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Answerman - Why Isn't More Anime Shown On American TV?

If you're talking about the United States, anime, for most people, is this distant, almost mythical thing that a bunch of kids and a few creepy manchildren are really into. The only series your random Average Joe will recognize by name are Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, Digimon, Sailor Moon, Naruto, and maybe Ghost in the Shell, One-Punch Man, and Attack on Titan even if they cannot recognize any of the characters and all anime looks the same to them.

Ever seen the Adult Swim series Perfect Hair Forever? That's how many Americans perceive anime to be like.

By the way Answerman, I really appreciate your answer and is very informative. But why did you reuse that question and your answer for the article today, even though it can be found in "The Changing Tides"? Were you recently getting a lot of emails from people asking you a very similar question? I'm not trying to blame you or anything, I'm just curious.

I don't know much about Doraemon's ratings numbers, but I quite enjoyed what I saw. I felt like I was 12 again.

Since we switched to the new single-question format, a lot of people are going back and reading a lot of back articles and finding the ones they wanted to learn more about. However, the questions that are lumped together with a few others under ambiguous titles get ignored. So, about once a week I've been going through those old columns and finding the "good" questions that still apply today, and reposting them in the new format so that readers can find them again. Most of them need a little updating, but this one didn't.

Hoo-boy. Ain't it the truth.
Have to remember, when Saban's Power Rangers hit syndication in '91, and DiC's Sailor Moon hit in '92,

And American TV mostly caters to out of touch White baby boomers and Starbucks drinking hipster kids who don't have time to read novels so resort to serial adaptations instead. They're not any better.

The ratings weren't so great. The season 2 finale only pulled in 69,000 views. No, seriously: http://www.toonzone.net/forums/threads/disney-ratings-thread.5459741/page-3

I think the real question is why do people still pay for TV? I just have an internet connection and I am still able to enjoy all the American/Japanese television I want! Well at least until they kill net neutrality but then I always have my blurays...

leafy sea dragon wrote:

I don't know much about Doraemon's ratings numbers, but I quite enjoyed what I saw. I felt like I was 12 again.

The ratings weren't so great. The season 2 finale only pulled in 69,000 views. No, seriously: http://www.toonzone.net/forums/threads/disney-ratings-thread.5459741/page-3

Ever seen the Adult Swim series Perfect Hair Forever? That's how many Americans perceive anime to be like.

I read the headline, and wanted to see if Justin would hit on the concise, historical one-word answer:
"Escaflowne".
...
Early attempts to bring over Slayers and Case Closed's success fell through, and then, they (FOX) were persuaded for the licensor's next big local anime phenomenon of its day: Escaflowne.
(facepalm)

Nelvana's Cardcaptors still had enough generic cute-fantasy-action appeal with its heroine and Pokemon-like "card" premise, and Tokyo Pig was kiddy-cute, but ohhh....where do we START explaining why Escaflowne was not the stuff you would stake the network on for mainstream Saturday morning??
A "girly"-appealed show that mixes mecha and fantasy? Might work on paper, until you got a LOOK at the darn thing--If you were a clueless network exec who thought "Anime is weird", the prosecution rested. You might just have well tried showing Utena on Fox Kids.

Even for a younger show, the standard anime taste for somber, pretentious over-written series-serialized Game of Thrones-like fantasy arcs that you might see on Spice & Wolf or Seven Deadly Sins was not made to be shown between toy commercials to a sugar-cereal fueled audience that was waiting for the new Ninja Turtles episode. And let's not even get into the stylized animation style, the cute catgirl, or what the heck was up with those noses.
Fox naturally blamed the show, did a Best-Buy and decided "no more anime!", and by that time...DBZ had moved to Cartoon Network. And the rest is history.

Some shows just belonged to the complete attention-span of core anime fans on disk. And by that 00's point, the entire anime-fan industry got their stuff on DVD (or DVD sales to CN), why go anywhere else?

The US doesn't need the equivalent of Canadian Content regulations in order for foreign entertainment to get outcompeted by things made more to local tastes, and that applies as much to broadcast and cable TV as it does to streaming entertainment.