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INTEREST: Director of Gundam SEED Thinks Anime Has Too Many Regulations

What Americans call fanservice and pandering, the rest of the world just sees as the natural human body
Europe, Japan.. They're not as hung up at seeing a woman's cleavage as Americans are and don't make a fuss like you see here. And if you're expecting anime to cater to American puritian tastes, you'll probably be waiting awhile.

And i support Sailor Moon because it has been 15 years and Precure(the first show has alright i guess) had it´s time in the light. Sailor Moon is a international success and i kind of like the manga. The market needs the money and if the final product has the chance to be good it deserves a better adaptaion.

The problem with modern anime is this: No risks anywhere, no violence/real sex or content for "film" lovers. It´s like Miyazaki said.
Too much Otaku pandering. I still don't understand how Space Bros or the new Legend of Galactic Heroes are being produced in this climate. The last 5 years had tons of great cartoons(Tron, Young Justice, Korra and so on) but most got canceled and i need anime to step up ! I now only watch Hunter X Hunter and Mushishi 2. Baby Steps is also a good manga.

I agree with the director 100%. The last tv anime with real "grit" was Baccano. I don´t need messed up stuff to like an anime (Mushishi again and The Wind Rises) but i want to watch a story and not a hugging pillow ad. Or another demon shonen action show. Where is the Till death do us part anime or Suicide island or a watanabe show witch a budged. Dandy is the best(9/10) but Kids needed twice the episodes to do the mangas justice. Or original shows like Lain. And no more pederast softcore porn. Its killing the medium !

Gundam Seed by the way isn´t that "mature". The movie version had a decent off screen beheading and the show had bloody explosions around episode 35 or something(but no gore) but nothing that can´t be shown to a 12 year old. And too many "toyetic" moments. 6,5/10. The original Gundam is better 8/10 and more violent/believable. Also it was for 8-16 year olds school boys. Seed Destiny is comedy Gold !
00 is also better and more "gritty". 8/10 but the movie was bad.

For great Gundam goodness i recommend Zeta Gundam 10/10 and Victory 9/10. Victory is the most messed up children show ever !

Rant over.

In my opinion, fan service ruined anime in general. Also I believe it will only get worse and worse in the future.

There's so much ignorance in this thread on how people can saving the anime industry. It always boils down to catering to what they want. Very transparent soapbox. Leave it to the usual suspects to take a quote about censorship and twist it to their own agenda of being anti-otaku. residentgrigo criticizes otaku pandering then says he loves an otaku anime. Such a hypocrite. People don't even know what they're complaining about it seems like otaku pandering just means anime they don't like and anime they do like somehow aren't for otaku. Such a scapegoat

And more international anime fan will continue to increase criticism (including me) because the reason I stop watching anime because of too much fanservice and less on creativity/innovation in the storyline, there's only quite a few good anime left for me to watch for the last 2 years.

residentgrigo, I'd just like to point out your post is a prime poster child example of anime fan entitlement. It reeks of not only entitlemnt, but lack of knowledge of the medium as a whole. You say you support the Sailor Moon remake because you want variation, but why would you support a remake of an old show over the dozens of shoujo anime currently airing? Why not support Pretty Cure, or the upcoming Puri Para which are original titles? Is it truly about variety or are you simply hunting for a nostalgia binge so you can relive 'the good old days'? Your comment on watching many American shows, and then condemning shounen series also raises an eyebrow of mine. Are any of those American shows crime dramas? Those are common like shounen are in Japan, each market has mainstream and dominate shows, so what makes one dominate genre better than another? Again, is it an issue of 'all colors' or simply an issue of your your own specific tastes not being accomindated to? Lastly, I would advise against statement such as saying the industry is on a decline or needs saving Sales have shown otherwise.

-Stuart Smith

The problem isn't "too many boobies" in anime. The problem is that it's abused by hacks that make it like rattling keys in front of children. Shows based entirely around fanservice, that revolve solely around premises that give an excuse to use it. I guess you can say looser restrictions would just make that worse, but I think it would help the better things rise to the top as the trash sinks further and further with ludicrous plotlines.

@ Mohawk52 and mdo7:

If your problem with recent anime is that there's too much fanservice and "moe", then the problem lies with you, not with the shows.
I don't know where you learned what "moe" is, but to everyone who does not frequent 4chan or Sankaku Complex, moe is the feeling you get for a character whose character traits appeal to you.
If you call the characters in, for example, Is The Order a Rabbit "boring moeblobs", then that just means that you're too shallow to see the depth in the characters.

Literally every anime has moe.

The amount of sexual fanservice shows versus the amount of shows that does not use sexual fanservice as its main thing is very low.
Stop acting as if anime is dead.

residentgrigo wrote:

And i support Sailor Moon because it has been 15 years and Precure(the first show has alright i guess) had it´s time in the light. Sailor Moon is a international success and i kind of like the manga. The market needs the money and if the final product has the chance to be good it deserves a better adaptaion.

Pretty Cure is not irrelevant simply because you deem it as such. If your concern is money for the market, then Pretty Cure is going to blow Sailor Moon Crystal out of the water in that regard so you should embrace that as well as Toei and Sunrise's other properties for girls. Your statements are contradictory.

Banjo wrote:

In my opinion, fan service ruined anime in general. Also I believe it will only get worse and worse in the future.

An opinion based on what? Shows like -Monogatari and Infinite Stratos have sold 10-20k+ while artsy-experimental stuff like Fractale completely bombs. If anything, fanservice is keeping the industry alive.

But when was the last time you saw any indication that two characters actually had sex together? I have to assume he meant something like that when he referred to Flay.

Pretty Cure is not irrelevant simply because you deem it as such. If your concern is money for the market, then Pretty Cure is going to blow Sailor Moon Crystal out of the water in that regard so you should embrace that as well as Toei and Sunrise's other properties for girls. Your statements are contradictory.

All these complaints just make me wonder how much anime people actually watch. Both today and in the past. People act like the 80s and 90s were devoid of sexual content and titillation. Anyone who isn't old enough to know who Lum or Machiko are should not be taking part in this discussion. The only thing that has changed over the years are the fans, more and more I see western fans becoming more close-minded over the years and throwing up buzzwords and sweeping generalizations devoid of any actual argumentative merit. I would love to see someone break down the current 80-odd shows airing on TV right now and explain why they are all bad and anime is dying, but unfortunately that requires effort and critical thinking.

-Stuart Smith

What's weird about his comment to me is that it's about late-night anime. While sometimes they have to black out or otherwise censor large chunks of the screen, it doesn't seem like there's anything they can't actually do. It would have made more sense if it was aimed at more mainstream time-slots, though even then, Psycho-Pass, which was the most mainstream you can get outside of kids' stuff, basically had on-screen rape along with other pretty gruesome stuff and wasn't censored the way, say, Brynhilder is. Though maybe that was a case of CR or Funi streams being less censored? Guess I'm not 100% on that. I do recall hearing that Code Geass's second season was heavily rewritten because of it's switch to a more mainstream time-slot.

In any case, Pupa seemed to be a specific case of content being so extreme that it significantly affected the production (I don't think super short episodes were what they originally wanted to do, I believe they had trouble getting TV stations to even air it). But otherwise? What exactly are they being prevented from doing?

In any case, if there's an audience anime could reach but currently isn't, I have a hard time seeing this being a major reason for it, or a reason at all.

Hoppy800 wrote:

I just seen a couple commercials on Youtube, wtf, Victory Gundam is far from a kids show. There was also a Super Famicom game geared towards kids too.

Of course it was a kid's show, just like every single Gundam TV series ever, contrary to what some fans seem to think. So was Space Runaway Ideon, have you heard about or seen how THAT turned out? The original Gundam had some fairly graphic scenes as well. Seems like TV stations started cracking down in what kids' shows could get away with in violence sometime in the past 5-10 years though.

Do you honestly believe that the Anime industry cares about a bunch of picky and cynical people thousands of miles away that constantly balk at release prices and rarely buy series-related merchandise in the amount that Japan fans do?.

Aikatsu is probably a much bigger threat to Precure than a possible Sailor Moon revival.

What has changed though over the course of last 4 decades is that anime from a mainstream phenomenon (because it was aired on mainstream tv) was mostly evicted from tv and relegated to late night time slots. And it's this, not regulation as Fukuda is declaring that is the cause of the problem.

Once you've cornered yourself into a niche its game over. Late time anime will never ever have the variety in themes that were the staple of mainstream anime.

There is also another problem in that the industry is incapable of producing adult themed animation for the silver screen. Anime has never managed to grow up. And that's why we see the complete rehashing of those standard 3-4 themes in late night anime.

Too many people are mistaking extreme content for maturity, when all too often it represents the exact opposite. Jojo, for example, is fun, but absolutely nothing about it is mature -- if anything, that show seems remarkably in touch with its inner demented five-year old (that's an observation, btw; not a criticism).

And I don't get what this director is complaining about regarding censorship.

Graphic violence? We got that in Jojo and Hunter x Hunter right now.

Nudity? That's all over late night anime now as well, and those beams of light blocking out the details are not censorship; they're a way to entice the truly sad to shell out 7,000 yen for the "uncensored" blu-ray.

Solid storytelling? Let me direct you to Space Brothers, Cross Game, Hyouka, and Kids on the Slope.

Want to go a little more art-house? Try Hyouge-mono, Flowers of Evil, or the current Ping-Pong.

Otaku shows that are actually good? Madoka Magica and Fate Zero are still in recent memory.

All kinds of stuff is getting made. Most of it is same-old same-old (fetish-of-the-week for the late-night otaku crowd; shonen jump/card fight stuff for kids), but that is compost from which flowers do occasionally bloom. Sturgeon's law applies, but we've still got the 10% that isn't crap; a better signal-to-noise ratio than that is not the norm; it's a golden age. The parade of fanservice and bizarre fetishes in late-night anime is a turn-off for me, and the explosion in the number of card battle shows eating up the kids' timeslots is depressing and worrisome, but to suggest that nothing "mature" can get made anymore is just ridiculous.

Then you got shows like, Vanguard, Z/X Ignition, Live-On!, and others and they all are bad in terms of little character development, lackluster visuals, and overall bad presentation. Again, something to sell to kids.

Ziko577 wrote:

Then you got shows like, Vanguard, Z/X Ignition, Live-On!, and others and they all are bad in terms of little character development, lackluster visuals, and overall bad presentation. Again, something to sell to kids.

Did you really just say Vanguard has little to no character development?
Compare Aichi from the first few episodes to Aichi as of Link Joker. He's had a improvement in terms of his character. Same thing with Kai and Misaki. Vanguard is fantastic in terms of small amounts rather than large chunks of character dev.


And most of the later stuff like visuals and presentation are subjective. Extremely subjective, at that.