Forum - View topicAnime industry & international popularity?
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Samuknight
Posts: 35 |
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I am wondering why Japanese animation got such an explosion worldwide to the point not only were Japan's biggest hits such as Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, and Saint Seiya are recognizable icons even to people who never heard of anime and liked to an extent by anime haters but they even out rated local shows in foreign countries!
I mean for example not a single Italian cartoon series had been able to come close to achieving the popularity of Dragon Ball and Saint Seiya in Italy and in the Philippines Yu Yu Hakusho had far more viewing than even successful live action TV dramas and soap operas in the Philippines! Only the American cartoon industry could compete with many American cartoon icons like Spongebob, Scooby Doo, and the Flintstones achieving international popularity and Disney (with Pixar and perhaps to a lesser extent Dreamworks) animated films being hits much everywhere they release their films. And even than the Japanese industry has a big edge over the American animation one. Only the shows that were hits in their original broadcast such as Spongebob find international airing and its only Disney's and Pixar's films that consistently scores the box office in foreign markets (though Dreamworks' Shrek was a pretty huge hit worldwide). Japanese anime on the other hand not only had its mega hits find massive success around the world but even merely moderately successful shows like Cowboy Bebop and obscure ones such as Big O become such big hits despite not scoring stunning ratings back in homeland Japan. In some cases the original mangaka and studios are only able to make a profits with such failures because of the international success. Big O to use as an examples was actually canceled in its original run in Japan but it was such a surprise smash hit in North America that the studio actually resumed the series! Sonic X would receive a North American only second season which ironically would later get dubbed in Japanese (despite the first season originally made in Japanese for Japanese audiences). If anything, the Japanese industry succeeded where the American industry could not; create shows targeting older audiences that were not inane comedies (in the vein of South Park and Family guy) and attain considerable commercial success (Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the shell being the prime example I can think off). Even their shows aimed at kids and teenagers attain success at older audiences if Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball are anything to show. Only American animated cartoon aimed at kids I can think off that had such major success with adults comparable to DBZ and Sailor Moon is Spongebob Squarepants. Lets go it a step further and I'll state many shows that would be taboo to watch by the opposite gender "back in Japan" find tremendous success with said gender internationally! Admitting you like Sailor Moon even as a elementary kid in Japan is already social suicide. But at least half the Sailor Moon fandom is male worldwide! Many other series that were meant to only be like "by little girls" such as Cardcaptor Sakura, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Rose of Versailles not only have primarily adult fans in the West but the ratio of male-female fan ratiois basically at the same level as Sailor Moon. Many series intend to be aimed only at certain genre fans have most of its international fans don't even follow said genres.Captain Harlock for example has its French fandom mostly consisting of non-Sci Fi/Space Opera fans. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24141 |
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It's an interesting question as to why anime has succeeded beyond Japan and I confess I don't really know the answer although I will try to hazard some guesses. First, the Japanese entertainment industry had a big incentive to develop anime because it was a way to tell "big" stories without needing a "big" budget to go with it. For whatever reason, it would seem that Japanese audiences had less of an issue with animated material than in many other parts of the world where animation has pretty much been relegated to family or "kiddy" fare. So there was both the incentive to make animation and an audience for it. As it happened, some of the stuff that got made lent itself to adaptation in other parts of the world: i.e. Speed Racer, Star Blazers and later on stuff like Pokemon. These types of titles acted as "gate ways" to other anime. And the rest, as they say, is history.
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Crisha
Moderator
 Posts: 4290 |
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Edited the thread title to cut it down some.
Also, this might be an interesting question for the Answerman. The e-mail address is answerman (at!) animenewsnetwork.com. |
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ChibiKangaroo
 Posts: 2941 |
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Korean animation has started to pick up quite a bit. It's still an open question as to the kind of international success they will have, but they have started to put out some serious high quality stuff.
I don't know how many people have seen this movie: Leafie A Hen Into the Wild If you haven't seen it, I HIGHLY recommend seeing it. It was the all-time top earning Korean animated film when it came out there. I'm frankly surprised it didn't get a major American release, as it is a fantastic movie and probably one of the most well rounded/deep animated movies I have seen in some time. And I say that having seen many Japanese animated films. There is a Korean language version (subtitled) that is very spot-on with the voice acting. There is also an official English dub version that was produced for home video in Canada and a few other English speaking countries. The dub is still pretty good but not as good as the original. This is a video review that covers some of the main topics/positives of the film - Video Review |
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