Quote:
Originally Posted by Malkuth
Well, that's my problem with the zone... if you exclude young boys, and adult hobbyists, who is your audience to go through the limitations of a TV run. Several shows would have been more watchable if they focused for example in their innovative art, animation work, storytelling, but with either shorter or longer runs (depending on the case), different/cheaper publication, like festivals, webcasts that also have better revenue prospects.
The only reason I can see Noitamina staying on TV is the hopeless struggle to gain mainstream appeal, and it is obviously not working. Based on the ratings.
...
This approach is what bothers me about the fanatical support of Noitamina. It groups together everyone else (that do not have a awful lot of similarities except not liking the majority of the zones' shows) behind a degrading term, considering what airs in the zone the pinnacle of art, and everything else trash... not all supporters do so, but there are a lot that do.
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Well said.
What bothers me about the noitaminA fandom, is that they haven't read this thread. Or at least they don't analyze it sufficiently.
From the way they talk about how noitaminA is "mainstream", and every otaku show is just a "niche" you would think that there is at least an order of magnitude of difference between their popularity. Rather than just admitting that they WANT noitaminA type shows to keep going and be popular, they create some ideology about how the rest of the anime industry is dying from insularism, and noitaminA is the only cure.
You don't ever hear people commenting on how we need more popular shows like K-on, like To-LOVE-ru, or like Madoka, even though they also had ratings similar to modern noitaminA, (plus much better sales).
For all intents and purposes, the noitaminA audience is as much of a niche as the viewers of these. Maybe they are not from the the "
stereotypical otaku", demographic, but that 2% minority of the population who are staying up late to watch artsy coming-of-age stories, must still be some sort of anime enthusiasts, rather than just "the mainstream".
We don't even know if actually targeting the mainstream would be good for anime as a medium. After all, we don't know
what ordinary japanese people want from their anime, but evidently, it's not Josei.
We just took the noitaminA fandom's claim at face value, that if anime would be mainstream, more shows woud be like current noitaminA, but it's probably not true. Maybe once noitaminA succeeds and finds the formula to genres that really the whole mainstream of Japan wants to watch, it will be something that it's current Josei-loving niche audience despises.