[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Eragon

I would rather not have anime going mainstream - not that it will anytime soon.

I'm honestly a bit surprised to read you express this position. I vaguely recall you once expressing a desire for more shows like Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Black Lagoon, and Full Metal Alchemist.

If I'm recalling correctly here, then anime going mainstream would almost certainly mean more shows like that. You wouldn't want that?

Originally Posted by Bri

Animation, and I'm not even talking anime, is too abstract to have a wide appeal. Mainstream audiences want 'real' events and people/characters they can easily relate to.

I disagree. Many individual cartoons and/or anime shows are mainstream, so I don't think it's impossible for the medium as a whole to become that.

And animation is certainly no more abstract than most video games are, and video games have been mainstream for decades now.

Plus, the success of The Lord of the Rings movies really flies in the face of your argument here. I doubt most modern movie-going audiences can relate all that well to people living in a world with medieval-level tech and the sort of magic and monstrous beings that can be found in the world of LotR. And yet, the LotR movies did exceptionally well. People like abstraction and escapism from time-to-time.

Come to think of it, I can't recall anyone on this board to have written anything positive on shows like American Idol, Jersey Shore, Oprah etc. Are anime fans different from mainstream viewers?

I sometimes check out American Idol, just for the musical performances. I usually enjoy that. The actual competitions I don't care as much about because, to the best of my knowledge, few American Idol winners have actually gone on to be very successful full-time music artists. Off the top of my head, the only ones I can name are Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood.

I'm not much into modern American TV dramas.