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

DerekL1963 wrote:

Anime wasn't completely absent before the late 90's... MachGoGoGo (adapted as Speed Racer) and Astro Boy aired in the 1960's. Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (adapted as Battle of the Planets), and Space Battleship Yamato (adapted as Star Blazers) aired in the 1970's. Voltron (adapted from Go Lion and Dairugger XV) and Robotech (adapted from Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada) appeared in the 1990's. (And those are just the biggest, best known, and most widely distributed... Wikipedia has more details.)

Reflecting on the TV shows that I watched in the late-'70s and mid-80's makes me feel so very old.....

Mohawk52 wrote:

I mean I still get an ear full from her-indoors of "watching cartoons at your age. Don't you feel ashamed?"

Hate to see what she'd think if she caught you watching porn in the daytime.

Mohawk52 wrote:

There is still that old western, (mostly US) dogma that "animation, (cartoons) are just for kids".

It's present in Japan too, of course. What are or have been the highest-rated anime in terms of viewership? One Piece, Pretty Cure, Sazae-san, Doraemon, Crayon Shin-chan, Pokémon, Yo-Kai Watch. All of them were aimed at children. This multitude of anime aimed at teenagers and adults are a drop in the bucket compared to those shows, and the Japanese mainstream has a stereotype of anime viewers as dorks way more negative than they do here.

The amount of shows and especially the variety was extremely minuscule compared to other countries. The depth and variety of shows airing in Latin America, and mainland Europe is very much 6 or 7 times the size of everything aired during the US. That right there made Anime that much more mass market, as it kind of offered a different kind of feel than US shows. It made granddads remember the old days with Goldorak and Lupin III - that stuff does not happen in the US.

Italy's broadcast of Dragon Ball Super reached almost 2 million viewers. That is almost Japan standards. This is all traced back to showing a dizzying amount of anime back then.

I guess what I am saying you need a Toonami style breakout in the 70's and 80's to solidify anime culture.

Which makes me wonder why some idiot couples became parents at all. It's like they go "Parental responsibility? What's that?" when they're told they have to be held accountable for their children's behavior. Letting them run around in public places and scream like dying chinchillas isn't proper parenting. Worse yet, these idiot parents get mad at other people who tell them to watch their damn kids, like others have no right telling them how to raise their children (which is hilarious because Mr. and Mrs. Moron Parent aren't really raising them at all by letting them constantly misbehave like that). This is how newer generations grow up so lazy and entitled, thinking they don't need or have to work, but should still get things for free.

Correct, as well as Disneyland itself to a worse extent.

It's a similar deal with when people adopt a puppy: They're cute and they want to raise something without realizing the commitment they'll have to spend for the next many years. There are a lot of tragic stories about abandoned dogs because they grew up and were no longer cute and small, way too many for me to count. You can't just abandon a human child though (not that it hasn't happened) and not get in trouble over it.

Have you seen how elaborate and expensive 1st birthday parties can get? The infant isn't even aware of what's going on. The birthdays are clearly for those parents. They're excited about their baby. After a few years, however, the novelty will wear off, and you get the parents we see who have grown bored of their own children.

Disneyland? That's kind of expensive though. I commonly see parents use TV and the Internet as babysitters because they're readily available, and in the case of TV (and retail businesses and libraries), free to use. From my experiences, lazy parents also tend to be cheap parents.

....Might be getting senile in my late 20's but Pokemon never aired on Toonami at least not until Kids WB bit the dust around 08 or so.

Pokemon was consider to be a joke by many anime fans at the time (The people on these boards were teenagers and adults).

When I said worse extent, I didn't mean going to Disneyland every day. I meant the entitled behavior they exhibit elsewhere is even worse there, to the point parents are the spoiled ones and use their own children to get what they want. They even act like the costumes employees are supposed to teach their kids morals, because it's Disney. Trust me, I've seen some videos of such types, as well as read blogs of former employees who put up with the worst types.

I mention that because a lot of people act like that everyone was into Pokemon back in the late 90's. Sure to younger kids, Pokemon was a big deal, but anyone over the age of 13 did not care about Pokemon.

ninjamitsuki wrote:

It's a little sad that daytime Cartoon Network shows zero anime, not even Pokemon anymore. What little action cartoons they do show are put in death slots, too.

Action shows are expensive to make compared to comedy shows. Cartoon Network can make a mint with Teen Titans GO! on a comparatively minuscule budget than they would with any action show they've produced in the last 20 years.

Sonic Boom does have action elements in it though, and it's doing well in the ratings. But it is a sitcom primarily, action secondarily (and some episodes don't have any fighting).

EricJ2 wrote:

Unfortunately, the angry fans, who by now believed that any commercial-broadcast dub of a kids-anime series would be 4Kids' Glitter Force even when it wasn't, and chopped with edit/localizations beyond recognition--and bearing old Disney grudges from who-knows-when--tried to drive the dub off our shores with torches and pitchforks before it even aired....Oh, remember the "Pizza Wars"?

It is definitely quite sad that the hardcore was vocal enough to put an end to something that could've had a lot of casual appeal. I don't know much about Doraemon's ratings numbers, but I quite enjoyed what I saw. I felt like I was 12 again.

There is definitely a kind of fandom rivalry between the hardcore anime fans and anything associated with western animation though. It was infamous in earlier decades, and while it's lower-profile now than it used to be, it hasn't completely diminished like the famous Star Trek-Star Wars rivalry.

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...

Even on official streaming sites, AS doesn't really care about anime as much anymore. To watch an anime episode, you have to use your cable provider account.

I see what you mean. I believe you, considering the behavior I would see of both kids and parents at my previous jobs. You speak like you've worked at Disneyland, which I definitely do not envy. What do you mean by the people in costumes teaching their kids morals? Do the parents expect their kids to go on wacky adventures with them and learn things?

Also, ironically, it's the Disney channels that have more focus on action shows nowadays than CN. Especially now that Disney owns Marvel and Star Wars. (So that has an effect of pushing the envelope for the other shows' benefit, i.e. if Marvel or Star Wars animated series can get away with something, then the other animated shows would likely be allowed to get away with it too.)

I kind of wonder if it's a cultural difference at work. In the history of export anime, Japan is always trying to join whatever established media franchise is there. In the States, though, established companies have no interest in joining forces, because they are already the most powerful.

Like in the 70s Japan smashed itself bloody banging on Hollywood's door, and honestly it's never gone anywhere. The closest to a genuine partnership with Hollywood was the Disney/Ghibli deal, years later. At the same time, though, bootleg anime was making its way across the States through greymarket UHF programming, because UHF was a new media with no established top dogs, and everybody was hungry for what they could get.

I guess a more precise question to ask is not why anime struggles to get on cable TV today, but rather why anime wasn't able to make the leap from grey-market UHF to legitimate agreements with the superstations that would eventually become cable TV, sort of like the agreements that created Crunchyroll.

This makes no sense. American TV is full of stupid garbage I and many other people have absolutely no interest in like reality TV shows. Over 90% of the stuff on American television is complete trash, not even remotely interesting. Anime actually IS interesting, quality content, and even bad anime is better than the vast majority of trash shown on American TV networks, especially if you get into the hundreds of channels on digital cable.

I think the real problem is licensing fees to show anime on TV are probably too high, it must be some financial reason, because the content is awesome and most people who see it love it. And if it is dubbed into English instead of using subtitles, that gets rid of any confusion and they can just show it on American TV on some cable channel and tons of people will watch it and the channel won't have to put any effort at all into developing their own content, they can just import it from another country. Anime is popular and shown on TV in many other countries, for instance all across much of Latin America and in several nations in Europe. It is even catching on in China now despite China's decades of hostility to Japan!

So yeah it really makes no sense that anime isn't being featured more on American TV, we have hundreds of channels, most of the stuff on TV is garbage, it would be an improvement over most of the content, and people would watch it. It must just be that American TV executives and the Japanese companies that make anime can't really come to any business arrangement that satisfies both sides... the TV executives here would rather save money by doing really low-budget stuff like reality TV shows, and the Japanese companies want to maximize their profit and charge a high price for the content they produce.