Forum - View topic

NEWS: Industry Group Head Says Anime is a Bubble that Burst

Quote:

He said that Japan should emphasize quality over quantity

My god! It's almost as if he's realized what a ton of people have been saying for ages.

I share his sentiment as well as yours. The 80's through early 90's were truly the golden age for Japanese animation overall mainly due to the massive OVA format and the steady theatrical releases of high quality anime series. Back then, anime was well made to simply tell a story, instead of today, when animated TV advertisements are being mass-produced to promote story elements that sell characters related merchandises. That, my friend, is the state that we're in, "quantity" overtook "quality".

DomFortress wrote:

I share his sentiment as well as yours. The 80's through early 90's were truly the golden age for Japanese animation overall mainly due to the massive OVA format and the steady theatrical releases of high quality anime series. Back then, anime was well made to simply tell a story, instead of today, when animated TV advertisements are being mass-produced to promote story elements that sell characters related merchandises. That, my friend, is the state that we're in, "quantity" overtook "quality". And damn, LDs! You're more hardcore than I could imagine. The only LD I've seen was the Tehchi Muyo OVA that my sister owns, and she doesn't even have a LD player.

I agree, too much quantity in the market, it's enough to turn me off.

I have about 60-70 US anime LDs. I should upgrade the Tenchi OVAs and the Tenchi Universe to DVDs but I just like LDs so much more. I really love the packaging jobs since if you buy the LDs it comes with a lot of extras that you can't get on the DVD versions.

I have three LD players, want one?

ikillchicken wrote:

Quote: He said that Japan should emphasize quality over quantity My god! It's almost as if he's realized what a ton of people have been saying for ages.

It is pretty amazing. I don't think this issue will be entirely bad. If companies have to be more selective about their choices, I think the quality will go up. Of course, it could easily be argued that if fewer shows are made, then we'll get more formulaic titles because there is less room to take a chance on something original.

DomFortress wrote:

I share his sentiment as well as yours. The 80's through early 90's were truly the golden age for Japanese animation overall mainly due to the massive OVA format and the steady theatrical releases of high quality anime series. Back then, anime was well made to simply tell a story, instead of today, when animated TV advertisements are being mass-produced to promote story elements that sell characters related merchandises. That, my friend, is the state that we're in, "quantity" overtook "quality".

The rose-tinted nostalgia is unending.

It's fine if you what to somehow want to deny that mecha was the moe back then, or that they weren't any different to sell a product, or that the creativity was restricted to a few select films and OVAs before Evangelion came along to change the possibilities for auteurs in anime television, but you don't have to advertise it.

And, that's just the issues for western cultures, for the Japanese and other eastern cultures, there are a good number of additional issues.

Again, over saturation, target demographics, and low quality. Today everything is an imitation of everything else. How many Eva Clones or Bebop imitations do we need? What's new and original anymore? Today's audience is not captivated.

Well look at it this way, all the newest anime series are simply remakes of existing titles on different mediums. So technically speaking we haven't had an original anime series since...

... someone help me out here?

Ha! You think NGE was ta bomb? It was an embarrassment by denouncing the human spirit when it was made during the Japanese economic recession.

And the proof is in the remake of NGE as a movie trilogy.

Face it, we had it good. Until you got spoiled.

ajlordnikon wrote:

Again, over saturation, target demographics, and low quality. Today everything is an imitation of everything else. How many Eva Clones or Bebop imitations do we need? What's new and original anymore? Today's audience is not captivated.

And there was originality in the 80s?

I'm also not seeing the "Eva Clones and Bebop imitations"; a few mecha series that take a few base elements of the former and Watanabe revisiting his glory days are hardly arguments against creativity.

DomFortress wrote:

Well look at it this way, all the newest anime series are simply remakes of existing titles on different mediums. So technically speaking we haven't had an original anime series since... ... someone help me out here?

You seriously haven't watched any anime of the past decade outside of mecha-revival series; there's no other logical reason for you to make that kind of ridiculous statement.

Quote:

Ha! You think NGE was ta bomb? It was an embarrassment by denouncing the human spirit when it was made during the Japanese economic recession.

I wasn't making a statement on its quality either way, but it's pretty stupid to deny that it was one of the earliest anime that gave artistic freedom to staff for anime television series.

And "denouncing the human spirit"? Huh?

Quote:

And the proof is in the remake of NGE as a movie trilogy.

That doesn't follow.

Quote:

Face it, we had it good. Until you got spoiled.

Uh, no. Unless you considering an entire subset of a medium to be "good" when it struggles to create original series to keep up any sort of creativity for television, or that somehow those in love with mecha weren't spoiled for years and aren't much different than those who love moe-inducing shows.

Kyogissu wrote:

...Is there some reason that we can't just say... "The rising amount of fans that used to exist don't anymore. Anime, while a recognized hobby/culture, is no longer explosive in popularity."

The reason it can't be said is because it's not true. From 2002/2003 when the US market peaked to today, anime exploded in popularity and convention attendance tripled, yet as the report stated, sales plummeted roughly 40%.

Granted, there's credence to the opinion that the Japanese started to emphasize quantity over quality in response to what they thought was a voracious foreign market, but that alone wouldn't constitute a 40% drop in sales, and certainly not in the face of a threefold increase in fans.

I think you're confusing sales with popularity. Anime popularity is still WAY up (although it might be just now starting to wane). It's sales that are down.

Because this decline has a much, much bigger impact to the industry than sales of plastic disks.

Here's proof: Revenue chart

Did character goods really account for that much of market dollars compared to media sales? That would be shocking to me, if true. Merchandise is pricey I know, but I can't imagine that the number of consumers comes anywhere close to the number of DVD consumers in our country. I'm genuinely suspicious that someone might have plunked a global sales figure into a domestic market spreadsheet to get the result seen here... (Or, if for some strange reason, they consider manga = character goods for the purposes of the graph, which I would consider grossly misleading...)

Even if the chart does use global merchandising figures, it still doesn't remove the fact merchandising accounts for a greater significant revenue stream than that of U.S DVD sales.

Thus, proving, that not buying a DVD is going to cause a collapse in the anime industry, as many kids here think it will.

I gotta be a bit skeptical and say that it doesn't "prove" anything significant about the nature of the market's decline without sharing more specific figures and satistical details...

I don't see stuff like Neo-Tokyo, Robot Carnival, and Angel's Egg being made anymore.

Case wrote:

Did character goods really account for that much of market dollars compared to media sales? That would be shocking to me, if true. Merchandise is pricey I know, but I can't imagine that the number of consumers comes anywhere close to the number of DVD consumers in our country. I'm genuinely suspicious that someone might have plunked a global sales figure into a domestic market spreadsheet to get the result seen here... (Or, if for some strange reason, they consider manga = character goods for the purposes of the graph, which I would consider grossly misleading...)

As a merchandise purchaser, I'm very inclined to believe the graph, and that's just in the figurine arena. I see these things "fly off the shelf" faster than I do DVDs.

Even if the chart does use global merchandising figures, it still doesn't remove the fact merchandising accounts for a greater significant revenue stream than that of U.S DVD sales.

Thus, proving, that not buying a DVD is going to cause a collapse in the anime industry, as many kids here think it will.

Interesting hypothesis on the manga=character goods generalization. Now that you've brought it up...

... I am now inclined to see a separate manga sales figure.

Wishful thinking from an industry secretive about its monies.

That's because something like NGE was already been done before it was made, at least twice. And they are Muteki Choujin Zanbot 3 in 1977 and Densetsu Kyojin Ideon in 1980, both were done by "Kill 'em All" Yoshiyuki Tomino.

You mean besides anime TV adaptations of preexisting intellectual properties, and animated TV advertisements with story elements to sell character related merchandises...

... there were actually original Japanese animation productions today the likes of Disney, Dreamworks, and Nickelodeon?

It was made on a shoestring budget courtesy from TV Tokyo, and the director himself was on a mental depression breakdown while the whole Gainax Studio was about to go under. Or did you thought that those uncomfortable moments of silences held by still shots were actually "artistic freedoms" and not a result of reduced budget during production?

Don't tell me you never sat through and listen the entire song of Come, Sweet Death. Or did you think that humans were all naturally born miserable and depressed?

If so, then why [spoiler]making Shiji to have a backbone in the first of the trilogy: You Are (not) Alone?

I wasn't talking about anime TV series in the 80's through early 90's, sunshine. I was talking about OVA as in Original Video Animations, sweetie pie!

I don't see stuff like Neo-Tokyo, Robot Carnival, and Angel's Egg being made anymore.

Even if the chart does use global merchandising figures, it still doesn't remove the fact merchandising accounts for a greater significant revenue stream than that of U.S DVD sales.

Thus, proving, that not buying a DVD is going to cause a collapse in the anime industry, as many kids here think it will.

stuff said

anime production companies get nothing from character related merchandises sales