Forum - View topicCrunchyroll Originals Have Been A Disaster
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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Eh, you might be surprised by Gargoyles actually. Lots of character introspection and some very somber and quiet moments, quite rare in American TV cartoons. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6267 |
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I listed the shows specifically because the OP essentially argued that American Cartoons from the last 50 years ago are no better compared to a show from 2001/2019 which of course isn't true. (admittedly I originally read that as a quarter of a century which means I can add stuff from the 80's and the first half of the 90's).
.......some of those shows are are less than a decade old that's not modern enough? And most of the complaints is the usual "back in my day" shtick
If you recall correctly Batman Mask Of The Phantasm was originally released theatrically and had content that would've never flown on Fox at the time and then of course years later they put out Batman Beyond Return Of The Joker which was even more dark and violent to the point they had to make an edited version which was still pretty dark and violent. And since then multiple straight to DVD movies that are also violent and in some rare cases feature sexual content so not really. Hell the Harley Quinn show on TBS is a thing.
Have you watched any of them? Because a few of them were known for their decent to strong character writing and complex plots. Secondly a lot of those WB shorts had issues with how their characters were portrayed which is how Bugs Bunny could go from a likeable character who was wronged and who you wanted to see get his revenge to being an asshole who generally started the problems or made them worse in any given short who as a consequence you couldn't feel that much sympathy for who also wound up being a karma houndini at the end the latter being more common than the former. Let's not even talk about how Daffy's character shifted and not in a good way over the same time period.
So no. Also you might want to remember that there was a lot of not good warner bros. shorts from that time period especially the 30's and 60's. Let's not even mention the blackface & asian stereotype stuff that dotted both Warner Bros. & MGM shorts from the 30's and 40's. |
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El Hermano
 Posts: 450 Location: Texas |
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I looked up the article you mentioned, and it seems it was about the way a lot of people only cared about it being made by a black creator than the quality of the show itself. I know a lot of people obsess over issues like that, but it is a two way street at the end of the day. Liking a show only because it has X is as close minded as people hating a show because it has X. It's the issue with making identity politics the main focus of any product, and it's not as if LeSean Thomas hasn't been open and honest about his goals as a creator. But I didn't mean no one didn't ever complain about those shows, just that they were not huge controversies that literally every content creator and outlet made videos and articles about. People either liked or disliked the shows and moved on with their lives. |
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DamianSalazar
Posts: 759 |
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You don't speak for me. I got into this medium because I love animation and was curious to see whether it would pique my interest. Mind you I watched Pokemon, Digimon, Medabots, Beyblade, YuGiOh, Bakugan before finding out they were anime.
First of all, do you actually watch Cartoon Network? The issue some people have with CN isn't because of shows like Steven Universe, it's actually scheduling. It's a problem it shares with Nickelodeon. The two networks have a constant fixation with some of their successful programming, most notably Teen Titans Go! and SpongeBob Squarepants, a fixation that has led CN to shaft shows to later dates for reruns of TTG, and as for Nick, any show that isn't SpongeBob or doesn't get good ratings gets the axe. |
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Moxxmix
Posts: 18 |
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Remember in the early 2000's when there was a flood of hate against the "moe" anime style? CalArts is like that, but for western animation. It's referring to a set of particular animation stylisms that have spread over a large number of properties that people find distasteful, to lesser or greater degrees. Common properties are things like ping pong ball eyes, flat mouths, lack of depth, certain types of lining, etc. There's no single element that defines it, anymore than the eye expansion or chipmunk teeth (eg: K-On) define the moe aesthetic. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6900 Location: Kazune City |
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Seems like the real issue is branding and specific title choices for the "Crunchyroll Originals" lineup, not the mere fact that CR is financially and logistically involved in some anime production. If the Originals lineup were more centered on stuff like Shield Hero, Place Further than the Universe, Laid-Back Camp, MMO Junkie, Tonikawa, and similarly-well-received projects (and the Ex-Arm/Gibiate type stuff were more buried in the seasonal streaming churn), there wouldn't be this kind of controversy.
Come on, let's drop the historical revisionism. The backlash to HGS was not "You guys fail marketing 101 so hard" it was a fear of a dastardly feminist/woke/whatever "agenda" being propagated and imposed. Strange how, for example, no one reacted to CR announcing Goblin Slayer with "they're spending literally all my subscription fees on fantasy rape trash." Almost as if there's a large contingent of the anime viewerbase that holds certain ideological viewerpoints, hates the legitimate industry, hates CR, and is willing to believe any nonsensical conspiracy theory to explain CR doing Something They Don't Like. Though I will say that CR made a bit of an unforced error in the HGS saga, as they didn't "read the room" (perhaps a Bay Area Bubble effect?) in terms of how reactionary the anime viewerbase truly is. |
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FlowerAiko
 Posts: 223 |
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The whole HGS situation was a very big mess, and I think a lot of the blame lies with CR's marketing. However, it's really undeniable that some people took this as some weird brigade against their anime by the "PC police" or whatever. I remember a lot of people crying about the "CalArts style" (despite the fact that the creator did not go there), digging into the personal lives of the announced staff and screenshotting their "man hating" tweets from four years prior, making jokes about the body types and skin tones of the girls on the poster, hyperbolic complaints about the evils of the "PC West" invading anime, etc. I invite people to go back through the archive of bad faith YouTube complainers or even just the Crunchyroll subreddit to read all of that. And much of the ire was directed not at the company of Crunchyroll but rather the individual members of Ray and his team, who cannot control the marketing of their show.
However, I think it's also important to note that there were a lot of good-faith criticisms, even beyond the obvious irony in a "diverse" all-white writers room. CR's brand at the time was very much "by the fans, for the fans" with the biggest brand push being that, through your sub, you support the known-to-be-underpaid anime staff DIRECTLY. Meanwhile, the site and its apps sucked to use (they honestly still do), especially when you compared it to "competing" pirate sites. The video player was still flash in the year 2018 (which they would only change in response to a bitrate controversy). A viral YouTube video advocating for piracy floated around only a few months prior, and people were even starting to doubt if the "supporting the anime industry" marketing held any weight. In response to all this, CR decides the best thing to show subscribers was an ad detailing how their money went to funding an American cartoon. I love American cartoons, I subbed to D+ for The Owl House, but that's not what I use CR for. I wanted an html5 player, a better PS4 app, and CR to stop losing licenses to Amazon and Netflix. The stupid "political correctness is ruining my anime" argument definitely overtook everything (including the controversy's legacy, judging by the state of this forum), but I think it was incredibly apparent that AT&T and Ellation had zero clue what their subscriber base even wanted. Shame they demonized HGS rather than looking inward and realizing it was a company problem. |
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JoelBurger
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It may not have been the most vocal, but a part of the backlash absolutely was the sentiment that the trailer told you basically nothing about the show due to how focused it was on the people making it instead. |
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Piglet the Grate
 Posts: 761 Location: North America |
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The whole diversity issue is promoted to deflect attention from more important problems such as the terrible working conditions for staff that you mention, and of course much worse things than that (but those are veering way to far off topic for this forum).
The issue here is if someone subscribes to Crunchyroll to watch Japanese anime, should that money be put towards making American style animated cartoons? Either Crunchyroll should make a more a la carte subscription service so people can only pay for what they want, or they should expect to lose subscribers who get fed up paying for stuff they have no interest in. |
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JaffaOrange
 Posts: 254 |
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I'm a Crunchyroll subscriber. That doesn't make me an investor though so I really don't have a say about how the company uses the money I give them. They have a bunch of shows that have been translated that I want to watch and I pay for the ability to legally do so. If I think that what they offer isn't worth the money, I stop giving it to them. Nothing more, nothing less. If Crunchyroll ends up only having shows I don't care about, then that'll happen and Crunchyroll is aware of that.
That being said, the average quality of Crunchyroll Originals is surely below the industry average right? If this something that will be corrected if they just release more and more or is there some kind of systemic problem? I wish I could say bad management = bad shows but there are plenty of examples where mismanagement still leads to great properties...until it doesn't (see: video game industry). Is it simply that good talent was all too busy when Crunchyroll reached out for staff and studios? Surely being part of the production team means that they have some say during the production process? Did they ok everything (even when questionable) or were they still excluded until things were too late? I wouldn't be surprised if it was either. |
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Hal14
 Posts: 714 Location: Heart of africa |
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Like @JaffaOrange said, a subscriber is not the same thing as an investor. Yes, if you don't like the shows a service provides then you should unsubscribe. But buying a product or service isn't the same as investing in it. I've seen this similar mentality with video game development. It would be one thing if you gave money through crowdfunding and that person used that money to make a different game, but buying a Konami game doesn't mean they are obligated to use that money to make another Castlevania game instead of their godforsaken pachinko machines. |
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AmpersandsUnited
Posts: 633 |
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I remember people expressing displeasure at Crunchyroll funding and promoting said controversial shows. Direct comparisons were made criticizing how Crunchyroll will proudly promote Shield Hero but bury High Guardian Spice. It's not as if people don't object to Crunchyroll doing that stuff as well, it's just one side was a lot larger than the other and ended up getting their way.
That's the most reasonable approach. If a service is not living up to your expectations then there should be no obligation to support it. Personally, no, I did not especially care for most of the originals they make. I do prefer them make Webtoon adaptions over more American-focused stuff like High Guardian Spice, and that does seem to be the direction they went with after the backlash they got. Streaming services wanting to exert more control and ownership by making their own shows is inevitable, so customers should make their opinions heard so that they might go in a preferred direction at the very least. We're going to get more originals whether we want them or not. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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Hear! Hear! This is exactly what happened to Cartoon Network decades ago. They went from paying royalties for the series they had to creating new intellectual property they owned, even if that was in detriment of WB as a conglomerate (that is the reason they cancelled Teen Titans in lieu of Ben 10). This all about the money and those who think Crunchy should do things differently for whatever reason without giving a financially sound alternative, are just barking at a wall. |
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IceLeaf
Posts: 146 |
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I really don't count I'm a Spider, So What? as a Crunchyroll Original. The manga had a going to get an anime announcement years before were said to be a thing. While sure it may take a while for things to be animated you think they would have announced this exciting new thing they were doing at the same time the manga announced it was getting an anime
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BBally
Posts: 84 Location: UK |
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[loud applause] Beautifully said. |
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I mean there's doujinshi for everything but I don't think the majority of anime fans look to PreCure for sexy anime girls. Remind me (don't) if you were the same guy who talked about getting off to Sailor Moon a few threads ago and that's why it can't be 'feminist'?  |
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