Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertaker
You actually have better argument using other lists with Strike Witches, Oreimo, and Queen's Blade.
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True, Brimstone's list shows the shift in popularity as much as mine. Top 7 from his list:
K-ON!!
Angel Beats!
Ore no Imouto
Durarara!!
Working!!
To Aru Majutsu no Index II
Strike Witches 2
Every one of the top 7 is seinen. There are varying degrees of moe elements featured, but the representation is very strong.
Other than pure moe shows, there are also moe elements in shows that don't need them. I like Bakemonogatari and Katanagatari a lot, but (for the biggest examples) Nadeko and Konayuki Itezora add nothing, and ruin the shows for me the entire time they are on screen. The shows could have been improved (for me) by avoiding moe stereotypes.
All the lists show a shift in popularity, but does NOT necessarily show a deeper change in how anime is made. Cyth brought up a "checklist mentality" for making a lot of these shows. However, maybe there was the same mentality in the past, just with a different checklist? Since I wasn't watching anime in the 90s, and I mainly have seen the best shows of the 90s, I don't know if the mindset changed.
I will argue though that the mindset was not the same in the early to mid 2000s. Anime appeared to be gaining popularity outside Japan, economics hadn't crashed yet, and anime studios thought they could greatly enlarge the audience. All kinds of shows got made, some of them with much larger budgets than you would expect, without a checklist for a specific audience in mind.
As a whole, the experiment failed. The shows were not successful enough to support themselves. And that is why we have checklist mode.