Is Anime losing ground?

[Gorath Sodom]

I speak primarily about the U.S. Anime market in this argument, though if there are citizens of other regions who are noticing a rise/decline in Anime's popularity, please feel free to speak up.

The example I'm giving may or may not be the best one to give. I am primarily looking at Cartoon Network, who has began to show less and less Anime, mostly because the ratings have gone down hill. Toonami started as weekly, but is now exclusive to Satudays. Adult Swim started as Sunday only, then divided into Action and Comedy, whereas Action featured Anime and Comedy featured U.S. Comedy toons, such at A.T.H.F., Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and Family Guy. Eventually it went weekly, where they showed Anime on weekdays and comedy on Sundays. However, now it's Anime on Saturdays and Thursdays (reruns on the latter) and Comedy every day except Thursday and Friday.

Every Sunday, AS shows the ratings for the previous Saturday and Sunday, and Comedy (Sunday) had Action (Saturday) beat nearly four times over in recent weeks.

Here are my suspicions:

- Cartoon Network isn't showing enough good Anime (least likely)
- Other networks aren't showing enough good Anime (somewhat likely)
- Americans are too narrow minded and xenophobic to accept other
subcultures (highly likely)
- Americans find Anime too cutesy (highly likely)
- Americans find Anime plots to be too controversial and/or unrealistic (highly likely)

Anything to add?

I feel that animation in general is losing ground.
Why, oh why would a channel stop showing Thundercats or Tom and Jerry and pick up something along the lines of the new Mary-Kate and Ashley cartoon?
I enjoyed Spirited Away, that was the last good eastern anime I liked, a lot of crap now is just made for the sake of it. I mean, some of it is worse than porn.

[Toph Bei Fong]

There is plenty of great anime out there, it's just mostly not on TV because it wouldn't look too good. It would be completely butchered. But yes, I agree that Toonami is starting to go downhill. I don't really watch Adult Swim or Toonami that much. I mostly only watch Justice League and Teen Titans. Other than that, I don't really watch anything else. Because I've seen all of Samurai Champloo already, and have seen Inuyasha to completion as well. So I have no reason to watch the rest of the anime shown on there. Oh. I also watch Zatch Bell, too. That's a really great show. Of course, it's better uncut. >.>

[Keisuke Takahashi]

Originally Posted by Tim Hunter

I feel that animation in general is losing ground.
Why, oh why would a channel stop showing Thundercats or Tom and Jerry and pick up something along the lines of the new Mary-Kate and Ashley cartoon?

For the old cartoons they moved all that to the Boomerang Channel.. but this is more along the lines of the Hanna-Barbera and what not.

As for Anime, I think it's being shown a lot more... at least compared to back a few years... I mean almost all stations that air cartoons of somesort have at least 1 form of anime... what I've noticed was more of a decline in "non-anime" style cartoons.. which.. in a way is good =P but also kinda sad.

[SSJ4 Goku]

I think that anime's commercial success in terms television is anything but decreasing.

If you look at the past year or so, we've been hit quite forcefully with anime on TV as compared to past years. I mean, we have two (I believe, if not more) anime-exclusive networks throughout the country, another Asian-entertainment-specific one on the rise, and other companies thinking about starting their own networks like this, too. We have channels like Stars and Showtime broadcasting anime now, and of course there's Cartoon Network, which I think is doing a lot more than it gets credit for doing.

Some wildly popular shows such as Trigun and FLCL have just recently made their returns and FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST and Ghost in the Shell: The Stand Alone Complex have gotten more than its fair share of kids interested in anime in the past few months. Even now, within the past month, it just premiered three new series on its network, not to mention the fact that its finally bringing some good anime movies (such as Metropolis) onto American airwaves for the first time.

Then, of course, we have the mainstream channels that still pump out anime that they aim at younger audiences (which I don't altogether mind as long as they manage to keep it relatively unedited). I have no qualms admitting that I watch One Piece, Shaman King, Yu-Gi-Oh! and other shows the US has been marketing to a younger audience but hey; at least it's getting more people into anime.

Now as far as anime in the non-televised market goes, I'm not too good of a judge of that anymore. The past few months have seen a significant drop in my anime DVD purchasing, so I can't quite attest to how well it's doing in stores, but if there has been a drop-off, I think it's because of the fact that some of the biggest, most well-known titles that were initially coming over here a few years ago have finally been absorbed by a good amount of the anime-loving community here. If you look around, a lot of the series that made anime popular here have been getting re-released at lower prices (Trigun, Hellsing, X, etc.) because they've already seen their run here in the States. Of course, there are still shows coming out over here that are extremely popular/deserving of our hard-earned money, but, like I said, I haven't been purchasing much myself lately, so I can't really judge that well from here.

I think all we have to do is wait a few more months if we truly want to see where anime's going to go in the US. This coming autumn will see the release of Naruto, one of Japan's biggest successes in recent years and I think its commercial success here should be a good indicator of how well/poorly the anime industry will fair in months to come here.

[Hecate]

Well Cartoon net has been experamenting with new anime series.....they just happen to not be as good as the ones from a year ago. I'm sure they'll pick out the good ones after some more public testing and show what the kids want.

OTHER channels.....those anime are normally focused on the younger generation to view, and yes, even that is goen down because of the educational crap thing goen on with America's children and the anti-violence/sex deal. SOMe of the higher movie channels had good anime on once in a while...one of them has a semi-daily showing of 'Dirty Pair' and one comes up with movies like Cowboy Bebop, Princess Mononoke, Ghost in the Shell, X, Vampire Hunter D / VHD: Bloodlust (rated R), and a few others.

Too cutesie.....well...those would be teens looking at the anime aimed for the younger kids....there's plenty rated PG13 and R...just gotta know where to look.

now for the "- Americans are too narrow minded and xenophobic to accept other
subcultures (highly likely)".....I doubt that. There are THOUSANDS of kids demanding more anime....but it's the current older adults that aren't into it....my mom HATES it....drives her up the wall.....and my grandparents hate ANYTHING Japanese because of WWII. They even want me to change my guinea pig's name 'cause it's Japanese (Kiyoshi). Nah...the generation it's aimed for is demanding it against the will if the older population....so that's something that'll be solved in time as the anime generation slowly takes over.

"- Americans find Anime plots to be too controversial and/or unrealistic (highly likely)"

I would say highly UNlikely. Just like American TV...Anime has its share of being real or unreal.....sure more unreal than not...but look at Disney...unreal and SO MANY people love it. I think it's just that some people don't like the anime style.

Even within Anime there are different Anime styles. I've seen a couple that I don't like and the rest are just fine. The ones I don't like....the characters are too 80's looking (like Lupin the 3rd) or just too old-american (Metropolis and Kikaider with the eyes with the white triangle glare on a black dot and bubbly hands). The anime kind like from Trigun and DB/Z/GT I like.....so really it's up to the artistry for that section, I think.

[Wrath]

it's definitely losing ground.
What was the last good and new anime you can remember?
Spirited Away and Metropolis.
How long ago did they come out?
What was the good anime before that?
How long ago did THAT come out?

Both movies and series are lacking as of late.
The new GITS isnt that bad, but most of the series coming out these days are crap.
There are SOME glowing bastions of absolute genius out there, it's just that their light is hard to make out when it's surrounded by such filthy crap.

I await with immense anticipation
- The FMA movie
- The next series of Hellsing


As I aint a yank, I cant agree with half of the things said about the TV over there, but I dont find it hard to believe

I miss the Weekly Goddamned Awesome Anime Nights on Sci Fi channel.
Every friday at midnight they would play (an anime film, not an episode of anything) either something well known, or thoroughly obscure (which was the most often case)
Usually 2-4 hours of anime.
Great times. I used to tape them every week.
Thanks to repeats, I ended up with about 5 tapings of Akira (with it being after other stuff)

[Gorath Sodom]

That's a good argument, SSJ4 Goku, though I'm sure many people don't have access to the Anime Network or that other network you were specifying... I sure dont.

As for Baron's argument, I could not agree more.

And Rachel may have a good point, the younger generations maybe a tad bit more open minded than the older ones.

Another fact that has come to my attention is the butchering of Manga. There are several publications out there who are editting the hell out of them. Anyone familiar with Tenjo Tenge? CMX edited that title, amongst others, so badly that there are petitions to stop the butchering of manga. Sadly, I think it's going to be a while, it at all, until we see results.

[Akira]

I also agree that the anime industry is slowly yet surely increasing in the US. Sadly its most of the time less serious animes that are about little monsters (Pokemon,etc.). Too bad they cant go show movies like Akira and Ghost in the Shell more often and air shows like Berserk. That would be much more diversified. Im not saying to completely stop showing those other animes but rather to vary it up a bit.

[Sarah]

I think the decline seen in the viewing of Adult Swim's anime titles may just be due to it's main audience from times past getting older and moving on. If they really liked anime, they probably got further into it and have already searched for and found other anime. Others probably just moved on with their lives.

There's a bit of a tiny gap right now, but it's also summer. People are inside less around this time of year. When school gets back in session and the weather cools down, kids will start watching again... and the bringing of some new shows (which I think are planned for the fall) will attract them even more.

Actually, it being summer is probably the main reason. Most likely.

I wanna add that some people dont watch it cause they associate it with cartoons. Whenever i'm watching anime my dad says "You shouldn't be watching cartoons, your 20. watch some adult shows." which is not exactly true. many anime series are geared towards adults. so some people are just narrow minded or dont even know what it is.

[Hikari]

anime isn't losing ground. every once in a while animators need time to think and relay their thoughts or to actually produce the anime. right now,they're just all doing it at one. anime will bounce back soon. it won't go down that easily.

[2ndPower]

Anime losing ground? Probably not. It's just going through a temporary lapse, in my view. As Sarah pointed out, it is summer. Ratings will typically go down during the summer for nearly every tv station, what with the vacations, the playing outside, the summer jobs, and all that extra crap that happens during the summer.

Another problem with the ratings system, that's not really seasonal but could help explain why ratings are getting lower is that they don't put Neilsen boxes on college campuses, and rarely have Neilsen boxes for people of that age, which is ironically, the main audience for adult swim.

As for DVD and VHS purchases of anime, I can't explain that. It could be that the people who would usually be buying them are now working summer jobs and don't have time, but that's just a theory. I've seen no concrete proof.