Forum - View topicWhen do you think anime will become more mainstream?
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nhat
Posts: 922 |
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The anime market has hit it's peak and isn't going to get more popular than it did in previous years. Showing on TV that isn't ABC, FOX, or other major station isn't improving the popularity either.
Since the view of animation in the U.S is never going to change or going to change incredibly slowly, either for good or bad. IMHO, the only path that I can see is to have good or above average live adaptations of anime. Speed Racer was decent but the success was hampered by many factors. Transformers is a bit of an odd ball since the models were the only thing originally from JP. After thinking about this a bit, I think this is the only path the average joe can get more of a interest in this form of entertainment. [EDIT: Made your thread title more specific. -TK] I tried but I hit the character limit and didn't want to change the specific meaning of the title. Last edited by nhat on Mon Oct 27, 2008 12:19 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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JacobC
ANN Past Staff
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Well, I wouldn't say incredibly slowly. Look at the difference between the mainstream acceptance of anime from now to ten years ago.
HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE. Very. Explosive, even. It can only grow from here as fans get older and have kids, honestly, I don't think anime can go anywhere but up and out unless some great difficulty transpires overseas or something. If there is one factor that will make anime more mainstream, though, I think you've already mentioned it: Hollywood. Look what it did for comic books. -.-' Seriously, they're actually cool again, or at least it's cool to pretend like you like them even if you don't read them and only watch the movies and cartoons that spawned from said movies' popularity. I don't really care if anime becomes "mainstream" or not, so long as it remains readily available. 
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Vortextk
 Posts: 892 Location: Orlando, Fl |
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I don't know if the fanbase will grow by huge jumps anymore. I mean, I'm sure the bulk of kids that would ever have been interested in anime started on either dbz/pokemon, or more recently with adult swim/naruto and are already a fan. I would imagine acceptance growing large, but fanbase is what I wonder about how much more it can expand. (And by these statements I mean people born between like, 85-95~. Obviously someone who is now 40 probably started on somethig else. I don't think there are going to as many 40 year old converts as 12 year olds so I believe growing the fanbase should deal with kids/teens)
As far as in your face popularity goes, Naruto is the only thing I can think. I've had a fair number of parents at blockbuster asking for Naruto games so it has to be doing atleast well enough. Without big hits, anime just seems like it'll stay as a niche geek past time. |
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CSousuke
 Posts: 75 |
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Cartoon Network/Adult Swim did a decent job of getting the younger audience into anime, but with the drastic schedule changes of cutting almost all the anime out might effect the popularity of it. But eh, another channel is bound to come along and add anime to it's line-up...I hope.
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LuckySeven
 Posts: 587 Location: Georgia, USA |
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One would hope so, but really the main thing that would help anime is probably more TV exposure, and in a decent timeslot. I know during the height of the Toonami era there were always complaints about the editing. I didn't mind, I know it was a necessary evil. Honestly I got a good chuckle out of the The 'cousins' on Sailor Moon, the digital bikinis on Tenchi Muyo, things that were obviously bottles of wine or sake claimed to be tea, and the infamous bloody hand that had no blood on it from Outlaw Star. As much as I love the more or less uncut state of anime as it airs on late night TV now. I'd gladly give up that status to get more anime on television at times that are more friendly to creating newer and younger fans.
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NovaProspekt
 Posts: 5 Location: Houston, TX |
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Check the ratings on the [as] anime though. Waaay below their "comedy" offerings. More prime time exposure would... expose people to anime, but it would be a drain on the stations.
THE (not just biggest, but only) hurdle for anime is overcoming the stigma that "cartoons" (no flames please, I'm aware of what I said) can't be deep, or entertaining, or grown-up. I know people that watch sci-fi series like Supernatural and Smallville and Sarah Connor Chronicles and Lost, and all the comic-adaptation movies; yet still say that anime isn't their thing because it's animated. I know others that love romantic book series, especially more imaginative ones such as Twilight, and again, say anime couldn't possibly hold their attention because it's "just cartoons". I think that if people got over the fact that it was animated, they'd discover just how diverse and entertaining it can be. |
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CSousuke
Posts: 75 |
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Anime has on AS has always been pushed to the late night, due to ratings. Adult Swim is known for it's stupidity in its shows, and most of its fans enjoy that. It's sad, AS has gone down hill, and might possibly hit rock bottom pretty soon. They already have narrowed it down to two anime shows on Saturdays (not like the old days) it won't be long until it's only one, just to keep fans from complaining about them having none. Ratings are better now then they were 2 years ago when Cartoon Network/Adult Swim together had probably 7 anime shows on Saturday. Quite sad 
Last edited by CSousuke on Mon Oct 27, 2008 1:08 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Elfen12
 Posts: 479 Location: Bay Area |
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In my opinion, i think it'll stay the way it is. I mean yeah they'll keep producing, and we'll keep watching... but it just doens't seem like soemthing that could get truly mainstream. It is something like... hackysacking or ... uh lets see, like unicycling... it's just not a mainstream activity. It's something that much of the "mainstream" finds to be rather... well lame from experience, although that is from experience so that may not be true. However, something such as anime, just coudlnt' turn into something that everyone likes... imean there were points at which it sort of was, with pokemon and pokemon cards and yu-gi-oh for a little... but that is by deifnition Mainstream Anime... which is a bit of an oxymoron. Those two shows barely seem to be anime when you watch them, they're just sorta cartoons... i mean they were both on and i think are both on Kids WB... not much of an anime program.
Anime will forever stay to be that thing that only a select group of people will watch. I can't imagine it being somethign that lots would watch... i think if it did come to that, it would make many others stop watching it becuase of the whole "being differnet" thing... and that, could in it of itself, push it back out of the mainstream flow. It is something that just there are two groups of people with opinions exist... those who think it's cool and can see past certian patheticies of it that some people think coexist with it... and then there are the people whose eyesight ends at certian facts... things like "oh it's from japan" or "oh it's porn" or whatever they say, you know what i'm talkin' bout i think. Some people are willing to go farther with certian things... and that will always seperate the two groups, hence anime will always stay the same. In theory at least. Even though the fanbase may grow, it won't go mainstream... they're two differnet things here. -Elfen12- |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I don't think anime will ever be truly mainstream. The only way it could be is if the majority of people were to come to accept animation and anime companies begin attempting to appeal more to American audiences that their own Japanese audiences. The reality though is that for that to happen, American animation would have to first begin to widen it's appeal and essentially reach a similar stage to that of anime in Japan. In that scenario though it won't really be anime that is mainstream, but simply animation. Anime will still really be a niche.
That said, I think anime could certainly still become more popular. For starters, It would help if the anime industry were to shift away from some of the more Japanese or otaku oriented anime and towards some of the more American friendly areas. More importantly though I think anime is desperate for another really massive mainstream hit. It's been quite a while and while there have certainly been popular anime like Naruto or Bleach, they have not really attained the same level as past hits like DBZ. There is also certainly a hope that Hollywood can do for anime what it did for comics. Nearly half a dozen movies based on anime have been announced recently. It remains to be seen if they are any good or retain enough relevance to anime to generate any kind of interest. |
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DragonsRevenge
 Posts: 1150 |
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I think the popularity of anime has dropped off considerably from the Inuyasha/Cowboy Bebop/Trigun/Wolf's Rain Days. That's either the result of AS cutting back on it's anime programming, or the reason why they did so. I think it's also oversaturation of the market in the early 2000s that did it, too, that could be why Ganeon ended up going under, and why ADV is where they are now. Come to think of it, anime inspired games (JRPGs for instance) aren't nearly where they were several years ago, as you don't see any major JRPG franchise seeing any sort of mainstream popularlity. Tales of Symphonia was prolly the last one and oddly enough, that was from around the same time. So who knows.
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LuckySeven
Posts: 587 Location: Georgia, USA |
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What I meant about a better timeslot isn't confined to just the current Saturday night block of Adult Swim (and to a lesser extent the Saturday block of Toonami). I think it might be better if there was something on during the weekdays as well. When Toonami was at its height, it was on Monday through Friday in the afternoons. And in its last stance it had been reduced to a 2 hour block on Saturday nights. I'm just saying for anime to become more mainstream it needs more exposure. 2 hours a week is very minor when you realize that before it was getting up to 4 hours a day (including Midnight Run) at one point. Also there's the lack of promotion for it as well. People can say what they want about the anime on Adult Swim not getting the ratings, but how do you expect it to get ratings when its not getting any promotion. For the longest time, they were not advertising any of their anime shows. How do you expect people to watch if they don't know its on, or when its on. The constant schedule shifting didn't help matters either. No matter how the ratings might have been, I'm pretty sure some of their borderline shows took big hits when they kept getting moved around. I won't deny that the popularity of anime has probably dropped off some, but I'd say that's also a comment on the quality level of the shows that have been aired as well.
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lesterf1020
 Subscriber Posts: 295 Location: Trinidad and Tobago |
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I don't think anime will ever be mainstream. It will probably not get much more popular than it is now. At the moment anime relies on word of mouth and someone accidentally stumbling across the medium and seeing something they like. That has low growth rates.
For anime to go mainstream someone or something very popular will have to aggressively endorse it or the anime industry will have to deliberately and aggressively attempt to broaden the market. At the moment the anime industry is only targeting anime fans and those who like mature cartoons or tech and scifi geeks. Until the industry makes a concerted effort to target the general audience or someone really popular decides to promote anime, anime will remain a niche market. |
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gokuthamonkeyking
Posts: 53 |
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its already doomed when that little brown books guy said "haruhi's light novels are for pre-teen girls and we're having a myspace party for it."
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BrentNewhall
 Posts: 31 |
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Because, heaven forefend that a company try to find a new market for an anime franchise, right? 
In all seriousness, this is a tough question, as "mainstream" is hard to define, and popularity is not a simple linear progression from "unpopular" to "highly popular." Pokemon did a lot to popularize anime, but as a result, many folks got an impression of anime as kid-oriented, especially with the later success of Yu-Gi-Oh. Most Americans have now heard of this thing called "anime," but they don't understand it the way we do. (Nor will they ever, of course, but that's another argument....) I think anime in America will certainly need something different if it's going to broaden its fanbase. We'll probably need another breakout hit, like Dragonball Z or Pokemon. Ideally, it'll be something more serious and adult-oriented, to popularize the idea of anime as a more mature medium. Or, it won't. Things change, and life changes. |
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Saourealis
Posts: 2 Location: North Carolina |
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I personally don't expect it to grow any more than it already has... if it does become "more mainstream," I expect the normalization to be a minor change from today, at best. BrentNewhall touched on exactly what I was going to say - the anime that has become popular and attracted attention is largely viewed by American audiences as "shows for children." They don't get any exposure to anime geared toward "adult interests," and I simply don't see that happening.
Past what they can see on Adult Swim (other than Inu-yasha and Naruto... I don't know what Adult Swim is showing now, but I remember when they aired a some Lupin III a few years back. Ohhh yeaaah, baby.) there isn't much marketing being done to get anime into regular life. It has to be considered, additionally, that even Adult Swim has its own target demographic, which really isn't large enough to bring anime into the mainstream. There's also the problem of division among Adult Swim viewers. A lot of college kids are tuning in for Family Guy, Venture Brothers, Futurama - if they haven't been allowed to see an anime that they liked, they aren't going to wait until 4 A.M. to see if this new show being aired will be cool or not. (And if they didn't like what they saw of early-evening anime, they'll probably AVOID Cartoon Network at 4 A.M. No? Just me?) And then there's the only-anime viewing portion of Adult Swim. And then there's the moderate percentage who might watch a bit of both. It just seems like until anime is put out there where it can be viewed by "everyone" instead of people who might seek it out in the first place, the fandom will continue to grow slowly. G4 air[s/ed] some anime and Sci-Fi has "AniMonday," but... G4 is tech TV and Sci-Fi is... Sci-Fi. That's a huge wad of stereotyping massed into one sentence, I know, but look at things like The Animatrix and the animated version of AeonFlux. Sure, people who aren't hellbent on watching science fiction titles might have enjoyed The Matrix or Aeonflux, but they probably weren't interested enough to check out the "cartoon" movie based off of the series. I, on the other hand, have geekdom coded into my genetics, and I've been a fan of anime and science fiction for a long time - so of course I'm going to seek these out. Until ABC or FOX or another widely-viewed channel airs an anime that shares some characteristics with CSI, non-anime fans aren't going to realize that these shows can appeal to them as well. The one small chance of anime becoming a large mainstream presence (this is all in my opinion, of course), is something I could see happening 15-25 or 30 years down the road, when the people who like anime today have children. It wouldn't be a full mainstream assimilation, but I could see it becoming more "normal" than it is even now. Keep in mind, that's assuming that the aforementioned "anime fans of today" still appreciate anime and would be willing to show it to their kids. Just my two cents. |
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