The Otakusphere: Impz’s brief history of the world (or at least all of the world that matters)

You can blame Impz, Martin, Bateszi, Hige, Lythka, Author and Michael for this post.

Really, I know a collective groan goes up anytime someone starts talking about “the community”. But after reading Impz’s brief history of the Otakusphere (that’s still my word for the anime blogosphere), Kabitizin’s interviews and Os’s new blogging initiative (which is really cool by the way), it has made me wonder.

Why do we blog?

And I’m not going to talk about why I blog, because frankly, no one cares, but I’m curious about the stories from everyone else. How did you get started? Why did you start? Did you do research or did you just jump in? What type of niche do you try to get into? And probably, most importantly:

What do you get out of it?

As far as the readers of the blogs, who don’t have blogs of their own, what do you get out of reading them? Do you normally read for news or opinions or both?

Really, I’d like people to leave comments or leave links to posts of their own. I’m curious.

In My View: Much ado about a loli

Talking about the industry is like having an itch in the middle of my back. I want to scratch it, but I can only reach the edges.

That said, I still want to do it.

Usually I can trust Author to cut through the BS, but even he is jumping on the “What is FUNImation doing?” bandwagon (at least from what I can tell.)

All because they licensed two shows that no one has heard about, and they’re releasing one as a box set for the half dozen people who will buy it. And the half dozen more people who will buy it because it’s a box set.

Okay… so let’s put this into perspective. Yes, licensing Mamotte! Lollipop! doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, especially with the way the anime industry is going. But there are at least a few things we don’t know. A) How much they paid for it. B) Whether or not they’re going to dub it. C) How much they’re going to sell it for. On top of that, there’s an entirely different way of looking at it. Maybe they licensed it BECAUSE no one’s seen it. So it hasn’t been tainted by fansubs.

But beyond that, comparing ADV and FUNImation is reasonable. They both throw as many titles against the wall and see whether or not they stick.

Except in FUNImation’s case they have (at least twice in the last year.)

One look at the recent, ICv2 list of the “Hottest Titles of early 2008″ shows, the company has four of them. And if that’s not enough proof, they’ve reported that the losses to their division weren’t because of FUNI, but because of BCI Films. They also have 27 percent of the market share. Now they could be lying about all of that. But somehow (in this post-Enron world), I doubt it. If there’s one thing FUNImation isn’t doing right now, it’s hurting. Well at least not anymore than the rest of the industry is hurting right now.

Now since BEI seems to be everyone’s darling at the moment, let me remind people of some facts. First, Haruhi flopped. At least that’s what Eric Sherman said back in November and I haven’t seen any change in that. Lucky Star (no matter how good or bad it is) will likely follow suit. (It is number 71 on Amazon.com’s list of top selling Anime and Manga, for what it’s worth.) In fact, I’m curious why they even bothered licensing it. So they have two titles that are likely to do well, Code Geass and Gurren Lagann. I mean has anyone stopped to wonder why a company which has licensed maybe two things a year for the past three years suddenly is releasing so many titles?

But I can’t say they’re really hurting either.

But really, I like playing this game. So my big winner so far:

VIZ.

Yes, VIZ. Right now, they’re releasing Death Note, Naruto, Bleach and Pokemon. Not to mention that they have a pretty firm foothold in the manga market. I mean if I were a betting man, that’s who my money would be on.

But that’s just me.

The Otakusphere: Civil Liberties, Dead Titles and Living Monkey Armor

Yeah, for those of you who don’t know, I’m a radical Civil Libertarian. And when I say radical I mean “no closed door meetings, destroy the FCC, try the prisoners in Gitmo and let the Nazi’s march” type of radical Civil Libertarian.

So when I read usagijen’s post on Library Wars, I just about got up ran around my apartment screaming, “Yes, yes, yes, you fricken rock!”

And then I remembered that my roommate’s asleep.

Working at six o’clock in the morning must really suck. It’s been a long time since I had to do that, but what must be worse is going into work and finding your job has been replaced by a monkey. And not somebody who looks like a monkey, but a real monkey.

Alafista has a report (with video) of a bar that just started having a monkey serve drinks. Really, now if they could just train them to simultaneously link hands to form living monkey armor, the world would be a better place to be.

Just imagine being guarded by a horde monkeys at your beck and call.

Anyways, in the WTF category, Borderline Hikkomori has a post up about FUNImation releasing some show that no one has heard about, and the people who have heard about it, don’t care. Really though, I have a sneaking suspicion that they picked it up for bargain basement prices. As much as I’d like to suspect the industry of stupidity, for the most part FUNI’s been pretty smart about their licenses. I mean they do have at least four of the top selling anime of the beginning of 2008.

Now if they could just start working on that living monkey armor.

And on a more painful note, I just came across this post on How a Girl Figures. I’d heard about how much money figurines sap out of you. But Jiminy Christmas. See this is why I appreciate super_rats and Happy Soda - all of the fun of seeing a figurine, none of the pain.

And one final note… living monkey armor, just think about it. All of the cool of monkeys, all the use of armor.

Wait, no. Okay, so on a real final note, voting for the Anime Blog Awards is wrapping up. And vote for DrmCshr0 for best Dorama. It’s certainly some of the most intelligent.

The Case of the Invisible Parent: A Mother’s Day Post

(Note: This is part of the ABC Mother’s Day Extravaganza)

So a while back, CCY did a post about the reasons why parents seem to be missing from anime. Now, I think he laid out a reasonable explanation. Anime (at least the anime most of us watch) is geared at a 15-23 year old demographic. But I also thought the answer might be even simpler than what he laid out.

Those parents simply aren’t important in most of these stories.

I mean if you have six to twelve hours to tell a fairly complex story, adding in the extra complication of parents could derail the story, or just add another subplot that doesn’t get fully developed and ends up hanging around at the end of the tale without a resolution.

Then I started thinking about Beck.

When I initially watched the show, I was struck by the fact that Koyuki’s mother was quite literally invisible. Even though he’s living with her, he hardly seems to talk with her. The few times when we hear from her, it’s her telling him to turn down his music. And the one time that we see her we don’t even see her face.

Now overall, the show has a tendency to avoid face shots of characters, which aren’t important any more. In a lot of ways it reminded me of Dickens conveniently killing off characters who didn’t serve a purpose anymore (as opposed to Red Shirts whose entire purpose is to get killed.) On a completely story telling level, this makes a lot of sense. I mean they WERE just dead weight in the story.

Then I started thinking about a short story I read a long time ago called Obst Vw (it stands for Obstructed View).

It’s been a while since I read the story, but basically it follows two teenagers who are estranged (in the non-legal sense) from their parents. Now most of the tension occurs between the two teens, but there’s this invisible presence in the story of the main character’s father. Even though we barely see him throughout the course of the story.

This got me to wondering; maybe she was important after all. I mean, she’s a definite presence in the story. In fact, it becomes a running theme that we’ll get a Walton’s-like shot out of the outside of the house with Koyuki’s light on, and then her saying to turn down the music. The people, who sneak into the house, don’t just come in the front door, but creep up through his window. And the one time we do see her (still faceless) she’s trying to impart some pretty sage advice.

That’s when I realized, it wasn’t that she wasn’t important. It was just that she wasn’t immediately important.

In fact, it’s trying to get at something that seems to get truer the older I get. That these people, who drift in and out of our lives like ghosts, are important. And although they may seem like part of the faceless masses surrounding us, they still have a presence (whether we see it or not.)

And at the risk of being sappy, isn’t that what Mother’s Day is all about.

Impressions: Saiunkoku, Kurau, Baccano!, Amatsuki, Real Drive, Druaga and more.

So I went to smoking roll-your-own cigarettes so I could buy more anime. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing, but I sure do have Haruhi sitting on top of my TV just waiting for me to watch it, but anyway on to some impressions.

Saiunkoku Monogatari: Since it seems that no one has seen this show, I figured I’d give people a little heads up. It’s a show about a girl who’s family has fallen on hard times. She’s decided that she wants to buck the system and become a government official. So I finished the first season of this and… it’s okay. On the good side, it has some awesome characters, a fairly interesting “love” story and enough tension to pull me pretty effortlessly through every episode after episode fourteen. On the other hand, reverse harems are about as tiring to watch as actual harems. Towards the end, it’s just a bunch of them standing around saying, “Oh Shuurei is so great.” It got old, fast. And it has the tendency of getting right up to the climax and then skipping it. So good enough that I’d watch the second season. Not good enough that I feel like gushing over it.

Kurau: Phantom Memory: You know BONES could take crap and make it sparkle (at least from what I’ve seen.) Now, Kurau’s not anything special plot-wise. It starts like a superhero story and right now it’s a superhero story mixed with The Fugitive. But the characters are still interesting. And the credits say the story was by BONES, so… take that for what you will. But the director seems like this is really his first time directing, but he’s done a lot of storyboarding and other stuff for the studio.

Baccano!: I don’t think I ever did a proper statement on this show. But on the one hand, it’s awesome and I really don’t know why this show hasn’t been licensed in the United States. I mean it’s practically made to sell to a Western audience. On the other hand, the multiple plotlines and massive cast of characters does end up making the show feel like it’s trying to do too much with too little space. It’s a fun watch, but I can’t say it’s an amazing show.

Amatsuki: And now for a show that didn’t come out years ago, but still no one’s talking about. So far this is one of my favorite shows of the Spring season. Its got swords. Its got demons. Its even got classy fanservice (if such a thing exists.) And it has a complete and utter lack of a whiny boy hero. I know that I don’t have any taste, but seriously, this is a solid show that doesn’t try to do more than what it sets out to do. And surprise, surprise the director on this one worked on Rurouni Kenshin (both the TV series AND the OVAs). And ironically… Real Drive.

Real Drive: I’m still not completely sure about this one. So far, I’ve watched the first four episodes and they’re solid. I just don’t know how they’re going to support another 22 episodes with it. But I really like the main character, who was a diver who got into an accident and slept until he was an old man. I kind of like the sidekick girl. She’s cute, but a little flat so far. But so far, not bad, not great, but definitely watchable.

Tower of Druaga: I have to agree with Coburn on this one. This show is awesome. I mean its tongue-in-cheek funny. And thankfully it never takes itself so seriously that I can’t enjoy it.

Itazura na Kiss: Honestly, I shouldn’t like this show. I mean Kotoko is so incompetent it’s downright insulting. Naoki is a jerk. The little brother deserves a solid kick in the rear end. But… I still keep coming back for more. And I’m not sure why I enjoy it so much, but I do.

Macross Frontier: It’s Macross. It’s cool. Sheryl is one of the few anime women who I will say is hot. Enough said about that one.

Madlax and nature versus nurture

So recently I finished watching Madlax again. Now, I was really tempted to try to apply some overarching “industrialized world versus less-industrialized world” theme on it. (Personally I’m not a big fan of the phrases “First world” and “Third world” and I think “Developed world” and “Developing world” are equally bad.)

But I found that I couldn’t. I mean no matter how I struggled with it, I kept coming around to the fact that the show was pretty plain about what it was talking about.

It was talking about a different duality all together. Whether or not ethics are a natural thing for humans or if they’re an artifice that should be stripped away.

Now, I will probably go on as far as that point, but it’s got me thinking a lot about duality and anime. I mean as far as story structure it makes a lot of sense. You have two competing ideals that the hero has to struggle with, so it provides an internal tension. So I get why it’s fairly common in anime.

But I think there’s something more to it. It’s not that dualities aren’t common in Western Literature and other thought. I mean we have The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, more recently, Aragorn in Lord of the Rings, Thomas Covenant in Stephen R. Donaldson’s books. In religion, we have Calvin and Arminius, Perseverance of the Saints and Good Acts. In psychology we have Freud and Skinner (granted there’s a whole lot that I left out there.) But in the end, there’s a whole lot of opposition going on.

But I’m going to start with Madlax because in a lot of ways, I think that gets at the roots of a lot of dualities.

(Please note: I am about to completely spoil Madlax, thus guaranteeing that no one will finish this blog post. If you ever had any intention of watching this show, then I’d suggest watching it first. If you don’t, then by all means keep reading.)

All right you have been warned.

So anyways, the two main characters of this show, Margaret Burton and Madlax, were once the same person. They split at the moment when Margaret’s father pointed a gun at her. As the main villain pointed out, they represent two competing desires in the girl at the time – the animalistic need to survive and the need to uphold social mores. Basically they’re a duality brought to life, and representative of the larger duality question of the piece: Are ethics an artifice or are they natural?

Trust me, that question is going to come up again.

Now in a lot of ways, this reminds me of the basic nature versus nurture debate that goes through social science circles. To be honest, it’s a tricky question at best. But for all of its other faults, Madlax does provide an interesting answer. A bit of both.

When Margaret initially answers this question, she states that these things may be artificial but people still need them. In and of itself, that’s a satisfactory answer. I agree that ethics are an artifice that humans have created so what we can survive in groups (in lieu of fangs and claws.)

But I don’t think that’s the true answer Madlax was going for. The big answer comes in the form of Madlax’s own duality: she’s a kind killer. Granted, the first time I watched the show I wasn’t really all that interested in that duality (or rather I didn’t really notice it.) The thing is that no matter that she started as a manifestation of Margaret’s will to live, she also took on part of her ethics too. So that even though she killed often, she still felt bad about it. Basically, the show is hinting at the fact that empathy is a natural human emotion.

So why have I prattled on for 700 words about this? Mostly because I’m trying to get at the root of the idea of being a monster in anime. And I think Madlax provides a good starting place for that discussion. In essence, a basic question, from which I hope I can form other questions.

Robber Barons and Mercenaries: A look at Itazura na Kiss and Macross Frontier

You know, I’m not even going to talk about Code Geass and Pizza Hut.

Well other than I think the slogan, “This Revolution is brought to you by Pizza Hut!” is really funny.

But anyways, itsabun and later Hige mentioned how Kaiba depicts a fairly Marxist ideal of what a capitalist society is. And I have to agree, but I’ve noticed a couple of other fairly subtle nods to the capitalist system in a few other shows this season. In particular two of them come to mind right off the bat.

The first one, Macross Frontier, really shouldn’t come as a shock to most people. Let’s face it, the main character becomes a mercenary. A mercenary for a company that has better weapons than the military, no less. A while back, I did a piece on the nature of democracy in mecha anime. And Macross Frontier seems to hit all of the points, so far. The central government is crippled by red-tape, bureaucratic infighting and popular opinion. The only thing that seems different here is that Alto is actually a citizen solider, something which I find interesting.

And add in a “rags to riches” sub-plot worthy of Horatio Alger, and there seems to be a message coming out of the first five episodes of the show – follow your dreams and don’t expect anyone else to help you out with it. Now I don’t know how much of that is an artifact of the story-telling and how much of it is intentional. But it’s an interesting message, especially when there are so many monolithic companies present in anime (Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 comes to mind right off the bat.) It’s a nice change to have a show that features capitalism in a good light, even if democracy does get the shaft.

Well at least so far.

The other critique that I’ve spotted comes from an interesting place – Itazura na Kiss. One of the first things I noticed when I started watching this show was the stratified school system. To be honest, it’s not a particularly uncommon idea in anime. But usually both of the characters are from the same social strata as it were. In Itazura you have one guy from the elite and one girl from the lower class. What makes this show interesting as far as that goes is that the usual theme is: “Oh my God, we can allow these two to date. That’d be unthinkable.” And then they fight against society to be together and everything ends happily.

Strange enough Itazura na Kiss does exactly the opposite. Instead it’s the parents who are trying to play matchmaker and Naoki who seems against it. In fact, it reminded me of the Industrial Revolution around the time of the muckrakers, with Naoki playing the part of the disinterested robber barons.

At least until, episode five. (I’m not sure if this is going to be a spoiler. If it is than avert your eyes, or go promptly to your nearest brainwashing center of your choice to remove the memory of this post.) Now at least a few people complained about how Naoki isn’t really interested in Kotoko To be honest, I was a little put off by it too. Well that and the fact that she isn’t capable of doing ANYTHING by herself. Now to be honest, it’s not any more flattering if you replace Kotoko with the working masses and Naoki with the robber barons. In fact, it becomes the polar opposite of a Horatio Alger story. No matter how hard the lower classes work they’re never going to achieve the status of the higher classes because of a sheer lack of talent.

Well unless the higher classes decide to practice a little bit of corporate citizenship. To explain, once Andrew Carnegie got tired of making his fortune off of the backs of the workers, he grew a conscience and said, “Wait, we should give something back.” What was funny is that is exactly what Naoki does in the fifth episode of Itazura na Kiss. Now the message isn’t necessarily any better. Now it’s, “The lower classes can’t achieve anything without help from the higher classes.” But it is a bit more interesting.

Related Links

CCY’s awesome Shoujo Showdown.

Impressions: Kaiba – somewhat better than five fingers and a palm

Oh Kaiba… how people will lavish over you. How you will stroke people’s brains and make them think about things. How you will bring together people.

Okay, so enough of that. When I read one of the first reviews of Kaiba, I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical. Call it Curmudgeon’s Law. Call it “Cameron is a contrarian and will disagree for the sake of disagreeing.” Call it whatever you want to call it. But I promised some folks that I’d give it at least three episodes.

And I have.

Now, Kaiba follows the idea of most hard sci-fi. You take a scientific development (the fact that people have their memories stored in capsules and transplanted between bodies.) Then you examine the effects on society. And I’ll admit freely that part is great. I mean you have a Marxist society. You have a very visible “afterlife” that might not really mean death. You have the idea that there is a “sanctity” to being an original, but copying yourself is illegal. And you have it all without any of the visual confusion that I get from a show like Ghost Hound or Serial Experiments Lain.

In fact, the amount it can tweak my brain makes me interested in the show.

But you know there’s always one guy every season, who stands up in the middle of the parade and shouts: “The emperor has no clothes.”

Well, I guess this time that guy is me.

Because for everything that this show does well, it has one major flaw: Kaiba.

Good lord, this guy isn’t a main character. He isn’t even a plot device. He’s a piece of equipment. He’s a camera for the plot to happen to or around. The only time he actually ACTS is late in the third episode. Otherwise, he’s running away or peeking into people’s memories or getting dragged around. What’s worse is that he doesn’t actually HAVE a personality. He hardly asks questions. I mean he has his body stolen from him and what does he do? Oh, peeks into the room while his body is having sex with a stranger. Good lord, am I supposed to believe this guy is for real?

The thing is that without a character who I can invest myself in, who I care about, all the great world development doesn’t mean squat.

It’s just something that provokes a whole lot of mental masturbation, without the benefit of actually getting off.

In My View: On the art/entertainment divide

A while back, I did a rant about Art. Now, I still stand by my statement that “Art doesn’t exist.” But something Hidoshi wrote in the comments has been niggling around in my brain for the past few weeks:

I should note in addendum that I think art is the most useful of all labels in anything considered culture. Art serves as the axle of the cultural wheel, and without it there are no standards by which to create — no mental or emotional tools, as it were.

This has been bugging me. Not necessarily because it’s wrong, but because I don’t necessarily understand why something has to be Art to create the standards that are used to create. Now don’t get me wrong, I respect Hidoshi’s viewpoint. I mean he’s a smart guy who can manage to write like he’s an average Joe and that’s no mean feat.

But I’m still struggling with why Art as a distinction is important.

Okay, so here’s how I see it. On the one hand, you have Art, which is held out as something to be admired. To borrow Hidoshi’s words, it’s the standard by which anything creative should be judged. Now, I’m not going to touch the subjective nature of that, simply because well… I shouldn’t need to. But I can understand that certain creative works should be held up as benchmarks of what a medium or a genre can do.

On the other hand, you have the crass pandering to the masses called entertainment. Basically it’s meaningless throwaway garbage that you use to turn off your brain (or at least that’s the argument.) Okay, I can understand that some stuff might not seem like it’s important. Or just seem like it appeals to some baser instinct in people.

But, and it’s a big but, that assumes that entertainment is meaningless. Which it isn’t.

Let’s take Rome for an example. What’s the first thing people think about when that word comes up (well other than Julius Caesar)? I can bet it’s not Virgil’s Aeneas. It’s probably not Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I doubt it’s the Roman comedies. And I’m pretty sure no one’s singing, “There’s something for everyone –”

Nope, they’re probably thinking about the Coliseum. And if there’s a bigger entertainment fest then watching two grown men face off against each other with swords, I’m not sure what it is.

The thing is that the Coliseum (and any of the bread and circuses programs) is important when you’re looking at Roman culture. In fact, I would say that they’re a defining factor. I mean what it says about daily life in Rome that people flocked to see people try to run each other off of the tracks at the Circus Maximus or that they wanted to see people face off against lions in the arena.

Not only that but it says something about humanity that we’d want to see slaves try to kill each other. Or that we’d create a business. Or that politicians would set something like that up to distract the masses of people who were unemployed because of the large wave of slaves that were coming into country.

The same could be said about a show like The Simple Life, which follows the follies of two very rich girls trying to do very common things. Do you see a parallel here? Because I do. America has a tendency to want to tear down its idols. The middle and lower classes content themselves with the idea that “Well those people couldn’t do my job.” And a show like The Simple Life comes around to reinforce it. Is it pandering to the baser instincts of people? Sure. Does it show any type of creative drive behind it? No, of course not. Is it still important to wonder why something like that is popular? Yes.

In fact, I’d go as far to say it’s just as important to look at the message that a show like Speed Grapher is trying to convey, and what it’s trying to appeal to as looking at a show like Kaiba and seeing what it’s trying to say. Or to put it another way, it’s not as important to figure out what the creator is saying to the viewer as why the viewer is enticed with the show in the first place.

But then again, I might be a Philistine.

 

In My View: Naruto and Witchblade? What exactly is this world coming to?

So I think I might just be out of touch with the average anime fan. I was perusing through ICv2, mostly because they actually release numbers (or at least sort of release numbers) and I came across this list:

ICv2 Top Ten Anime Properties—Early 2008:

Appleseed Ex Machina

Dragon Ball Z

Naruto

Devil May Cry

Death Note

Pokemon

Witchblade

Bleach

Fullmetal Alchemist

Afro Samurai (emphasis added)

 

Okay so we’ve got five shows that have been released within the last year (or so), which honestly is a lot better than last years list. So I mean that’s looking up. More people are buying new stuff than they were. But… what am I missing here?

I think it’s that, with the exception of Death Note, none of these shows look particularly good. I mean don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect much out of Witchblade. The comic book was about T and A, I don’t expect much more from the anime. In fact of any type of comic that the anime industry could pick up that’s the one that surprises me the least of all. And Afro Samurai? I mean good lord Samuel Jackson hasn’t done a good movie since Formula 51 (and that’s using good in the loosest possible terms). But him, Robert Deniro and Al Pacino could all get together and make a movie titled “SUCK” and people would still buy it. So… I guess that doesn’t surprise me much.

And ironically, I really thought losing the Gurren Lagann license would put ADV into the sinkhole, but Devil May Cry was an actual hit? What kind of messed up crazy world am I living in?

(Please note: What follows next is pure speculation on my part and has no relevance to facts past or present.)

In all fairness, the article did say worldwide sales were down. Then it propped it up with a hopeful line right afterwards. But looking over that list, it leads me to one of two conclusions.

The first is obvious. People aren’t buying DVDs. Now I don’t really want to speculate why they aren’t buying DVDs. I could come up with four or five right off the top of my head. The economy is down. Food and gas prices are up. The housing market in the United States is in a free fall. Consumer confidence is down. In fact a quick trip to the front page of CNN pretty much told me that the best news out there in the last two weeks is that London stinks (quite literally). I can’t blame fansubs for it. At least not all of it. But I’m pretty sure they play a part too.

The second is a little less obvious. This might actually not be that bad.

Yes, I said it. I’ll say it again. It might actually not be a bad thing that animation companies in Japan have to cut back. Despite what the BitTorrent trackers and the convention numbers might say, I think the market hit saturation about three years ago and has been slowly shrinking since then.

It just depends on the lesson that they take away from it is. A while ago Ryan over at Nakama Brittanica wrote a fairly long piece about economics and guessing about what will happen in the future. And while I agree that people like me are definitely stabbing at shadows, I can’t help doing it. He also brought up the idea that there was a “golden age” of anime stretching from the time of the first Ghost in the Shell movie to Fullmetal Alchemist.

In a way, I agree with him. There was definitely a rennesaince in anime that happened during that eight year stretch. But there’s something else important to note about shows like Fullmetal Alchemist, Cowboy Beebop, Trigun and even FLCL. They had an appeal outside of the standard fan community. I’ve talked to more casual fans that have watched those shows than have even heard of Beck or Haruhi or any of the dozens of shows that are arguably just as good, but didn’t have that kind of appeal.

But that’s what four of those shows have in common. They appeal to a broader market than the average fan. Now in some ways, I’m sad that shows like Witchblade and Devil May Cry are the ones that are finding that larger audience. Because it may send the message that “Hey, if you through in some easily recognizable franchise then it’ll do well.” To be honest, I’m not convinced that’s the way to go.

What they need is a great show. Something that reaches across genre lines and niches, something that anyone can enjoy. Now I’m not sure if Gurren Lagann or Code Geass will be that show. I’d be guessing if I said they’ll hit it big. But I’d be surprised if they do.

In fact, I just haven’t seen the series that going to do it yet. But hopefully Ryan’s last paragraph is more prophecy, than wishful thinking:

Looking toward the horizon, we can’t predict what will be good or successful with too much accuracy - or what will befall us in artistic and economic circles, so as far we know, the next golden age is right around the corner. I hope that will be the case, and wish all the companies in the industry the best of luck during these harsh times.

—–

Related Links

The Pink Slyphide did a piece about the possible re-emergence of a dual market. (I mean for those of us who remember the VHS days.)

Densetsu Shoujo’s take about recent complaints on the encoding for Crunchyroll downloads.

Orz-Swiss Cheese Porn’s attack on trying to pander to the audience with fanservice.