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Old 2018-06-04, 11:44   Link #1
False Prophet
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Some sad musing about the life cycle of anime and manga

Just visited Akihabara last weekend. The previous time I did this was in 2009, almost 10 years ago. I couldn't recognize the streets.

Anyway, I just have this questions want to talk to you guys, especially those who read/watch a lot of the old stuffs:

There have been hundreds of new anime and manga released each years for more than two decades now. Let's just say that you're a creator, you pour your soul into an anime or manga of yours. What would you feel after twenty, or thirty years, people just plainly forget about your work?

I'm not blasting the mass-production aspect of manga/anime production or anything, and I am all in for competitiveness. It is just that I feel sad for the creators. I did some writing back in college before giving up because I plainly didn't think my work is memorable enough. But here, even with anime & manga that are loved by their audiences during broadcast, could still easily be completely forgotten twenty years later. For all the efforts and self-reflection the creators have spent, it is a crying shame.

To me, it is like literature - hundred thousands of amazing new books being released every year, each of them is a mirror to aspects of our lives. They are worthy of preservation, and yet, how many would actually have the privillige of being read by future generations? And it was not always because they were bad - maybe they were written in one of the dying languages, or the publisher screwed up the marketing, or people would rather forget the topics they were discussing, etc.

Anyway, I should stop before sounding too much like a cranky old man who is projecting his problems onto other matter. What is your thought, then?
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Old 2018-06-04, 17:29   Link #2
Nivek von Beldo
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There have been hundreds of new anime and manga released each years for more than two decades now. Let's just say that you're a creator, you pour your soul into an anime or manga of yours. What would you feel after twenty, or thirty years, people just plainly forget about your work?

If the work give me money fine...but the issue one as creator is not you work being forgotten(people will always talk, specially if high quality) the issue is unable to come up next with a new big thing and still having that as work/making you money, if you're unable to get that you've a massive issue.

There few series can break that osmosis..but a lot keep alive and with their niches so that work.
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Old 2018-06-05, 15:37   Link #3
0cean
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Even more depressing, everyone associated with what "Hollywood" originally stood for is both dead and forgotten. You're speaking of two decades, which also happens to be about the time span that Hollywood predates the very first Disney feature film. That movie is called Snow White and was released in 1937.

And not only has enough time passed for pretty much everyone to completely forget the original Hollywood and all of its Stars, it's even been long enough for Disney to become utterly corrupted and turn into something that could be described as it's own evil twin. Didn't even take 50 years after the death of Walt Disney himself. His death being around the time anime was kind of taking off in Japan.

There's no happy ending either. It's the fate of stuff to be forgotten by everyone. Some works will prevail in name only, but more or less nobody will actually bother to actually check that old stuff out.

What's the oldest book you actually ever read? It wasn't the Divine Comedy written by Dante in 1320 some 700 years ago, was it?
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Old 2018-06-05, 16:39   Link #4
Nivek von Beldo
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Originally Posted by 0cean View Post
What's the oldest book you actually ever read? It wasn't the Divine Comedy written by Dante in 1320 some 700 years ago, was it?
People Read the Oddysey and Illiad too, and arturian legends are as old that too, so when something is good will be, even all the flaws.
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Old 2018-06-05, 16:54   Link #5
0cean
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I'm pretty sure the Arthurian Legend people read are remakes and retellings, not the original. Personally, I'm a fan of the one where Arthur is a girl, as you can see from my signature. Same with stuff from Homer. People mainly know those from remakes and retellings. Or maybe a movie. Without constantly updating something, people simply forget.
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Old 2018-06-05, 23:19   Link #6
AntonKutovoi
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The oldest book I've read IS Illiad, actually.
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Old 2018-06-06, 05:50   Link #7
0cean
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So you can read ancient Greek or did you read a translation from later on? (Also, the Iliad only has one L, not two.)
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Old 2018-06-06, 06:54   Link #8
AntonKutovoi
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 0cean View Post
So you can read ancient Greek or did you read a translation from later on? (Also, the Iliad only has one L, not two.)
Ah yes, my bad, misspelled the title. Obviously, I read a translation . If you meant in original language, then the oldest book I’ve read is The Tale of Igor's Campaign, which was written in the late 12th century.
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Old 2018-06-06, 09:22   Link #9
SeijiSensei
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 0cean View Post
And not only has enough time passed for pretty much everyone to completely forget the original Hollywood and all of its Stars
Speak for yourself. I don't know what period constitutes the "original Hollywood" in your mind, but there are plenty of us still alive who remember Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor, or even Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin. I saw people like Stewart and Taylor when they were still alive; movies with Gable, Lloyd, and Chaplin were replayed on television in the fifties and sixties.

Now I don't have much experience with the silent movie era. I've watched some silents, "Birth of a Nation" in particular, but I can't say I can name any great stars from that period.

I've found that younger people seemingly have little interest in or awareness of the vast repertoire of movies made before, say, 1980. My daughter would often tell me that her friends hadn't seen or even heard of movies that we watched together because I made sure she saw a broad array of films. I can understand people not knowing about obscure gems like Peter Bogdanovitch's "Paper Moon," but many of her friends growing up had never seen, and often never heard of, signature films like "2001," "The Graduate," or even "Casablanca" and "Gone with the Wind."

You can't keep older works alive if you don't pay attention to them.

Last edited by SeijiSensei; 2018-06-06 at 13:37.
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Old 2018-06-06, 11:25   Link #10
Obelisk ze Tormentor
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Originally Posted by 0cean View Post
So you can read ancient Greek or did you read a translation from later on? (Also, the Iliad only has one L, not two.)
From your comment, it seems like you either underestimate translation works or you think people who only read translation of classic works do not count as people who enjoy the said works. That doesn't matter. What matters is people are still drawn to read those classic works (translated in their own languages if necessary) which is contrary to what you said: "nobody will actually bother to actually check that old stuff out."

As for myself, I've read Robinson Crusoe, Moby Dick and Jules Verne's works, among others.
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Old 2018-06-06, 13:43   Link #11
SeijiSensei
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Probably the oldest book I've read is the Bible. I read Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars in Latin class. In French we read things like Le Chanson de Roland from the 11th century. Japan celebrated the 1000-year anniversary of Murasaki-dono's Genji Monogatari, which I've also read and is widely considered the world's first novel, in 2009.
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Old 2018-06-06, 16:48   Link #12
0cean
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I stay by what I said. "Nobody will actually bother to actually check that old stuff out." You are all nobodies, don't fool yourself into thinking you are somebodies. And don't take this too harshly. When I make statements about the world, I don't care about a few thousand weird people caring for old stuff. People like us don't matter. I think on a larger scale where everything under a couple of million gets rounded down to zero.

The point is that everything fades into obscurity with the years. Some stuff earlier, some stuff later. The question about the translation was intended to bring something to the attention of the reader: a translation is an update of a work. Not in the sense that George Lucas updated the original Star Wars trilogy, but in the sense of a re-release. This was to underscore what I said a post before: "Without constantly updating something, people simply forget."

So ask yourself again: which is the oldest work you know that hasn't since been updated? The bible is a pretty old book, but I'm sure I could find an edition that was printed 2018. The original Gundam is a pretty old anime, but I'm sure I can find some Gundam anime that was released in 2018.

I claim that the only reason people haven't forgotten those is because of the constant updates. You don't even have to go back hundreds of years to find works that haven't gotten any updates and have simply been forgotten by pretty much everyone except some weirdos that kept looking for old stuff, like myself.

To get back to the original Hollywood: lots of that stuff has been lost to time (and mostly fire). You couldn't even watch it if you wanted to, because there's nothing left to watch. If you didn't watch it back in the 1910s, you won't ever get to see it. And I'm not sure what's worse. Lots of old stuff people could check out, but choose not to, or lots of old stuff that is simply gone.
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Old 2018-06-09, 09:51   Link #13
Fireminer
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 0cean View Post
To get back to the original Hollywood: lots of that stuff has been lost to time (and mostly fire).
Well, at least somebody still remember the 1965 MGM vault fire. It is such a shame how people treated silent movies like garbage right after the advent of movies with sound.

And even something as shocking as Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom could be forgotten...
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Old 2018-06-09, 10:41   Link #14
dragon1412
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It's more depend on the current demographic rather than just the time, for example, if you ask, i myself watch The Tramp when i was a little kid, a black and white movie, despite the advent of movie with colours in that era. And i am pretty sure there is no update of that. And i'm pretty sure many more beside me have and still know Charlie Chaplin
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Old 2018-06-09, 23:06   Link #15
TinyRedLeaf
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It's depressing only if you allow it to be.

I was doing some house-cleaning in the past week, when I stumbled again on my copies of Katanagatari, a NisiOisiN (Bakemonogatari) series I started watching in 2010, but never completed.

...and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it, especially the third episode. I don't recall what else I was watching at the time that made me lose interest halfway, and maybe it might happen again.

But the point remains. As long as a record exists, someone, somewhere will stumble on the story again. If you're sincere in being a creator — and by that I mean that you're creating something simply for the love of it, and not for the sake of fame or fortune — being "remembered" for all time isn't really something that's at the top of your mind. Of course, it's nice to be recognised, and it's even nicer to strike rich, but those are incidental goals, not primary ones.

So, if I were an author, an artist, a mangaka, an anime producer, etc — I'm none of these, but I am a media professional, and have been for the past 13 years — I can tell you, quite honestly, that it's not about how many you reach, and for how long.

It's about making an impact, at any point in time that it mattered. It's as simple as someone sending a message that he or she really appreciated your work, and it made a difference, however small, at that point in time.

Speaking for myself, that's all the validation I need.
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Old 2018-06-11, 11:09   Link #16
jal90
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If I was a creator, I would certainly like that my work stood the test of time. With that much I can agree. However that is a long-term dream that goes much further and beyond your lifetime. It is not a practical approach to worry about the transcendence of your work because you are not going to have a proper measure of it no matter what.

On the other hand, I feel like this is the wrongest era to set this debate. It's not very appropriate to talk about forgotten and buried gems in an age with extensive online databases and the ability to watch an obscure 70s anime by clicking on a random torrent site. We have more access to information than we ever had, and this is only going to improve. Being a fan of classic film, literature or older anime has never been easier. And I understand that the trends of mass production bring uncertainty to the equation, but the fact we can find like hundreds of copies of everything is a much bigger guarantee for their future than what we had before. Yeah, I can agree with 0cean here and think of myself as part of a very irrelevant minority but there's never been a better moment to be part of this minority, and there's never been a better chance for older stuff to reach and be consumed by an audience.

Heck, mass production is not even the inherently recent problem it's made out to be. The historical peak of film production in Hollywood happened during the 20s and 30s. The difference is, a huge percentage of these films were not kept in good conditions and now either survive severely damaged or cut, or are completely lost. Right now preservation is much better than it was back then and we are not only guaranteed to have reliable records for future generations but there are better tools and a more focused effort to find and preserve older titles that would otherwise remain lost or in decay.
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Old 2018-06-12, 13:04   Link #17
m4d75
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Quote:
Originally Posted by False Prophet View Post
I'm not blasting the mass-production aspect of manga/anime production or anything, and I am all in for competitiveness. It is just that I feel sad for the creators. I did some writing back in college before giving up because I plainly didn't think my work is memorable enough. But here, even with anime & manga that are loved by their audiences during broadcast, could still easily be completely forgotten twenty years later. For all the efforts and self-reflection the creators have spent, it is a crying shame.
I think this is not a problem in terms of us as audiences, readers or as a creator to forget any work that has been made dozens of years ago, but I think if there is a very good work made decades ago, his/their work will always be remembered in each audience or reader. As long as we as spectators or readers who have watched or read it consider the work is good then it is not a shame or sad because we will always remember it as a good work even though the work is not or has not been watched or read by all or most people in this world.

Indeed there are some works that the results are not good but not always bad too, it depends on many factors that you have written above as I quote in below.

Quote:
Originally Posted by False Prophet View Post
To me, it is like literature - hundred thousands of amazing new books being released every year, each of them is a mirror to aspects of our lives. They are worthy of preservation, and yet, how many would actually have the privillige of being read by future generations? And it was not always because they were bad - maybe they were written in one of the dying languages, or the publisher screwed up the marketing, or people would rather forget the topics they were discussing, etc.
I give 1 example : Watch the anime from the World Masterpiece Theater in the 20th century which I think the concept of the story is very good about the family matter in living life to return intact between parents, grandparents, children, uncles and aunts and so on that can make us as spectators could take a lesson from the work of the World Masterpiece Theater even though their work was partially adapted from novels and books of previous stories.

Although the results of their work has been made dozens of years ago, but it will always be remembered by most of audiences although perhaps from the results of some of their work there are unpopular in the eyes of the audience..., but not meant to be forgotten.

But unfortunately the concept of anime story from the World Masterpiece Theater is very rarely made in the anime of the 21st century because there are many types of anime that sell more product than the concept of this story (harem lol).

Example for an anime that has been made in the 21st century which I think very good to remember is "Clannad" from novel, games to an anime.

Last edited by m4d75; 2018-06-12 at 14:05.
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