Why are anime and manga so niche in America?

You are right about that.

I think part of why the stigma of animation being for kids is dying is likely due to the amount of adults nowadays who grew up on the 90s-00s era cartoons like Rugrats, Tiny Toon, Pinky and the Brain, early Spongebob, Batman: TAS, Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, etc.

Or even anime from those decades. Like Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Pokemon, Inu Yasha, and Sailor Moon

Contrast with, say, the past decade where most of the adults in that time grew up on the Saturday morning fare that was meant to sell toys.

edited 24th Feb '17 1:10:17 AM by powerpuffbats

I really wish there was an American animated television show that wasn't an "edgy" comedy. Why can't we have something like Friends or The Big Bang Theory with moving drawings instead of live actors?

I feel like the closest attempt at something like that was Mission Hill, and it kind of flopped.

Futurama also kind of juggled that with all of it's sci-fi humor.

I watched it late at night as teenager but it confused and bored me. Still, it was good attempt and wasn't Mission Hill on FOX or WB?

It was on WB but it got cancelled like mid way through it's run. AS actually debuted quite a few of the unaired episodes. Though it didn't catch on like Home Movies, Family Guy, and Futurama did, so there was no "uncancellation."

Um, several Cartoon Network shows?

Also, what does this have to do with anime being niche in America?

He means for adults.

Bojack Horseman and Rick And Morty count, at least.

Because it ties into how americans see animation.

It's a bit to do with the age ghetto, but americans (and many europeans) basically don't take animation seriously. And I think this has a lot to do with Disney, because while Walt Disney did see animation as something with limitless potential for creativity, the company itself ended up and still does strictly formula shows/films aimed at families. This was done because animation is extremely expensive to make, and families are the biggest possible market (stuff like Fantasia wasn't very profitable), but this had the consequence of changing public perception on who animation is meant for.

Anime and manga arguably only avoided this by cutting down on costs (black and white for manga, limited animation for anime) so it could afford to try out less expansive genres, like adults and teenagers.

The Oscar award for best animation feature was specifically created to avoid giving the best film award to an animated feature. Even today CG animation only escapes it if it strictly uses human actors to base the characters, and even then we probably have to thank the huge amount of money put into cg special effects and films like james cameron's avatar for that.

I do think that anime and manga is helping change this, because people growing up with anime tend to expect more variety of stories from animation. As for why comedic adult cartoons are so popular in america, well they do go way back but basically if you want slapstick violence it's pretty hard to pull it off in live action, at least since movies gained sound.

I also wish there was more variety with cartoons these days.

But action shows are expensive.

Didn't you say something similar already?

Also, variety doesn't guarantee something is better. Being bad at a bunch of different things isn't better than being bad at one or two.

Honestly, I don't remember.

Maybe I did.

[[Sincerity Mode, But, you're right.]]

As far as i know the country where anime has the most popularity other than Japan itself is the US.

But one of the reasons i imagine anime isn't as popular in the US is because while America seems to be ok with violence being viewed on TV they hate sexual content while Japan is ok with sexual content and not violence.

Also Japan has a vastly different culture than the west probably because they were historically isolated in Japan.

Of course i know absolutely nothing about Japan or anime and not alot about the US since im nowhere close to those countries so im sure im completely wrong.

edited 19th Nov '17 8:39:10 AM by inkoalawetrust

In some ways, anime has come and gone as a mainstream entertainment in the US.

from the mid 1990s until the Cartoon network dropping of anime around 2006, Anime was a major Gen-X entertainment form. A survey in 2004 discovered that 85% of people aged 14 to 35 watched at least one hour of anime a week. Anime has returned to being a niche following since.

Ehhhh.

Anime and manga are about as niche as any other nerd medium, certainly more mainstream and popular than e.g. comics or science fiction are.

It's not Hollywood popular, but nothing else is either.

@Screwy Sqrl: If anything anime right now is more popular then it has been even during the 90s boom, its just on a different platform:

edited 25th Nov '17 11:34:36 AM by Demongodofchaos2

Also I wonder if that 85% was driven by anime shows being presented as an extension of cartoons (especially on children's blocks like Kids' WB), rather than anime as a medium considered distinct from western animation.

I remember when Target used to sell anime box-sets a decade ago. I regret not buying more. Now all I see is the occasional Naruto Shippuden dvd and Ghibli films. I once saw a Sailor Moon S dvd... And just a S dvd. No earlier episodes and it wasn't even a box-set.

It's a shame that anime has gotten niche. It makes it harder to buy manga and anime in stores. I like Crunchyroll but it can't beat owning a physical copy. The only anime on TV are either on Disney XD or Toonami nowadays.

I find it easier and more convenient to stream, personally.

Online shopping is cheaper anyways.

I'm probably in a minority but I don't like online shopping. I always prefer to buy stuff myself.

The fact online shopping and streaming is more popular actually has made anime and manga less niche now, couple with new hits from netflix like Devilman Crybaby and Violet Evergarden.

edited 15th Apr '18 11:55:28 AM by Demongodofchaos2

Perfectly agreeing with Memers on page 3, only some kinds of anime get aired. Anime is not niche at all, but it is ''filtered'', in order to protect The System.

It's perfectly okay to see most of so-called "mainstream" anime because it is what the people thinks all anime is, alongside the usual reaction/trope). But if certain other animes aired like (non-exhaustive list)

• Yuyushiki, which is about a three-way yuri polyamorous relationship growing and thriving, and also hinting at enough love as a way of becoming immortal.
• Kiniro Mosaic and Sakura Trick, which both have as one of the heroines being a hard-working girl being "rescued" from the coldness of careerism by, respectively, an adorable motivated redhead who works hard but get bad grades anyway, and an utterly wonderful beige-haired intelligent, strong-witted, ''elite'' little woman who get a way to success paved for her and refuses it because she wants to be independant and follow her heart, screwing the past and money for it !
• Kokoro Connect, which has one of its heroines confess she [spoiler: masturbated in the hero's body too], because of all the pent-up sexual tension that society wanted to block in her mind.

Those animes, in most foreign countries (as in foreign to Japan) could loosen morals and awaken ordinary people to the System's main shackles,patriarchy and monoamory, leading to their destruction. So they are censored. Translations exist, made by fans, they can be used by all, it's definitely not why their are absent from broadcasting. They are censored to protect people from deviant thoughts.

Hopefully their messages will still pass on, by fans propagating these stories.

(The reason why such works aren't censored in Japan is because Japan's citizens are much less rebellious, so the System can use those animes to motivate their exhausted salarymen to the fullest by promises of escape and literally filling them with happy thoughts.)

...what the fuck are you even talking about

I'd say that, while streaming has helped the popularity of anime that were otherwise "too Japanese", "too weird", "too niche", etc for release fifteen years ago, anime has a whole is pretty niche. Maybe it is because it's seen as separate from animation as a whole?