Anime popularity in America/Europe...

[lubczyk]

Anime is niche in its home country of Japan, so its no doubt going to be niche in outside markets.

Anime is like the Simpsons, Family Guy or even stuff like 24 or LOST.

Of all those people that watched Sex and the City, how many bought the DVDs?

Look 24 is pretty popular on the online community in Japan, lots of people download it illegally just like we download anime.

The whole business model is broken.

Are you going to buy all 4 Seasons of 24 without having seen an episode on TV? No!!! Are you going to buy the Boxset of 24 Season 1 if you're not sure whether the series is going to turn to shit later on? No!!!

People are not going to invest hundreds of Dollars on series with a continous storyline without having seen the whole story first.

Most people don't and won't ever buy a new series or movie (whether anime or Hollywood) without having seen it first. Since there's no way for most Americans, Europeans (or even Japanese) to preview whole series before they buy them, anime will remain niche in Japan and abroad.

It's one thing to blindly buy the Stargate movie, it's quite another to buy all the season boxsets.

[solomon]

Beyond that tired statement. Interesting activities have been occuring as of late;

There was the reinvigoration of Crunchy Roll for instance; providing same day streaming (or close to it) of shows such as the Aegis of Urkuk and now Kurogane no Linebarrel.

There is the avaliability of a few anime series/movies on Itunes.

More companies are releasing series in chunks, as oppsed to drawing out the series' release windows.

According to ANN more companies are investigating the web for opporunites to show programs for a "preview" or if possible, use a tv like ad selling structure.


Personally, I applaude the anime industry for always trying to stay on top of what fans want partly because of love for fans and the industry. It kind of irks me sometimes on fandom's selfish "fansub or bust" mentality. Not to mention the fact that it's a marvel that any of this stuff is avaliable anyways. It's only natural that it would take longer for anime to reach other countries. After all anime was made for japanese audience AND WAS TO BE FUNDED BY JAPANESE AD REVENUE AND COMMERCIAL SALES.

That isn't anagalous in the states unless you can break into the highly competetive kid's market. Much more anime is on tv then ever in the US, but it isn't the break out topic maker it was back in the late 90s and early 2000s. There is only so much you can do in the american Tv market really, especially these days with dwindiling ad revenue and ratings short falls, networks all across the board are homogenizing their content, deviating from their original specific aims (look at A&E 20 years ago, and look at it today).

You still have some holdouts like adultswim (although I wonder about that one) and the Sci-Fi channel (I wonder about that too, they seem to be haphazardly choosing shows, IMHO). The R1 companies want to address the viewing time gap, but the internet as an industry is notoriously tricky to make money in for regular TV product, especially new untested productions. Anime has a better chance then say first run live action drama, but one thing you will have to deal with is what role fansubbers will play in the new field, if any.

[Theowne]

Originally Posted by lubczyk

Anime is like the Simpsons, Family Guy or even stuff like 24 or LOST.

I don't think that anime (the kind mostly discussed here, not Studio Ghibli or other popular productions) has the same level of mainstream influence and popularity as The Simpsons does in America.

[solomon]

Originally Posted by Theowne

I don't think that anime (the kind mostly discussed here, not Studio Ghibli or other popular productions) has the same level of mainstream influence and popularity as The Simpsons does in America.

Excactly true, if you go ask random person in Japan if they watch most of the stuff we nerd out about they will give you blank stares. Even gundam, everyone in Japan knows gundam, like everyone in US knows star trek BUT FEW PEOPLE ACTUALLY WATCH IT. (except for maybe the old heads who saw it in the theatres in the 80s, it's nerd city)

Most shows we nerd out to are aired at like 1 am in the morning, any body with a normal life in japan isn't watching them I can tell you

[Shadow Kira01]

Considering that the majority of the anime-related games are not released in the States or Europe indicates that anime or anime-related aren't mainstream or popular culture.

[musume_no_hoshi]

In the UK, anime is almost non-existant.

Once upon a time, me and my friend was on the bus going back home from school. Then we heard these boys from the school down the road talking about Naruto. They were talking about 'I bet Tsunade is going to be the 5th Kogage (was it spelt like that?)'. Me and my friend just face palm them, because we were already on Shipuden (okay I dropped it after around 4 episodes).

There was the only time I ever heard some random strangers talk about anime.

In my schoot l (well it's an all girls grammar school...so it's not the best indicator of what a normal school would be like) there's a few anime 'fans' in my year. But all of them are what I would call casual fans. Well I'm not too sure how to indicate how much of an anime fan is one person. At least they do not know what moe or tsundere is. And surprisingly or not so surprisingly all the other girls in my school that consider themselves to be anime fans likes punk music...(and I'm the weird one that keeps listening japanese music)

We all know that anime is niche, it is even fairly niche in japan. At the UK when I do say the word 'anime', people would ask me what it is. People ask me what's the difference between manga and anime.They also say anime are chinese too (I would say alot of british people doesn't really care whether I'm chinese japanese or korean ^_^;; even my art teacher said it once). I would say anime is as niche as Linux.

I live in the 2nd largest city in the UK, Birmingham. And there is only one manga/comics (American comics) store, they do sell manga at Waterstones, but that's not delicated manga store. There isn't a true anime con either, there's one called London Expo/Midlands Expo, it is more of a media expo. Even an anime con can't survive on its own, it usually still need some random movies or games to support it. Although I would say 90% of the people that attend are some sort of anime fans. To my knowledge, even France has a proper anime con.

I'm not familar with anime on TV, I never watch TV except BBC iplayer for Mock the Week. I don't think there's any anime on the free channels currently, but Naruto is still on Jetix (or was it called foxkids?). Back a few years ago, when I was the casual anime fan. There was a few anime on TV. My friend was talking to me the other day what anime he watched when he young, it included, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptors, Pokemon, Digimon, YuGiOh and all the typical shows that was on TV, I also laughed at him for watching Sailor Moon and Cardcaptors ;P. To my knowledge, UK has even less anime on TV compared to the US, it's no suprised that anime isn't remotely as popular as the US...and people are also saying anime isn't popular in the US ^_^''

UK is always the slowest when it comes to technology from Japan, it's only normal that anime isn't popular either.

[damionpitt]

I don't think its lack of support for anime in america and europe, its just lack of good anime being put out in these places that makes people want to legally purchase it. I mean i'm all for buying things straight from japan rather than buying it here in america. I don't want my money going to the shitty english version of naruto with its whiney women subbed voices and constant "believe it's". (that is really fucking annoying btw) I like fan subbed episodes i can get for free online way better than anything any company here in the US is putting out with english dubbed. Now there are exceptions to every rule like cowboy bebop or GITS or FMA. They were done ok and i supported them by viewing them on TV instead of looking them up online. Honestly though US cares less about making quality anime and getting out quality products than japan. So why should i as a normal fanbased person ( low income college student) pay for their crap, when instead someone in japan can pay for it, then sub it for me in america. So its still getting payed for over there and supported often times by people there and here. I'm happy that japan is the anime capital. They do it right, for the most part, and i'll support anime from japan anyday over the crap US is selling. Not sure how its like in europe, but i'm not seeing many great anime, or dubs coming out over here. So until american businesses put up the cash and support better anime series and dubbing, i won't be supporting them. That is just me though.

[stelok]

Anime doesn't sell well in U.K., probably because U.K. is too conservative to appreciate anime.

[Nosauz]

I think children programming is really to blame for the lack of appeal of anime, in its attempts to appeal to the masses. Anime in america atleast is/has always been targeted at younger audience, where as in Japan you have shonen, but you also have seinen genres. Also american licsenced anime especially liscensed by Saban has pretty much destroyed the image of the American anime industry, at least in my eyes. The blatant censorship destroyed one piece, and when you look at anime in the cartoon morning genre, its come to a place where only things like yugioh, pokemon, which have a secondary product lined up for the fans to buy get licesnced. It's frustrating because anime is so complex, well at least good animes, and there is such a variety.

Another thing is, its hard for american audiences to buy anime like they do with their favorite tv shows. If I had never seen sindicated sienfeld I would never bought the complete box set of the show. With out possibility of seeing the show first, fandom with non hardcore anime fans is less appealing. Overall the system is very different compared to Japan, which leads to so many unsuccesful ventures by american anime companies.

[npcomplete]

Originally Posted by stelok

Anime doesn't sell well in U.K., probably because U.K. is too conservative to appreciate anime.

lol, the US is even more so, but that doesn't hamper it as much.. at least not until mainstream America finds out about it.. So it might be better for it to remain niche. Ideally it would be better for it to be under the radar for the conservative crowd, and have it grow in popularity with the younger crowd over the next generation or two.