Why are lesser known anime so unknown?!

[Captain Awesome]

Oh! Speaking of demons, you guys seen Claymore? its EPIC

[nightbringer]

Could some peeps suggest to me good starting place for such things? My even remotely anime-ish/manga-ish sources are basically stated upon the other thread XD

[The Jim]

Did you look in this section of the forum at all? We have one thread entitled Anime Recommendations For New Fans, and failing that, try Your Top 7 Anime Series or Movies

[Jupitris]

To answer the titular question.
Partly its recommendation systems, people (myself included) recommend more broadly appealing anime. For example I usually recommend Gundam but never 5 cm per second, because Gundam goes down better with most people, contains more appealing aspects (e.g fighting) even though I'd objectively say there as good as each other in my opinion (Both good but for mostly different reasons)

And I'd also recommend something that objectively is better than something I like more/have a soft spot for e.g I hardly ever tell people to wacth/read Kannazuki no Miko, because only 4 of the episodes are any good and its really quite stupid. But at the sdame time , the twist is great you can see it coming (as with most twists) but you still don't expect what you get, it can be shocking when you realise some of what's happening/happened in places. And it has a surprisingly tear jerking ending.
Still the robots look like ass and the fight scenes are really poor. I still like it though and it was worth the 13 episodes even if most of those were crap. At least it wasn't 180 of em.

And the last point, people newer to anime tend to gravitate towards other newer fans, and these newer fans tend to already be into the same shows the big name ones and then they start recommending the same groups of shows to each other and then maybe some new shows in similar veins and then it seems most of the group that don't take an active initiative in finding new shows get stuck in a loop creating this cycle meaning the big shows get bigger and smaller shows are getting increasingly squeezed out.

[hereticascendent]

Its simple, people are awalys going to turn what they hear about most for example I guess I can't deny the anime I like is the well known stuff; Full Metal Alchemist, Ghost in the Shell, Chrno Crusade, but hey we live in a culture where what sells best if often put on high esteem not to mention the shelves so while this underated stuff may be good (not denying it is) its due the giants of econmical demand that get drowned of the picture.

[The Jim]

Let's not forget that we're talking here about countries where the most popular TV shows are the likes of X-Factor and American Idol.

Lowest Common Denominator.

Which isn't to say that Bleach is popular because it's stupid, but it's not exactly the likes of Death Note or the end of Evangelion

[XenLár]

Ooooooh controversial statement Mr Jim lol.

Though I totally agree with Flawless on this. From cosplayers I've seen and general conversation on forums, there has to be an audience out there for the obscure animes. So why are they not being picked up?

I see a lot of tv shows now actually talking about manga being one of the biggest increasing markets in the UK literature wise. So why isn't any smart arse tv guy jumping on this and saying - hey you know what? Anime would make a lot of money....?

[The Jim]

No idea. A few years back we had a peak of interest for anime on TV, with the likes of The Anime Network block which used to run on Sat and Sundays, and then also the Anime Central channel.

TAN was pretty successful actually, but ended closing due to ADV cutting all their non-core activities (i.e. cutting back to just DVD distro), and shortly after that closing up all together. Anime Central was on every night, and showed a new episode most nights (I think weekends were repeats, but I may be wrong), and due to that, very quickly ran through what they had to show.

The best course of action in-terms of anime on UK TV is to have a block 2 nights a week on a channel such as Bravo. It has been said in discussions on other forums I visit that the actual distros (Beez, Manga Ent. MVM, etc.) would actually have to pay for the time rather than having the channels pay them for the shows. ADV were quite lucky when they put TAN on, as the channel they were non-profit if I remember right and funded by grants.

[Jupitris]

Nov 18, 2010 23:04:40 GMT The Jim said:

Lowest Common Denominator.

Which isn't to say that Bleach is popular because it's stupid, but it's not exactly the likes of Death Note or the end of Evangelion

Careful, something not very (for lack of a batter word) intelligent to you, may be considered intelligent by someone else.
We wouldn't want this topic going down the route of debating the merits of specific anime.

Anyway on the question of Anime on TV, I could suggest two major points of contention as to why broadcasters simply choose not to broadcast anime.

The first Public opinion, for many older people they still remember the old negative publicity given to anime, particularly in the later seventies and early eighties, the best example from the time is when good ol' Mary White house pitched in to give the usual diet of ignorance and over-generalisation. And this negative stigma still lingers over anime, like that its paedophilia junk with juvenile plots and pointless dialogue...... well ok there is actually all of that.
And the Opinion that all anime watches are japanophilic cosplaying convention going weaboo's hovering over their computer screens, angrily typing on some god forsaken internet forum where no-one cares .............. wait ......... I'm kidding but not completely I mean convention go-ers of any fandom even in the more (if not completely) accepted say sci-fi fandom among them con go-ers are looked down upon as the worst of the worst , so we here are actually kinda harming public perception , even if its because they really understand nothing.

Anwyay back on point, with all of that do parents want their children watching this stuff, with these perceptions? Not really and some are bound to complain at this point, then we have the violence, I mean stuff like DBZ got away with it , punching each other in overly exaggerated ways, or fighting with "magical powers" didn't seem to strike too much of accord and was kinda accepted as part of children programming you could say since stuff like tom and jerry or looney tunes, well accepted western shows.
But look at the naruto/bleach type of shonen with massive knives/swords/shurikens.
KNIVES?!!? ZOMG PARENT RAGE, THERE ENCOURAGING MY CHILDREN TO STAB PEOPLE THIS IS A BAD INFLUENCE!!!111
You get the idea, and lets not get into any other questionable material that however brief may make its way into the even the most edited of versions, and to take out all the weapons out of these shows would be insane, I mean look at megaman, didn't that suck. And i always wondered what they were doing in Yu-GI-OH, now i know they were supposed to be guns there.

Second DUB VS SUB and the 14+ market.
This is a real issue that will stop broadcasters, I chose 14 here because its around 14, 13-15 usually when people make the decision to watch subs instead of dubs that's based partly on observations of other peoples *claimed* ages on-line when they say there watching subs and partly because i myself made the switch at that point, although I didn't watch anime then so it was for all Non-English TV shows and Films, mostly Chinese +HK martial arts films and French Films but I digress.
A poll on Bandai USA's website put the USA audience at 55% Preferred Subs and 45% Dubs, note preferred.
Its my experience that many Sub watchers will simply refuse to watch dubs while many dub watchers will watch subs in certain conditions (E.g Not licensed nor going to be for the foreseeable future (Illegally usually ),Dub is unbearably bad even for dub watchers (See anything by 4kids)) although this poll isn;t completely accurate and wont account for certain groups etc.
Working on a basis its 50/50 assuming as i remember the pull correctly it was 30% who said specifically they would never watch Dubs, and 22% who would never watch subs, this means any broadcaster who's looking at airing anime will lose 20-30% of a 14+ audience immediately that's not an attractive prospect when they could air something else, American live action that has at least the potential of wrangling everyone.
This feeds back into the problem when trying to broadcast shows aimed at older children, for say edited for broadcast shonen e/g Pokemon, DBZ etc etc is primarily aimed at 8-14 year old's anyway so there isn't much of an issue there all dub watchers, with very few understanding that the shows are even foreign i myself at 8 remember asking why the voices and the mouths moving didn't match i just assumed it was crap animation which was one of the reasons i grew out of anime, the only good anime that I didn't consider childish I saw on UK TV was Gundam Wing which I was later to learn was the 5th worst Gundam series.
But with shows aimed at older audiences, your losing significant amounts of an audience whatever you decide to broadcast the DUB or SUB in a timeslot (I am aware one channel Used to broadcast an uncut sub at a later time of whatever they were showing) Also before i wrap up at this age when you start to research anime a little more maybe read manga and you learn of the severe editing that goes on in some shows, that can affect a show too.

To sum up my overly long point, when broadcasting anime a station has to fight an up-hill battle against the plentiful objectionable content in anime, to what degree do they edit anime, do they SUB or DUB , and there going to lose audiences who don't like many of these choices and those who simply don't like cartoons or those who specifically don't like anime.

Its simply more profitable to show Glee or something like it, no editing needed, no subbing or subbing no translation costs.

Also specifically in the UK and sometimes but not nearly as much in Europe the price of anime in pushed up by US distributors, who buy licence rights to the Uk and then sell them onto a 2nd distributor at an inflated price, or give them to a subsidiary company which often charges inflated prices to make profit for the main company and cover whatever extra costs are associated with operating in another region and most of the time profits for the second distributor make the price punitive.

[XenLár]

*just died*

Lol thanks RedFox. I'd be lying if I said I read all of that word for word (I have to go out in a minute) but what I read of that was really interesting. (I'm gonna go back and read it properly but I figured I'd post and get this thread going again).

I totally agree with you in a lot of these points as well. You're right about the parent's reaction I think. Anime do like to increase the size of their weapons don't they? It's bizarre though that people dislike stuff with knives and things in yet Animal Protection organisations have said nothing about the merits/problems of letting small children watch shows like Pokemon that depict humans making animals fight each other until their badly wounded.

((I know that Pokemon hasn't encouraged a load of animal abusers and I would consider anyone who voiced the above opinion to be an idiot, but I'm surprised someone hasn't been such an idiot, if that makes sense.))

I also think that there's a majority opinion in the West, promoted by people like Disney, who think that cartoons are only for kids.

As far as I can see the problem is Disney's recent productions. Their old ones were fantastic for sneaking in adult jokes and making the films entertaining for grown ups and well as kids - I think that's why Walt Disney was so successful. But now their productions are things that are CGI (therefore giving the idea that flat animation is outdated) and aimed more solely at children, therefore giving the idea that animation in any form is for kids.

I'm really liking Dreamworks' animated productions at the moment and I'm kinda hoping that they grow more as they appeal to a wider audience and might encourage people to see animation as not just for kids again.

The proof of these ideas is in the pudding when someone asks me what I'm into and I mention anime. They're usual reaction to that is - "What? Like cartoons?" When we all know that there's a hell of a difference between Death Note and Looney Tunes for goodness sake. I always say after that - "Oh hell no." Lol.

[Jupitris]

Wow, that was a blast from the past Well ..... novemeber.
And yea it gets a bit poorly worded in places, I may go back and tidy it up slightly, judging by the time I was tired when I wrote that.

And yea Disney really have dropped the ball, quite hard, same with a lot of western animations, as you pointed out there used to be a lot more adult jokes, double entendres or political/pop culture satire in animations, these days its all been taken out, in just about all animated productions, even Dreamworks doesn't really stray as far into that territory as before.

I have to confess I've pretty much always been on dreamworks side, well when I was a kid i didn't know much about the dremaworks v disney conflict, but at an early age I always appreciated Antz over a bugs life for example, and I saw prince of Egypt at the Cinema, that was a damn good film, even to me when I was about 7 I must've been, now older I can appreciate it more, I haven't watched too many of there recent films, but megamind looks interesting enough for me to give it a shot, and I've hear only good things about how to train your dragon , beyond that I really only dislike Madagasgar in the dreamworks library, I just hate everything about it personally it annoys me to hell. Kung Fu panda also I wasn't impressed with, but I did appreciate the general satire of martial arts films enough for it to be ok to me. - Dreamworks side track - but yes, dreamworks certainly is making (although its still children's animation) animation more worthwhile to an adult audience.

I never deny that anime=cartoon when people say it, because its usually useless to do so, (in fact the word anime comes from dessin-anime (or anime-dessines) from the french for cartoon and its the literal english translation too) yes there is a huge difference the style and content and demographics but hell I'm not going to pervert the facts to pander to someone else's ignorance!
Still I resent the fact that people always assume western cartoons were always for kids, I mean Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist was damn intelligent in places, the Dilbert animation was like the famous comic strip an absolutely hilarious satire of the office workplace and general human stupidity (I've seen that series 7 times now , I first saw it when I was 9 and I've been getting more of the jokes ever since), I love aqua teen hunger force, which form the outside may seen weird.... because it is, its a very surrealist comedy with some priceless gem moments. Even growing up with kids stuff like home movies, the hilarious film/historical references for adults, and the great characters for a kids show with some real depth.
Now all of those are comedies, and that because really that's what western animation does best, as much As I love anime and there are some hilarious anime scenes, even when watching comedy anime, usually the comedy isn't what I'd call A grade, it usually has other features which make it a good show (azumanga, lucky star are good examples) not overly funny, but funny enough but with great aspects such as the irrelevant plots throwing real emotion and drama into the mix just enough.
But for pure comedy western animation every time.
But when people put down cartoons whether , American , British, Japanese, Russian, French, there putting down some masterpieces which were by no means made for children in some cases, or children alone in many, but to be honest its not the individuals fault most of the time, it just seems our media of all forms, and critics just seem determined to smash down on animation or even anything related to animation, (I have some real rants on how people rave out certain movies or shows when there just based often on superior anime/manga particularly.... Im looking at you kill bill....)

[XenLár]

I agree with you. I know where the word anime comes from but I tend to deny that it's cartoons just because I know what they're thinking in their heads when they say cartoons.

Spirited Away is a film I have found to be quite useful in explaining what anime is.

- A lot of the time I'll say "have you ever heard of someone called Hayao Miyazaki" and they'll be like "who?" so I say "ever heard of Spirited Away?" and they'll often go...... "......... er.... yeah that's that animated movie right?" And I go - "that's anime, and it's only the tip of the iceberg" lol.

And yeah Dreamworks has its downsides too but generally they have several gems in amongst the pile.

Shark Tale, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar = Poo.
Prince of Egypt, Spirit, Road to El Dorado, Shrek (not quite animated but there we go) = Great.