Forum - View topicThe '80s and '90s, OVAs, and you
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Unit 03.5-ish
Posts: 1540 Location: This space for rent |
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Hallo ANN.
 As a new member, I'm totally pumped to be here...almost as pumped as those bodybuilders in that old SNL skit.
And now for my very first thread. So we've been lucky with anime these days; quality series and movies, interesting plots, likable characters, actually respectable dubbing, cheap boxed sets, and more shows now that wouldn't have made it twenty years ago are coming our way. But it wasn't always like that, which brings up my point: why was it, in the '80s and early '90s, anime in the US market not only consisted mostly of OVAs and one-shots...but a lot of them were pretty bad? The notion that this stuff could appeal to anyone outside of Japan baffles me, and it just doesn't seem to make much marketing sense in retrospect. Was it desperation? Were these the only titles they could license? Did a lot of these then-fledgling US anime companies either not care or did they feel gracious they even got a license or two? Or did nobody think anime was going to even take off and they just tossed random crap at us to see if there was ANY interest? Or maybe Japan liked making really bad cartoons back then. Who knows... |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6902 Location: Kazune City |
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These are my theories on the subject:
1) Movies & OVAs were cheaper to license and dub, as opposed to longer TV series. Because the home-video market for TV series (even domestic ones) hadn't really been established, longer anime had to have TV deals, merchandising possibilities, or other mainstream angles to be commercially viable, and that meant hacked-up stuff like Starblazers, Robotech, Voltron, Sailor Moon, DBZ, Cardcaptors, etc. (And is it just me, or were TV series longer on average back then? Seems like 13-26 episode series were the exception rather than the rule, and there were a lot more 50-100+ episode series in those days. In fact I don't even know of any 13-episode TV series until 1996's Those Who Hunt Elves.) 2) People were so desperate to get their hands on anime back then, that they would buy anything on a "because it's anime" basis. 3) The companies knew these short anime were lousy, but they were able to market them successfully as edgy, exotic products. "Look, it's a cartoon! But it's got people's heads getting ripped off, nudity, and a whole bunch of bad language that we added in!" |
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Unit 03.5-ish
Posts: 1540 Location: This space for rent |
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Those are good theories, and I really don't think TV shows did take off until DVD was introduced (in fact, I don't recall ANY live-action shows being put on VHS).
I find even the hacked-up stuff to be enjoyable if you take it in a certain way. I enjoyed Speed Racer for its inherent yester-decade cheesiness, I don't have qualms with Robotech if you only count the original Macross show and don't give a lot of thought to the others, and Voltron was fun for what it was. But yeah, the main reason they had to do stuff like chopping up and repackaging Macross was due to the silly licensing deals (this was, after all, before anime could be shown on late-night networks like Adult Swim). As for the length of these shows: it's no secret that anime production is slower and is hitting tough financial times in Japan, and the shows that were epically long like DBZ were most likely due to the economic bubble, I think, but since anime's lost some ground as being financially viable... I think it's interesting to note that big hitters like ADV and other licensing companies were cutting their teeth back then (and it's possible anime may have remained in the OVA ghetto if these companies weren't willing to take the risky chance of distributing full-length TV series on VHS). |
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Emerje
 Posts: 7427 Location: Maine |
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Pretty much a little bit of everything you said, Zalis, had to do with it. ADV in particular seemed to thrive on OAVs and movies back in the day just so they could have a catalog of titles.
And you're right, there are many more 13 episode series now than there used to be and I believe that has a lot to do with the way the industry exploded in Japan. The pool of titles and story lines that they can pull from has outgrown the number of television time slots available so it only makes sense to shorten the series length in order to squeeze in more titles and in turn push out more merchandise. I'm noticing another trend where they'll run a show for 13 episodes and then a few months later start "season 2" with 13 more episodes such as with Vampire Knight and Natsume Yujincho. I believe we're even starting to see some seven episode series appear. A few years ago Dan posted an audit of the Encyclopedia and listed the number of titles that had 13, 26, and 52 or more episode runs. The size gap between 13 and 26 was pretty large at the time, I'm kinda curious how much that gap has closed up in the last few years. Emerje |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Unit 03.5-ish:
I think you have a few misconceptions here. For starters there has always been a ton of crap. It was true in the 80s and 90s and it's true today. The only difference is that 80s/90s crap usually consists of a whole lot of gore and tits with no actual quality while today's crap consists mostly of a whole lot of moe girls and harem situations with no quality. We may not notice this as much though today as we did back then for a few reasons which brings me to what I see as your other misconception. Generally, even nowadays anime that is very graphic with a lot of violence is seen as the most marketable here. Yeah, a lot of that kind of anime was crappy especially back in the old days but it was still more marketable at the time that a lot of the more Japan-centric stuff. For this reason, by choice of the anime companies, what was most frequently licensed was exactly that kind of thing. You should probably be thankful too because they were right. It's thanks to exactly this kind of anime that anime did take off in North America. As for why there was such an excess of OVAs, it is possible that that's just what was being produced most commonly at the time. I don't actually have any statistical basis for that though. It is also likely though that due to limited finances and the unpredictability of the market back then, companies were far more inclined to release short OVAs which were cheaper and would provide quicker profit instead of investing in the larger cost of TV shows which would provide returns much slower over a period of time as the different volumes were released. |
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Unit 03.5-ish
Posts: 1540 Location: This space for rent |
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Hmm. I didn't really say I thought it was ONLY the graphic stuff...but I do see your point.
I'm not so shallow as to thrive on graphically violent anime (in fact, I find those types to be very boring and sub-par...except for some rare exceptions), but even with the burgeoning popularity of some TV shows, it is true the violent stuff still appeals. (As an example, Afro Samurai seems to be marketed towards the "casual" anime crowd, and since it was aired on Spike and has Samuel "Shut Your Motherfucking Mouth!" Jackson voicing the title character...well, that speaks for itself). On another note, anyone remember those late-nite commercials for "EXTREME ADULT ANIME" or whatever that did consist of shots from those ultra-bloody OVAs and other things? I doubt that helped destroy the myth that anime is this ridiculously over-the-top adults-only stuff...it probably helped perpetuate it. Edit: I'm well aware there's still a lot of crap...but I'm smart enough to use review sites (Mike Toole is my anime god) to avoid the rotten stuff. |
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DuelLadyS
 Posts: 1705 Location: WA state |
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If high school anime websurfing was right, there were more OVAs in the 80s/90s becuase anime companies were trying to capitalize on the new home video market (which obviously didn't really exist in the 70s.) The reason so many of the 'bad' ones came over here was becuase they were liscensed in chunks- if a company wanted these 2 good shows, they had to buy them along with 3 bad ones, or something like that.
I have no basis for this other than faded memories, though... and Mike Toole rocks. *hopes for more Anime Jump Show* |
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Joichiro Nishi
Posts: 163 |
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The good old times when anime was considered riculously over-the-top adults-only stuff. It was a lot better than the moe crap or pokemon's clones. I really love that old trashy OVAs, maybe because I also love 80s American action. |
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Lee1981
Posts: 109 |
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I like a lot of 80s and 90s OVAs, myself. I mean, yeah, a lot of them are bad, but there are plenty of good ones as well. You have the 1985 Area 88 OVA, which is a very compelling story about someone in the military against his will. You have Green Legend Ran, which is a very entertaining post-apocalyptic fantasy OVA. The Iria OVA might not be the best thing out there, but it's still an entertaining action sci-fi movie with a pretty good plot and likeable characters. And while a lot of one-shot OVAs aren't that great, there are a few that I like such as Mermaid Forest, Mermaid Scar, and Laughing Target, all of which work very well with their one-hour running time and don't feel rushed and still manage to be compelling stories.
I have noticed that they had a lot more longer shows back in the early 80s than they do now though. 52 episodes seemed very common, though in 1978 they did have Future Boy Conan, which was 26 episodes, and 1982's Space Adventure Cobra had 31 episodes, so they had shorter series as well. But overall they do seem like they were longer back then than they are now. I'm not much of an expert in how anime is created or distributed over in Japan so I can't come up with any possible reasons for it though. |
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Mushi-Man
 Posts: 1537 Location: KCMO |
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i find that most 80/ early 90's OVAs were often bad. To my understanding this was because licensing companies were just trying to push what ever they could onto the market while anime still had the attention that it did. But not all of the anime from this time were bad. We got Akira, Ghost in the Shell, ext. But the sad truth is, there were allot of anime from that time that I wish I could forget.
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Randall Miyashiro
 Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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For the most part Zallis summed it up well. Fandom were very different back then. Back when Animeigo first started to release tapes they were a very small company and couldn't invest in anything more expensive than the random OVA. Most of us fans back then already had copies of Riding Bean, Miyu and Madox 01 but still wanted to buy the "official release" in order to support this fledgling company. Whenever a new Streamline film would be released fans would clamor to the theater even if it was horrible dub of something like Lensman. Anyone else remember going to Berkeley on one of the rainiest days in 1990 in order to see the premiere of Akira?
If you are talking about US live action series I had a huge collection of TV series on VHS and LDs back in the 80s and early 90s. Granted television series have become a much larger part of the home video market, I wouldn't say it was non-existent before DVDs. From Star Trek, Northern Exposure, Amazing Stories, all the way up to X-Files and Babylon 5. Granted they were not sold as complete seasons so would cost a minor fortune when bought two episodes at a time, but they did exist. Sadly some of my favorites like Hill Street Blues and Sledge Hammer only had a handful of episodes on VHS as well, but they did exist. As for anime I watched most of my raw imports back in the 80s off of VHS releases. Some television series were available in their entirety on a per volume basis. Others like Dunbine, L-Gaim, Layzner, Vifam and Votoms only had compilation OVAs (popular in the mid 80s) which sucked but were better than nothing. The first big wave of television anime on VHS/LD in Japan that I remember occurred in the early 90s. I remember being so excited when I got all of Zeta on LD back in 1991. I soon got all of Nadia and Escaflowne on LD which cost well over $1000! I had a fairly impressive import anime on tv collection by the time DVDs were introduced and don't know if your theory holds in the Japanese market. |
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Unit 03.5-ish
Posts: 1540 Location: This space for rent |
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I didn't think laser disc even HAD a market, kinda like how beta tapes died out before they even had a shot. I may be wrong and that may have been more common in Japan...
OVAs weren't/aren't always necessarily steaming piles, I know that much. I bet part of it, again, had to do with Japan's thriving economy back then; artists had more money and were given more creative freedom to do experimental stuff. Bear in mind that this resulted in stuff like M.D. Geist, too. |
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