Is Anime losing ground?

[Musenko]

Here in the uk we have never really had an decent anime on tv but it is slowly creeping in again and i have noticed that more an more shops are starting to stock decent anime so i dont know about whats happening in america but it looks like it is on the rise here

[Keisuke Takahashi]

There's a decline in your average good cartoons, I think... a lot of them are weird, i think. Not like your classic cartoons from the 80's.. seriously what happened to those.. =T

[Andromeda]

Yeah, Adult Swim has a pretty solid line of Anime. What I find interesting is that they have Evangelion on Thursday as their new episode night, and rerun it Saturday. I do remember the last time that AS had new episodes of Anime on Thursday, but it is an interesting move. But the two biggest things I have noticed this year that marks a drop in anime is Toonami going from an afternoon weekday line up to a Saturday line up and G4 stopping Anime Unleashed almost, down to Fridays only, when it was an hour all week. And what adds insult to injury is the replacements for both Toonami and G4 are horrible. I used to watch anime every day, because there was always something new on, or something fun to watch. Gundam Wing, Tenchi Muyo, heck even Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z. When I came home from school Toonami was something you'd watched before doing your homework, or something I woke up and watched when I slepted late. Now it is all packed into one day, I spend about 5 hours in front of the TV and then nothing the rest of the week. They never finished Kenshin, they finally finishing Yu yu Hakusho. Gundam SEED is on in the bad hours of the night with Yu yu.

I really do not know what CN is doing, because sometimes I think they are removing Anime. It is disappearing from the place that started giving us Anime. If I could afford to spend money on it, I would get the Anime Network or on demand, even though it is a little one side in only showing ADV distributed anime. But if I want anime anymore I have to buy it or put something in, because there is just so little of it viewable anymore. Not to mention we cannot watch Anime uncut because of our own puritanitic ideas that will not go away.

I try to convince people I talk to, to watch Anime that it is not just simple cartoons they are used to seeing. I would go out of my way to find something that would like if I could. Because Anime is just as good as thing you see on TV, actually I think it is better than a lot of the junk and rubbish on, but that is probably because a culture, so different views, they have things I have not seen yet, so it is not all old and reused, like I see all the time with American TV Programing.

[OnOneRyder]

I think for one, animation is becoming less and less common because CGI and other forms of imaging are easier done. No longer is an amazing CGI sequence limited to the $200 million budget movies.

Also, many north americans simply don't understand it. Basically we're stupid; if it doesn't catch our eyes and minds in the first 5 seconds chances are we'll change the channel. When's the last time you sat down on your couch and watched every channel for 5 minutes to decide what to watch?

Personally the only anime to ever strick my interest has been apple seed, and it was far from traditional japanese anime. So unless the creators all start going to more advance imaging for the NA crowd, I don't think it will be around in the next decade.

[Aldras]

I've noticed a decline in anime as well but it just might be the time of the year.

I remember when I was a lot younger, anime used to air on Sci Fi channel a lot and now you don't see a lot of it, if any are airing today. Once anime hits CN, it gets butchered, slaughtered, censored, and then dubbed with Digimon character voices. Not a lot of Americans get to see uncensored, uncut anime on the local TV because North America is all trying to promote nonviolence. That's why I just gave up watching AS/Toonami because they censored or cut out scenes in Outlaw Star and I had enough of the censorship. I bet if Americans had the money and time to sit down to subscribe to a network that runs a lot of uncensored anime, they would be absorbed into Japanime. Not a lot of Americans know this, but you know how Americans specialize in making CGI and movies involving real people? Japanese do the same but do it with anime. Anime is just as popular as movies are in America. Recently I used to watch G4 for AU (Anime Unleashed) and actually got to watch all of Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure. I enjoyed it very much but as of late, Anime is being showed less and less on TV stations. Let alone, sometimes they air at very bad times. Oh well, I am just glad that there are dedicated fans that sub anime and bring it to America, thanks.

Well over here in Australia on Cartoon Network, they only used to show Adult Swim 2 times a week i think. But now they show more of Adult Swim, its on 6 nights a week now. And not only do they play something once a night, they play it 2 times now. Like on Sundays, Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex is on at 10:30pm followed by Fullmetal Alchemist at 11pm, then at 11:30pm Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex is back on followed by another Fullmetal Alchemist at 12. They also play other anime's like Gundam Seed, and all those comedy ones...

[Storm]

I think the proper anime (sorry for the generalisation) is the thing getting mostly affected. Due to the sudden worldwide popularity of shows like Pokemon, Yugioh, Bayblade and the rest of the shows that the kids have had crazes on; a lot of people find anime 'cheesy' and 'unfasionable' due to the rise and fall of children's anime. This is what a lot of people think anime is, instead of the decent ones that deserve respect.

[Mistress Sheena]

Oi, Yugioh isn't children's anime! >.>;
You'd be surprised how much it gets butchered in America. The Japanese subs have darker dialogue, and dueling isn't the most important thing, lol.

yes they do

if you watch an anime on TV and then buy the DVDs, youll notice that you just missed a whole bunch of good stuff that was edited

Hell, in the uk we hardly get any manga. although we do get the classics like urotsukidoji and akira. last one i saw though was 'sky blue' which was supposedly the 'new Akira', not really. pretty poor to say they were working on it for seven years...

thats because it takes so long for them to translate everything, sometimes it takes a whole decade

i suppose, but surely they can do it on computer a lot faster than what theyre doin (one guy sat in a room reading through the scripts or summat)...
I dont know a lot bout computers but surely they could do that

i dont either, all i know is that its taking them a damn good long time to actually get anime over to the UK

[Haru-Sensei]

The art of anime is much to young to be losing ground already. Granted some of the best animes were produced before 2000. Although I still will say that there will be some stunning ones to come.

the only reason why anime would probually be losing ground is because they're not putting enough on TV and selling them on DVDs for at least $25 each on average and that in the U.S., a lot of the anime is cut out on the TV.

but a lot of people cant afford to buy all those DVDs and stick with the TV versions and theyr not gettin all the good stuff