Thread: anime trend
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Old 2011-06-14, 18:41   Link #12
Tempester
Japanese Culture Fan
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Planet Earth
Age: 33
Quote:
Originally Posted by mechdra View Post
For me I would like to say original work is getting less and less. Most of the anime now are adaptation from another media. If we look at the situation for the past five years, everything come from manga, light novel and game. It seems like the creativity of the animation studio lost for many years already.
Angel Beats
Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai
「C] - The Money of Soul and Possibility Control
Canaan
Code Geass
Darker Than Black
Fractale
Ga-Rei: Zero
Hanasaku Iroha
Heartcatch Precure
Heroman
Mobile Suit Gundam 00
Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt
Sora no Woto
Star Driver
Tantei Opera Milky Holmes
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Those are all original TV anime that I've seen that have aired within the last five years. This doesn't count OVAs, movies, or anime that I haven't watched yet. Enjoy.

Quote:
Originally Posted by relentlessflame View Post
I don't think it has anything to do with cutting out "Generation X" exactly, but there's a limit to how many shows they can make that rely entirely on nostalgia to sell. As people have grown older, their tastes have largely changed, and when they do make new shows that try to follow the old formulas, they don't always hold up as well as the "classics". (This is in part because of the rose-coloured glasses effect; the shows people get nostalgic about may not actually be that amazing, but they're remembered fondly because of their influence on the person at the time.) There are certainly shows and OVAs that come out every year that are attempting to capitalize on this sort of nostalgia, but the majority of today's shows will be tuned to the interest's of today's audience, not that of 20-30 years ago.

Plus, it's not as if there were dozens and dozens of superpower/mecha anime every year in the past either. It's just that there is a lot more anime being made nowadays than there was before, and the newer business models allow them to exploit smaller niche audiences than would have been justified in the past. The entire "late night anime" market is new (and largely replaced the OVA market where niche works lived in the 90s). If you were to only compare the prime time (family) and Saturday/Sunday morning (kids) anime blocks, I think you'd find the balance of anime content in "mainstream" time slots hasn't shifted as much as you think. Not to mention, unless you lived in Japan, the sorts of shows that were licensed and translated when you were a kid may further bias your perspective on what anime was all about back then.

So all that to say I think the premise of this thread is a bit unreasonable. You've grown over the course of the last 20-30 years, but in a way you're asking why (or at least noticing that) the anime industry hasn't stayed the way it was when you were a kid. The anime industry has grown up too, and has expanded to include a whole lot of other genres and styles that were underrepresented/nonexistent in the past. But even still, there are shows being made today that appeal to your specific interests as well; they're just part of a much wider and more diverse ecosphere of shows, so you have to dig a bit deeper.
This. As we age our exposure to anime is affected by changes in how we live. If I didn't come here to Animesuki I would have missed out a lot on currently running niche anime. If I went to Gaia Online instead, all I'd know about would be shounen action series and Kuroshitsuji. (No offense to anyone who likes these types of anime.)

Quote:
Originally Posted by TurkeyPotPie View Post
This is what I miss the most about current anime. The market seems to be highly polarized (and getting more so) and split between super-niche late night otaku fare and strictly childrens anime in daytime slots.
This is a pet peeve for me when it comes to the length of an anime. If your anime airs late at night, most of the time it ends up with ~12 episodes. If your anime airs in the morning, most of the time it ends up with ~50(!) episodes. This is all regardless of the amount of actual plot. So we have late night anime with complex, intricate plots that are truncated to around 12 episodes (Angel Beats, and most currently 「C」), while we have morning children's anime with plots that can be summarized in a 2-hour-long movie stretched out to 49+ episodes.
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