Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Sports Anime Bomb In North America?
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5488 Location: Iscandar |
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Aren't sports anime also problematic to license and release in R1 because they are usually way too long? Yowapeda and Haikyu are the only recent examples I can think of sports shows with 50+ episodes that have seen disc releases.
I understand that shows like Megalobox, YOI and Keijo have been successful because they have brought different elements to the table, but I have to think it is also related to the shows being short in number of episodes. |
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Shiflan
 Posts: 418 |
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I doubt it. I don't remember sports shows being popular back in the days of VHS fansubs while plenty of other long series were. And there are plenty which are 26 or fewer episodes too. Whatever it is I don't think long episode counts are the main factor. Those that have been licensed still flopped (generally speaking). |
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LagannImpact
 Posts: 574 |
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Viz seems to be taking a chance on Megalobox, and knowing them it will probably be making its way to Toonami soon-ish. But that's more "altered sports/action" than true sports.
Of course, Toonami has become a confusing platform these days because a lot of shows that are considered "hits" are bombing by standards of 2-3 years ago. But if Megalobox is put back-to-back with Dragon Ball Super and can buck the trend, that will just cement its status as a "hit" among the bevy of bombs that is sports anime. |
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Furuzaki
 Posts: 105 |
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Haikyu has sex appeal? Kuroko and Free is obvious, but Haikyu? Mind = Blown
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4526 Location: New York |
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The thing about Megalobox (and two Manga I would love to see Crunchyroll animate instead, Karate Minoru and All Rounder Meguru) is that it’s a rather simple core concept, two people beat the crap out of each other. It’s much easier for the layman to understand.
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Felicity dash
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...it’s like saying males can’t enjoy Sailor Moon because it’s Shojo and it came from a Shojo manga. Thats what I’m getting based on your comment. |
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BVerfG
Posts: 43 |
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As someone who dabbles a little in the yaoi doujinshi and fanfiction scene: yeah, Haikyu is pretty big there. Not saying i buy that explanation for its popularity, it happens to be a really good sports manga/anime. The magic of the sports anime genre is that it makes things that should by all rights be incredibly boring, exciting. I mean Chihayafuru or Hikaru no Go are about a card and board game respectively and they're exciting. Haikyu is about volleyball, which is a bore to watch in real time for me. Free to me isnt really a sports anime. It tells us shit all about what makes you good at swimming and is mostly about hot guys and their homoerotic relationships with each other. Expressed through swimming, obv. The answer might be correct but it seems unlikely. As someone else has pointed out: why wouldnt those arguments hold true for Japan? People are passionate about sports (soccer and baseball) in Japan. They still buy sports manga and anime. So going for the nerd/otaku argument, which may or may not be true, seems pretty weak as an argument. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5477 |
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Anime fans and exercise do not go hand in hand. I'm sure there is a good reason, most likly a cultural one, why they do well in Japan.
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H. Guderian
Posts: 1255 |
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With the marathon-watching habits of many anime fans, sports anime are prohibitive.
Imagine coming home from work and putting on an episode of a baseball anime. You could pace out and ignore most of it while you make dinner, or pay more attention during playoffs. TV Anime are designed to be consumed in an episodic fashion. Have any actual sports fans downloaded all of a sports show and marathoned it like they would a more plot-drive show? Sports anime that take off over here take off and are known to be popular during their airing cycle. The popular ones are getting watched episodically. |
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DigitalScratch
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I mean it has almost unintended sex appeal? The series may be about volleyball, but there’s also characters with such strong emotional tension between them that a yaoi fan can easily twist it into them being tsundere for each other, or having repressss romantic feelings. It’s all about perspective. So while series like Kuroko and Free and even Yuri on Ice are very blatant with who they’re trying to appeal to, Haikyu just so happens to hit the same buttons for similar fans without having to show the same amount of sex appeal. It’s prob cause the characters have strong chemistry and relationship drama that appeals to the fujoshi crowd. And it’s possibly a very, very large crowd going by how many Haikyu fans attend cons and the sheer amount of yaoi content. |
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rahzel rose
 Subscriber Posts: 830 |
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I think some of it is the implication that ONLY fujoshi like these shows. And as someone who is not really into shipping at all and wouldn’t consider myself a fujoshi, it always gives me a bit of a pause to read or hear things like that. |
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Kirigea
Posts: 11 |
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Exactly this - he purposely quoted a subsection to illustrate a disengenuous argument. And the author specifically states "these are shows that sold sex appeal first" - the notion that Haikyuu is selling sex appeal "first" is non-sensical. |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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The problem I've personally had with a lot of sports anime (and manga) in the past is that I feel like they rely on the audience knowing about certain things of the rules to begin with and wanting to actually watch a game. And, being a massive nerd, I do not know most sports rules OR want to see a game be played. And I feel like way too many of them are focused on that rather than the characters and what they're thinking or feeling. I think that trend has actually been changing lately though, where Yuri on Ice was more than happy to have internal monologues during every skating routine. But I also think something that massively helps is when the damn plot moves along. Take Slam Dunk for example, that 32 volume behemoth only covers about 4 months of in-universe time and it will spend volumes at a time on a single game. Compare that to Takehiko Inoue's next basketball series, Real, where games don't tend to last more than 2 chapters and we spend most of the time with the characters and their thoughts and not with the game (and also, time passes at an appreciable rate). It's a shame Real seems to be on a semi-permanent hiatus because it's one of the best manga I've ever read. But I know that, at least in Japan, Slam Dunk is extremely well liked (one of the top 10 selling manga of all time, I believe?), but over here, it's just too much sports for me, not enough character or plot. I personally need a better sports plot than "we want to be the best team/individual!" Compare that to Real where absolutely no one's goal is "to win" but it's all about characters. And consider that I knew even less about wheelchair basketball than regular basketball, but the characters and the situation made me want to know more about the sport (I'd assume Inoue also assumed the average Japanese reader wouldn't know much about it either, but he wisely chooses what is actually plot or character relevant instead of going over every single rule and/or play). Hikaru no Go did something very similar for me, where it often goes with the old "dramatically slaps the mahjong piece on the board!" thing, but I still wanted to know more about the game at the end. Maybe for Japan, where kids might already be on board with the sport, having a game last 5 volumes is great fun, but for the west? We don't really care.
So while a loving, believable, and adorable gay couple might've gotten people to look at Yuri on Ice, I also think that knowing that the average person doesn't know all these skating jumps (they seriously still all look identical to me) and isn't a skating otaku (unlike the creators) YOI wisely leaves little things for the real life skating otaku (and real life figure skaters) to enjoy (like Johnny Weir's rose crown) while focusing on the characters and combining that with having enough time pass for them to actually develop was what made it stick. And sure, part of the plot might've been trying to win the Grand Prix, but it was far more clearly about Yuri's development and seeing his self-esteem improve over the series, so our story was more than just "Yuri wants to win". And yet, for all these sports series, I still have yet to know any about juggling! Also, why is yacht racing an Olympic "sport", but not juggling? I'd say it could be judged similarly to figure skating or gymnastics, with a "routine" sort of deal. |
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Kirigea
Posts: 11 |
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A show having a yaoi fanbase does not mean that that is why it's successful as the author implies by stating "these are shows that sold sex appeal first" (note the use of the word "first"). The statement is just as false as saying that BnHA is popular because of its sex appeal just because it too has a yaoi fanbase but anyone that has spent time as an anime fan will know that literally every show with a male dominated cast will almost certainly always have a fujoshi audience. |
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TheAnimeRevolutionizer
 Posts: 329 |
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Oh please. Spare me this stereotype. I've met plenty of guys and have relatives who were on football and soccer teams in high school and they loved anime. Someone also hasn't heard of Psychic Force and Burn Griffiths. Thing about that however, is that much unlike martial arts, and I'm not talking about MMA, sports culture over here is all about fitting the bill and making the cut. I'm sure there are also tryouts and screenings in Japan, but over here sports culture is way more rooted in Americana to a fault. While sports culture all over the world shares some traits, the US loves its sports entertainment, and they look for new and talented players young as soon as they hit the playing field. It also doesn't help that, while there are plenty of cool guys and athletes out there, sports culture is also somewhat rooted in more toxic aspects of the US as well, like having hands with spoiled rich upper middle class socialite bourgeois and fraternities and sororities, and if I recall from an earlier Answerman forum discussion, one user from NYC stated that she got into anime because the sports teams in her school were also related with street gangs. It also doesn't help that the worst aspects of sports culture in the States also has some nasty undertones with elitism and supremacist ways of thinking, especially stemming from the aforementioned toxic societies up there. Around the big city where I live, there's a major nation college here that's already suffering a scandal from exploiting their players, and the surrounding area of the university where my workplace is located is already dealing with college delinquent antics. It also doesn't help that it's in downtown. When it comes to martial arts, yeah, there are some jocks and overly competitive jaggovs here and there, but when it comes to joining in, there's no overt judgement or screening to be had; granted of course, one of my siblings was specially hand picked by the grandmaster to inherit the TKD school he went to, and unless that martial art is some sort of truly potentially dangerous and powerful stuff hidden away like Iron Palm and various Koryu, there kinda will be, but that is very rare (like astronomically, especially in this day and age) and once you've joined you're in as long as you like. Hence why anime fans here are more interested in martial arts; it's the athletics without the competition (for the most part), and there's aspects of building self motivation and internal development, along with knowing how to defend yourself, and walking the path of a fighter with responsibility, and where their studies will take them. It's certainly more revolved around fantastical elements and fantasy when it comes to anime, but the morality and virtue is there. |
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