• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

what happened to anime?

ZiZ

ZiZ

Member
I don't think anime is worse than it was, it's just that you now have access to so much of it and you have wade through the shitty anime to find the good stuff.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
Actually, didn't Weekly Shonen Jump sales also peak in the '90s? It seems like the most mainstream of the mainstream, so I wonder if that that reflects the audience shift as well. Although there probably other factors involved as well, like paper media in an increasingly digital world.
 
M

MetroidPrimeRib

Banned
L Thammy said:
Actually, didn't Weekly Shonen Jump sales also peak in the '90s? It seems like the most mainstream of the mainstream, so I wonder if that that reflects the audience shift as well. Although there probably other factors involved as well, like paper media in an increasingly digital world.
Click to expand...

One Piece, Naruto and Hunter x Hunter started in the late 90s so if you want to count that as the 90s then sure? But Dragon Ball, Fist of the North Star and JoJo's started in the 80s.

I think with One Piece, Naruto, Hunter x Hunter, Haikyuu, Assassination Classroom, Shokugeki no Soma and My Hero Academia Shonen Jump was doing better a few years ago then in the 90s. Like One Piece is the best selling manga of all time by a significant number, then Dragon Ball, and Naruto is 20m behind that.
 
KonradLaw

KonradLaw

Member
Anime right now is a lot better than during 90s. No comparision. Of course if you got into it late you only watched crap of the crop from the whole decade. But if you compare quarter to quarter from each year modern wins easily
 
KonradLaw

KonradLaw

Member
L Thammy said:
Actually, didn't Weekly Shonen Jump sales also peak in the '90s? It seems like the most mainstream of the mainstream, so I wonder if that that reflects the audience shift as well. Although there probably other factors involved as well, like paper media in an increasingly digital world.
Click to expand...

Light novels exploded in popularity, while they were pretty much non-existent in 90s and most LNs are shonen. So it's not like the genre's popularity faded. More like it diversified into more mediums.
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
68baauN.gif


This happened.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
MetroidPrimeRib said:
One Piece, Naruto and Hunter x Hunter started in the late 90s so if you want to count that as the 90s then sure? But Dragon Ball, Fist of the North Star and JoJo's started in the 80s.

I think with One Piece, Naruto, Hunter x Hunter, Haikyuu, Assassination Classroom, Shokugeki no Soma and My Hero Academia Shonen Jump was doing better a few years ago then in the 90s.
Click to expand...

This is what I'm talking about.

salesjumpy3u6f.png


Jump has apparently lost some 10% of sales in the past year, from around 2.24 million for January-March 2016 to approximately 2.01 million for October-December. Its circulation peaked some 20-30 years ago at over 6 million.
Click to expand...
 
P

PKrockin

Member
ZiZ said:
I don't think anime is worse than it was, it's just that you now have access to so much of it and you have wade through the shitty anime to find the good stuff.
Click to expand...
Doesn't help that some of the people we depend on to help filter out the garbage, anime fans, apparently have such low standards that I'm hearing positive recommendations for shows like Eromanga-sensei.
 
D

disappeared

Banned
Kite said:
Nothing really changes, when I first got into anime i remember old farts complaining how their 70s and 80s anime were better and my 90s anime were garbage. And yes Miyazaki was complaining even back then how anime was a mistake and nothing but trash.

Here is an a translated interview with Miyazaki from 1988 complaining about the state of "current" (80s) anime

Here is Miyazaki in 2002 talking about Japanese animation "is facing a dead end" and describing younger film makers as the "copycat generation. "I wonder why there are so many films that contain so much violence and feature sexual content." "I think there is a chance that the spread of Japanese animation overseas might only lead to embarrassment."

570.gif


Nothing ever changes~
Click to expand...

I finally went and looked that Miyazaki quote (in the gif) up and it turns out he never actually said that. But the man is still very pessimistic about the industry.
 
M

MetroidPrimeRib

Banned
L Thammy said:
This is what I'm talking about.

salesjumpy3u6f.png
Click to expand...

Yeah the circulation of the actual magazine itself has dropped, but I think sales of tankobon volumes individually have gone up. I'm not sure if that balances out, but One Piece alone is a juggernaut.

disappeared said:
I finally went and looked that Miyazaki quote (in the gif) up and it turns out he never actually said that. But the man is still very pessimistic about the industry.
Click to expand...

Its a funny joke until people started to believe he actually said that. And I don't think Miyazaki is that pessimistic, he keeps coming back to the industry. He's a grumpy old man anyway.
 
F

FLEABttn

Banned
The question isn't "why is anime bad now", it's "why did I ever think it was good in the first place?" It was always bad.

Don't follow anime as it shows in Japan, it's an exercise in futility. In the unlikely event a series is actually good, you'll still hear about it years later.
 
M

mlclmtckr

Banned
Op what happened is the waifu having super nerds all found each other on the internet and supported and encouraged each other and stopped feeling the shame and embarrassment they should have been experiencing and they instead started buying body pillows and downloading Rule 34 of underage characters and became an important bloc of the anime consuming community and studios started catering to them more and more.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
PKrockin said:
The time leading up to the mid-90s was a bubble economy.

Ah hell, I'm sure you know this already but:

GDP per capita


charts
Click to expand...

That's supposed to be at the heart of the demographic shift, isn't it? That's really what I'm wondering about. Although, I got curious, and it does seem like a few heavy hitters finished around the time of that drop. I could imagine that also had some effect. Particularly:


Yu Yu Hakusho (1994)
Dragonball (1995)
Slam Dunk (1996)
Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken (1996)
 
C

Cyrano

Member
plushyp said:
Having only watched Bebop for the first time last year, I can safely say it's not. Ballad of fallen angels totally lived up to the hype. Especially the funny ending juxtaposed against the entirely serious episode.
Click to expand...
A series can be more than one thing. Bebop is deeply rooted in film noir combined with spaghetti westerns. Both of these kinds of film are rooted in a nostalgia for a more rugged and "real" fictionalized past. Not a past that actually exists, just one we idealize as potentially having existed.

So yeah, it'd be difficult for Bebop to not be nostalgic. It is based on film genres that are nostalgic by nature. Bebop is trying to capture that idealized past (as Spike is doing both literally and metaphorically).
 
W

wbEMX

Member
My biggest issue with anime today is just the shitton of shows that have intriguing plots but are only 12 episodes long, feel rushed because of that and end mostly with an open end, basically telling you "FUCK YOU, BUY THE MANGA!" Don't get me wrong, this has always been an issue, but the amount of shows that are only one season long and 95% of the time unfinished after the last episode is much higher today. I'm less interested in watching brand new stuff with every new season that comes along. And now even with Attack on Titan II only being 12 episodes long although there is more than enough material from the manga to get 25 episodes I'm on the edge of giving up on current shows.

And that says a fucking lot for me, as I only got started with this shit in 2013 when I was 18 and discovered Attack on Titan. I have no nostalgia whatsoever (except for watching DBZ back in the day) and even I think that something went south the last few years.
 
Basketball

Basketball

Member
What A Time To Be Alive said:
im goin through crunchyroll rn and this is just not catching me anymore. i tried to watch some of this shit but either its some school drama melodramtic type bullshit or its over the top to the point the shit is not even enjoyable.

what happened to that weird action type anime from the 90s man real shit

also why is shonen still a thing :S

EDIT: same goes for manga as well cant catch anything that really sparked me the way it did in the past
Click to expand...

Preach ... School drama, little kid shonen
shit is garbage

I found this though ... Real anime ... lots of good stuff from the best eras
https://letterboxd.com/animechief1982/list/anime-80s-90s-non-mecha-mystery-sci-fi-and/
 
J

.JayZii

Banned
I don't understand why they still make kids' shows either.

Don't production companies realize I'm not a kid anymore? It's weird.
 
Allonym

Allonym

There should be more tampons in gaming
To echo what some have said, there's One Punch Man, Mob Psycho 100, Attack on Titan, Another, Erased, Boku no Hero Academia, Dragon Ball Super, Gundam Thunderbolt, Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans, Hal no Grimgar, Blame! and a boatload of Shonen things. Honestly anime hasn't gotten bad, it just seems like the industry has gotten comfortable with pandering and producing a plethora of the same old things. There are still some unique, quality things out there without crazy amounts of fan service or other questionable things. There's an even larger backlog of things you can watch if you're going from 2000 onward. Can always read manga too...which might be the better choice anyway
 
Allonym

Allonym

There should be more tampons in gaming
Lucumo said:
Most of Gundam is pretty terrible, apart from a few series (and I say this as a fan of real robots).

Why are the others moving slightly to the right?
Click to expand...

I want whatever you've been smoking. What real robot are you watching that's better/more consistent than Gundam?
 
J

John Kowalski

Banned
Zombine said:
Anime gets better once you become invested in a waifu. Watch Idolm@ster.
Click to expand...

TBF and i'll be for once actually honest because zombine is my favorite poster, Idolm@ster is actually a fair share better than an idol anime ought to be. It is a great show with great characters.

haruchiha4lyf
 
petran79

petran79

Banned
Osamu Dezaki ,Satoshi Kon, Ryotaro Nakamura are not with us anymore....Miyazaki retired
Most of the older directors and animators have either retired as well or are not as active

That happened.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Chainsaw Man |OT| True Best Friends Kick Devil Balls Together
2
84
7K
Doom85 replied
Remember the discussion about "asian people cannot see 3D"?
2 3
107
5K
coffinbirth replied
So uhhh there's been no good Spiderman film since 2004 huh?
2
71
3K
Dark Star replied
Unintentionally Funny/ Weird Game Design Choices
Opinion Cringe Analysis
4
702
Angry_Megalodon replied
So what other open world games have I been missing out on?
2
56
3K
Drizzlehell replied
Top Bottom