[HN Gopher] Anime is eating the world
___________________________________________________________________
Anime is eating the world
Author : vishnurnair
Score : 95 points
Date : 2024-09-23 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (a16z.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (a16z.com)
| earnesti wrote:
| I watched it when I was younger, and read some comics. I don't
| really know why, because it always felt like shoddy garbage. Now
| the idea of spending time with some anime feels repulsive.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| So much of it is written for <21s.
|
| Exceptions exist, but the average level of plot /
| characterization / dialog is terrible by adult standards.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Funny you say that, when probably some of the most memorable
| plot/characterization/dialog I experienced I could find in
| what can be considered anime.
|
| Maybe I am just juvenile in my tastes. I just can't find a
| western series (and nowadays not even movies) that does the
| same for me.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The Wire?
| api wrote:
| I too have never been able to get into it. The aesthetic just
| does nothing for me. Not sure why, just not my thing.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Some of the technique is really impressive to me, it's
| basically an entirely different visual tradition. Especially
| the way motion and sound are depicted in manga I find just
| totally fascinating. It's so creative and effective at
| portraying these dynamic elements in a static form.
|
| Unfortunately still I've never really found any that worked
| for me as complete works of art for all the common reasons.
| Bad dialog and plotting, off-putting tropes, juvenile subject
| matter etc.
| dmonitor wrote:
| Try Chainsaw Man. The first ~100 chapters make up the first
| "arc" of the series and it is incredibly well done. The
| story starts to meander and the art seems more rushed in
| the second arc (currently ongoing), but the art of the
| first arc alone makes it well worth a read.
|
| Dungeon Meshi is also really good from beginning to end.
| Especially if you like D&D inspired material. It has a
| clever take on fantasy settings and avoids the more
| annoying anime tropes.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Drop the zero (the most popular shonen manga) get with the
| hero (the works of Taiyo Matsumoto).
| haunter wrote:
| >The aesthetic just does nothing for me
|
| Like what? This is like saying the aesthetics of Hollywood
| films just does nothing for me. Which can be Forrest Gump and
| the Avengers Endgame too
| renox wrote:
| It's exactly like other media (TV, movies, books), most of it
| is uninteresting but from time to time there's a jewel.
| labster wrote:
| Congrats on becoming an elitist.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| I never got the hype either. I tried watching Attack on Titan
| and it feels like it's aimed at young adults. All the
| characters just state out loud exactly how they're feeling
| about everything. The setting is interesting but I just can't
| take any of it seriously when the dialog is so childish.
| kombine wrote:
| > All the characters just state out loud exactly how they're
| feeling about everything.
|
| Yeah, this is one thing that I didn't like about AoT,
| especially in the first 4-5 episodes. Later I accepted it as
| its characteristic style, I think its strengths greatly
| overweigh this particular aspect. And, there is much more
| depth to the characters than the childish dialogs lead you to
| believe.
| latexr wrote:
| > I tried watching Attack on Titan and it feels like it's
| aimed at young adults.
|
| It's aimed at children, that's what shonen anime is. The word
| literally means "boy". For something of an older demographic,
| you'll want to search seinen. Consider "Monster", which is
| something that could've been a western show for adults.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_(manga)
| jarule wrote:
| _I watched it when I was younger_
|
| Yeah, it hits different when you start at 35.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Unsurprising considering how a lot of other media has become
| nothing but an endless series of big budget, overly "safe" or
| overly ideologically motivated remakes/adaptations.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Produced by the same 5-6 companies regurgitating the same
| stories and content I've already experienced and telling me I'm
| wrong for preferring the original.
|
| I've been into anime for over a decade and for fans of
| animation, it's a wealth of unique stories and characters
| tailored to any demographic. Like action, romance, slice of
| life, etc., there are stories for you most with unique voices
| from artists and creators doing it out of passion rather than
| just another writing gig.
| scandox wrote:
| Sound of goose slaughtering knives being sharpened...
| gloryjulio wrote:
| At the end the day, the successful ip solely depends the talent
| of the author. An army of marvel machines is not gonna produce
| attack on titan written and drawn(with some help) by a single
| person.
|
| Another example is one punch man. The source material is just
| some draft uploaded by some random guy.
|
| Nothing can topple the talent yet
| npinsker wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly it.
|
| Also makes me think a16z's games division may struggle to
| find a hit... generally the people who are hyper-focused on
| producing great work aren't also looking to make the next
| billion-dollar empire.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| (1) a16z has a games division?
|
| (2) Mixed feelings about lumping all gacha games under the
| "anime" umbrella based on art style, especially when so many
| gachas are original properties (Genshin Impact et al) or spinoffs
| of non-gacha games (Fire Emblem Heroes, Pokemon Masters). I get
| why they're drawing the association, so maybe I'm just being a
| purist for no reason, but in my head it's only an anime if it's
| an animated show or movie!
|
| ETA: Or how some gacha series get popular enough to have bona
| fide anime spinoffs--I think both Fate and Granblue fall under
| that category?
| dragontamer wrote:
| Fate/SN was originally a porno before it became a non-prono
| anime before it became Fate/Grand Order.
|
| Fate/ is one of the weirdest meta-stories of all time. The
| evolution of that universe is utterly fascinating to me, more
| so than the actual story today.
|
| The gist is that Nasu always wanted to create a Comic book
| style shared universe, and that Nasu sees himself as a Stan Lee
| or George Lucas type who is in charge of a community of writers
| rather than just writing one singular plot.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Fate/ is one of the weirdest meta-stories of all time.
|
| That reminds me of a not-really-description I read once about
| Homestuck, basically saying that the many
| manifestations/spinoffs are too twisty to be worth
| explaining.
|
| BTW, this comment is not a request for clarification, I'm
| fine with my ignorance on the franchise itself.
| Zircom wrote:
| Calling FSN a porno because it has sex scenes is like calling
| Wolf of Wall Street a porno just because it has sex scenes.
| It's extremely reductive and entirely inaccurate. There's
| like literally 3 or 4 h-scenes in the entire novel, and
| collectively they all probably make up less than a few
| percent of the text/screentime.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I'm calling it a porno because said scenes have foreplay,
| climax and a full frontal nudity moneyshot.
|
| It's just 3 or 4 scenes. But they are clearly full on
| pornographic scenes. They are also completely irrelevant to
| the story and were removed from later adaptations.
|
| ---------
|
| I'm mildly convinced that Nasu started with the
| pornographic market so that his story would be the king-of-
| porn first, building up a niche within that sub community
| first. It's highly unusual for pornographic stories to
| receive the shear detail and writing effort that went into
| F/SN.
|
| Call it the Facebook strategy. Don't aim to be king of all
| the market, instead aim to be king of some sub-niche first.
| You can always pivot away later.
|
| But you are correct in that the level of detail and
| character development even in the original novel far
| exceeds that of any porno. But I argue that this fact was
| Nasus explicit strategy for growth.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| Read the second sentence on the Wikipedia page.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Fate went in the other direction, started as a visual novel and
| got some very popular anime adaptations, that led to the gacha
| game being made, which led to some of the especially popular
| parts of that game's stories being adapted into anime form.
| throwanem wrote:
| You're not the target audience of this blueprint for
| decontextualization into maximally fungible product.
|
| It's early days yet. Still plenty of time to get used to
| reminding yourself of that.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| 2 - I think it's a distinction worth making. Genshin Impact is
| not anime. That doesn't make it bad by any means, but it does
| mean that maybe what they're arguing isn't true. Anime is
| relatively strong now, but I don't think it is either at its
| peak of popularity (anecdotally, I see more people wearing
| demon slayer gear than I did bleach gear, but old school DBZ
| shirts are still most popular) nor at levels that can be
| described as "eating the world". Of course, the more vaguely
| East Asian styled cartoons you throw into a pile and squint at,
| the bigger it looks.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Similar reaction to seeing FF lumped in there. FF7 in
| particular might travel in some of the tropes, but I feel
| like it was pulled in to bolster the game side rather than
| being a true exemplar.
|
| On a semi-related note: A16Z, stay the hell away from Square
| Enix.
| codedokode wrote:
| That Chinese RPG game is not anime-based, but definitely
| anime-styled (probably to appeal to audience of anime viewers
| or maybe just because anime-styled characters look better
| than realistic ones).
| jsheard wrote:
| > a16z has a games division?
|
| They got into games during their Web3/Blockchain/Metaverse
| phase so you're forgiven for not noticing given that hype train
| went absolutely nowhere.
|
| Now they're all about AI being the next big thing in games,
| because of course they are.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| They're still pushing their Blockchain grifts and supporting
| political candidates who will look the other way.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Don't forget about Clubhouse
| grogenaut wrote:
| they do, they also keep emailing me and I never signed up for
| it. and they won't let me unsubscribe. it's wierd.
| B-Con wrote:
| Also the Gachas:
|
| - Arknights - Azur Lane - Kancolle
|
| Just off the top of my head.
|
| I share your mixed feelings. On the one hand, I like "anime" to
| refer to something very specific. I think the world is more
| confusing when terms evolve and redefine too much.
|
| But on the other hand, the Gacha games clearly owe a good deal
| of their success to the anime elements they copy-pasted, even
| if the core game mechanics are anime-indifferent.
|
| Over time, these lines will get blurred even more as the market
| maximizes where those elements can be incorporated. The art and
| story elements clearly have appeal, and they'll probably get
| incorporated into more and more into media that's not Japanese-
| produced TV shows.
|
| And when those non-animes get adapted into true animes because
| they're obviously such a clean fit, it feels like the
| similarity needs to be acknowledged with some a broad umbrella
| word to cover everything. Which might as well be the word
| "anime"...?
| Trasmatta wrote:
| While there seems to be a lot of money in anime, the animators
| themselves are still underpaid and highly overworked:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/business/japan-anime.html
|
| There are so many stories of the insane hours that animators in
| Japan have to deal with. Part of that is the "normal" toxic
| overwork culture in Japan, but animation seems to be one of the
| biggest perpetrators.
| Geezus_42 wrote:
| Because people care about and are invested in the art they
| make. It makes them easier to exploit "because they should feel
| privileged to have the job they want." People who work in
| creative industries all over the world face this issue.
| Onavo wrote:
| Video games industry software engineers are usually paid
| peanuts
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| This is exactly what the parent comment said.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Who gets to define whether someone is 'exploited' or not?
|
| There are artists who would rather be paid even less, but
| given more creative freedom and control over the final
| product, (deciding on dubs, script changes, etc...)
| Especially in anime production.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Exploitation = leveraging a neverending stream of young
| people interested in working in an industry, initially for
| unsustainable wages, by dangling the prospect of eventual
| liveable wages in front of them, death marching them, and
| then firing them and hiring the next crop of new grads
|
| Other industries do that, but at least they have the
| decency to compensate fresh hires decently. (E.g. law,
| management consulting)
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Studio MAPPA was effectively grinding down the souls of
| their artists during the production of Jujutsu Kaisen [0].
| The linked article is just one of many. The work conditions
| at MAPPA seem pretty unreasonable to me, so I'd consider
| them exploitative. These animators aren't being given any
| creative freedom either.
|
| [0] https://comicbook.com/anime/news/mappa-studios-
| animators-wor...
| gruez wrote:
| aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensating_differential
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Aka supply and demand.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| This is typical of "cool" jobs.
|
| A lot of people grow up as anime fans and want to work with it.
| With high supply comes lowered prices.
|
| Something similar happens in (cool) computer games programming
| compared to (dull) regular SWE jobs.
| ghaff wrote:
| It happens anywhere that people will basically work for free
| if they can. Even where you have guilds and unions that try
| to set a certain floor--e.g. with films in the US--it's only
| somewhat effective in that the floors are fairly low and
| people will still wait tables to try to get their big break.
| layer8 wrote:
| There is some parallel to CG artists around Hollywood, despite
| Hollywood making vastly more money than anime studios.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| That seems to always be the case, doesn't it?
|
| "While there seems to be a lot of money in X, the
| $people_providing_value are underpaid and highly overworked"
|
| They always let themselves get shafted.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| It's a spectrum though, and anime studios are on the very
| upper end.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| Is it me or this article is all over the place mixing together
| the manga industry, cartoon production in Japan and Korea and the
| style they use, ai companion (?), some style of games both in
| terms of what they look like and their gameplay and basically
| concluding nothing?
| bdndndndbve wrote:
| "This is currently a trendy aesthetic". Cool guys. You're like
| Tiger Beat but you have billions of dollars.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Cliches are eating the world, and a clicheed headline like this
| promises commoditization, not creativity. Yes I know who
| originated it.
|
| Also, there is absolutely no way that the involvement of venture
| capitalists is going to improve anime culture. [shigechi.gif]
| dragontamer wrote:
| It's because anime is multi-genre and sub-genres of anime cater
| to basically every demographic.
|
| Anime includes masterpieces like Spirited Away, trashy harem /
| male fantasies like Jobless Reincarnation, touching dramas like
| Anohana, female oriented romances like Fruitsbasket, literally
| pornography like... Erm... Well you know.
|
| Etc. etc. etc.
|
| It's not fair to compare one anime with another. It's not like
| cartoons in the USA that fall under the rough set of same humor
| or writers. Anime is much broader and thus has something for
| everyone
|
| And anime also has a lot that you'll hate. I personally hate
| recent male fantasy trends like Solo Leveling for example
| (despite enjoying Overlord, a male fantasy from yesteryear).
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Jobless Reincarnation is simultaneously trashy and also
| prestige drama. I feel like you could have picked almost any
| other harem show and been better off for your example lol
| Devorlon wrote:
| I think Jobless Reincarnation is a perfect example because of
| its paedophilic undertones if not outright being so.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Jobless Reincarnation has a lot of fucked-up trashy aspects
| to it, but it also explores how those things fuck people
| up, why and how, and goes deep into character development
| and a realistic depiction of what healing from trauma (and
| people who haven't healed from trauma) looks like.
|
| There are a lot of harem anime out there that do not do
| that type of deeper character work and function solely as
| male power-fantasies. See, for instance, _Tsukimitchi_ or
| _Rosario X Vampire_
|
| That was and still is my point
| dragontamer wrote:
| So people know: I've chosen a highly controversial anime on
| purpose to prove that there's anime some people hate and
| other anime people love.
|
| I personally couldn't get very far into Jobless
| Reincarnation. So I'm on the haters side. But in any case,
| the controversies of this anime are well known.
| Izkata wrote:
| I actually didn't know there was any controversy around
| it, but this:
|
| > I personally couldn't get very far into Jobless
| Reincarnation.
|
| explains your choice. Based on how other modern isekais
| typically go, it definitely starts out looking like this
| one is going to go down a similar route, but it really
| doesn't. The overall character development for the main
| character is about him figuring out how to relate to
| others and develop healthy relationships instead of the
| fixations and fears he started with.
| glandium wrote:
| The interesting thing about Jobless Reincarnation is
| that, even though the Anime was a late comer in the
| Isekai genre, the original work, the online novel, is
| actually a precursor if not the starting point of the
| current wave of Isekai works.
| dragontamer wrote:
| [delayed]
| claudiawerner wrote:
| 'Pedophilic undertones' doesn't relate to 'trashy' or
| 'harem', even if you read the anime that way. In fact, it
| can be extremely interesting to see something which is so
| rarely portrayed or discussed in fiction, even fiction for
| adults.
|
| The reality of child abuse is neither solved nor rebuked by
| depictions or explorations of psychology in adult fiction.
| mrsilencedogood wrote:
| I don't even know what this show is, but I can guarantee
| you any pedo-related stuff in there is highly unlikely to
| be for the purpose of "depictions or explorations of
| psychology".
|
| Come on, don't try to kid me. It's there for the same
| reason all the other seinen anime have a ton of
| borderline softcore porn tropes in them.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| I don't really know how to respond to the idea that the
| fact anime includes fanservice means it can't deal with
| sensitive topics at the same time.
| some_random wrote:
| Why is the fanservice sexualized children?
| claudiawerner wrote:
| In this case, it's not; but even if it were, does that
| limit the ability of a text to explore interesting
| themes? Why?
|
| I'd recommend reading deeper into the scholarly
| literature of sexual themes in anime and manga before
| assuming that fans necessarily interpret 'children' into
| the text. See:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639806
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > I feel like you could have picked almost any other harem
| show and been better off for your example
|
| agreed. redo of the healer or bastard would fit "trashy male
| power fantasy" a lot better.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I mean, yes I wanted a Trashy shown for my example. But I
| also wanted... A good show with merits.
|
| I was optimizing on controversy with this pick. Looks like
| it mostly worked given the conflicting viewpoints that have
| come up.
|
| There's very well written drama in Jobless Reincarnation.
| But it is also paired up with a literally panty worshipping
| (holy artifact of Roxy) panty-thief.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| It also can't be overlooked that the anime style is both highly
| flexible and also very easy to reproduce. Like I remember it
| being old hat to see books on "how to draw anime" when I was a
| kid, and anime didn't have nearly the presence it did in the
| west as it does now.
|
| I'm genuinely not trying to be a shithead or anything, it's
| just a style that lends itself well to industrialization and
| specialized tooling to speed up the process of creating. Unless
| you get into highly stylized executions, if you as a company
| just want to turn out a perfectly average and forgettable
| anime, you can do so at scale pretty easily, and the glut of
| artists looking for work means you don't have to pay a lot for
| the labor either.
|
| I have nothing against this but frankly as a creative it is
| slightly demoralizing to see just more and more consolidation
| and mechanization in industry. There's so little that feels
| genuinely creative anymore, and it feels like year over year
| the art people produce is crushed harder and harder into pre-
| made molds that do well on content algorithms.
|
| Maybe nobody else gives a shit.
| causal wrote:
| Right, this article is lumping together a bunch of different
| things that are maybe loosely related because of anime as a
| style.
|
| The unstated thesis might just be surprise that this once-nerdy
| stuff has become mainstream at all and therefore has investment
| potential that was heretofore unrecognized.
| decafninja wrote:
| Even the aesthetic/art style varies tremendously - i.e. even
| the "big eyes" thing so often correlated with anime art isn't
| universal either.
|
| Can you have "Western" anime? Some hardcore otakus scoff at the
| idea. If you made an animated version of Star Wars - is that
| anime? Is Avatar: The Last Airbender an anime?
|
| "Chinese anime" or "Korean anime"? Again, some would scoff at
| the idea. But what is all that Hoyoverse stuff? Or all those
| Korean webtoons (though that's really more comparable with
| manga - and the korean word "manhwa" uses the exact same
| Chinese characters as "manga").
| Izkata wrote:
| > If you made an animated version of Star Wars - is that
| anime?
|
| Rather than "if", here's two instances of that idea I know
| of:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Squad_Isekai
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Anime
|
| Edit: And it actually looks like some anime studios did get
| in on Star Wars:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Visions
| dragontamer wrote:
| ...
|
| Are you unaware of
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Visions
|
| ??
| Izkata wrote:
| I was unaware, I'm not really a fan of that franchise
| dragontamer wrote:
| Yeah. The anime community has a lot of debate on these
| things. I guess it makes sense that not everyone is on
| the same page with regards to the eternal flame wars /
| arguments here.
|
| Avatar, Star Wars, even Boondocks comes up.
|
| I think My Adventures with Superman was Korean at least,
| but stylistically it's close to anime.
|
| ---------
|
| The one people may have forgotten about is RWBY, which
| was the famous Texas Anime (erm... Texas made anime-
| inspired art?) that split so many people with debates on
| 'Anime or Not'.
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| "The famous Texas anime" is King of the Hill. People in
| Japan argue over whether watching it is better with subs
| or dubs. It's a slice of life anime in all but drawing
| style and origin.
| jwells89 wrote:
| > Can you have "Western" anime? Some hardcore otakus scoff at
| the idea.
|
| There's not really anything stopping creative individuals who
| aren't Japanese from producing anime. The thing that many
| attempts miss (and I suspect what makes hardcores bristle) is
| that they tend to miss the point in one way or another,
| resulting in a product that might have many of the outward
| characteristics but ultimately misses the mark.
|
| In my opinion Avatar is actually pretty close. I've seen
| clips from various animated productions from France that also
| seem to capture a similar spirit.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| > Can you have "Western" anime?
|
| I would definitely think that all the French-Japanese and
| Italo-Japanese coproductions of the 80s somehow qualify as
| western anime, yes. See for exemple _Ulysses 31_ and
| _Esteban: Child of the Sun_.
|
| Then you have things like _Radiant_ which a "manga" by a
| French artist in French which was turned into an anime by a
| Japanese studio.
|
| I guess there probably is animation made in the typically
| Japanese somewhere. I can't really help you there because I
| only read mangas and never watch adaptations (they are always
| strictly inferior to the material they adapt). So the only
| Japanese/Korean animation I watch is original content of
| which there is sadly very little.
| B-Con wrote:
| What I find the most interesting is that there is clearly
| something that makes anime stand out as being its own thing,
| distinct from the majority of other animated TV, but it's
| hard to put a finger on exactly what that attribute is and
| where to draw the line.
|
| The anime community has, for as long as I've been a part of
| it (13 years or so), decided that anime is "animation made in
| Japan". This heuristic has actually worked pretty well.
|
| But the lines are increasingly blurred.
|
| - Japanese produced shows are outsourcing some animation to
| China and Korea, and sometimes taking direct funding and
| story writing input from the USA.
|
| - Non-Japan produced shows are taking notes on what works,
| drawing on it for inspiration, and in rare recent cases even
| outsourcing animation directly to Japan.
|
| - There is a TON of money in gacha games, and the biggest
| "anime" titles some people may recognize are gacha games,
| butand the majority of those are run 100% by Chinese
| companies. Ironically, sometimes sending them over to Japan
| for the TV adaptation.
|
| Just like food: Italy may have "invented" pizza, but New York
| pizza is now its own thing.
| layer8 wrote:
| The Solo Leveling anime adapts a Korean Manhwa, so maybe not
| the best example here. Not that there is any shortage of male
| wish fulfilment in original Japanese works.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Shite, I wasn't expecting bad sentiment on Solo Levelling. I
| love games and this series touches me so differently. But
| unlike the parent comment, I have watched may be 4-5 anime
| series in total because I generally don't like anime, they
| look all same to me.
| dragontamer wrote:
| There's a lot of better trapped in a video game anime out
| there.
|
| Overlord does a better job with grimdark. I'm fond of Log
| Horizon though S3 sucked. Solo Leveling came out the same
| time as Weakest Tamer began a journey to pick up Trash, and
| that was delightful for me.
|
| I think the visceral stuck at the bottom of the ladder
| feeling was better handled by weakest tamer. A young girl
| who was forced to run away from home because her village
| considered her 0-star skill literally a heresy and
| religious blight.
|
| Unlike Solo Leveling, the Weakest Tamer actually sticks
| with the plot. She never becomes much more powerful than
| she was, and instead leverages her relationships / friends
| she makes rather than literally solo leveling.
|
| --------
|
| The Isekai / Reverse Isekai genre is literally animes
| biggest genre right now. There's so so so many better shows
| out there than Solo Leveling.
|
| But I guess the question is: what do you like about it?
| Solo Leveling is a passable male fantasy do-it-myself-by-
| plot-armor always win kind of show. But.... This plot
| honestly has been done better back by Sword Art Online (and
| I didn't even like that anime either).
|
| ------
|
| Jobless Reincarnation, despite all the controversy, is
| probably the local optimum on that 'Do it myself' / solo
| leveling / get stronger loop.
|
| Hmmmmm... I'd give either Reincarnated as a Slime or I'm a
| Spider, So What? As my top picks on this genre /
| storytelling style. For personal enjoyment. Maaayyyyybe
| Re:Zero if you're into the body horror stuff that Solo
| Leveling also does.
| fwip wrote:
| I loved all the spider bits of "So I'm a Spider, So
| What?" But every time they cut to the other half of the
| cast members it sucked so bad.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > Unlike Solo Leveling, the Weakest Tamer actually sticks
| with the plot. She never becomes much more powerful than
| she was, and instead leverages her relationships /
| friends she makes rather than literally solo leveling.
|
| But that's a different plot than Solo Leveling, and in
| particular, a female rather than male power fantasy.
| (Social control vs individual strength.)
|
| Your criticism that Solo Leveling isn't something it
| wasn't meant to be is strange.
| glandium wrote:
| Heck, it's even in the title that the story is about
| leveling.
| glandium wrote:
| Serious question, do Korean web comics count as Manhwa? I
| mean, the difference in media makes it a very different art
| form. (Although, in the case of Solo Leveling, it started as
| a web novel)
| layer8 wrote:
| At least the Wikipedia article counts them as such:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webtoon. Good point about the
| web novel, I have only passing familiarity with the
| franchise.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's true that Anime is a broad field, but the vast majority of
| works is heavily shaped by Japanese idiosyncrasies and themes,
| which also means that, barring singular exceptions, anime is
| not really something for everyone. Conversely, the non-Western
| storytelling, themes, and character/interaction stereotypes are
| what many are drawn to (but still only a small minority of the
| population). I therefore don't see it "eating the world" in the
| sense of becoming completely mainstream. It's arguably not even
| mainstream in Japan itself.
|
| However, to me this is a good thing, in terms of cultural
| diversity. Trying to adapt anime to more mainstream tastes in
| the name of global profit would do it a disservice.
| diob wrote:
| Saying it's not mainstream in Japan is a heck of a claim.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Anime is an important part of their culture.
| layer8 wrote:
| The majority of the Japanese population doesn't watch
| anime: https://unseen-japan.com/is-anime-popular-in-japan/
|
| And a large portion of those who do watch is due to a small
| number of very popular tentpole series. Most anime
| productions cater to a relatively niche nerd/geek audience.
| hnthrowaway6543 wrote:
| 32% of Japanese people watching anime is pretty damn
| mainstream. Marvel is indisputably some of the most
| mainstream US media in the past 20 years and yet "only"
| ~50% of the US population has seen a Marvel movie.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/807367/marvel-
| movie-view...
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm saying this in the context of the root comment claim
| that there is anime for everyone. Only a very few anime
| series are mainstream in the same sense that Marvel
| movies are mainstream. Continuing that analogy, most
| anime series are more akin to serialized superhero
| comics, which are only read by relatively few. Looking at
| the shape of the distribution here is important.
| RajT88 wrote:
| You do not have to have a majority of people consuming
| something to be considered mainstream.
|
| TFA quotes 31-32% of people (young and old) in Japan as
| anime watchers. That is very mainstream!
|
| Your argument is like trying to claim Metallica is not
| mainstream. Sure, most people do not listen to them, but
| _everyone_ has heard of them. I would wager back in the
| day less than 32% of people listened to Michael Jackson.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| You are mixing together under anime shows which are produced in
| Japan from manga or from light novels with shows produced in
| South Korea from manhwas. They don't have much in common. Even
| the art style is different. It's a bit like mixing together
| European comics and American ones. It doesn't make much sense.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| It's disgusting to claim that Western "Cartoons" fall under a
| "rough set of same humor or writers". It is just as varied, and
| frankly as good if not better than eastern Anime.
|
| You obviously didn't watch enough varied western cartoons. The
| following are just a small sample of different, highly varied
| western studios/artists.
|
| 1. Don Bluth
|
| 2. Hanna-Barbera
|
| 3. Pixar
|
| 4. Bill Kroyer
|
| 5. Ralph Bakshi
|
| 6. Mike Judge
|
| 7. Genndy Tartakovsky
|
| 8. Vivienne Medrano
|
| 9. Jerry Rees
| cyberax wrote:
| > It's disgusting to claim that Western "Cartoons" fall under
| a "rough set of same humor or writers".
|
| There's a grain of truth here. A huge grain. The US comics
| were long stunted by the Comics Code of 1954:
| http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/labeling/comics-code-1954
|
| It had been revised a bunch of times, but arguably it went
| away only in early 2000-s. Mostly because of the anime/manga
| influence.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority
| pferde wrote:
| Did that code even apply to cartoons? I thought it didn't.
| lioeters wrote:
| > Genndy Tartakovsky
|
| An artist with a unique vision and aesthetic. Samurai Jack is
| one of my favorites.
| deepzn wrote:
| Though the most popular anime by far around the world is
| shonen. Which caters to the typical male teen/pre-teen
| audience, but also adults and is typically characterized by
| action, typical underdog protagonist stereotypes of a loner,
| outcast, who develops a tight knit support group or team on
| their quest to overtake or defeat a great evil in the world.
|
| E.g. One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Attack on Titan, etc.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Everyone likes a good retelling of "A Hero's Journey".
|
| That's why properties like Star Wars rose to prominence as
| well:
|
| > underdog protagonist stereotypes of a loner, outcast, who
| develops a tight knit support group or team on their quest to
| overtake or defeat a great evil in the world
| vunderba wrote:
| _" It's not like cartoons in the USA that fall under the rough
| set of same humor or writers"_
|
| Such a hysterically bad take that it calls into question your
| entire point.
|
| Quick list of cartoons that have an incredible variety, both in
| terms of animation quality, sophistication of humor, and target
| demographic:
|
| - Steven universe
|
| - Bojack Horseman
|
| - adventure time
|
| - helluva boss
|
| - Invincible
|
| And this is just within the last decade. Want me to go farther
| back?
|
| - Animaniacs (the original series)
|
| - Spaceghost Coast to Coast
|
| - Justice League
|
| - Ugly Americans
|
| I'm also excluding for the most part animated comedies, such as
| Futurama, South Park, the entire Adult Swim lineup of the late
| 90s / early 2000s.
| bawolff wrote:
| I'm not sure i agree. Yes there are exceptions, but they tend
| to be few and far between, and fairly niche themselves.
|
| Most american animation seems to be: stuff aimed at young
| children (pixar type shows), super hero adjacent stuff, or
| adult commedy (like south park). A few exceptions here and
| there but on the whole there just isn't that much variety.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Are you talking about made for TV animation or others? I
| would suggest animated feature films such as The Secret of
| Kells, A Scanner Darkly, or even Waking Life and Heavy
| Metal to see that this is not entirely the case.
| bawolff wrote:
| I liked a scanner darkly and think it was a great use of
| the medium. However it was made close to 2 decades ago.
|
| That's kind of my point though. There are exceptions (for
| a recent example i really liked "undone"), they just tend
| to be few and far between.
| vunderba wrote:
| I can pull the same thing with anime - the vast majority
| pumped out are either:
|
| - slice of life
|
| - isekai
|
| - shonen
|
| Here's a few more: (not super hero, not necessarily geared
| towards children, and not comedy)
|
| - Owl House
|
| - Pantheon
|
| - Infinity Train
|
| - Final Space
|
| - Castlevania
|
| I think you're simply less well versed in the variety of
| western animation. There's also not nearly as much _MONEY_
| in western animation, so of course there 's less of it.
| cyberax wrote:
| I've not grown up in the US, and I know only about Bojack.
| And even that from a few memes I've seen.
|
| Around 20 years ago, I tried watching a few US cartoons and
| comics to get better acquainted with the culture, but they
| were all pretty bad.
| vunderba wrote:
| Bojack deals with very heavy themes (depression, self
| destructive behavior, etc) in a scatological and satirical
| manner.
|
| Without listing specific cartoons that you watched, it's
| hard to know where you "went wrong". Part of it might have
| been a culture gap - pop culture heavy cartoons wouldn't
| really appeal to somebody who didn't grow up in the US.
|
| This could have just as easily happened to you if you'd
| moved to Japan and been exposed to shows like:
|
| - Failure Frame (PARALYZE POISON PARALYZE POISON LOOK
| LISTEN LOOK LOOK) - if you get this joke, you get it.
|
| - Faraway Paladin (devolves into some of the cheapest flash
| animation YTMND level I've ever seen)
|
| - Diabolik lovers (...)
|
| Conversely there's a lot of good anime out there as well:
|
| - Cowboy Bebop
|
| - Mob Pyscho 100
|
| - Hells Paradise
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| You are underestimating the sheer amount of Anime produced
| every year. You probably get as much variety in a single year
| as a decade of western animation.
| throw18376 wrote:
| outside of the actual pornography, more and more of anime is
| just emotional pornography for people with attachment troubles.
|
| it can be a great art form. even some of the emotional
| pornography can have artistic merit (recently: Frieren). but
| increasingly, despite diversity in genre and visual
| presentation, all anime just tries to push the same emotional
| buttons of loneliness, belonging, connection, in a very heavy-
| handed way that is more about provoking the emotions in the
| body than about artistic expression.
|
| not everyone has those buttons, which is why anime fans are a
| devoted minority, and why it seems like lonely, traumatized,
| and marginalized people are drawn to it.
| B-Con wrote:
| Mass-produced media always recycles the same thematic
| stories.
|
| Western cartoons aimed at kids recycled the "power of being
| yourself" to death. Ask my tweens about the shows they've
| watched, and they'll pick apart how repetitive the story
| beats are between them.
|
| The beats that anime is recycling may be different, but all
| of them get tiresome and feel pandering.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Exactly. Anime is really a medium, not a genre.
| maxglute wrote:
| There's something to be said about Waifu lists transcending
| anime genres / subgenres. I would say compared to 70s-90s anime
| landscape, stylisitically anime / east asian animation has
| converged a lot. At least mainstream stuff - we've nearly
| reached peak moe, there's still seasonable optimizations /
| stylistic tweaks here and there - but IMO it's fair to suggest
| convergence in waifu/husbando aesthetic has driven and is
| driving a lot of growth, and it's fair to put everything under
| umbrella for extrapolating market trends. I feel animes'
| ability to make fans horny and the increasing culture around
| anime fandom (now) unabashedly wanking over their
| affection/fondness over random constructed characters across
| genres is... potent.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I like that about Anime. I think part of my it and Manga have
| such a broad spectrum is because it is relatively cheap to
| produce - meaning the companies bankrolling production are less
| risk averse, and as a result lots more weird ideas get to be
| tried.
|
| You do not have to watch too much of it to get the sense that
| writers are just going nuts tossing stuff against the wall and
| seeing what sticks. Endless remixing of ideas from what came
| before, and outside influences.
|
| Example: Legend of Black Heaven, which featured a middle aged
| retired rockstar guitar player working as a software engineer,
| who is tracked down by aliens to get him to use his guitar
| playing as a weapon in an intergalactic war. Sure, why not? Is
| it good? Debatable. Have you seen anything like it before?
| Unlikely.
| simianparrot wrote:
| I have a feeling the industry will sink a lot deeper a lot faster
| now that a16z has got their eyes on this goose, salivating at the
| thought of squeezing ""value"" out of what remains of it.
|
| RIP.
| chomp wrote:
| I thought the same thing as soon as they wrote the statement
| about the value of the market being $50B. That private equity
| is remarking on its market size means they are definitely
| sizing up how to squeeze it. A16z has no shame and it shows
| here.
| xattt wrote:
| Given that certain portion of the anime fan crowd is somewhat
| socially vulnerable, a private equity firm stepping into this
| space will no doubt create some predatory scenarios.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Ya, my first reaction was I'm not taking advice from a16z on
| what's "eating the world".
| dogleash wrote:
| >salivating at the thought of squeezing ""value"" out of what
| remains of it
|
| I'm amused at their assumption that they can squeeze tighter
| than the currently existing notoriously abusive segment of the
| market.
|
| Also, the way they talk about exploiting parasocail
| relationships, I'm assuming their next big announcement will be
| funding a startup that is a call center to handle texting on
| behalf of onlyfans creators.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| New Dragonball-level animation budgets?
|
| Which is to say, a few dollars over $0?
| postsantum wrote:
| I can see the globohomo corporate memphis images being replaced
| with globohomo anime characters
| science4sail wrote:
| Maybe if you live in an Anglophone country. In East Asian
| countries, anime-style corporate mascots are everywhere!
| phatfish wrote:
| That sentence required a lot of Googling.
| lioeters wrote:
| > Used to sarcastically denote the predominant philosophy
| espoused by the Western economic elite, formally known as
| "neoliberalism". It combines ruthless capitalism by
| transnational corporations with a facade of socially-
| liberal politics.
|
| > The ultimate end state of Globohomo is one in which all
| sexual, ethnic, racial and national identity is broken
| down, leaving the demoralized masses to work for $12 an
| hour in an Amazon warehouse while a small cadre of
| billionaires rule over them.
| chrishare wrote:
| Right. Between crypto shilling and this, A16Z is about
| extracting profit, and not about principled value creation or
| problem solving.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| 2 of their listed categories are also shamelessly AI focused,
| so you can really see them lining up the investor-catnip.
|
| Would be nice if VC's would go destroy something of theirs for
| once, and leave everyone else out of it.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| I doubt it. Anime is popular because people like it. A16z is
| incapable of producing something people like.
| mdni007 wrote:
| The quality of anime has already started to decline especially
| after Sony and other greedy companies started getting their hands
| on animation studios.
| bbqfog wrote:
| There's a lot of great anime being produced today. Have you
| watched Vinland Saga or Chainsaw Man?
| leotravis10 wrote:
| Also buying out streaming players such as Crunchyroll.
| world2vec wrote:
| Anime quality has been on a steep decline. It's all isekai stuff
| these days and gacha is a disgusting mechanic no different from
| slot machines at the casinos. This article left me with a bad
| taste in my mouth.
| bbqfog wrote:
| No doubt that it would be best for fans if a16z stayed far away
| from anime, but you're wrong about quality declining. There's a
| ton of great stuff from recent times: Vinland Saga, Ranking of
| Kings, Chainsaw Man, Dr. Stone...
|
| There's always been trash anime, but it feels like there's some
| very original work being produced.
| leotravis10 wrote:
| No question, especially when you have only two major players
| distributing most anime in Sony and Netflix.
|
| I enjoyed the good old days from the 1980s to the 2000s when it
| was actually more creative and good quality not to mention that
| there were more competition at that time period.
| rootsudo wrote:
| 100% this. I'm glad I'm not the only one. The article is
| definetely written for someone that is not in the hobby and
| looking for a place to park money for more enshitification of a
| platform that already was, pretty much unrecognizable from a
| decade ago.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Well, if this will get them off of crypto BS, I'm all for it.
| par wrote:
| yeah but we don't want the crypto bs guys shifting their
| attention to anime.
| FinalDestiny wrote:
| I think this is directly related to https://anime.com - a new
| product from the Azuki team (NFT collection)
|
| It was announced about a week ago. Surprised no one mentioned
| it yet.
| msp26 wrote:
| It's a breath of fresh air watching anime adaptations that
| actually love and respect the original author's work like dungeon
| meshi.
|
| Meanwhile western fantasy adaptations seem to be full of arrogant
| showrunners that think their vision is better: wheel of time, the
| Witcher, House of the dragon (to an extent). George RR Martin
| even publicly criticised HBO for this recently.
| coolbreezetft24 wrote:
| I loved the first two seasons of Wheel of Time (and also loved
| the books growing up) - what is wrong with it?
|
| Never read The Witcher or played the games but also really
| enjoyed the netflix series
| adamkittelson wrote:
| If you find that you like something that most people don't
| it's generally best to just leave it alone and be happy you
| enjoyed it. If you try to delve into why so many people don't
| like the thing you like then either they will manage to
| convince you the thing you like is actually bad, which
| doesn't benefit you, or you'll start to question whether or
| not your taste in media is bad, which doesn't benefit you.
| coolbreezetft24 wrote:
| I guess I disagree with the premise that most people
| dislike those two things, which seem quite popular and were
| well-received
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Most people who watched it enjoyed it. Jordan fans were
| big on it (at least from what I saw at JordanCon and
| WoTCon). Will people not like certain things, sure. The
| issue is that YouTubers will complain about anything
| these days and rage videos get more traction, so it's
| easier to pile on, and people who wouldn't watch it
| complain about how bad it is.
|
| I wouldn't put to much weight on someone not liking
| something. After all, either they haven't watched it all,
| or they are watching something they don't like. And
| that's not someone's taste I trust.
| dota_fanatic wrote:
| One can enjoy the show as a kind of trashy fanfiction
| while still finding it terribly unfaithful to the
| original story and characters. We're only two seasons in
| and massive changes have been made that invalidate
| character arcs in the original, so I expect we'll
| continue to see greater and greater divergence in plot
| points.
|
| Having said that, what do you think of people like GRRM
| (wrt House of the Dragon) and Brandon Sanderson
| critiquing these adaptations? Your last paragraph seems
| to imply there's no value to someone dislike something.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > I wouldn't put to much weight on someone not liking
| something. After all, either they haven't watched it all,
| or they are watching something they don't like. And
| that's not someone's taste I trust.
|
| That's some very "heads I win, tails you lose" logic
| right there.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| WoT was very much not well received by fans, mainly
| because it is so disrespectful to the source material
| that you would think the showrunner actively hates it.
| You asked for specifics, so:
|
| * Rand and Egwene's relationship going from "they like
| each other but are kind of hesitant" to "sneaking away to
| have sex in the woods". Not only is this completely
| unnecessary, it's completely at odds with the moral
| values of Two Rivers culture for them to be doing that.
|
| * Perrin being married (WTF), and then killing his wife
| by accident (WTF squared). In the books Perrin is _very
| careful_ to not accidentally hurt people as he is
| conscious of his strength.
|
| * In general, trying to change the Two Rivers to have the
| diversity of modern day NYC. A region so far off the
| beaten path that even their _de jure queen_ doesn 't
| remember they exist is simply not going to have a broad
| selection of races. This isn't as big of a sin as the
| character changes, but it's also _completely free_ to
| have this bit of worldbuilding via character casting.
| There is no good reason whatsoever to give it up.
|
| * Generally changing relationships in ways that just
| aren't supported by the books. Like, Siuan and Moiraine
| aren't in a sexual relationship at that point in the
| story so it's idiotic to depict them as such.
|
| * Trying to act as though the Dragon could be any of the
| Emond's Field kids is against the very metaphysical
| foundations of the WoT universe. The Dragon could _only_
| be a boy, and Moiraine would _know_ this damn well. And
| while we 're at it, Moiraine had no idea that there were
| ta'veren in the Two Rivers at all, certainly not more
| than one, unlike what the show claims.
|
| * Aging up Min severely _and_ making her a Darkfriend.
| Just WTF.
|
| * At one point Nynaeve _heals death_ , which is again
| completely impossible in this universe.
|
| * The damane costumes... so bad it's laughable. What on
| earth were they thinking? How could they get it so wrong?
| How you go from collars (in the books) to _ball gags_ in
| the show is utterly beyond my ability to even imagine.
|
| Those are the main things I can think of, and that's just
| season 1. I didn't even bother trying to hate read about
| season 2 after how bad season 1 was, but from what I
| heard it wasn't better (like apparently Rand bangs
| Lanfear, which he _absolutely would never do_ ). I
| understand that adaptations need to change things. But
| the changes they made to WoT aren't necessary, and often
| make the story _worse_ than what Jordan wrote.
|
| It all shows a grave disrespect for the source material,
| contrary to the staff's claims that they love the books
| so much (bullshit). As far as I can tell, Rafe didn't
| want to do an adaptation of Jordan's story, he wanted to
| tell his own story. Which is fine, but then _tell your
| own fucking story_ , don't take a massive dump all over
| someone else's work which many people love.
| msp26 wrote:
| I'm surprised to hear that. I've genuinely never held so much
| disdain for a TV show (season 1) in my life. But when season
| 2 hit I was too apathetic to even bother watching.
|
| They made so many changes (mostly shit) that it was hard to
| even see it as an adaptation. The official statement (mental
| gymnastics) was that it's "another turning of the wheel".
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > I'm surprised to hear that
|
| In the fandom, it's fairly well received. JordanCon/WoTCon
| had everyone loving it. Sure, some people might not like
| it, but the majority of people who watched it loved it.
|
| Martin's criticism of HoD is silly considering he still
| hasn't stuck the landing on his original series, and I
| imagine is holding back because people didn't like his
| resolution and is now stuck. Regardless, lots of people
| love these things. That you don't is fine. Not everything
| needs to be for you.
|
| I didn't like Witcher 3. Overrated lame open world with
| boring stories and poor combat. Never finished it. So I had
| zero interest with any of the Witcher shows. But I also
| realize that a lot of people love it. I'm happy those
| people have something they enjoy.
| dota_fanatic wrote:
| What makes you think ".. had everyone loving it" and "the
| majority of people who watched it loved it"? Was there a
| study done? I don't know either way, and am genuinely
| curious what that distribution looks like. I suspect
| nobody knows the answer but you seem confident in your
| assertion.
|
| As an aside, I imagine the commenter you're replying to
| will find "That you don't [love these things] is fine.
| Not everything needs to be for you." to be patronizing.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > In the fandom, it's fairly well received.
|
| No it isn't. On Reddit, people are extremely critical of
| the show. And outside of Reddit, I literally do not know
| one fan of WoT who actually enjoyed that monstrosity.
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| The Witcher books are great. A refreshing take on fantasy
| from an entirely different set of folklore, and the English
| translation was done so well that you can't even tell.
|
| I also played the games (which take place after the books)
| and loved them - although despite having a great story, the
| first game was really rough. Witcher 3 is in my top 10 games
| of all time, and it rewards you for playing all three by
| letting you carry over your saves and seeing your impact on
| the world. I hear they're remaking the first game as well as
| a fourth, so there's a lot to look forward to there.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Right. And anime tends to stick very closely to the manga which
| inspired it, because, commercially, it's often a vehicle
| designed to increase the sales of that manga.
|
| Take Dungeon Meshi, for instance: The anime only covered about
| half of the material of the manga. So if you liked the show and
| you want to know how the story ends, you've got to pick up the
| books. If the showrunners changed important plot points,
| finishing the story might not be so easy...
|
| The Dungeon Meshi anime probably made some money on its own
| account, but there are a lot of marginal anime series that
| aren't really designed to make money, but are intended to
| increase awareness/sales of various manga properties.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Dunmeshi's getting a second season--hopefully enough ground
| to cover the rest of the series :)
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| The anime following manga orthodoxy is a relatively recent
| thing, especially compared to earlier 90's adaptations.
| Compare Sailor Moon, Helsing, etc, where they deviated so far
| that both of them got subsequent "re-do" animes that tried to
| more explicitly follow the manga.
|
| I would argue that reinterpretations/taking liberties aren't
| always a bad thing. I went back and watched the Jojo's
| Bizarre Adventure OVA from the 90's that compressed/deviated
| the Stardust Crusaders arc considerably, especially compared
| to the more recent anime, which follows the manga panels to a
| 't'. I would argue the OVA holds up _very_ well and makes
| some necessary edits for the sake of the pacing. Plus, the
| OVA staff clearly did their research, because OVA Egypt feels
| _way_ more authentic than anime Egypt (which looked like your
| stereotypical mishmash of Middle East /India).
| phatfish wrote:
| Fullmetal Alchemist and the redo Fullmetal Alchemist:
| Brotherhood is the one I'm familiar with. Also the "filler"
| episodes from Naruto.
|
| It seems like mega series with 200+ episodes where fillers
| are needed aren't getting made now? Demon Slayer is only on
| 63 for example.
| t-3 wrote:
| It's even more than anime following manga - it's anime
| following manga following light novels. The vast majority
| of new anime were first successful novels and manga before
| getting an anime adaptation. The pathological and deeply
| systemic aversion to risk is extremely obvious. This is
| also why so many series are extremely generic - the same
| tropes and tired character archetypes, the same storyline
| that's been done 1000x - writing webnovels is a huge
| industry in east Asia, and the dynamics are very similar to
| print-magazine/newspaper periodicals but even more so.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Watched a few episodes of dunmeshi before binge-reading the
| manga, and I was surprised/impressed that the anime is
| essentially a shot-for-shot recreation of the manga. I assume
| they used manga panels as the storyboards, which speaks to how
| good Ryoko Kui is at visual framing, timing beats for action
| sequences and jokes, etc.
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| that's the source of some cheesy anime cliches like having
| every character react and say something while an arrow is
| still mid-flight - in a manga it makes sense but when
| animating it makes it feel slow (looking at you Saint Seya)
| dale_glass wrote:
| That's extremely common, it's been happening for ages. You
| can see it in things like Naruto, too.
|
| That's because they made it at a rate of an episode per week,
| and in parallel with the source material. That doesn't give
| time for anything very fancy, so it's mostly a panel by panel
| adaptation. Plus some filler in the mix, because a chapter
| usually doesn't have enough meat in it to last a whole
| episode. It's often 2 chapters per episode or so.
|
| And that's why the slow pacing and the awful fillers.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| That's because the gap between comic books and animation is one
| of the smallest between mediums. Not that it doesn't take
| creativity to adapt a manga into anime, but there is a template
| for a very faithful adaptation that is available to you.
|
| If you're turning a prose novel into a tv show, you have to
| basically create everything from scratch. You can set it in the
| world of the novel and basically follow the plot, but the
| pacing is impossible to translate directly, and you don't have
| any of the visuals.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >be full of arrogant showrunners that think their vision is
| better
|
| Most just want to have their own take on whatever they're
| adapting and I think that's preferable because whether good or
| bad, at the very least they're adding something new.
|
| The nostalgia and fanbase driven reproduction of the same stuff
| over and over adds nothing, it's just fanservice. If I want The
| Witcher the game I can just play the actual game, if I want
| GRRM I should read his books. Adaptions in which authors take
| liberties have much more potential to be interesting. King
| famously hated Kubrick's The Shining, Garland took a lot of
| liberties with Annihilation and Starship Troopers was straight
| up subversion and satire of the book and Heinlein's worldview.
|
| Given that we're in the age of maximally non-offensive Disney
| and comic book adaptions that just refuse to die and with so
| few genuinely novel media out there to begin with, I'm in favor
| of people at least taking some risks with adaptions.
| jwells89 wrote:
| The biggest issue with divergent adaptations in my opinion is
| that there aren't many that are middling or on par with the
| original. They tend to either be good, uplifting the source
| material into something greater, or not well thought out and
| somewhere between bad and awful, and it's easier to fall in
| the latter of those two buckets than the former.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| But if you wan to have your own vision, why don't you just
| create your own world to do that in?
|
| If I took Fahrenheit 451 and adapt the story so that the
| state executes Guy Montag because my vision is that hate
| speech is dangerous, it's not Fahrenheit 451 anymore.
|
| Take the most recent Dune movies as an example; In the books,
| Paul spends so much time becoming Fremen and trying to resist
| the prophecy as well as endlessly worrying about a space
| jihad, only taking the water of life when he was not able to
| predict that Gurney would try and kill his mother.
|
| In the new vision "Let the Jihad begin!"
|
| The first is the story of a reluctant hero who is trying to
| keep his family alive and cherish the love of the desert
| people who adopted him.
|
| The second portrays a mother and son who scheme to use those
| around them to further their end goal of power and revenge.
|
| If I enjoy eating Oreo cookies and I buy an ice cream that is
| labeled "Oreo Ice Cream" but when I taste it, it is
| Strawberry Jam flavor, I am not going to be writing a review
| that praises the product designer for their bold vision. I
| will be taking the product back for a refund.
| bawolff wrote:
| > The second portrays a mother and son who scheme to use
| those around them to further their end goal of power and
| revenge.
|
| That was present in the books at times as well.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| > it's not Fahrenheit 451 anymore.
|
| What it is, is _your relationship to the story_ and that 's
| really what an adaption is about. A good adaption I think
| always shows you what someone feels in regards to the
| original work, it's a response to or a dialog with the
| original and that can include any emotion you have towards
| it. Artistically you don't really owe Fahrenheit anything,
| that's the sort of "fandom" mentality that I think is
| pretty misplaced and immature in art, but popular now
| because everything has fans and followers.
|
| I agree with your observation about Dune but I think it's
| quite smart. Villeneuve has basically rewritten Chani
| entirely and shows us the story from her point of view,
| starting and ending the two movies with her deliberately.
| It's a critical outside view on Paul unlike the book in
| many ways, and I think that just reflects Villeneuve's
| perspective. (and also coincidentally Herbert's actual
| intent for Paul, it will hopefully spare people the awkward
| monologues from the second book)
|
| Deep Space 9 is another example of this right, there's the
| die-hard fan mentality of "It goes against everything ST is
| about!", but ultimately it makes the universe much more
| interesting and compelling because it gives you another
| perspective from another point in time from someone who
| didn't quite buy into the utopianism and just expressed
| that.
| jeffchien wrote:
| Anime has had no shortage of adaptations disrespectful of the
| original. Most of the time it's due to not having enough source
| material like HBO GoT, which somehow sent Fullmetal Alchemist
| to 1920s Germany in the first adaptation's movie. But sometimes
| you get people like Bokurano's director who straight up said he
| hated the manga.
| clearleaf wrote:
| This has to be an AI generated article. It doesn't take 1/10th
| this much gobbledygook to announce you'll try injecting AI into
| anime and pray that money comes out somehow. Crap on crap on
| crap.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I'm finding myself pulled towards anime after being exhausted
| from CGI and terrible/reused set design. Live action shows are so
| boring and plain these days, everything looks the same with
| slightly different costumes. Nothing is really engaging visually,
| and the storylines seem to be held back by what they can do
| visually/"within their budget" for a lot shows.
| dmonitor wrote:
| I think the manga format is really effective at letting new
| stories reach audiences. US media companies need to realize
| that funding authors/artists to test run their new stories as
| cheap comics and increasing funding to the 1/20 that gain
| traction is a great way to incubate the new talent that the
| industry desperately needs.
|
| American comic books are incredibly stagnant and have been so
| for the past 20 years. Not a single new character with any
| cultural relevancy (besides reboots of old characters) has been
| made in the last 20-odd years. Meanwhile, series like Attack on
| Titan, Chainsaw Man, and Jujutsu Kaisen have become million
| dollar global franchises in the last decade. The manga => anime
| => cultural zeitgeist pipeline has produced tons of recent
| compelling series.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| What I like from manga is that there's usually a single
| author who envisions the whole story, there could be a small
| team of assistants and an editor to help but the story
| belongs to a person alone. Not a team of people writting a
| story by committee.
| oDot wrote:
| I spend most of my time writing and researching live-action
| anime, and I can say that for it to really blow up, there needs
| to be a paradigm shift.
|
| Currently many of the efforts are trying to fit a peg into a
| square by either "westernizing" the content, as done in
| Hollywood, or completely jumping the shark as with most Japanese
| releases. Both only make for a less palatabl result.
|
| Instead, a selective "offset" approach should be taken. I
| illustrate this briefly in a YouTube mini-essay:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WiyqBHNNSlo
|
| It is also how I write my IP:
|
| https://www.weedonandscott.com/narrative/keepers-of-alteria
|
| And it's how I assess exiting IPs for adaptation.
|
| Until current stakeholders shake the current models out of their
| system, this field is leaving a lot of creative output (and
| profits) on the table.
| da02 wrote:
| Is this your day-job? That's impressive. Did you cry on the
| travesty of Netflix Cowboy Bebop?
| oDot wrote:
| No, not quite my day job yet.
|
| I have stopped watching the live-action Cowboy Bebop after
| about 5 minutes, so much of it was spared.
|
| The same production company (Tomorrow Studios) is currently
| making the live action One Piece, which, ironically, could be
| more detrimental to live-action anime than Cowboy Bebop was.
|
| The reason is that even though the live-action One Piece is
| not something I'd consider live-action _anime_, it's actually
| quite good and is definitely well received, which may cause
| producers to adopt its formula, and stop researching
| alternative adaptation paths.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > travesty of Netflix Cowboy Bebop
|
| Ugh. I just... it was so... ugh.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| > I spend most of my time writing and researching live-action
| anime
|
| What do you mean by live-action anime? This reads to me as
| contradiction in terms. Anime is a term of art for CJK
| animation, especially Japanese animation.
| oDot wrote:
| Live-action anime is an oxymoron commonly used to describe
| live-action film or TV series based on anime or manga, or
| having similar style to them.
|
| The term is not well-defined.
|
| You could say it applies to Ghost in the Shell, because it is
| based on existing IP of the genre.
|
| You could stretch it to include The Matrix, which is an
| original IP but employs a lot of the style
|
| Edge of Tomorrow, even though based on a Japanese light
| novel, has deviated enough both in plot and style for the
| term not to apply
| aspenmayer wrote:
| That's interesting. Is this phrasing used by others or is
| it your own? I haven't ever heard it before. As an
| anime/manga fan, it seems confusing and slightly grating.
| It feels similar to intentionally wrong or "not even wrong"
| engagement bait.
|
| The closest thing I can think of that I myself could
| describe that way would be Alita: Battle Angel, due to the
| big eyes/small mouth style of Alita, but I would never
| actually call it live action anime, but rather, a live
| action anime _adaptation_.
|
| Maybe this is related to modern speech patterns? The
| closest thing I can think of is "it's giving x" which seems
| to me to be a shortened version of related phrase "it's
| giving x vibes."
|
| On a related note, The Matrix actually has an animated
| spinoff The Animatrix, which has segments that are arguably
| anime, as they are produced by Japanese creators in a
| typical style.
|
| However, I find that the phrase live-action anime perhaps
| says more about the person saying it and their perspective
| than it says about the content being described as such.
| oDot wrote:
| I could see why this rubs you the wrong way.
|
| I have never thought of its origins before, but I'd
| assume it's a short hand for "live-action anime
| adaptation". Maybe this makes it more palatable for you?
|
| As for Animatrix, yes -- it really went full circle,
| considering how they pitched the original feature:
|
| > When Larry and Andy Wachowski were pitching The Matrix
| to their producers, they played them a DVD of an
| 82-minute Japanese cartoon and said: "We wanna do that
| for real."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/oct/19/hollywood-
| ghost...
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I think it's mostly me. In another comment you mentioned
| the live--action Netflix One Piece adaptation as live
| action anime, and I think that description actually felt
| somewhat apropos in that specific case, due to the
| adaptation employing lots of CGI and special effects to
| ape the style and mannerisms of the anime.
|
| I think finding the term live action anime slightly off
| is my own issue, as I also find the term Japanimation
| also slightly grating. It probably has something to do
| with being a fan of a historically somewhat
| mocked/maligned subculture.
| thefz wrote:
| Might be an US thing, I don't think I talked to anyone watching
| anime in the past IDK, 20 years? Besides kids watching dragon
| ball at the TV after lunch, if that counts as anime.
|
| I can't even tell a modern title or an author.
| bbqfog wrote:
| Demon Slayer is incredibly popular with younger people.
| decafninja wrote:
| Could certainly be a US thing, but I've found the tech crowd
| and the anime otaku crowd to overlap a lot. Ditto for science
| fiction.
| codedokode wrote:
| Also in screenshots from underground hacker forums in the
| news the users who leak databases or hack something often
| have anime-styled kind-looking avatar which creates a
| contrast with post content.
| rauljordan2020 wrote:
| Opposite experience. Here in the US, I've heard a lot more
| people watching anime than when I was a kid. Especially modern
| ones such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, etc.
| decafninja wrote:
| Same. Being into anime (and gaming, and RPGs, and sci-fi,
| etc.) marked you as an outcast nerd when I was a kid.
|
| Nowadays, most of it is nearly mainstream. Granted there is
| still some weirdness like grown 40yo men obsessed with
| schoolgirl harem anime...
| Dweller1622 wrote:
| Take a guess at what they might have been into when they
| were kids!
| kaashif wrote:
| I think the only way to get a real picture here would be
| doing surveys and finding out quantitatively.
|
| I also don't watch anime and don't know anyone who does
| really.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Same here in the UK. Not a single sniff of anything anime at
| all in my day to day life, but I am bombarded by all sorts of
| other shite (Marvel and other comic-based movies etc) on
| billboards and the like. I've never seen it pushed to the top
| on any of the UK streaming services.
|
| I know nothing of anime nor manga, apart from recognising the
| style. Never watched it - looks like kid stuff TBH.
| acheong08 wrote:
| I think a lot of anime watchers hide it.
|
| > looks like kid stuff TBH.
|
| Especially when this is the attitude held by most of the
| older generation.
| daedrdev wrote:
| The US and France are the highest consumers of Anime content
| from what I recall
| GaggiX wrote:
| How old are you? Because people talk about it all the time.
| wormlord wrote:
| I know that this is a website for startups, but looking at art
| that people enjoy and put their soul into and thinking "how can I
| extract profit from this" I think is actually close to a mental
| illness.
|
| I understand that commodification is inevitable (and yes anime is
| already a soulless business), but goddamn if it doesn't look like
| some form of neurosis. It's like walking into an old growth
| forest and seeing the potential for a toothpick factory.
| gruez wrote:
| To a first approximation, "extract profit from this" means
| providing goods/services that people are willing to pay money
| for. If people are willing to pay for more anime content,
| companions, vtubers, and streaming sites, why is it a "mental
| illness" to provide that?
|
| >It's like walking into an old growth forest and seeing the
| potential for a toothpick factory.
|
| At least for old growth forests you could argue that it's
| mispriced because it's providing biodiversity/carbon
| sequestration which can't be sold on the market. Meanwhile the
| benefits provided by anime accrue solely to its consumers.
| What's the problem with getting them to pay for it?
| jjulius wrote:
| >To a first approximation, "extract profit from this" means
| providing goods/services that people are willing to pay money
| for.
|
| This is too generous, particularly with regards to a16z
| coming into an already existing market. In reality, it's more
| akin to taking something that already exists in a form that
| people enjoy and are already willing to pay for, and both
| bastardizing and cannibalizing it into something of lesser
| quality just so that you can have additional excuses to
| charge more money for things that you never used to charge
| money for before.
|
| "Nice thing you have there, be a shame if we fucked it up so
| that we could make more money off of it," is a mental
| illness.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| To put it another way, it's taking surplus value that was
| previously going to either the producers or consumers of
| the product and funneling it to Silicon Valley VCs instead.
| lioeters wrote:
| This is a main driver of the enshittification of society,
| people who are net negative being in the middle of all
| interpersonal transactions, seeking every opportunity to
| exploit and extract value. As another comment mentioned,
| the self-styled "elite" ruling class is mostly made up of
| sociopaths who are excellent at being parasites.
| anomaly_ wrote:
| It takes two parties for a transaction to work. Basically,
| you're railing against free markets and the free exchange
| of ideas/money/work/etc.
| jjulius wrote:
| This is a black and white perspective, while the world
| happens to be quite nuanced.
| phs318u wrote:
| You're assuming that the other party in this transaction
| is rational. If there's one thing that should be obvious
| to all by now it's that humans as consumers can be
| incredibly irrational to the point where entire
| industries have flourished by gaming this irrationality
| for the aforementioned purpose of squeezing even greater
| profits.
| robbiewxyz wrote:
| > "extract profit from this" means providing goods/services
| that people are willing to pay money for
|
| This is definitely not accurate: a functioning market drives
| profits toward zero. Therefore "extract profit" is always
| synonymous with "break the market" i.e. monopolize through
| regulatory capture, trade secrets, network effects,
| proprietary protocols, or whatever else.
|
| To quote Mr Thiel [to a venture capitalist, at least]
| "monopoly is the condition of every successful business".
|
| Fwiw it might be fair to say extracting revenue means
| providing something people are willing to pay for. Not profit
| though.
| teachrdan wrote:
| Your comment made me think of a blog written by Marc Andreessen
| at the beginning of Covid.
|
| >It's time for full-throated, unapologetic, uncompromised
| political support from the right for aggressive investment in
| new products, in new industries, in new factories, in new
| science, in big leaps forward.
|
| He writes from the perspective of, "How are we having so many
| shortages during this global pandemic? We used to BUILD things,
| goddammit!" And now, fewer than 5 years later, a16z says:
|
| > Yet, _we believe that anime is just getting started - today,
| new technologies and business models are accelerating a once
| niche industry to even greater heights._
|
| To the extent that anyone in power in tech claims to believe in
| the greater good, they are full of shit, a16z very much
| included. It's fun for CEOs and VCs to make grand proclamations
| about what's wrong in the world. But at the end of the day,
| they only care about making money.
|
| Or maybe anime is one of those "new industries" Marc Andreessen
| said he was so excited about?
|
| https://a16z.com/its-time-to-build/
| codingdave wrote:
| You may be right, but it is hardly unique to either startups or
| to anime. The fine art world is full of artists who put their
| soul into their work, and galleries who try to profit from it.
| In an ideal world, both sides get value from working together
| despite being at odds philosophically, but in reality there is
| certainly some misalignment of incentives.
| jajko wrote:
| Look at the top world leaders, so called captains of business.
| Cold stone heartless sociopaths, every single one of them.
| Jobs, Gates, Musk, Bezos, Schmidt and so on and on.
|
| For a second imagine what environment they went through, what
| battles they had to fight _for decades_ and keep being on top.
| You can 't be a normal balanced person with good friendly
| personality and achieve any of that. Even if you start at
| absolutely stellar lucky place, you will end up as say Stallman
| (respect to that guy, but you can see life path vs Jobs
| difference mainly due to character).
|
| The fact that such people are celebrated and imitated and there
| is a lot of strive to replicate their success path is normal.
| Why - as per J. Peterson (topic on its own, but his
| psychological stuff I still respect) there is cca 1:20
| sociopaths and 1:100 psychopaths in general population. Do the
| numbers, they are not nice but then you can understand whats
| happening in this world and politics much better. HN isn't
| representative of general population, that ratio is much worse
| although smart folks like that know when to be quiet and just
| watch/read.
|
| I am not trying to scorn those folks, at their best they do
| move whole society further, and we desperately need that now.
| But they are overall not good people, sort of necessary evil
| IMHO.
| disqard wrote:
| HHGG-style, like how our planet was summarized as "Mostly
| Harmless", your comment is a pithy summary of CEOs:
| "necessary evil".
| NoCoooode wrote:
| That's what I found so dystopian about web3. It seemed they
| were trying to financialize everything, declaring they were
| making payments frictionless while inserting themselves into
| every new financial stream they were trying to create.
|
| As for a16z, andreeson's 30k word moronic Randian rant speaks
| for itself. People obsessed with optimization should not be
| involved in public policy.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > People obsessed with optimization should not be involved in
| public policy.
|
| I mean, they should. It would be cool if we could optimize
| public policy. Optimize means make as effective as possible,
| right? They should just not be so laser-focused on one metric
| that they're blind to the side effects created by optimizing
| for it.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| That's why I like things like the PICO-8 "fantasy console".
| People making games just for the heck of it, with no objective
| of a paycheck.
|
| If you make a good one you could always port it and sell it
| later (Celeste), but that's kinda beside the point.
| asdf123qweasd wrote:
| The most important part about anime is- with computer assisted
| tooling, its cheaper to make - cheaper to make means less
| oversight by creative handicaps like financeer gremiums, means
| artists get a shot earlier, instead a few making it to the honey
| pots. Thus more artists, who want a shot try the medium instead
| of waiting for there day in the sun in some cooperate mausoleum.
|
| Tl,DR; All of culture is constantly fleeing the curse of the MBAs
| - the destroyers of all things good with the Middas touch.
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| If you're new to anime, it's hard to figure out where to start.
|
| If you're able to tolerate some more intense themes, Fullmetal
| Alchemist Brotherhood is widely regarded as one of the best anime
| ever created, and rightly so.
| vundercind wrote:
| Like a lot of things, I think it can also be hard to remember
| how much effort it took to get into it.
|
| Most anime's pretty off-putting if you don't know how to "read"
| it--you have to get used to all three of: quirks of the medium
| (e.g. how emotions are expressed visually, confused Engrish
| intro songs); cultural differences between your culture and
| Japan's; and a pile of tropes that are very common in anime but
| less common elsewhere, which you can use as a way to understand
| the genre of what you're watching and how it's supposed to be
| read.
|
| It's why Cowboy Bebop is such a popular gateway anime: Ed aside
| (and even there, only sometimes) there's minimal reliance on
| alien-to-Westerners visual expression, the genre is entirely
| familiar and uses familiar tropes and archetypes, and it's
| culturally hardly any more Japanese than Blade Runner. (Plus, I
| mean, it's good--but so are a bunch of others that _do not_
| work well as gateway anime)
| maxglute wrote:
| I was expecting report to acknowledge "AI Waifus / Husbandos" at
| some point, nevermind first point. Whatever the artistic merit of
| anime, it's nice to see analysis that acknowledges anime
| popularity is simply driven by sheer horniess by both genders.
| IMO functionally PG13 softer softcore pornography.
| adamwong246 wrote:
| While elevated Anime does exist, it by-and-large deserves it's
| reputation as pulp. It was cheap to produce by humans, and even
| cheaper to produce by machines, but the kids simply can't get
| enough of it. I am slightly terrified at the thought that should
| the matrix ever come to pass, it will appear as a endless tide of
| cat-girl avatars.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Something has happened with western television where it's like
| everyone is angry all the time and can never come together to
| solve a problem without arguing about it for half a season first.
|
| I find it incredibly exhausting to watch. Anime can be a nice
| refuge from that, as can older tv-shows from before this was a
| thing.
| jwells89 wrote:
| That cynical bent you mention along with a takeover of
| dark/gritty aesthetic, with both being positioned as more
| "realistic" or "mature" and thus preferable has made western TV
| somewhat exhausting to me too.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah, don't know how mature it actually is though, given how
| everyone acts like a self centered teenager now more than
| ever ;-)
|
| I think the transition to streaming is also an exaserbating
| factor, since it's less important to resolve events the same
| episode, characters can now hold much longer grudges.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Yep, that's why I included those quotemarks. I don't think
| that behavior or gritty aesthetic is actually mature, but
| there's a popular conception that it is for reasons that
| are unclear to me.
|
| My best guess is that the overarching emotional climate
| biases what people consider "realistic" or "mature", and
| since the mid-to-late 2000s it's been pushing that
| perception in a more cynical direction.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I mostly think it's bad writing. You can make mature,
| gritty tv-shows without the protagonist running to their
| room and slamming the door very hard when they don't get
| what they want, but the problem is that this is much
| harder.
|
| Breaking Bad is a solid example that gets it right.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| The "iyashikei" subgenre is specially nice for that. I'd really
| like to see what a western tv take on iyashikei would look
| like.
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| I've recently gotten much more into anime, and I feel that I love
| it because I love fantasy. There just aren't that many western
| fantasy shows that are nearly as good as Frieren or FMAB.
| hyggetrold wrote:
| _> AI is deepening the previously parasocial relationships we had
| with our favorite anime characters from passive linear media,
| into powerful new, interactive relationships._
|
| I truly can't believe they had the gall to publish this article.
| The more of the article I read the more I felt like I was reading
| their strategy for preying on the weak and unfortunate.
| adamwong246 wrote:
| You are right to be horrified but what is the use in
| maintaining the pretense that we are not strip-mining our
| citizens of their attention?
| Vegenoid wrote:
| It is truly shameless - and they are this shameless because
| they can be, and may even be rewarded for it. AI "companions",
| if left unchecked, will be as harmful as addictive drugs,
| enabling companies to suck everything from some people.
| imiric wrote:
| But that future is coming regardless if VCs bet on it or not.
|
| I'm not defending the article and agree with you that it's
| despicable, but the only thing successful VC firms know how
| to do is to bet on companies that will make them money. It's
| clear that a future where AI companions exist is coming, and
| it will be a huge industry, so it's only logical that they
| would latch on to it and promote it in the only way they know
| how.
|
| As for AI companions themselves, sure. They will be addicting
| and harmful, but technology is already that. Yet loneliness
| is a worldwide epidemic, and I reckon that AI has the
| potential to also improve the quality of life for many
| people. This in turn will lead us to even lower birth rates,
| but that seems inescapable as well. The next 50 years will be
| interesting, to say the least.
| papashell wrote:
| > AI is deepening the parasocial relationships
|
| Fixed.
| latexr wrote:
| And they called it " _our_ favourite anime characters", as if
| we're supposed to believe the blood-sucking money-addicted
| pariahs at a16z are fans.
|
| The whole article reads like a book report from Steve Buscemi's
| "how do you do, fellow kids" character, with a few choice
| phrases from a "most popular anime quotes" buzzfeed article. I
| cringed.
|
| It is unsurprising that both "contributors" have "web3" listed
| as one of their focus.
| pupppet wrote:
| I watch a lot of anime but I'd be surprised if we don't see a
| crash similar to the video game crash of '83. There is a ton of
| garbage being cranked out right now.
| Wuzado wrote:
| Holy hell, this is such a depressing, dehumanized, out-of-touch
| article--especially regarding the fascination with AI in the
| field of, admit it or not, art. The article even makes mistakes
| in the most basic factual areas, such as calling light novels
| "visual novels." It's deeply saddening.
|
| For a more positive outlook on the animation industry, check out
| "Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!"--an incredibly creative love
| letter to the joy and passion of creating art through the lens of
| animation.
| dvh wrote:
| After 2+ decades of watching anime I was struggling to find
| something that would interest me, I thought I got tired of it.
|
| But then I made a scatter chart of my ratings of all 200+ anime I
| watched vs MAL rating and I found literally ZERO correlation! The
| MAL rating means nothing for my anime tastes. So now I start
| watching random anime starting from episode 1 and if I hate it I
| drop it, no bad feelings, if I don't love it by episode 3 I drop
| it as well. There are over 17000 anime. And finally I was able to
| find good anime again that I truly enjoy watching, easily 10*. I
| don't even read ratings or reviews beforehand as there is no
| correlation for me. Just pick random anime and watch.
| t-3 wrote:
| There's a lot of good stuff from China - Mo Dao Zu Shi,
| Thousand Autumns, Fairies Album, All Saints Street, Forty
| Millenniums of Cultivation, Fog Hill of Five Elements, Psychic
| Princess, Fei Ren Zai, Fabulous Beasts, No Choice but to Betray
| Earth, etc. There is of course a lot of mediocre and garbage
| stuff as well, but the tropes are far less annoying and thanks
| to Chinese censorship there's far less pandering and it's much
| more tasteful on average than Japanese anime.
| legitster wrote:
| The traits that define anime all trace back to post-WWII creative
| innovations intended to work around limited budgets and
| resources. So pound-for-pound you can maximize the amount of
| "hit" you get from stories, characters, emotions, etc. And by its
| nature its cheap and fast to make.
|
| It's the ultimate form of mass-produced entertainment for the age
| of cheap, binge-able content. "Quantity has a quality all of it's
| own".
| hintymad wrote:
| Following this, the next one that "eats the world" could be web
| novels (https://www.webnovel.com/). If I'm not mistaken, the
| trend was started by the Chinese authors. Chinese companies
| created those hyper competitive yet super lucrative platforms for
| the authors. Over the past 20 years, the authors truly evolved
| through generations of competition. They may lack of deep skills
| in writing world classics, but they certainly have mastered the
| art of creating captive stories with vast scale and scope. They
| also invented more genres than I can care about. Some of the
| stories were so intriguing that some readers on web novel
| resorted to Google translate to read the untranslated version --
| something that I can't fathom. And it looks western authors have
| slowly picked up the trend, so I'm hopeful that we will see a lot
| more authors coming up with amazing stories.
| titanomachy wrote:
| "AI is deepening the previously parasocial relationships we had
| with our favorite anime characters from passive linear media,
| into powerful new, interactive relationships"
|
| One thing that troubles me about this is the idea of a human
| having [what they feel is a] deep, meaningful relationship with
| what ultimately is a bit of code and conversation history owned
| by a for-profit corporation. They might even experience [what
| they interpret as] romantic love towards this construct. This
| could give the controlling corporation unbelievable leverage over
| that person, even worse than casinos or cigarette companies,
| because AI companions aren't as fungible as these other highly-
| optimized dopamine delivery systems.
|
| Of course, Blade Runner 2049 explored this well.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| How do you go about directing / producing your own anime or
| animated series anyway? I have stories within me that scream out
| to be brought into this world.
|
| I've watched a lot of anime and western cartoons and feel like
| the bar isn't that high. I'm pretty confident I could write and
| direct something that's competitive with most of what's currently
| being produced. At a minimum, just making a solid show that
| doesn't abuse common tropes while including a strong story and
| art direction seems like it would put you miles ahead of most
| existing anime; see for example: Frieren. Frieren avoids common
| anime tropes and is happy to explore the setting while giving the
| characters room to breathe; this was enough to propel the series
| to the top of every anime rating website.
|
| Even evaluating top-tier producers like Studio Ghibli, despite
| being able to create S-tier art and animations, I think they no
| longer have any stories worth telling which they haven't already
| presented in some form or another. It's like they continue
| producing movies because the studio has to do something, but
| there's no strong driving force to guide them. Modern Studio
| Ghibli movies aren't driven by a burning passion from the
| director's soul to be summoned into this world.
| zhizdev wrote:
| I am trying to produce an anime / webtoon with an AI assisted
| studio. Would love to chat more about your stories that scream
| to be brought into the world! (X @zhizdev)
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The best story telling in anime doesn't come from anything
| close to Ghibli - at least not modern Ghibli.
|
| If you want high concept, good, unique stories, it's going to
| take you to some much more indie sutff. Serial Experiments
| Lain, The Tatami Galaxy, Perfect Blue (and everything that
| director made), Ghost in the Shell (the first movie), Akira,
| and a bunch of other weird 80s/90s anime films you likely
| wouldn't even consider.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > Perfect Blue
|
| I saw it recommended somewhere. Had no idea I was in store
| for a legit psychological thriller.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| What a timely observation of this phenomenon that definitely
| didn't happen twenty years ago. Now that they've discovered
| anime, I wonder if they're going to start investing in other
| current crazes like Y2K compliance or maybe this hot new "world
| wide web" thing I keep hearing about.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| So many things are wrong with this article but I'll start with
| Haruhi Suzumiya being a 'light novel' (a novel printed in large
| text as if for seniors with a few illustrations) as opposed to a
| 'visual novel' (something you would make with
| https://www.renpy.org/)
|
| It is hard to know because financials aren't public but it's not
| clear to me that Crunchyroll has really addressed the commercial
| problems anime had in western markets. In the VHS era there was a
| fight over subtitles vs dubs which was acute because you could
| not put multiple content tracks on the media, in the DVD age you
| could.
|
| More fundamentally, dubs cost a lot of money in comparison with
| subs and were always terrible until the people who made those
| terrible dubs gained experience and some of them got good.
| (Though they do their best work for game publishers like Idea
| Factory and ATLUS who care.) At the time people though subs had a
| limited market but now subprime anime (and sometimes good anime)
| gets shoveled onto Tubi and people watch it --- today we're in
| the habit of watching movies with subtitles because you can't
| make out the dialog on half of the new Hollywood movies anyway.
|
| Since crunchyroll is in the vainglorious subscription racket I
| can only assume they're as profitable as Netflix, Disney Plus,
| Peacock, etc.
|
| The article touches on but doesn't really stress how it is very
| rare for an anime to start out as an anime ( _Precure?_ ) but
| rather it is the way you know you made it if you made a manga,
| light novel, visual novel, video game, etc. The economics are
| brutal and nobody is going to invest in it if the story,
| characters and settings haven't been market tested. Of course
| this leads to problems like you can find out how the anime you
| like ends if it you look at the source material.
| skybrian wrote:
| If that's an error, Wikipedia has it too:
|
| > Haruhi Suzumiya (Japanese: Liang Gong haruhi, Hepburn:
| Suzumiya Haruhi) is a Japanese light novel series written by
| Nagaru Tanigawa and illustrated by Noizi Ito.
|
| Also:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Haruhi_Suzumiya_light_...
|
| But apparently there's a Manga version too?
|
| Never read it. Is it any good?
| Izkata wrote:
| A common pattern is light novel -> manga adaptation -> anime
| adaptation. From the first few release dates on the sidebar
| of the main page, it looks like this one followed that
| pattern (with lots of spinoffs and sequels).
| julianeon wrote:
| I wouldn't group anime with Roblox, at all. Roblox has 10
| thousand different themes and game worlds, and a small fraction
| of them reflect anime, but that's not particularly interesting.
| bawolff wrote:
| I think part of the reason, is a lot of western media has become
| very safe, and thus stale and repetitive.
|
| Western (live action) movies are sequel after sequel of
| predictable plots. Western animation is relegated almost
| exclusively to children (and ocassionally raunchy adult comedy).
| The formula is stale, so other media is taking its place.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I have limited time with my existing responsibilities, but with
| what little time I do have, I love investing it into a good movie
| or TV show. I don't mean whatever "binge-worthy" show is on the
| top 10 of Netflix. I like character development, good pacing,
| non-standard plots, etc. It's pretty much the opposite of what
| has come out in the West over the last five years.
|
| So, I started investing more into anime, and I have had zero
| regrets. Sure, there's plenty of low-quality near-pornographic
| trash, but I've found far more diamonds in the rough than I was
| initially expecting.
|
| Let me give a recent example: Kotaro Lives Alone. It's a story
| about a four-year-old who lives alone due to some extenuating
| circumstances I won't cover for the sake of spoilers. It's funny,
| heart-warming, cry-inducing, and overall, extremely entertaining
| for an otherwise outrageous plot. I've found dozens of gems like
| this in the past five years, and a lot of them are "recent"
| enough to give me hope that the Japanese haven't forgotten the
| art of making quality media.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| Yeah it has been since the late 1990's/early 2000's. Audiences
| appreciate high concept and escalation of premise even if the
| themes and storytelling aren't amazing.
| par wrote:
| Honestly I feel a16z as a 'tech vc' firm is just getting weird
| now. It's like they're trying to be the de facto flag bearer for
| like weird crypto otaku types. And I say this as someone who has
| loved anime since the 90s, I don't think I want a16z getting
| their mits into my special interests. To see them talking about
| 'waifus' is just weird.
| squidsoup wrote:
| Anime seems to have a quality problem. Other than Miyazaki and
| Satoshi Kon's work, I can't say there's much that has resonated
| with me. Evangelion was interesting, but that was almost thirty
| years ago!
| GaggiX wrote:
| Do you actually remember the TV season of Evangelion?
| Especially the last episodes seem they have finished the
| budget. I'm sure the films are better, but I still have to
| watch them.
| squidsoup wrote:
| I thought the ambiguous ending was interesting and thought
| provoking, even if it may have been the result of budgeting
| issues, but I do recall they tied up the loose ends in the
| movies.
| GaggiX wrote:
| I think it's quite easy to find anime that are better than
| the TV season of Evangelion, if you like it.
| squidsoup wrote:
| Open to recommendations!
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| It's getting like no love... but Blue Eye Samauri on Netflix was
| really something fucking else.
|
| SO hates animation things usually and really liked it.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I've always liked memes and anime for their entertainment. Though
| I've always cringed when people feel the need to try to bring
| them into their work or work life.
| manicennui wrote:
| I mean this as unkindly as possible: please stay the fuck out of
| anime.
| drbig wrote:
| "Please, keep _these_ people away from art and culture. Isn't
| blockchain AI enough already?"
|
| Well, of course it isn't! They ain't vampires - these just need
| blood an power, and also are completely fictional.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Anime today isn't what it was a decade or two ago. While tastes
| and styles change, and I accept that, what this article defines
| as anime isn't anime in any traditional sense.
|
| The article claims:
|
| "Anime is where the future of creation and play is happening--
| whether through mobile games, fanfiction, roleplaying, or AI
| interactions. We believe anime will become a dominant format for
| content engagement."
|
| But is this really "anime"? In my opinion, no. Vtubing and AI
| tools aren't anime.
|
| The article describes a fan's journey as starting with popular
| IPs like _Attack on Titan_ or _One Piece_ , then moving into
| deeper social engagement with UGC, VTubing, and cosplay. They
| argue anime has evolved from passive to interactive.
|
| This shift, however, feels like a corporate "anime-as-a-service"
| model, exploiting aesthetics rather than preserving the original
| spirit of anime before the 2010s.
|
| And of course, the 2010s anime is nothing compared to the 00s
| which, really felt like the height of anime with fansub
| communities and then The 90s where the community really started
| cosplaying and trading by VHS tapes while being blinded by the
| futurism of Japan.
|
| This article really paints a dim future to what brought me joy
| and what pulled me into IT/Tech/NetSec/Programming and I couldn't
| even get out of the first few paragraphs before I wrote all this.
|
| But I'm flabbergasted. Anime as a service is here.
| codedokode wrote:
| My own observations in my country:
|
| - in recent year or two, saw lot of people in the streets wearing
| clothes with Japanese words. Saw such clothes in stores. I
| thought initially that they were fans of Japanese culture, but it
| seems that it is just a fashion trend and they probably cannot
| even read them.
|
| - when entering a bookstore or a school supplies store, there are
| notebooks and sketchbooks and other goods with anime-style
| characters, translations of novels. Novels are now even in some
| supermarkets. Again, it started recently.
|
| - that anime-styled Chinese RPG game is somewhat popular among
| young people, and when reading laptop reviews there are comments
| like "Will (anime-styled Chinese game) run on this?"
|
| - I am not sure if we can count anime-styled avatars on social
| media because I don't remember if they were always widespread or
| only recently
|
| Hope these trends will continue. I wonder is it our local
| (Russian) trend or something global?
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| It's Time to Destroy
| AndyKelley wrote:
| As an anime enthusiast, seeing this breakdown from a powerful VC
| is depressing. How about you go play your capitalism game
| somewhere else. I'm sure my dishwasher can be made even worse
| than it already is by adding AI features to it. Anime is great
| precisely because it's mainly driven by artists with a creative
| vision, not by hyenas scavenging for rotting meat.
|
| Ew. I really hate this.
|
| I'll go back to studying my WaniKani flash cards for the day and
| hope that I forget that I read this by the end of it.
| johnea wrote:
| I've been a major fan of anime for decades. Including starting to
| study Japanese at age 50 (not recommended).
|
| I could care less about the game spinoffs, or the vtubers, but I
| do hope we can get beyond the current plot trend of "living in an
| imaginary world with my smartphone, where I pretend to be dwarf
| listening to Irish jigg music".
|
| There are so many awesome anime: Heike Monogatari, House of Five
| Leaves, Angolmois - Genkou Kassenki (depicting the Mongol
| invasion of Japan in the 1200s).
|
| Sadly, anime for addults is not currently a factor in that
| blossoming industry described in the article.
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