Most likely will be banned soon like it is in Texas
hibikir_40k on
It’s not bad, but I am surprised by the focus. if anything, the question should be why did it take so long to be popular in America compared to the rest of the world, as in the late 80s and early 90s anime was already outcompeting US-made animation all throughout the world.
It also doesn’t get into what IMO is the real reason anime has a huge advantage neoliberals will understand well: It’s picking stories tested in much cheaper models. Black and white comic in Japan is so much prolific and cheaper to produce than American comics, and Shonen Jump does far better at helping people try new things that even independent US comics. And nowadays the sources are even cheaper: Series go from free web-novel to published light novel to Anime, so you don’t even need a visual artist there: When the stories get to be popular enough, then you spend more to popularize them. But this works because they have people of the right demographics doing the reading, while in America the closest idea is Fifty Shades coming out of Fan Fiction.
The model of testing stories for cheap isn’t even just Japanese now: See for instance Solo Leveling, a popular action series that followed a similar path but is made in Korea.
So the fear of homogenizing is a bit silly, precisely because of how much variation there is in those starting stories. While there might be times when stories for teenage boys can seem formulaic, and a lot of anime is low quality, the industry is big enough to take chances. So even with something like Chainsaw Man going a little past the teens. Things like Frieren and Apothecary Diaries, which get plenty of women watching. Even something like Ascendence of a Bookworm, which is basically a girl bringing economics knowledge that could come straight from Wealth of Nations to a magic-centered medieval society. With so many people writing web novels and drawing manga, Anime could do really well by doing just adaptation. The fact that there’s original series sometimes (see Girl Band Cry, for instance) along with some pixar-style original movies from Ghibli and the like is just icing.
3 Comments
And our culture is worse for it
Most likely will be banned soon like it is in Texas
It’s not bad, but I am surprised by the focus. if anything, the question should be why did it take so long to be popular in America compared to the rest of the world, as in the late 80s and early 90s anime was already outcompeting US-made animation all throughout the world.
It also doesn’t get into what IMO is the real reason anime has a huge advantage neoliberals will understand well: It’s picking stories tested in much cheaper models. Black and white comic in Japan is so much prolific and cheaper to produce than American comics, and Shonen Jump does far better at helping people try new things that even independent US comics. And nowadays the sources are even cheaper: Series go from free web-novel to published light novel to Anime, so you don’t even need a visual artist there: When the stories get to be popular enough, then you spend more to popularize them. But this works because they have people of the right demographics doing the reading, while in America the closest idea is Fifty Shades coming out of Fan Fiction.
The model of testing stories for cheap isn’t even just Japanese now: See for instance Solo Leveling, a popular action series that followed a similar path but is made in Korea.
So the fear of homogenizing is a bit silly, precisely because of how much variation there is in those starting stories. While there might be times when stories for teenage boys can seem formulaic, and a lot of anime is low quality, the industry is big enough to take chances. So even with something like Chainsaw Man going a little past the teens. Things like Frieren and Apothecary Diaries, which get plenty of women watching. Even something like Ascendence of a Bookworm, which is basically a girl bringing economics knowledge that could come straight from Wealth of Nations to a magic-centered medieval society. With so many people writing web novels and drawing manga, Anime could do really well by doing just adaptation. The fact that there’s original series sometimes (see Girl Band Cry, for instance) along with some pixar-style original movies from Ghibli and the like is just icing.