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One thing that bothers me is how dismissive American fans are of boy band shows, when those are massively popular in Japan.

Yeah, B Project is pretty bad. UtaPri seems to be good if you like it, but boring if you don't.

But Marginal #4 is a really legitimately good comedy series with great character writing, and the music is good. And Tsukiuta's three concert scenes have some really amazing, detailed animation that deserves more recognition (look them up -especially Tsuki no Uta from the end of the series.).

I think there's an audience for these shows outside of Japan, they're just not people who usually like anime, or if they are, they're put off from these shows by how the rest of anime fans act towards them. Or, likely, they haven't even heard of them.

There is also the mobile game issue - that a lot of anime are actually small parts of franchises, but the anime is the only thing available outside of Japan. And it's not just mobile games. The anime K has over 10 prequel books and novels that actually make up most of the story, and the anime is sort of empty without them. And Tsukiuta is mostly in audio dramas and stage plays.

It's not an issue of the fans in Japan, it's an issue of the creators and producers. They're trying to make anime take off around the world, and it's happening, but these areas still need bridges to be built, or there's a huge risk of that division growing.

Last edited by Paiprince on Wed Mar 22, 2017 8:10 pm; edited 1 time in total

The fact that Parachomp's comment got roasted gives me a bit of hope for the Western anime community.

Sadly, people like him are so deluded into thinking their opinions are God and in the tune of the White Man's Burden, must "enlighten" the Japanese "shit taste" in their own media and they'll always rear the ugly heads just to get their 5 seconds of fame on a comments or message board. Try having some Aussie or Brit who declares himself an American sitcom connosieur and tell you your favorite is hot garbage. Feel the rage now?

And with the current wave of terrible memes plaguing Western pop culture, I would dread to think how anime and manga would become if they full front focused on Western tastes.

#861208 wrote:

One thing that bothers me is how dismissive American fans are of boy band shows, when those are massively popular in Japan.

Yeah, B Project is pretty bad. UtaPri seems to be good if you like it, but boring if you don't.

But Marginal #4 is a really legitimately good comedy series with great character writing, and the music is good. And Tsukiuta's three concert scenes have some really amazing, detailed animation that deserves more recognition (look them up -especially Tsuki no Uta from the end of the series.).

I think there's an audience for these shows outside of Japan, they're just not people who usually like anime, or if they are, they're put off from these shows by how the rest of anime fans act towards them. Or, likely, they haven't even heard of them.

For that, I blame it more on the low opinion most people have of boy bands in the west who aren't teenage girls and young women. Boy bands are a magnet for snark and insults, but pretty much anyone aimed at and popular with teenage girls is like that.

leafy sea dragon wrote:

When it comes to online play of Japanese games, I often watch gameplay videos, and some of these uploaders are Japanese. From what I've noticed, there are some who don't like to play with/against foreign players, there are some who don't care what country the other players are from, and there are some who actively seek out foreign players. Pokémon, in particular, seems to have a lot of the last category. There are fundamental differences in your typical Japanese Pokémon player online, your typical American player, and your typical European player, and some people just prefer the company of another region's style.

This goes all the way back to FF11 where JP parties would put JP Only in recruiting. Half for communication, but also half because American players have a much lower playskill than Japanese players do. This carried over into 14 where the lowest JP server is about on par with the highest NA server in terms of endgame raid clears. Even with quasi-illegal PC add ons like ACT which tell you a bosses rotation and how to beat him, Japan which mostly play on PS4 consoles and have no mods are still more skilled.

Even in things like other games and card games Japanese players usually dominate the world tournaments, like Yu-Gi-Oh! I imagine they seek out foreign players because they view them as easy wins?

Paiprince wrote:

Sadly, people like him are so deluded into thinking their opinions are God and in the tune of the White Man's Burden, must "enlighten" the Japanese "shit taste" in their own media. Try having some Aussie or Brit who declares himself an American sitcom connosieur and tell you your favorite is hot garbage. Feel the rage now?

Isn't that tied into American egotism and Japanese humility? Americans always await with baited breath to see what the Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic score for the newest movie or game is. Review culture in general is obsessed with opinions, especially those in a critic position who people have deemed have more important opinions than others. Japan doesn't really have a huge review culture for anime or games. There's no authorative metric that determines what's worth seeing or playing.

Last year there were so many people insisting Suicide Squad was a failure because of its critical panning, ignoring the 750 million it grossed. We live in a culture where fan and critic reaction means more than practical things like profit. A common defense why something is good or bad is what critics say. They act like critically acclaimmed is a tangible thing. I can see why Parachomp said what he did. I disagree with it, but its a pretty typical mindset in the west to care about opinions to such a huge degree. I'm thankful it's not really a thing in Japan.

-Stuart Smith

I feel like it's worth pointing out that Japan re-dubs Power Rangers with the respective Super Sentai actors that played the roles the first time and airs it on TV. They did this with the one season of Kamen Rider, too.

Honestly, I think that Japan view the US with the same amount of exotic-ness as we view them.

Alan45 wrote:

Look at this question from the opposite side. Almost all US movies, including some too poor to get a theatrical release, are released internationally. Many an expensive blockbuster has only made a profit when released overseas.

I've yet to hear that the fans of, say the Marvel superhero movies, gave a damn about how popular the movies are in Japan, or Europe or any other place outside the US. I'm sure the studios or other investors in those shows do care, but the fans, not so much.

If the fans of US entertainment don't care how their shows do outside the US, why should we expect Japanese fans to care how their shows do here?

That's basically my view on the matter. Producers have a financial incentive to care what those outside the primary market think. Fans in the primary market mostly don't care aside from the occasional novelty of "they changed what in Country X?" or "That's popular in Country Y? Wouldn't have expected that." Once in a while you get something being popular enough in a secondary market to tip the scales to a sequel getting made, but if few enough in the primary market liked it to begin with that a secondary market is what makes it worthwhile, few in the primary market would care about that.

Japan has all the good artists, so what Japanese fans like we get good doujinshi for. Somethings my favorite girl isnt popular so she gets little love. The question should be what can American fans provide so Japanese fans to care about us? Japan determines the sales and the fanart, so we dont have much to offer.

Joe Mello wrote:

I feel like it's worth pointing out that Japan re-dubs Power Rangers with the respective Super Sentai actors that played the roles the first time and airs it on TV. They did this with the one season of Kamen Rider, too.

Those redubs aren't popular, though. Most Japanese fans I've talked to regard them as pure cringe. The only time I've seen sentai fans care about PR is when Akibaranger made fun of PR fans, when Korea had to change the Sentai name to Power Rangers because of Saban's licensing issue, and when those awful Nininger toy figures came out Japanese fans reaction was "What is this? Power Rangers?" because of how they had huge muscles like how PR toys give the toys huge muscles.

Stuart Smith wrote:

This goes all the way back to FF11 where JP parties would put JP Only in recruiting. Half for communication, but also half because American players have a much lower playskill than Japanese players do. This carried over into 14 where the lowest JP server is about on par with the highest NA server in terms of endgame raid clears. Even with quasi-illegal PC add ons like ACT which tell you a bosses rotation and how to beat him, Japan which mostly play on PS4 consoles and have no mods are still more skilled.

This wouldn't apply to the card game examples you cited, but part of the division in online RPGs can probably also be explained by internet speeds generally being slower in the US (aside from the other obvious issue of inconvenient time zones). If you and the rest of your party are based in Japan but are willing to accept, say, a healer logging in from the US, that decision could potentially have a negative effect on your entire party because if their connection craps out while you're all in a boss battle... I'm sure you get the point.

I think one series that bucked the trend was Yuri!!! on ICE. Since a lot of real life (foreign) skaters got really into it, Japanese people paid a bit more attention to overseas reactions to the series.

Lord Oink wrote:

Japan has all the good artists, so what Japanese fans like we get good doujinshi for. Somethings my favorite girl isnt popular so she gets little love. The question should be what can American fans provide so Japanese fans to care about us? Japan determines the sales and the fanart, so we dont have much to offer.

I've seen good fanartists from all over on pixiv, but I would say that most of the best that I've seen on that site at least are the Japanese ones. Doesn't hurt that professionals like character designers, mangaka, animators, etc. have accounts on the site.

Alan45 wrote:

Look at this question from the opposite side. Almost all US movies, including some too poor to get a theatrical release, are released internationally. Many an expensive blockbuster has only made a profit when released overseas.

I've yet to hear that the fans of, say the Marvel superhero movies, gave a damn about how popular the movies are in Japan, or Europe or any other place outside the US. I'm sure the studios or other investors in those shows do care, but the fans, not so much.

If the fans of US entertainment don't care how their shows do outside the US, why should we expect Japanese fans to care how their shows do here?

Fans of WoW definitely seemed to care when their darling film became profitable almost entirely thanks to China. And there have been a few other cases of the same, specifically with China though, of course, and no where else so far that I know of. But yeah, generally this is a pretty accurate parallel.

LadyKuzunoha wrote:

This wouldn't apply to the card game examples you cited, but part of the division in online RPGs can probably also be explained by internet speeds generally being slower in the US (aside from the other obvious issue of inconvenient time zones). If you and the rest of your party are based in Japan but are willing to accept, say, a healer logging in from the US, that decision could potentially have a negative effect on your entire party because if their connection craps out while you're all in a boss battle... I'm sure you get the point.

No, that won't factor into it. From my days of playing World of Warcraft on an American server, latency on an international connection to the server isn't that severe, and a party member's net connection could crap out no matter what country they live in. As for timezones, I've known plenty of people who have regularly raided with groups from another country because the shifts they work mean those are the times they're awake and available.

There is a Japanese website that translates foreigners' comment on things relevant to Japan. Name's "record of replies from ten thousand overseas countries", literally. It has a category that is about comments about anime and manga. So I think there are people in Japan who are aware of what foreigners are discussing.

Stuart Smith wrote:

This goes all the way back to FF11 where JP parties would put JP Only in recruiting. Half for communication, but also half because American players have a much lower playskill than Japanese players do. This carried over into 14 where the lowest JP server is about on par with the highest NA server in terms of endgame raid clears. Even with quasi-illegal PC add ons like ACT which tell you a bosses rotation and how to beat him, Japan which mostly play on PS4 consoles and have no mods are still more skilled.

I am a FFXIV player myself. Even in this moment I am crafting something in the game... Heard that FFXI even made WoW hard to penetrate Japanese market... Final Fantasy as a series is really aimed at international market. Most BGM in FFXIV that have lyrics are mostly in English. They even tried to invite a famous Chinese singer to perform the theme of FFVIII, if I recall correctly. The attempt failed though.
BtW ACT allows you see what's shrinking. So when the party fails a DPS check and is wiped, you know who is responsible.

Stuart Smith wrote:

Even in things like other games and card games Japanese players usually dominate the world tournaments, like Yu-Gi-Oh! I imagine they seek out foreign players because they view them as easy wins?

-Stuart Smith

While I don't know quite as much about the competitive scene as other video game franchises, top finishers at the Pokémon World Championships have traditionally come from a variety of countries. The only recent time that Japan swept the top 6 was 2015, the infamous "chalk" year, where they brought in mostly the same teams. Same goes for the card game (though without a year like 2015).

I prefer following the noncompetitive scene, as there's more variety to be had there, thpough I'll sometimes watch top-level battling. In both realms, the Japanese uploaders and streamers of Pokémon battling don't have any significant difference in win rate between the regions (though they can vary a lot between uploaders/streamers). I've never felt a significant difference between regions either when I play. The one Japanese YouTube uploader I remember best, kyono007 (he's since retired), not only mostly put up mostly battles against foreign opponents after the games became available internationally, he wrote his descriptions bilingually in Japanese and in the best English he could muster and liked receiving comments in English.

LadyKuzunoha wrote:

This wouldn't apply to the card game examples you cited, but part of the division in online RPGs can probably also be explained by internet speeds generally being slower in the US (aside from the other obvious issue of inconvenient time zones). If you and the rest of your party are based in Japan but are willing to accept, say, a healer logging in from the US, that decision could potentially have a negative effect on your entire party because if their connection craps out while you're all in a boss battle... I'm sure you get the point.

Thogh not an RPG, I have played Splatoon long enough to notice differences in behavior between Japanese players and other regions. Since it's a team shooter, any disconnection is going to substantially affect the outcome of a match, and latency too if it gets bad enough. I noticed Japanese players are equally likely to disconnect but are much less likely to be laggy. Splatoon is an online-oriented game made by a company not too good at implementing online play, so it's pretty demanding--theslightest hiccup could cause out-of-control lag and disconnections.

The Japanese average skill rate is the highest of the regions, but I would attribute that to two things: There are more of them than in any other region, and they tend to be the most dedicated players. You can find large amounts of them at all times of the day, and many of them quickly reached the level cap of 50. It's as if some of them just spend their whole days playing Splatoon because they have nothing better to do all day.

They also stand out more for being the most aggressive of the regions, preferring to roam around solo and picking fights, and due to this being the prevailing way to play the game in Japan, they become quite good at aiming and shooting. (For the record, American players are more likely to group together and do coordinated attacks while backing each other up, and they can somehow do it even without voice chat; and European and Australian players most often avoid fights, preferring to quietly contribute to the objective or lend a support role far away from the other players and will not fight back until they're attacked. This doesn't mean regional styles are monolithic. I've seen some terrifying European and Australian players. Rather, it's what I'm most likely to see among a huge number of potential ways to approach the game.)

ignitingblue wrote:

There is a Japanese website that translates foreigners' comment on things relevant to Japan. Name's "record of replies from ten thousand overseas countries", literally. It has a category that is about comments about anime and manga. So I think there are people in Japan who are aware of what foreigners are discussing.

I'm finding that site way more amusing than I should. Then again, I do sometimes follow sites that keep records of comments from Japanese fans of western animation to see what they think of current trends. This is the flipside of that.

ParaChomp wrote:

A real shame that they ignore us entirely. Many Japanese companies suffer due to ignoring criticism such as Nintendo's copyright abuse, they have no understanding of fair use and instead decide to soil their reputation with greedy criminal tactics.

you say they dont listen to westerners at all. thats not true. they do, just not that much. and they shouldnt blindly listen to everyone. of course people can and will grow from listening to others opinions. but it goes both ways. the reason why japanese games took a dive was because they focused too much on foreign markets. which is why default bravery did so well. they stopped trying to make a game for everyone and got back to basics. you have to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. if you just listen to everyone, your gonna make shit. so you have to ignore and listen. how much of each is where the work begins.

while i agree, they are extremely harsh when it comes to enforcing their copywrite, its not "abuse". if they went around flagging random stuff that they didn't have rights for, yea, but they aren't. they are flagging things they do have ownership of, though with the youtube system a ton of stuff got misflagged automatically by the system. not manually by them. this happened with multiple companies that own copywrites, not just nintendo. they may not have reacted to resolve it and maybe not at all purposely, but they are a entertainment company. they dont work for youtube or with youtube, what happens on youtube is a bit far from them. i dont blame them for not personally going and resolving the issue. its for youtube to do so, as its their system that was messing up. as for their actions of copywrite enforcement outside of youtube flagging, like the flappybird thing. thats their business decision. i dont agree with it. but its their decision and they are technically legally allowed too.

as for their reputation, they are in their opinion trying to maintain it. nintendo has a extremely high standard when it comes to their intellectual property. and they dont want others to use their stuff and bring it down. partly for quality control, and of course for monetary gains.

while i tend to be on the laxed side of copywrite. i would suggest they ease up on enforcement. but right or wrong they have the right to do it as a private company and we have teh right to critize it. but to say they don't understand fair use, or call it abusive. thats inferring extra. they of course understand fair use, they higher lawyers that get paid a lot to work with it and against it.

ParaChomp wrote:

Another example is Sword Art Online, the YouTube anime community has analysed the series to the point that it's worse than irredeemable and yet the franchise continues to pump out material as opposed to keeling over and moving on.

We need to communicate as a whole in order to move on and until people accept others' ideals and learn from them, they will never grow.

i also hate SAO and see it as a very poorly written anime. but they have the right to make it, and i support that right. i disagree with a lot of stuff people have to say. but i will fight for their right to say it. but then i will criticize it.

even tho its horribly written its a cash cow. i dont blame them for still making it. tho i wont support it as i dont like it. i also dont like beiber, but fine with people that do and fine with him making his music as long as he doesnt force his way into my personal life. just cause you dont like something doesnt mean it shouldnt exist.

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