Are there too many "Otaku-Pandering" Anime

That's really not a good measuring stick; way too much YMMV there.

For example, I refuse to watch anything whatsoever in front of my family, even things I know for a fact they watch too. You, on the other hand, appear to consider tv a more social activity. Which is fine, I'm just pointing out it makes "Anime you'd watch alone" too subjective.

Hmm... how about anime you will feel embarrassed of if your family and friends watch it?

Or anime that you dare not recommend to family and friends even if you like it.

edited 7th May '13 8:58:57 PM by probablyinsane

If I dare not recommend anime to anyone, it's probably because they don't like anime.

They know it will lower the short term profits. That's why it's a subsidy, yes? That's the whole point of a subsidy: to incentivize unprofitable behavior that's nonetheless good for society. The industry will never do this on their own because that would involve shooting themselves in the foot, so you give them the opportunity to make (certain) stuff without worrying about immediate profits, and that hopefully opens up the market for more long term growth (at short term costs).

Is there really a difference? It's still opening up the market. The market right now is fucking tiny.

This is where the international issue comes in. Japan wants to export its culture and increase its relative market power. If it has to push Bollywood out of business then so be it. You can agree or disagree with this goal, but it's certainly not an unusual one for a nation to have.

Uh... how is it not selfish?

edited 7th May '13 10:25:34 PM by Clarste

And why is more anime good for society? Right now, people can watch their TV dorama, play their Ninteno Wii, read their manga, etc. Why would it directly "benefit society" at all, to turn this one particular niche genre-thing into a major medium?

As long as we are solely looking at it from an anime company CEO's perspective, there is no difference, financial growth is financial growth.

But creatively, this has nothing to do with the "staleness" of anime. Earlier, Arha mentioned Nisekoi as a clichéd work that is a sign of pandering. But Nisekoi is a popular manga in Shonen Jump, that itself has a circulation of millions. More anime in the genres that the Japanese viewers are interested in, could still mean more anime riddled with tropes and styles that the average western viewer would consider otaku-pandering.

So, why is it selfish of me that I don't want the Japanese entertainment industry to dominate the Indian one?

I'm not any more Japanese than I am Indian, and I care as little about watching cartoons aimed at indian sensibilities, as I care about watching Bollywood movies.

You are yet to provide an example of why Japanese cartoons becoming a larger segment of the world's entertainment industry, would be a better thing for the world itself, and why I should care in favor of it, outside the context of feeling some sort of tribal loyalty either to the concept of animation compared to other mediums, or to the national economy of Japan compared to other nations.

So I'm asking again. Why is it selfish that I prefer a system where the already existing mainstream entertainment demand are supplied by appropriately mainstream mediums, and beyond that, there are also smaller industries that are appealing to smaller groups of people, like me?

edited 8th May '13 1:15:46 AM by Ever9

Because TV Dramas haven't been catching on overseas, unlike anime. The others don't directly compete.

Well, first of all I am not Arha, so if you're just assuming that all my argument are exactly the same as Arha's simply because he's agreed with me in the past then I have no interest in discussing this with you because clearly you don't care what what my arguments are, you're just conflating me with "the enemy". This is not a useful way to continue a discussion.

Second of all, popularity in Japan is still a tiny fraction of the world. The more insular the market becomes the less it'll grow. If you're a CEO or an economist, you should care about that. If you're not, then I guess you have no reason to. I never asked you to care though, I've only asked you to understand why other people care, such as the people who said the things that prompted this topic. If you don 't want to discuss the topic then why are you here?

Because anything you want at the expense of others is selfish by definition? You're selfish, I'm selfish, the CE Os are selfish and Japan is selfish. That's just a fact of the matter. All I'm trying to do is abstract from my own desires and look at things from another person's perspective. Is that too much to ask? I've never asked you to care, nor have have I asked you to support it, nor have I claimed it to be better for the world. Why are you assuming those things even matter for this conversation?

Otaku-focusing anime is alienating to the rest of the world, this limits the growth of the market, Japanese economists don't like that, especially ones who invested in it. That's it. That's all. It's a statement of fact. I like facts, that's my selfishness.

Essentially, you're making what I considered a rather abstract discussion about business and economics into a personal one about your preferences, which I feel is bizarre. The fact that you can't seem to separate the two in your head is also worrisome.

edited 8th May '13 2:21:55 AM by Clarste

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You did make enough vague claims about the staleness of anime in a creative sense. You could give specific examples of which anime you specifically consider so boring that a change in the market is needed, or you could just retract that aspect of your argument and admit that you only care about the relative size of the... animation industry.... the Japanese economy?

It's not really clear, you keep moving on that matter back and forth. At one point you advocate increasing the market in the local Japanese audience, but when I list the other Japanese entertainment mediums that are already covering the potentuial audience, you are bringing up foreign markets and the wishes of Japanese economists.

You are diluting the definition of selfishness way beyong the useful. Japanese economists would really love to dominate the world's entertainment industry. So would Bollywood, Hollywood, and several cultures and subcultures and niches in the world.

If even just by not wishing one of them to do so, I already "want things at the expense of others", then really everyone in the world is selfish, just for understanding the basic fact of life that not everyone can get what they want.

This is not a "Japanese Economy Appreciation Thread", the OP question was whether there is too much otaku anime? To that question, "No, because I don't consider otaku anime to be boring or clichéd, and it's current style makes me happy", is as much of a relvant answer as "yes, because the financial success of my arbirarily chosen country over others would make me happy". The fact that the op started the thread with a claim from Japanese government, doesn't mean that we need to be apologists of the Japanese government's hopes and plans.

Besides, let's look through how this discussion went:

The idea that cheering on international growth for it's own sake, was just your latest moving of the goalpost after you couldn't point out how the current otaku niche is spiraling towards loss compared to the older more mainstream model. And that claim itself, was your first reply to my assertion about the worries of lacking artistic quality in otaku-"pandering" anime, implying that the otaku-based market is unsustainable. Before that, you made your own artistic criticism about the "pavlovian" nature of otaku anime.

edited 8th May '13 4:27:58 AM by Ever9

Okay, I'll concede that I'm not entirely sure what I'm talking about anymore because my temper is getting ahold of me.

Sorry everyone for being a terrible person who ruined your thread.

edited 8th May '13 8:25:00 AM by Clarste

No problem. But it better not still be finals over there.

Anyway, I think they're just going to fund non-otaku anime, rather than crack down on otaku anime.

Which is good. Funding for things I like is good.

Disagreement here. It is not anime's otaku-ness that makes it's tropes unfamiliar, but it's Japaneseness. Hence my distinction about whether we are talking about more japanese-kid-oriented anime, or about more western appeal, because the two are not always the same.

A significant part of the anime boom was about western adults starting to look out for show like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Got S. Shows with lots of gunplay, masculine protagonists, mature female leads, and serious art styles, with minimal japanese cultural concepts, and directly fitting into western genres.

You are assuming that when the Cabinet Council talks about "widespread appeal", they care about the economy, but think that over: Anime was always far from the most significant segment of the Japanese economy, and even beyond that, governments rarely make commentary about the recommended strategies of a consumer-focused industries. Imagine, if the US government would declare that we need more AAA videogames with female protagonists! What would be more probable, that they actively care about the sweet taxpayer money they could get from helping out the games industry, or that the industry is just another pawn in their Culture Wars, wher they are making a point about what media is "healthy" or "unhealthy"?

When old distinguished Japanese men are making worried comments about otaku anime, they are far more likely to be worried about the existence of adult anime-otaku, than meddling into the money-making decisions of an industry.

I think you are greatly overrating how significant the western market ever was to begin with. Right now, today, there is only a very minimal western anime market, and that is mostly represented by a few hardcore otaku ordering discs from Japan, and maybe there are a few coincidential TV airings.

Besides, you are wrong about how long it took for the western market to shrink. It was not a matter of more and more consumers liking then stopping to like anime, but a very specific series of events of TV channels entirely pulling the plug on anime licensing, and an end to imported dubbed DV Ds, that they experimented with earlier. It all has very specific borders. I didn't select 1998-2003 arbitarily as the "best years" of anime, but as the years when the western market existed, when anime was even attempted to be sold in the west in large numbers.

There is an easy way to demonstrate that: why are the 2011 numbers still that much larger than the 90's ones? Even if you would be right that the sales boom in the 2000s was an aftereffect of the 90's successes, we all know from personal experiences that by 2011, there was no significant western anime market at all. I stopped to exist. Anime was not dubbed, not aired on western TV, and barely exported. Even professional subbing is barely supporting it's own production costs. Yet the 2011 profits are still larger than the 90's ones, and grotesquely larger than the 80's ones. So we know that this is done entirely by Japan.

The 90's were small not because anime sucked, but because children's anime was airing on daytime TV and barely made any profit, while 2000s anime was more effectively finding it's audiences. The "contraction" between 2006 and 2011 is the tiniest little thing compared to it, especially if you notice that it isn't even consistent, 2011 is bigger than 2008, and 2008 is bigger than 2003. You are chasing ghosts if you attribute that to the collapse of a market that already didn't exist years earlier, and that was never a significant force behind the industry, even in the years when Dragon Ball and Pokemon got licensed, it was a minor benefit.

edited 8th May '13 6:29:57 AM by Ever9

That raises an interesting point that has been overlooked, the part about tv audiences. It's widely know that back in early two thousand's they dropped in terms of number of viewers. However, anime companies have a higher revenue compared to the 90's.

This is a bit counter intuitive, because a wider audience implies a larger market and profit potential. However, anime studio's aren't directly paid for what they do, they are usually paid by a company (toy, manga publisher, etc.) that ordered the anime in the first place. Could it be that the companies that hire anime studios weren't as willing to pay, or is it that the anime original shows have gotten more successful, thus having a bigger profit share despite fewer sales?

Assuming the graph refers to revenues and not profits, because if it were the latter then it could mean that the investment on new/innovative/high quality animation had dropped, dropping the costs even if the revenues were constant/smaller.

edited 8th May '13 2:43:02 PM by lgcruz

You do realize quite a good amount of anime is still dubbed and released on DVD over here, right? And there's still a few aired on TV? You're pretty implying anime is almost non-existent over here, which is untrue.

I realize that, but these examples are so ad hoc and inconsistent, (with maybe the exception recent adult swim/toonami revival that doesn't appear on the chart yet anywys), that compared to the late 90's when they were a growing business, that led many western viewers to anime, now they are the ones that are barely sustained by western otaku throwing money at them.

For western anime fans, dubbed anime has entirely changed from the primary way of getting into anime though shows like Case Closed and Ranma, to an expensive DVD speciality that you can buy after watching the original Japanese airing.

What I'm saying is, if such a dramatic change doesn't represent itself on overall industry profits in any other way than an ambigous drop between 2009 and 2011 results (that is dwarfed by the 2000-2006 growth), then it wasn't ever a major factor for Japan to begin with.

edited 8th May '13 1:44:18 PM by Ever9

People make what sells. If the otaku demographic is used to certain clichés or styles, and will continue to buy it, why put effort into something creative but not likely to sell? Remember, anime and manga are pretty different in terms of production costs.

And this is just conjecture based on hearsay, seeing as how I've never come within a hundred miles of Japan, but it might just not be that well looked upon as a medium. From what I hear, it's far more acceptable in western society to be an otaku than in Japan, which says something. If some foreign country imported a lot of western comics or something from the US and developed a subculture that got really into it, they might be wondering the same thing.

@Rem: IDK, but this post is pretty interesting. :S

It should be noted that the Japanese language makes a distinction between "otaku" (roughly meaning "nerd"), and it's specific variations such as "anime otaku", or "gun otaku", "train otaku", "history otaku", "pro-wrestling otaku", etc.

So assuming that Rem was talking specifically about anime-otaku, he might be right that anime medium itself is "not well looked upon" in Japan.

It's indeed somehow analogous to the American comic book fandom. While nerds in general are popular in America, and even the specific genres and styles and characters that appear in comics are symbols of a very mainstream nerddom, the comic book nerds in specific are still very negatively stereotyped (even by other nerds), as anti-social manchildren with bad personal hygiene.

To continue the paralell a foreign culture would start to read large numbers of U.S. comics without learning much about the rest of America, they might first believe that the USA is the land of infinite comic books, then as they learn more about the stereotypes, they would go to the other extreme and decide that actually America hates nerds, and such thing as superhero stories can only happen because of extreme "comic book nerd"-pandering, while the rest of the nation obviously finds them utterly alienating.

It's the same thing as what we do with anime. The first weeaboos declared Japan to be the Promised Land of animation, then upon learning about anime-otaku stereotypes, we decided that actually Japan must utterly hate every element of anime (at least the ones that we, foreigners detect as weird).

Meanwhile, in fact there is a wide subculture of mainstream-otaku Japanese, a whole younger generation who accept kawaiisa as the beauty ideal (and based on that, moe), who might even be familiar with ecchi and harems, it is just specifically the anime-watching subculture and it's associated obsessive stereotypes that are considered unhealthy.

Hmm. Interesting, though not very informative on whether or not anime is actually popular in Japan. Vague. :V Anyway, considering there's an endless stream of extremely popular blockbuster movies based on comic books in America, I think that comic books negative perception is a bit exaggerated. Not to mention the innumerable cartoons, etc.

Comic books and comic book movies are worlds apart in terms of popularity. Even big name companies don't sell more than a few hundred thousand copies per issue. Which sounds like a lot, until you compare that to how much money the more popular comic book movies make. That doesn't even get to smaller companies like say, IDW Publishing and their Transformers titles that sell like 10-15 thousand per issue, (last I heard) versus the shitloads of money Transformers movies and toys have made.

edited 9th May '13 4:56:37 AM by SimplyWhatever

Well yeah, but why would people think comics are stupid but love the Avengers movie? >.>

Not really sure though I can guess a few reasons. 1. They tend to be a bit graphic compared to the movies. 2. Animation Age Ghetto has lessened these days, but it's still there. 3. Normal people don't like reading even if it's just speech bubbles.

Incidentally, even the manga industry in America is more prolific than the comics industry.

Didn't know that. Personally, I don't read western comics due to everything I hear about Continuity Snarls, Armed with Canon, Depending on the Writer, so on and so forth. I wonder if that's just me, or a popular reason to avoid them.

Western comics might be pretty alienating to viewers of adaptations,considering there's at least some reputation for being less family-friendly compared to the adaptations. There was some big controversy or something with DC's portrayal of Starfire in Red Hood and the Outlaws, which fans of the Teen Titans cartoon were probably be put off by, at least according to that Shortpacked strip.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I'd say the manga industry is more prolific in the U.S., but I'm not really sure. How many copies do top manga tend to sell? (I mean per volume, not per title)

edited 9th May '13 10:03:29 AM by SimplyWhatever

I don't read comics or manga, so make of that what you will, if anything.

edited 9th May '13 10:07:51 AM by PhysicalStamina

That whole continuity mess that Marvel/DC comics have, is a good example of what actual fandom-pandering looks like. I can't really think of anything comparable in anime that is supposedly influenced by otaku-pandering.