as an accessible European film. That Funimation shot by Zac was spot-on. Congratulations on 20 years! |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4669 |
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Agreed. It tends to be harder to judge something if it isn't something that you're likely to enjoy in the first place. I don't like sports games, for instance, so I'd be terrible at reviewing Madden since I'm going to be bored with it from the start. I don't want reviewers to gush over a show because it's in a particular genre, but having a general appreciation for the genre does lend a sense of credibility to the criticism. Speaking as an avid collector, it is frustrating to me to see how quickly people move on to the next thing because there is always something new coming along. It really shows how disposable entertainment is becoming. If you went by cosplay at my local convention, there was a year where you'd think Soul Eater was the biggest thing ever. The next year after it had finished on Toonami, not so much. |
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dm
 Subscriber Posts: 1480 |
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I want to echo Mike's complaint about movie distribution. There's often a single showing, sometimes at inconvenient times --- even in a market where that single showing sells out (in advance) and the theatre is turning away potential viewers. Having the flexibility to let theatres book the films for a week, or doing a following art-house run, would be nice.
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Kadmos1
Posts: 13626 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Provided its within the distribution budget, having an anime film at least 12 theaters (showing the dub and sub) in all 50 states for at least 1-2 weeks is perhaps the best approach. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I made a gamble that this panel would later be posted as a podcast, and due to that, I'm very happy it did! I would also like to thank you for giving us another episode finally! I've been going through pretty horrific withdrawal without a single decent anime podcast to listen to over the last several weeks..
As to the 'anime churn', yeah, it's definitely a thing, but I also think people take it a little too far when describing it. Like zrnzle500, I think there is a difference between not talking about a show you saw a few seasons ago, and forgetting about it, or no longer caring about it. It's probably easier to see how this pans out in some of the other community groups I participate in. People who collect, in particular, aren't forgetting a series they watched 18 months ago, because they'll be waiting that long for the Blu-ray anyway! As such, there is regular discussion about older shows all the time. But even disregarding that, more than the 'anime churn' causing people to forget previous shows that they loved, it just gives people, often different people, new things to talk about all the time. New things are naturally what gets most of the discussion, but that doesn't mean a lot of people aren't still enjoying older shows as well, it just understandably doesn't drive the discussion so much anymore. I'd say there are a good 20-30 shows every year that remain in the public consciousness for a few years at least. I still see people talking about Flip Flappers and Erased, Rakugo Shinjuu and Gate, Death Parade and Aldnoah.Zero, etc. There's a lot of forgettable stuff, but I think throughout the years, roughly the same number of shows each season continue to be remembered and discussed more long term. |
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mbanu
 Posts: 160 |
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I think one thing that is often overlooked is how essential the ANN Encyclopedia is; because of its age there is primary-source info on English-language releases that are hard to find otherwise, and as a generalist encyclopedia it is still the IMDB of anime. MyAnimeList tends to have more experimental titles, but the depth of info is a lot better on ANN. Sakugabooru is maybe the better educational tool as it has examples of key animators' work, but they have kept their focus narrow.
I'm pretty sure that the ANN Encyclopedia is what powers YouTube anime commentary videos; the number of database otaku who can pull the art director from a 20-year-old anime out of their memory is not as large as the internet would like you to think. 
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relyat08
Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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^I think the encyclopedia here is ultimately the tool that most other sources draw from, but I think a lot of those YouTubers, specifically, grab the actual names from MAL or Wikipedia. Both of which are not as comprehensive or as accurate as they should be.
I found ANN because of the encyclopedia, and it continues to be a great resource that I use very regularly but even while it is the best English language resource, it's still pretty incomplete itself. I understand how much work it would be to go through literally every show and fill out the credits, I've made a few edits myself, and it's a huge pain in the butt, but at this point, you still pretty much need to learn Japanese and read the credits straight from the OP and ED yourself if you really want to know who worked on something... or now, since some broadcasters suck and don't show the full credits, even that isn't always accurate. 
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