this is prolly the main reason why i love g gundam and gundam wing above all other gundam series. although, i’ve never seen them again after their reruns in 1999.

#1) Originality
#2) Plot vs Graphics
#3) Fanservice and moe

#1) Some people pointed out originality is quite a subjective matter, as you find original that show you watched for the first time and you grew up with that as a reference. People watching Dragon Ball for the first time may think it’s an original show, not accounting the fact there were other shows before of the same king, better o worse done than it. But they have DB in mind and will judge any other show based on DB without thinking in advance if their reference was good enough. That is quite a common mistake, and even very skilled people may fall for it.
Psgels also did the same mistake a couple of times. He watched Slayers new serie or Casshern Sins without knowing nothing about their predecessors, and having watched old slayers judget it with the respect of the new one. Big mistake: it’s pointless to analyze an original wit his own remake!
The solution to the problem is to analyze our own reference sample first and place them in the right context.
With the espect to the DB example. If i just watched the it for the first time, maybe it could be a nice exercise to go to the internet and google for some info about it. One may discover many other shows like that and may also find it being not so original in the first place.

continues

Still I want to point out that I’m not in the category of the people that thinks anime of old was better. I just trying to explain, from my personal experience, what I think is the reason people think like that.

Your point on moe is interesting. So far I thought it appealed to young children and teenagers (hello kitty type of attraction), but perhaps this also extends to an older audience (specially when you mix moe with fan service and lolicon tendencies). Anyways, my dislike of moe probably prevents me from understanding the psychology of those that like it.

However, from an egoistical point of view, this evolution is fine for me. I’m not getting any younger, so I’m all for more shows targeted to older people (the mature variant, not the moe one).

As for the otaku share of the market, I would be curious to know to how much it amounts. Any idea? I mean, if more than 20% of sales do not concern casual viewers but is the product of otaku’s purchases, it’s obvious this is going to firmly orient the market.

The crisis of economic stagnation and population issue hit Japan hard even before the 2008 meltdown in USA. Literally, Japan is running out of kids if the population did not reverse the demographic pattern soon ( 1.07: 1 ratio birth versus death, ideally should be 2:1 ratio).

Moe shows trend started when more and more 30-40s age otaku category who can’t seem to grow up began to buy into the moe trend which it is hard to miss by the studios. Simply, there is not enough kids for studios to make more children orientated anime profitably. The industry now hinges on aging otaku population to survive and these guys were mostly unmarried or unable to connect to people in normal manner due to social dysfunction in Japan. Not helping when more and more Japanese females were not interested to marry.

I also agree with the comment that there are way too many shitty niche genre shows (moe, harem, fan-service, and many others)because the powers-that-be have decided that it’s easier to make a niche anime and sell xxxx number of DVDs to the otaku who love that genre than to try and make a anime that would reach a large TV general audience and get paid making a popular TV show.

I think that sometimes some of us older more experienced anime fans can come off arrogant and condescending to the younger generation of fans when we really don’t mean to, it’s a matter of experience vs the exuberance of a fairly new fan of anime. I had a friend from back in my fansub/anime club days that at one time owned over 13,000 anime VHS-LDs-DVDs so his grasp of anime genre history and overall anime knowledge could come off as arrogance.

It’s purely 100% cultural. The actual contents of the show are no worse or more unoriginal than they ever have been, and are arguably MORE diverse and unique - you, and the rest of the English-speaking world, just have a lot more to compare it to now.

-Tom

one thing I dislike in today anime is their shell out their best story/animation etc… in the first couple episode.( you basically “doom” if make otherwise ) back then this wasn’t the case. least amount competition back is one factor.

But I think that is only normal, the more you watch movies, watch tv series, read books, read manga and comic, watch anime. You start getting how the stories are made and what happens after such scenes, with time it gets more difficult to be surprised. I think the conclusion is self explanatory, you start thinking “back then things were better” when in truth you should be thinking “back then things felt more surprising to me”. But that applies to EVERYTHING, not only to anime, it’s life.

The conversation that psgels has posted sounded to me like animes with good story, depth, originality, creativity, less moe, less fan services are the ones being rated as great shows, while the opposite are seen as bad ones.

But where else do you find “moe” or “fanservice” if not other than in animes itself. I dont think you will be allowed to direct movies that has teengers panty shots or other sorts. I dont think they should be seen has bad shows, or shows that are hardly worth the time.

It may be true that the adults would prefer deeper, better story-telling animes but i think that there are still a lot of people who actually really love the fanservice and “moe” shows.

Lets not forget that anime has a huge market out there and manga artists need to earn the money after all, some more so than the others so i think its bad to assume that bad artists = produce shallow , loads of fanservice animes.

I enjoy all the genres of anime. Sometimes i prefer the shallow ones because you dont need to pay so much attention to every dialogue that each character is saying.

And to answer psgels question, i dont think we can expect anime to stay the same as it was. like lets say 70s or 80s or 90s. It may be true that there are more harems, adaptations but i think there are still at least 5 good ( in this case the deeper, better story telling more character studies ) every year so i am completely happy with the way anime is right now :)

“As someone above said, the challenge any self respecting anime studio that wants to produce quality anime (in all aspects conceivable), is doing so while remaining profitable, so they need to find the talent capable of successfully balancing the elements for both purposes.”

And, perhaps more importantly, those studios need to allow said talent to work by giving them enough breathing room, which is a risk in and of itself. The balance is going to be affected by many factors and circumstances.

There’s really a lot that can go wrong, regardless of who is directing or writing a show at any given time.

You can bring together a team full of people with a certain amount of proven artistic skill and yet they won’t get that balance just right if commercial demands and requirements aren’t met.

What good is a product that gets some critical recognition but ends up costing more than the profits are able to give back? For the fans it will be a blessing, but for the company it’s going to be a headache if sales targets are not met.

Or you can let those commercial demands and requirements become the priority, to the point of affecting the work of the team and thus their efforts will not be as creative as they could have been.

Then again, you could argue that the profits from the more commercial shows allow the more creative ones to exist in the first place, since a failure can be funded by a success. At least in theory, since that much seems to be a problem when there’s not enough money to go around.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. I wish more studios would have the guts to try to explore new grounds, cause, as it is often the case, the higher the risk, the higher the reward can be, and so, it is also an opportunity for success and leaping ahead in the industry.

The answer to that question is of course subjective, and depends on what you think constitutes good art.

It’s fair to say that nowadays there are more creative, experimental ideas than there ever was –even if examples of the opposite abound–, but I see a valid reason for posing the question when you notice the recent trends that tend to reward moe-fanservice and other mix of rather unoriginal shows in sales.

As someone above said, the challenge any self respecting anime studio that wants to produce quality anime (in all aspects conceivable), is doing so while remaining profitable, so they need to find the talent capable of successfully balancing the elements for both purposes.

Creativity and innovation will undoubtedly get their rewards, as they will always draw attention whenever other types of shows become standard and thus boring.

Personally, I’m a little pessimistic about there being another GITS:SAC or LOGH in the future, maybe all that’s need is one great series like those to enlighten the masses that currently drift to generic shows.

Perhaps there could be a combination of market appeal and quality content, which some have said Gainax is good at finding, certainly a good moe show is preferable to a bad one, right? :p