Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Isn't More Anime Shown On American TV?
|
Goto page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
ultimatehaki
Posts: 1090 |
|
|||
|
I usually have these conversations with friends and online as well in forums. The anime boom in the 1990's and early 2000's, while it didn't stay for long, it definitely did it's job in getting anime out to the world at least.
I am one of the many who grew up watching all the anime on toonami after school like outlaw star, cardcaptors and dbz. Although I stopped watching when toonami went off the air before I entered highschool it still stuck with me and then I went looking for all those old "cartoons" I used to watch, the rest is history. I figured now it wouldn't be as popular to air on prime tv because like you said the target audience is moving away from that and the actual fans already seen it and know where to look to get new things. No real point anymore. |
||||
|
||||
Paiprince
 Posts: 593 |
|
|||
|
Because the people who watch American TV hate it. End of story.
|
||||
|
||||
|
Hypeathon
Posts: 1176 |
|
|||
|
How many times has this kind of question been asked on Answerman alone?
|
||||
|
||||
CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
|
|||
|
I feel like almost every other country has more of a presence of anime on TV than the US. The only examples I can think of with less are Canada and the UK.
Australia has free-to-air channels such as ABC3 and SBS that regularly throw anime into the mix, as well as a local syndicated "AnimeLab On-Air" block that airs in some territories. Germany has a free-to-air male-targeted channel that plays everything from One Piece to The Testament of Sister New Devil. Southeast Asia has a linear Animax channel. The 2x2 channel in Russia has toned it down a bit since they got in trouble for GTO and Ikki Tousen, but still shows Attack on Titan, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Ghibli movies, One Piece, Pokemon, and Speed Racer. |
||||
|
||||
|
encrypted12345
Posts: 718 |
|
|||
|
With the advent of online streaming, it's outright unnecessary for anime to air on TV. I suppose that it could theoretically increase the anime fan base, but it's overall large enough that it doesn't need to be forced to grow more. It can simply grow sufficiently by word of mouth, which is why I found Crunchyroll's movie theater commercials amusing, but not worth the money.
The bigger Japanese game franchises are in a similar place where they occupy a niche so large that they are more or less mainstream. I'm not even talking about titles like Kingdom Hearts or Mario; even Nier Automata, Persona, and Neptunia can be considered such IMO. I won't say that advertisement is 100% useless, but it's fair to say that advertisement on television probably isn't worth whatever money companies like Sentai or Funimation would be forced to pay. |
||||
|
||||
Jonny Mendes
 Posts: 997 Location: Europe |
|
|||
|
Streaming are going to substitute TV anyway so why care.
We can watch what we want, when we want, subbed, dubbed and without the stupid TV edits. Keeping TV network executives out of anime loop that they don't understand is the best thing about streaming. There are still a place for kids anime like Pokemon, Digimon, Doraemon, PreCure, or even something like Dragon Ball or One Piece. But anything less mainstream is a waste in TV channels anyway. |
||||
|
||||
EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
|
|||
|
I read the headline, and wanted to see if Justin would hit on the concise, historical one-word answer:
"Escaflowne". 
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, most of the general entertainment-analyst industry not only didn't know "what the heck" they were, most barely even realized they were Japanese! Europe, Mexico and Brazil didn't have as many cartoons of their own, and were used to showing whatever world imports they darn pleased--But in the US, the 80's syndicated-action days of Robotech, Star Blazers and Voltron had painted Harmony Gold-style afternoon dubs as "cheap" Godzilla-dubbed kitsch for poorer stations that couldn't afford anything better, and not as much in kiddy corporate-marketing demand as the stuff coming out of Disney Afternoon or Filmation, especially if they had toy sales to pay their bills. (Even Saban was less interested in the Power Rangers or Sailor Moon as the possibility that they wore their same outfits for the action figures.) Anime on US TV didn't become ANIME on US TV until Dragon Ball Z (which had already been airing on Warner afternoons for a year or two, after the first season of Dragon Ball, and along with the "wacky" afternoon dub of Samurai Pizza Cats.) It was sort of hard to ignore that that one came from Asia, what with Goku and everyone in dojo gear and doing martial-arts moves. And then came Pokemon. (And the "epilepsy" that got it into the headlines, and the game craze that made it marketable for Nintendo to try selling a US syndication.) After that, execs knew what Anime on US TV was: It was fighting, or it was a popular game you could market at Toys R Us. On video, everyone was buying Ranma 1/2 on VHS, but never mind showing it, just try explaining that series to an exec who only just found out that Pokemon came from another country...Oh, the one that gave us Speed Racer, I remember that! Fox in the early 00's were so confident that they had an easy generic-kiddy hit with "Flint the Time Detective" (sort of a low-rent Time Bokan that didn't have cultural barriers), they thought they could use their connection with Enoki(?) to grab the next Japanese toon hit that they didn't have to animate themselves! Early attempts to bring over Slayers and Case Closed's success fell through, and then, they 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? Last edited by EricJ2 on Wed Jun 07, 2017 5:29 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||
|
||||
Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5464 Location: Iscandar |
|
|||
|
From the tone of the question I infer that the person asking it is not very informed about how anime dubs are distributed. It is not that some anime shows with dubs do not air on tv, most dubbed anime shows do not air on tv.
Every time I see someone ask and lament that not much anime airs on tv my reaction is: WHO CARES. Watching something on linear tv is very antiquated at this point. I know that a big anime hit on tv benefits the industry, but the current model of legal simulcasts and DVD/BD's down the road seems to be working well. |
||||
|
||||
Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
|
|||
|
I dare say the reasons Justin provides would leave all but the most lucrative international productions—animated or otherwise—without any hope of enjoying an American broadcast. One supposes that in the world's biggest television market by monetary value, the need to accept any work in a finished and unmalleable form has seldom arisen.
|
||||
|
||||
Primus
 Posts: 2779 Location: Toronto |
|
|||
|
Outside of Fairy Tail, Sailor Moon Crystal and a small handful of others, has American TV really missed out on any truly viable series? I don't think so. Of the shows Kyle asked for, the only one I can see getting more than a niche audience is Sgt. Frog, and there were multiple attempts by ADV and Funimation over the years to get that on a US kids channel.
I don't think you can really dig into catalog either. Most of the stuff that would be on offer to TV stations would be shows already available on DVD/BD and streaming. Kind of hard to convince someone to watch a show weekly when they can watch it all for free on Funimation's site or buy a complete series collection for $30 off of Amazon. Remember when Chiller tried to make an anime block featuring older and lesser known shows? It lasted less than a month. |
||||
|
||||
|
CatSword
Posts: 1489 |
|
|||
It doesn't help that it was on very late at night on a niche extended cable channel with absolutely no advertising. |
||||
|
||||
|
John Thacker
Posts: 1006 |
|
|||
Yes, and all of those countries air a lot more American produced TV than the US airs programs from other countries too. The US not only has a larger GDP than the EU put together, it is particularly known for its successful entertainment industry that draws in talent from around the world to act and direct and produce entertainment for both domestic consumption and export. 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. |
||||
|
||||
|
Primus
Posts: 2779 Location: Toronto |
|
|||
The only point I'd say is fair is the total lack of advertising. The Chiller shows would not do well enough to justify a primetime slot on a major channel. Even the majority of the stuff Toonami's passed on would struggle. As Justin said, the more popular cable channels would prefer to air original content. Syfy's Starz anime blocks (which coincided with a downturn in CN's broadcast of anime) seemed to do okay until that network had grown to be able to do an entire slate of their own series. |
||||
|
||||
MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5419 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
louis6578
 Posts: 1870 |
|
|||
|
Where would you air it? Toonami/Adult Swim has an established demographic of action shows. Moe isn't really for kids as much as it is for adults who want something slower and more fanservice-y. Nickelodeon and Disney wouldn't exactly air these shows without heavy edits that diminish the value of the shows in question.
The fact that a lot of them don't get dubbed is another factor to consider. |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group