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Miyazaki's Call Out of Otakus

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Lillymon:
Well I spent a lot of time thinking about this issue, and came to the primary conclusion that the problem is way over there in Japan, I'm sitting thousands of miles away in England, and I can't really do shit to affect anything the anime industry is doing, so I should probably not spend so much time thinking about it.

My secondary conclusion was that Miyazaki is broadly correct. The anime industry now is otaku catering to other otaku, a situation I saw referred to elsewhere as effectively a form of creative inbreeding. The industry ends up reinforcing traits that used to be much more subtle, until we get to today with the industry effectively a parody of itself. The fact that the studios are still making money off this is almost more a curse than a blessing since with otaku continuing to buy up overpriced discs and merchandise every season, the argument for fundamental change is very weak. Why mess with what's still working?

I don't want to get overly doom and gloom though. Despite talk of how bad this season is, I'm still having fun with it. Things are almost never as bad as people bitch about it being. The problem is clearly more chronic than acute, I don't see any catastrophic collapse in the industry's future, so there's certainly time to adapt. The industry has changed a lot in the past and I tend to think those within the industry are not dumb enough to just sit around as the industry collapses around them. When times get bad, solutions tend to be found, and while I don't pretend to understand the anime industry to anywhere near the extent necessary to know what these would be, I just don't feel that this is a situation devoid of optimism.

So I'm just going to keep doing what I've been doing for a while now. Relax, have fun with my Japanese cartoons, and leave the anime industry to hopefully find a way forward. I'm feeling pretty good all thing considered.

jaybug:
Lilly, support non-otaku driven anime. Yes, buy it. If it has tons of fanservice, it's otaku-driven anime. Harem, magical girls, etc. Buy the stuff you would be comfortable watching with your mother.

The one problem I have here, is that if anime is otaku driven, that means that it is self-limiting in its audience. You'll never get any larger than what you are already, if you only cater to those who are buying you now. Sometimes the audience grows up; gets a life, a wife etc. They get over their 8th graders syndrome.

What are the numbers of the audience for a Ghibli film compared to those who watch Queen's Blade? How many will buy the former, to the latter? If you're giving your scores in ponies and unicorns, you might be a redneckare an otaku.

sackii:
Let's not kid ourselves... it's a business. What is the only group of people that will buy Blurays and figurines of their favorite shows? It's been answered countless times in this thread. In the end it's not much about the audience but about the profits.

jaybug:
Well Sackii, the industry has to support itself through merchandising, because it isn't drawing high enough viewership to warrant TV networks to pay them more.

I think there is a glass ceiling if you will, for anime. The ceiling is the willing suspension of disbelief. For some people it breaks as soon as they realize that what they are watching is animated, and not live action. It is certainly more prevalent in America than Japan, or at least that is how it was historically. Perhaps now the Japanese have a more similar identity with live action than it used to be. Because well, they can do more movie/TV magic in live action than they could before. Blue screen and CGI technology has come so incredibly far, that fewer stories need to be told strictly by anime, because live action used to look more fake than Godzilla crashing through Shinjuku. Godzilla movies were they cream of the crop back then, for live action spectacle.

If anyone knows what will happen next, they will become very rich. Guessing what people will pay money for next year is a worse bet than a crap shoot. But people do it, because when/ if yiou  guess right, you can make a hell of a lot of money.

Zalis, what kind of news are you looking at? Dude! At least give us a NSFW warning, eh? lol Speaking of otaku culture.

American otakus are into things like Fantasy Football. Or cooking shows. lmao.

Bob2004:

--- Quote from: jaybug on February 07, 2014, 03:24:22 AM ---I think there is a glass ceiling if you will, for anime. The ceiling is the willing suspension of disbelief. For some people it breaks as soon as they realize that what they are watching is animated, and not live action. It is certainly more prevalent in America than Japan, or at least that is how it was historically. Perhaps now the Japanese have a more similar identity with live action than it used to be. Because well, they can do more movie/TV magic in live action than they could before. Blue screen and CGI technology has come so incredibly far, that fewer stories need to be told strictly by anime, because live action used to look more fake than Godzilla crashing through Shinjuku. Godzilla movies were they cream of the crop back then, for live action spectacle.

--- End quote ---

I don't think that's the issue at all though. A lot of the most popular anime - Ghibli, as an example - are partly popular precisely because of the animation. They look artistic, and not realistic in the slightest, and that's precisely why they're so popular, in my opinion.

After all, we've only been able to tell stories in a realistic looking manner for the past 10-15 years. Before that nothing looked realistic, and it didn't stop anyone's enjoyment of it. It's the reason plays and books are still popular - people have always been able to appreciate a good story without it looking totally realistic.

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