The Leaderless Landscape

There is nothing that more masterfully mirrors the decline of KyoAni than the image above. The franchise that tremendously torpedoed KyoAni into the stratosphere of anime fandom love has, perhaps fittingly, disappeared into a completely different world, perhaps leaving a sense of melancholy in the ranks of KyoAni animators. Nagato Yuki now makes me think of Saki Miyanaga with glasses and purple hair-dye, while Haruhi makes me think of Kancolle's Kongou in a student uniform.

After a long absence, the world of Haruhi finally finds its way back into the world of anime, but it's no longer in the world of KyoAni. To be fair, KyoAni still retains a place of prominence in the anime world. However, it's no longer like a mighty colossus looming lusciously large, as it bestrides the anime landscape, leaving all others in its shadows.

In fact, the anime landscape is now effectively leaderless. Which is something I find vaguely interesting given how long KyoAni was dominant for, and how SHAFT once seemed on the verge of claiming KyoAni's crown.

In this blog entry, I will explore the current landscape of the anime world, as I ask the question "can anybody rise to the heights once enjoyed by KyoAni?" Don't worry, I intend to get back to my Love Live! series reviews soon. First, though, I take a trip down memory lane, before steadfastly swerving swiftly, like Miyamori Aoi driving a car, to more current affairs.

Pavlovian Entertainment: What is Plaguing Anime Today

Of fangs and maid outfits...

In the field of behavioral psychology, there is something called classical conditioning.

Classical conditioning is a form of associative learning that was first discovered by Ivan Pavlov. Classical conditioning, when put into layman's terms, makes one think of "Pavlov's Dog". The idea behind Pavlov's Dog is that the dog would automatically salivate in the presence of meat powder, but that if the presentation of meat powder became associated with another form of external stimuli (such as the appearance of the person who typically feeds the dog), then that other form of external stimuli could, in and of itself (separate from the presence of meat) cause the dog to salivate.

Pavlov took observations like the one above pertaining to dogs, and used them to formulate classical conditioning.

Anime: Now Completely Under Siege

Faces of Anime's Past and Present, Reflecting a Troubling Future...

This blog will be one of the most important ones that I ever write. It reflects fears that I've had concerning the anime industry for some time now. Two recent (but in some ways looming) events now come perilously close to confirming that those fears are justified. The picture above is presented here for multiple reasons. For one, these faces are those of prominent anime characters, from animes that can effectively serve as two bookends of a period of incredible growth in the anime industry. 

From 1995's El Hazard: The Magnificent World to 2009's The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya movie, anime has been a place of grand and compelling narratives, and of entertaining and psychologically fascinating characters, able to rival the best that other entertainment genres and mediums could muster. It is true that there were great animes both before, and after, the dates of these two animes, but I personally feel that 1995 to 2009 is where you find the bulk of great animes, and where the industry had both the quality and quantity of material to put it on par with even the best that other narrative mediums could offer. 

But that may sadly be about to end...

Why is "The World God Only Knows" struggling so much?

The most hardcore anime fans, such as many regular posters on Anime Suki, usually have a pretty good idea of which animes will be successful, in the sense of ratings, DVD/Blu-Ray sales, and related merchandise sales. They keep persistent track of which animes will be coming up in the following season, which animation studios will be handling each of them, how popular the source material (if there is one) for the various animes are, and the overall vibe surrounding each of them. They tend to have their finger consistently on the pulse of the anime industry, the anime fandom, and key related fandoms (manga fans, light novel fans, eroge fans, etc...). I myself follow anime somewhat closely, but I don't keep tabs on this wondrously wider world of the modern otaku with quite the admirable thoroughness and zeal as these folks do.

So... when an anime does significantly worse than initially expected or hoped for by these hardcore anime fans, it becomes an intensely intriguing intellectual curiosity for me. This was true when the heavily hyped Umineko anime bombed, and it's also true now with TWGON (which is the acronym I will use through out the rest of this post to refer to The World God Only Knows) likely suffering a similar fate.

Anime: Nostalgia Entertainment?

There was one scene in Angel Beats! that I didn't touch on much, even though some of the ideas conveyed by it were potentially powerfully poignant, and likely very telling. I didn't touch on it much because it was suggesting a general truism of sorts about anime today which transcends Angel Beats! itself, and hence I didn't want to spend much time on it in an actual Angel Beats! review. That truism is that modern anime intermittently intensely idealizes school life. 

Fall 2010 Predictions

Looking ahead to the Fall 2010 Anime Season

I know that the main request I get from regular readers of this blog is to finally get around to doing the "Nanoha Takamachi is No. 1!" write-up. And, well, I will get to that eventually, hopefully this weekend. ^_^;;

But for now, I want to devote my time to something that will be more of a quick write-up for me.

And that is making some predictions pertaining to the upcoming Fall 2010 anime lineup.

Now, I won't be going into detail here on each and every one of those 30-plus anime shows, which in and of itself is a rather impressive and perhaps surprising number of new anime shows for a Fall season, even if many of them are sequels. For an entertainment industry often said to be in decline, they certainly seem to have no problem chucking out vast quantities of new content each and every season. While the quality of that content may very well prove to be debatable, nobody can question its sheer vastness.

Aside from that brief comment on the vastness of new anime coming this Fall, I will look at a few shows in particular, and make predictions pertaining to them and the coming anime season as a whole.


So, hold on to your Hetalia hats, and kiss your Imouto goodbye for now, because we're about to start a thrilling Star Driving ride! ;)

Evaluating Anime Trends by Sales Figures

With us now around the midpoint of 2010, and with significant sales data available for us to evaluate (thanks to you, Eggplant of Anime Suki) I felt that now might be a good time to once more take a 'big picture' look at the anime industry at a whole, but this time rooted in concrete domestic (i.e. within the Japanese market) sales figures.

This is something that I honestly don't see a lot of amongst online anime discussions, and perhaps with good reason, as the business side of anime is like the business side of many entertainment industries: lots of dry mathematical data, and the crunching of numbers. At first glance, it may seem boring, but yet, it's very relevant, and can help us understand present and future decisions by industry leaders (in the case of anime, companies like Kyoto Animation, SHAFT, Sunrise, Brains Base, AIC, and so on and so forth).

For example, you may wonder why one of your favorite Japanese light novels or visual novels has yet to be fully adapted into anime. Well, knowing that the writer thereof has had one or more of the anime adaptations of his work bomb, and bomb hard, may give you a good, albeit cold and hard, answer here.

Furthermore, you may wonder why certain anime character types, or character designs, are so very prevalent. Well, knowing that all of the big sellers have them could help to explain that as well.

In the business world, what sells is ultimate what gets continued, if there's anything left to continue with, and even then, more may be forced out even if the original author would rather not go along with that. Dragon Ball Z is a classic example of this.

Furthermore, what doesn't sell often doesn't get continued, no matter how passionate a vocal niche fanbase may be about it. Popularity at sheer discussion, hype, and interest levels is almost meaningless if its not accompanied by good, actual, concrete sales.

Nice Girls: They Just Can't Win

"No one's going to side with you, you're stark-raving mad!" - Ash Ketchum

"Oh yeah? Just ask your mother..." - Giovanni

"That's all in the past!" - Ash Ketchum

"Listen to me, little boy, nice guys finish last, last...!" - Giovanni

Given the endings of many of the animes with romantic conflicts, that I've recently watched, Giovanni could very well be talking about nice girls instead. Indeed, that could explain why Ash Ketchum keeps moving on from one girl to another to another. Ash is internalizing what he was told by one of his greatest enemies, and hence he's not letting any of the nice girls that he's met end up with him...

A harem-esque Pokemon anime might be a lot of fun... ;)

State of the Anime Industry

It's been awhile since I did a blog focusing on the anime industry itself. And given that the incident involving the President of Bang Zoom! Entertainment declaring that anime is going to die occurred while I was on my hiatus from anime watching or blogging, I missed most of the discussion surrounding that.

However, after taking some time to collect my thoughts on the modern anime industry, and looking into the recent happenings within the industry itself, I've decided to do a write-up on the current State of the Anime Industry.


In recent weeks and months (and perhaps even years) there's been a lot of talk of anime being in a state of decline, at least at a commercial level. DVD sales, for a great number of anime series, are not that good, even in the domestic Japanese market. Digital distribution is very much on the rise, but as many ANNcasts have pointed out, ad revenue streams for free or highly inexpensive digital distribution tends to offer very limited revenue for the anime industry. Crunchy Roll helps, as does official digital distribution in general, but it is not the perfect panacea that a lot of anime fans seem to think that it is. Digital distribution alone is a long, long way away from being a satisfactory principle source of commercial profit for animation companies. And the likelihood of digital distribution ever achieving that is dubious at best. Like it or not, DVD and Blu-Ray sales will remain the principal source of commercial profit for animation companies for the foreseeable future.


Beyond this, I also personally don't get the sense or vibe that anime is still a "hot ticket item" like it was in the days of Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, and the original Full Metal Alchemist.

That's not to say that the actual quality of anime has necessarily declined. Visually, anime is as good as ever, if not better than ever. Many compelling anime characters and intriguing new anime series come to the fore each and ever year, if not each and every season. A case can be made that certain types of animes may be missing, but what's there right now isn't necessarily bad at all. Some of it isn't that good, of course, but there have always been some bad animes as long as anime as existed.

So, why is the anime industry in a sate of decline? Why does the President of Bang Zoom! think that anime is going to die, at least in foreign markets? Is it just a matter of the global recession bringing everything down? Does the problem lie with online piracy? Is the anime industry failing to adapt to new market conditions? Is it some combination thereof? Is it something else entirely?

That's what I'm going to try to address in this blog.


First, I'm going to focus on what the industry probably should do to try to turn things around for anime at a commercial level.

The first thing that the anime industry needs to come to grips with is that the old model of people buying VHS tapes, DVDs, or Blu-Rays simply for content access (i.e. simply to get to watch the anime episodes or the anime movie itself) are almost entirely over. The only exceptions may be exported DVD copies of domestic theatrical releases, and straight-to-DVD content.

There are essentially four possible reasons, or motivating factors, behind why a person would buy anime on DVD or Blu-Ray:

1. Content Access (the actual anime material itself)
   
2. DVD or Blu-Ray Extras
3. Collector's Item
4. A Gift for a Friend or Family Member
   

In most cases, 4 is one or more of the first three, only through proxy. So our focus here is on the first three.

Whether or not one agrees with anime fans downloading or streaming free fansubs of all of their favorite anime shows, the fact remains that a large part of the potential market for anime DVDs and Blu-Rays are going to do this, and will continue to do this. The only way that anime companies could get completely around this would be with Direct-To-DVD animes, but the anime industry has rarely if ever tried this option to the best of my knowledge.

So, long story short, much of the potential market for anime DVDs and Blu-Rays have already seen the actual anime content before the DVD or Blu-Ray is ever released. Hence, the anime industry is not going to get many people buying anime DVDs or Blu-Rays for content access alone. Period.

The days of a significant number of consumers walking into the electronics section of Wal-Mart, or into any kind of store selling DVDs, and then proceeding to make completely blind purchases of animes that they've never watched an episode of, are pretty much over.

Basic content access can no longer be the main sales pitch of an anime DVD or Blu-Ray. The anime industry needs to forget about trying to crush fansubs, or even trying to compete with them. They should embrace a business model that makes them irrelevant aside from them constituting free advertising. The anime industry needs to focus on the remaining options for the main sales pitch for anime DVDs or Blu-Rays.

Those two remaining options are the DVD extras, and the Collector's Item appeal.


The DVD extras would include such things as art cards of major characters in the anime, audio tracks of key people behind the production of the anime talking at length about the anime, additional anime content that goes straight to DVD, cosplay items, and perhaps video footage of interviews with the seiyu or voice actors behind the characters. Another aspect of "DVD extras" is simply how the DVD is packaged. Cover art is important. The product looking professional is important. All of these things can contribute to a consumer's decision to purchase the product.

Some animes do DVD extras well (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya did them very well, imo), but other animes can feel very lacking here. Given that content access in and of itself can no longer be the chief sales pitch of an anime DVD or Blu-Ray, it is important for the DVD to offer something that goes a bit beyond that. Such extras don't need to be expensive. Getting the voice cast and artists and production team together for a day of interviews to be put on the DVDs surely can't be that expensive.


Now, there's also the Collector's Item appeal. This appeal is, of course, increased by having good DVD extras. But even without such extras, there are ways to effectively market an anime DVD or Blu-Ray as a good addition to "every fan's" anime collection. Try to make it seem cool or impressive to own a full DVD/Blu-Ray collection of a particular anime. In fairness, the anime industry is already pretty shrewd here by throwing terms like "limited edition" or "special edition" on just about every DVD or Blu-Ray volume that it puts out. This is a direct play to the collector's spirit, and to some extent it works.

But here is also where the broader social context comes into play.

Ask yourself this: Why do people collect things?

Well, for some people, they collect things because they have a quirky or unusual interest in a particular item. Something just catches their fancy. This is often what is behind people who like to collect bottle caps, or a varied array of rare coins or foreign currency. It's just a fun and usually private hobby for such a person.

However, for most people, they collect things in order to proudly display their collections to their friends and even sometimes just to people who happen to drop in to visit them. Let's be honest, there is often a definite streak of vanity to building up large collections. Like the rapper bragging about all of his money, merchandise, and bling, the collector similarly wants to show off what he owns.

Now, the thing with "showing off" is that its effectiveness lies in the perception of the audience moreso than the perception of the presenter. In other words, a collector's collection only has the desired effect if the audience thinks highly of it. With this in mind, this is why collecting sports cards is so huge in North America, and why collecting hockey cards in particular is huge in my native land of Canada.

Hockey is hugely popular in Canada, and incredibly mainstream, so if you hold a vast collection of hockey cards, then that's something that you can safely assume any audience that you happen to be hosting at your house in Canada will be impressed by.

But suppose you hold a vast collection of material that most people don't care about. Or worse yet, suppose you hold a vast collection of material that has a strong negative stigma attached to it. For example, the pedophile is not likely to proudly display his collection of pedophilia to Joe and Jane Average from next door paying him a welcoming visit. That's an extreme example of course, but I'm sure you get my point.


And here is where any strong negative stigma attached to anime can greatly undermine attempts to sell anime DVDs or Blu-Rays as collector's items. And here is where we get to what I feel is the actual largest problem facing the modern anime industry.

And that problem is simple marketing. The anime industry needs to do more to make its product simply look cool. What comes across as cool can vary from culture to culture of course, but some things can come across as cool in many cultures.


For example, Spike Spiegel of Cowboy Bebop generally comes off as one cool guy. You don't really need to be an anime fan to get that.

I mean, just look at the guy:


Spike looks so colossally coolly cool here that even Coolio's name seems uncool in comparison. The guy practically perspires pools of refreshingly cool water. He's like a action hero from a Hollywood blockbuster, only in the form of an anime character.

Now, somebody like Spike is a gift to the anime industry. You need practically no marketing expertise whatsoever to make him look cool. It's also pretty easy to sell the sex appeal of these characters without raising too many eyebrows:




But then, there's something special about these three characters, isn't there?

That's right, good reader: They're actual women. They're not girls; they're fully grown and developed adults.

I don't disagree that sex appeal can help sell a product, almost any product. But when that sex appeal lies in underage characters, you run the risk of alienating a lot of people. Now, I'm not saying that you can't play up the sex appeal of, say, Haruhi Suzumiya, but it sometimes helps to be subtle with it, and that kind of sex appeal probably isn't what we want to be the most prominent image of all of anime in the west. I'm not saying that I myself don't appreciate that sex appeal (I do like Haruhi a lot, after all), just that it's not necessarily what the image of anime should be in the west.


So again, we come to marketing.

The anime industry never really needed to market Cowboy Bebop, Full Metal Alchemist, or Ghost in the Shell. They all essentially marketed themselves. But you need a bit more skill to market modern otaku fare to a broader audience, but that too can be marketed in such a way.


The key is to make anime look cool, and not squicky. To make anime look dramatic, but not angst-driven. To make anime look thought-provoking, but not excessively weird. To make anime look charmingly different, but not inaccessible. Play up the strengths that even Joe and Jane Average can get. Its often not the content that determines if something sells, but rather how the content is framed by its marketers.

Think of the movie trailers for most modern Hollywood movies. They're short, quick, often fast paced, and they play on a longing for excitement or allurement. They make sales pitches that simply sound cool and create broad interest.

And speaking of animes that create broad interest...



Those sales figures are astronomically awesome. They're out of this world. They suggest that the potential market for anime in Japan remains huge.

But they also pose a pressing question: Just who are these people buying up all the Evangelion Rebuild DVDs and Blu-Rays? Presumably many of these people are buying little, if anything, else that's available in the realm of modern anime.

As good as Bakemonogatari and K-On! did, the sales of these two look positively paltry compared to the Michael Jackson-esque success of Evangelion. And Michael Jackson was hugely popular in Japan (as he was in most places, of course).


A smart businessman in the anime industry should look at the sales of Evangelion, and compare them to the rest of the anime industry, and try to figure out how to get these consumers to buy into more modern anime. One (or both) of two things must be at play here:

1. Evangelion has something that no other anime has, and other animes need to get that before they can reach NGE levels of success.
2. Other animes have something that Evangelion doesn't have, and that something is turning off potential audiences.

Whichever it is, it would be great if the anime industry could figure it out. I have some vague ideas and theories that I'm currently running through my mind, but I'll get into most of them another day.

One thing Evangelion definitely has, though, is great marketing.

Calling yourself "The Best Anime of All Time" may rub some people the wrong way, and I personally don't really agree that NGE is that good, but its also eye-catching marketing. It's the sort of bodaciously bold, brash marketing that can draw in a lot of fans.

Perhaps anime needs more marketing like that.

Imagine the following anime sales pitch slogans, for example:

• Not your father's shonen
  
• The most delicious Slice of Life of all
  
• A Harem Anime done the way YOU want it done. For a Change.
  
• You haven't even seen a tear-jerking romance anime until you see ____________.

People are intrinsically attracted to confidence. It's part of the reason for Haruhi Suzumiya's popularity I would argue. The same is true of Light Yagami and Lelouch Lamperouge. An anime that shows confidence in itself will inspire confidence in potential fans.


But, anyway, let's bring this back full circle.


DVDs and Blu-Rays will remain the chief source of revenue for the anime industry for the foreseeable future. However, sheer content access is no longer a feasible main sales pitch for these DVDs and Blu-Rays, with the exception of direct-to-DVD content or domestic theatrical releases transferred directly to DVD and Blu-Ray exports.

As such, anime DVDs and Blu-Rays need good DVD extras and/or a vibrant collector's market in order to sell well. It would help mightily for anime to market itself better in order to facilitate stronger collector's markets, as such marketing can also improve the image of anime itself, making collections of anime DVDs and Blu-Rays be something that the holders thereof feel more comfortable and eager in putting on display.

Content-wise, anime is largely fine... but it could use more characters like Spike Spiegel and Faye Valentine. Cool dudes and attractive women. That doesn't mean that other prominent anime character types should go away. Not at all. It's just that characters like Spike and Faye make for a good "face of anime", at least for adult audiences in some foreign (and perhaps even domestic) markets.


By and large, this post just includes some ideas that I'm bouncing around in my head.

I'm certainly open to debate on all of them, and I may throw some more ideas out there later.

But I would like to shift the self-defeating debate of blaming fansubs vs. blaming "distribution models". Its self-defeating because fansubs do not make it impossible to sell anime DVDs or Blu-Rays. Its self-defeating because digital distribution is not a profitable enough venture, at this time, to cure what ails the modern anime industry.

And while the global economy is bad, it certainly didn't stop Evangelion from selling like a Smooth Criminal. ;)

Perhaps the rest of the anime industry needs to master the confident Ikari moonwalk as well.

Defending Moe

Welcome back, everybody!

After a two-month long hiatus, I've decided to make a short return to focus on a topic of much contention within modern anime fandom. And that topic is moe.



No, no, not you, Szyslak. Your dirty secrets are quite safe on this blog.

But the dirty secrets of this kind of moe is what this blog will be delving into.

And what do I mean by "dirty secrets", exactly? Well, 'dirty' might be blowing it out of proportion a bit, because it's nothing particularly scandalous. But they are the sort of secrets that a lot of people would rather not see the light of day. Before getting into what those secrets are, let's put forward some basic facts on anime that serve as important background for our upcoming Detective work!


One such fact is that anime, beyond its own borders of course, is a cultural export of Japan. Arguably Japan's most well-known cultural export, although karate and its teachers were pretty big back in the day too.

What we can easily deduce from this fact, my fellow Jimmy Kudos, is that anime reflects the current cultural norms and values, and hence sociological conditions, of modern Japan. In other words, the rise of moe did not occur in a vacuum. It wasn't simply the exotic brainchild of some powerful corporate executive. Something in the modern Japanese culture and/or society gave rise to it.

Some critics of moe argue that this something is simply sexism, and a culturally ingrained overarching chauvinistic patriarchy that reinforces it. In the eyes of these critics, the prevalence of moe within modern anime reflects a desire within many otakus for weak, submissive female partners.

However, that doesn't really make a great deal of sense to me.

Why?

Well, here's one reason why:

Nobody takes a punch quite like Keitaro does...

Love Hina! is one of the more prominent harem animes, and arguably popularized the genre. Being a harem anime with a large variety of female characters within the cast, it also no doubt contained moe.

If the dirty secret of moe was sexism then one would expect for the male leads of moe-centric shows to be paragons of traditional masculinity. To be real gar guys.

To be more...



And less...


"This. Is. Sexist Sparta!" ?

No, rather...

"I-I'm just the doormat messenger! Nobody kills the doormat messenger!" ;)


Now, don't get me wrong, anime does have it's real gar guys. But it's not often you see them alongside the most moe of females. It's probably fair to say that the target audience for Gurren Lagann is a bit different than the target audience for K-On! Or, at the very least, that the two anime shows are meant to have very different sorts of appeal.

To truly discover what's driving the popularity of moe in recent years, we have to uncover what's happening in Japan that might be giving rise to it. After all, the rise of the internet coupled with Japan's Lost Decade were in turn the catalyst for somewhat dark and philosophical musings on modern technology in the form of animes like Serial Experiments Lain, and Ghost in the Shell.

So what modern issues in Japan could logically give rise to moe?

The key clue is to be found here.

That's a long write-up, but let me sum up the pertinent points here:

• Japan has an aging population
• The nation's fertility rate in 2008 was only 1.37 (a healthy norm is 2.1).
  
• Up to 80 percent of Japanese singles over the age of 30 don't have a partner.
• A "Parasite Singles" lifestyle (i.e. being a NEET) has become more prevalent.
  
• Male temp workers, or those on low salaries, have virtually no chance of finding a marriage partner.

To put it into laymen's terms, this is a growing issue in Japan: Adult males and females in their 20s and 30s that are unable or unwilling to find steady work, are supported by their parents, have not smoothly transitioned into adulthood as their culture and society would have liked, and (here's the key part) have great difficulty in forming lasting romantic bonds.


So, let's break this down to the individual.


You're a Japanese man in his mid-to-late 20s or early-to-mid 30s that has had little to no luck with the opposite sex. You're either just making ends meet, or you're being supported by your parents.

Chances are that you look back quite fondly on your high school days, given how you had fewer cares and less concerns back then, than you do right now.

Or, perhaps you look back on your high school days as a time of missed opportunity. If only you had met that right young woman; the young woman who would actually accept you for you; maybe things would have turned out differently for you.

Yes indeed, you may be very insecure, and shy around women, knowing instinctively that your socioeconomic status does not lend itself to finding female mates in Japan's current society and economy. You may not have had sexual relations with a woman in a very long time, if ever.

You want to find entertainment that offers you some sort of blissful escape from the bleaker aspects of your reality.

What are you likely to turn to? Who are you likely to turn to?

Are you going to turn to entertainment with strong, firmly independent, and very competent female characters who would have no use for a loser like yourself? Are you going to dream about women impossibly out of your league, or at least that's what you think they are?

No, you're going to turn to entertainment featuring NEETs like yourself:



One of my earliest blog entries delved into how K-On!'s popularity probably lay, at part, in its natural appeal to the NEET demographic. Yui's appeal does come in large part because of her airheaded nature, and tendency towards goofing off, and eating cakes instead of practicing her guitar. But it has nothing to do with sexism. Quite the contrary, it has to do with the "Parasite Single", or lowly paid single, male viewer being realistic about the sorts of females he could ever hope to catch in modern Japan. Someone very approachable, cute and cheerful, but a fair bit airheaded and almost wastefully playful, is perhaps as good as it gets.

This even explains high-achieving tsunderes like Haruhi Suzumiya and Shana. The male viewer realizes that to win over a strong young woman like them, the young woman in question would need to be a bit eccentric and/or have a heart that could be won over by appeals other than simple socioeconomic status.


And this is why I defend moe in this blog. A lot of it is wish-fulfillment, but it's innocent wish-fulfillment. It's about anime presenting female characters that the male viewer could feel comfortable approaching; female characters that wouldn't make him feel hopelessly inferior to her or out of his league.


Beyond this straight-forward eroge game-esque romantic appeal, there is another aspect of moe that bears looking at. And that aspect is how perhaps moe is meant to counteract the stiff sociological socioeconomic structure of modern Japan.

Moe girls are often carefree. Innocent. Playful. They are not jaded, or cruel. They are often caring and genuinely nice. They often lack competence but at least they have a good heart.

And perhaps a lesson that comes from moe is that there is value to simply being a good person. That there is value to being a caring person who wants to help out other people, and have real friendships. And that people like this, no matter how airheaded they may be, are deserving of protection, yes.

Personally, this is something I saw a lot of in this anime:


The hatred that Nagisa Furukawa receives from some corners of the online anime community is a bit surprising to me. Perhaps we in the west have become overly accustomed to fictional characters that are ubercompetent. The forensics experts of CSI, the lawyers of Law and Order, and the effective gamesmanship of winning Reality TV contestants.

Competence, intelligence, shrewdness, efficiency, and pride in one's work: these are all highly valued in the western world. And rightly so, they are invaluable to have in a society.

You need all of those aspects to make this possible.

But to make something like that worth it, it helps to have good people with good hearts worth making that effort for. Good people like this:


And that, friends, is the heart of moe.

It's about characters that may be very flawed, but come across as approachable and friendly.

It's about characters that the domestic (and in some cases foreign) NEET audience wouldn't feel are out of their leagues, perhaps even as just friends.

And it's about characters that do in fact cause feelings of protectiveness to arise from within the viewer; not just because they're vulnerable, but also because at their cores they tend to be good people deserving of the effort to protect.


All of that being said, I will certainly concede that moe may be a bit too prevalent in anime today, and I certainly understand criticisms of it under that basis. However, I don't think that moe's very presence is as insidious as some make it out to be. It does reflect on a sad reality in Japan today, but moe itself does not push for a sexist reality.

And with that, I rest my case when it comes to defending moe.


However, I may branch off of this blog entry to discuss fanservice, and one other key point, pertaining to anime today.

But for now, that's all.

Any and all responses are welcomed. :)

Saying Goodbye

I've mostly enjoyed my experience in writing this anime blog, as horribly infrequent as it has been. I've also enjoyed most of my stay as an active poster at Anime Suki.

However, I today say goodbye to both. At least for now.

There are a few reasons for this.

One is that I'm in a bit of a rut right now as far as 'real life' issues are concerned, and I may need to get away a bit from what can be a very time-consuming hobby in order to deal with those issues.

Also, I feel kind of, well, spent lately, as it pertains to being an anime fan. I've grown tired of the old arguments and the old debates. And, maybe it's just me, but posting on Anime Suki doesn't seem to be as friendly an experience to me now as it used to be. People seem to be using neg reps more than ever before, and typically over nothing more than honest disagreements. People also seem to be more at each other's throats than ever before, and over what essentially boils down to taste issues (moe fans vs. moe haters, fanservice fans vs. fanservice haters, shounen fans vs. shounen haters, etc...), even recently going so far as fierce arguments over preferances in fansubs, and streaming vs. downloads.

I certainly don't mind people having different tastes and opinions than me. In fact, that's often the best way to learn in life; through rubbing shoulders with people who have different perspectives and takes on issues. But what does bother me is getting crudely attacked simply for preferring fansubs that try to stay as accurate to the original as reasonably possible, or for preferring downloads to streams.

Perhaps why this might bother me more than some is that I disagree with the view that the anonymity provided by the internet means that impoliteness or rudeness are more acceptable here than they are in 'real life'. I've always looked down quite a bit on trolling, for example. If somebody did the 'real life' equivalent of internet trolling, they'd probably be arrested by the cops. Speaking personally, I always strive to approach people over the internet the same way I'd approach them if I was speaking to them face-to-face in the 'real world'. If there's something I wouldn't be willing to say right to your face, then I'm not going to be willing to say it to you over the internet either.


So, for the forseeable future at least, I'm mostly done with Anime Suki. I might lurk there from time-to-time to see what new images are up on the Haruhi, Nanoha, or Shana boards, but aside from that, I likely won't be actively posting on Anime Suki again until a new Haruhi, Nanoha, or Shana season comes out (or until a new anime that's something along the lines of Code Geass or TTGL comes out).

I don't want this post to come off as too anti-Anime Suki because, once again, I have enjoyed most of my stay there, and it is a well-structured community and site in many ways.

At the same time, however, I want to be honest about the reasons for why I'll be cutting back on my activity there.


Also, and perhaps this is a normal stage in getting older, I just find that anime (in general) doesn't quite excite me like it used to. Okami Kakushi made for a fun little ride, but it didn't impact me like Higurashi did. Kimi ni Todoke has been very nice, and I'm glad that I've watched a lot of it, but it is starting to have a soap opera feel to it that I can grow tired of after awhile. Meanwhile, Kiddy Girl-And never reached the heights of its predecessor Kiddy Grade, and while Kampfer was frequently amusing its ending was rather nonsensical. I've also dropped a lot of anime over the past year, whereas that was a rare occurance for me in years past.

Does this mean that modern anime isn't as good as it used to be?

Maybe so, maybe not. Maybe it just means that I've changed.


But, in any event, I think that I need a break from the world of anime, if not from anime itself. Perhaps I just need to recharge my batteries, so to speak, and come back fresh at some future point.



When and if I do start up this blog again, my first post will be to ~finally~ finish off my Top 10 list with a proper write-up for my number 1. ^_^;;

However, I will now reveal who that Number 1 is with the following countdown! :)


No. 10: Kamina

No. 9: Tatewaki Kuno

No. 8: Lina Inverse

No. 7: Yuki Nagato

No. 6: Simon (TTGL)

No. 5: Fate Testarossa

No. 4: Shana (Shakugan no Shana)

No. 2 (Tied): Haruhi Suzumiya and Katsuhiko Jinnai


And... No. 1!

Nanoha Takamachi!!!

So, when and if I return, I'll explain in detail why Nanoha Takamachi is my favorite anime character of all-time. :)


But, in any event, I now bid you all adieu.

Thanks to everybody who took the time to read this blog, and/or comment on it. Special thanks to Dr. Casey and Heatth for encouraging me to start up this blog, as well as to 0utf0xZer0 for thought-provoking replies to it, and finally to tigermoon for being such an outstanding and fervent supporter of this blog with great replies of his own.

Happy trails everyone. I hope that some day I'll write more blog posts for you all again. :)

The Importance of Touch-Point Characters.

Take a copy of this picture and show it to one hundred people entirely unfamiliar with anime.

Then tell them the name, and basic premise, of the anime show that this picture comes from.

Tell them nothing else about this anime show (such as that it's adapted from a seinen 4Koma manga).

Then ask them "Who do you think is the target audience for the show?".


Some may suspect that there's something funny going on here, and that the clever thing to do would be to give a counter-intuitive answer. ;)

Just about everybody else, though, will answer "This show is for teenage girls. In particular, teenage girls that love music and being in bands, which I'm sure many do".



I once got into a bit of trouble with some Anime Suki regulars for more or less pointing out how K-On! would be seen just this way by most North Americans (certainly those not familiar with anime). Here's a random sampling (paraphrased, and going by memory), of the sorts of replies I recieved:

"K-On!'s not for girls. It's an adaptation of a seinen 4Koma manga. Since it's seinen, it's target audience is obviously men between the ages of 18 and 30."

"That's right! It's for male otaku."

"What's so strange about a show with nothing but females in it being for guys? You don't think that guys want to watch a bunch of hot girls?"


In fairness, I don't doubt that many guys like watching a bunch of hot girls. But K-On! has little, if any, sexual content to speak of, and it's almost as far away from pornographic as an anime can get. And hence, I did find it very strange, and I still do to some extent, that a predominantly non-sexual show featuring nothing but female characters is meant for adult male viewers. Given the lack of sexual content, where's the touch-point?:

"Not everything needs a touch-point you know. What your questioning is reality for us, and it's reality for the anime fandom."


Well, maybe that reality should change then...


K-On! did quite well, there's no doubting that. But a significant chunk of K-On!'s success may have been driven by female fans of the show, actually. As was noted on this Anime Suki thread, K-On! was very popular with male and female anime fans alike.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya was also in the top six for both genders, going by that thread.


'How can this be?!' some may ask.

'Isn't K-On! and the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya geared towards the male otaku audience?!' others may question as well.


These animes likely are aimed at that audience, but Kyoto Animation might have just lucked out. They have managed to adapt good touch-point characters for female audiences even if they hadn't intended to. I suspect that many female anime fans are able to identify with at least one member of the K-On band, and also that many female anime fans are able to identify with Haruhi Suzumiya and/or Yuki Nagato.


'What's a touch-point character?' some may ask.

A touch-point character is a character designed for the reader, viewer, or gamer to live vicariously through. It's the character (or at least a character) that the reader, viewer, or gamer can experience the writer's fictional world through. You experience the fictional world, either directly or indirectly, through the eyes and/or person of that character.

Quite often, but not always, the touch-point character is the main character of the fictional work.

Perhaps the best anime example of a touch-point character is Kyon, from the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Kyon is never "off-screen", and the entire fictional world is experienced through his eyes and narration. It's a testament to the strength of the characters of Haruhi Suzumiya and Yuki Nagato, then, that many female viewers are able to identify with them in spite of viewing them purely through the filter of Kyon's eyes and assessments. If you don't believe that many female viewers identify with these two characters, then I invite you do to a thorough search through the results of a "Haruhi Suzumiya" or "Yuki Nagato" search on Deviant Art. You'll come across countless pictures of people cosplaying as one or the other; the vast majority of these cosplayers being female of course. ;)


So, contrary to what many anime fans may think, touch-point characters are very nice to have. They may not be absolutely necessary, but they almost always help far more than they hurt.

Don't believe me?

Then let me give you a classic example of a new character created purely for the purposes to provide a certain demographic of viewers with a touch-point character:



No, it's not Batman that's the example here; it's Robin. ;)

Robin was created precisely so boys that liked Batman comics (or could potentially like Batman comics) would have a touch-point character. Batman himself could be a difficult character for boys to relate directly to, given significant age and wealth differences, as Batman is a rich man.

And did the creation and introduction of Robin help the Batman comics?

Well, I'll let Wiki answer here:
"Conceived as a vehicle to attract young readership, Robin garnered overwhelmingly positive critical reception, doubling the sales of the Batman related comic books." (emphasis mine)

So Robin was an overwhelming success for the Batman comic books, and later on for DC Comics as a whole.

Indeed, Robin continues to be one of DC comics' most marketable characters to this very day, as the very recent success of the Teen Titans cartoon TV series shows.


Touch-point characters matter. A good touch-point character like Robin can drastically improve a comic's readership, a TV show's viewership, or a game's sales. You add a good female touch-point character to a cast that already has a good male touch-point character, and you can expand your audience considerably.


The anime industry used to realize the great value of touch-point characters.

Here are three big examples of just that:


DBZ, Pokemon, and Sailor Moon all achieved great popularity and success, in part, through having good touch-point characters geared towrds a particular age and gender demographic.

DBZ always took special care to ensure that there was always at least one prominent adult male protagonist (Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, etc...) and at least one prominent kid male protagonist (Gohan, Trunks, Goten, etc...) present in the show. Furthermore, Goku and Vegeta provided two very different styles of male protagonists (the good-hearted morally guided hero, and the badass anti-hero, respectively). This meant that a full range of male viewers would have a touch-point character for the anime, in the form of one character or another.

Pokemon was intended as a show for kids; boys in particular. And, sure enough, the main character is a boy, and one of the core characters is a girl (to attempt to bring in female fans).

Sailor Moon was intended as a show for girls. And, sure enough, the main character is female, and almost the entire case is female. The male characters that are there are clearly meant more to be dreamy guys (Tuxedo Kamen, bishi male villains) than to be characters that would easily appeal to males.


Now, is this to say that females can't like DBZ, that adults can't like Pokemon, and that guys can't like Sailor Moon?

Of course not.

I myself liked Sailor Moon a lot, and I'm a guy.

But the people behind DBZ, Pokemon, and Sailor Moon all knew who the target demographic was, and they targeted that demographic through age and gender appropriate touch-point characters.

And folks, this is the most natural and most proven way to appeal to a target demographic; through touch-point characters.

Don't believe me?

Well, consider the Top 10 grossing movies of all-time.

Three of them are Harry Potter movies. Harry Potter himself was intended as a touch-point character for boy readers. Yes, Harry Potter now enjoys a very large adult fanbase, but much of that is due to how many of the initial fans of the book franchise (which started 13 years ago in 1997, after all) have since grown up to be adults, and have simply carried their love of this book franchise with them into adulthood. Also, Harry Potter does have some prominent female characters that are intended to appeal to female viewers.

The Dark Knight is a Batman movie intended to appeal to teen guys and adult men who find Batman cool.

Pirates of the Carribean is similarly intended to have main male characters that seem cool to guys, and hence are worth living vicariously through. These main male characters are also very hot to many women, of course, but it would be a mistake to downplay their touch-point value to adult males.

Star Wars: Episode 1 has a major male character for every age bracket, thanks to Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and kid Anakin. It also has a major female character in Padme. Throw in Samuel L. Jackson playing a role, and just about every demographic base is covered.

Titanic is the classic "chick flick", and the female main character of Rose is a superb touch-point character for females of all ages. For most of the film, she's a 17 year old on the Titanic (young enough for all teen girls to identify with, but old enough for many young women in their 20s to identify with). But for part of the film she's an older woman reflecting back on her Titanic experience with Leonardo DiCaprio's dreamy male lead. ;)

Avatar I actually have not yet seen, and have only a vague familiarity with, so I can't comment on it.

However, this assessment of the Top 10 Box Office successes of all-time illustrates just how important good touch-point characters can be.


However, the touch-point approach is not the current predominant approach of anime.

The current predominant approach of anime can be summed up this way:

The best way to appeal to a certain demographic is by presenting the opposite gender (of that demographic) looking cute and/or sexy, and acting in accordance with that appearance.


And, in fairness, this approach will appeal to a certain number of fans, and people in general. However, I would argue that anime has already maxed out the fanbase that it can get through this approach alone.

If anime wants to grow; if it wants to have anime series' become as popular in North America as what DBZ, Pokemon, and Sailor Moon were; then it needs to get back to the tried, tested and true touch-point approach.

Basically, anime needs a bit of a paradigm shift in its thinking. And by "anime's thinking", I mean the thinking of anime creators, producers, licensers, and fans alike.

Many of us anime fans need to start thinking outside of the "appeal to gender X by showing nothing but the opposite gender looking cute/sexy" box too.


Moe is very popular in anime fandom, but it's also received a bit of a backlash. Moe has many haters just as assuredly as it has many fans. In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I myself am a big fan of moe.

I don't think that the reason for the backlash against moe is people disliking 'cute girl' character designs, or girls with some moe attributes.

I think that the true antipathy that moe haters feel for moe is summed up by how moe represents a great divergence from the touch-point approach, and by how moe sometimes presents pure fetish fuel characters.


You see, there's a nuanced difference between a character created to appeal to the same gender, and a character created purely to appeal to the opposite gender. Case in point:


Sailor Mars is strong, confident, generally competent in battle, and has a fiery and determined temperament. She's meant to seem cool, particularly to female viewers.

Mikuru is meek, mild, moe, and shy. She's intended to come across as frail and vulnerable, hence causing the male viewer to gain an overwhelming sense of wanting to protect the poor girl.


Just as guys generally don't like identifying with many of the harem anime male leads that can come across as indecisive doormat losers, gals generally don't like identifying with really soft and shy and easily overwhelmed characters like Mikuru Asahina. This is why poor pitiable Mikuru is not all that popular with North American fans of the Haruhi anime. She's too obviously fetish fuel. She's too obviously intended to excite the opposite gender, as opposed to appeal to her own.


Moe is not the issue, in and of itself. It's whether or not a character's characterization is meant to make the character appealing to the same gender, or whether that character's characterization is meant to make the character pure fetish fuel for otakus.

Now, there's nothing wrong with a female character being intended to be appealing to male viewers, but how that female character will be received by female viewers should be factored in as well.

If all of your female characters are pure fetish fuel (and your anime isn't a yaoi), then you've just lost any chance whatsoever of appealing to a significant female audience.

This may be hard for male fans to grasp.

But ask yourself this, would you want all male anime characters to be like, and look like, these guys?:




Imagine anime where all the male characters are dreamy guys, bishounens, or shotas.

Does this sound like a dream scenario to you, my male readers? ;)

If not, then why do you think female anime viewers would want every female character to be pure fetish fuel either?



Anyway, my main point, once more, is simply this: Anime needs a bit of a paradigm shift.

Bishis are fine, moe is fine, shotas are fine, all of that is fine.


But in addition to that, it's good to have genuine touch-point characters.

If you're trying to sell a show to guys ages 18 to 30 then it might be a good idea for that show to have a major character that's actually a guy in the 18 to 30 age range, and is intended to be an appealing touch-point character for guys.

If you're trying to sell a show to girls ages 13 to 20 then it might be a good idea for that show to have a major character that's actually a teenage girl, and is intended to be an appealing touch-piont character for teenage girls.

And the same applies for all age and gender demographic combinations.


Appealing to gender X through using attractive gender Y characters does work, but it's not the only (or even the most proven) method.

The touch-point method is the most proven method, and it's the one that I think anime needs to recalibrate its thinking towards. You can use that method and still have sexy women, moe girls, bishi guys, and shota boys. But using that method will make the fetish fuel less noticable, and using that method will also offer a sort of direct appeal that your Average Joe, Jane, Makoto, and Kasumi gets more easily than the fetish fuel approach.

I'll probably be touching a bit more on this topic in future blog entries.

But for now, I conclude my take on this topic, and I look forward to any and all responses to it. :)

The Five Phases of Entertainment

After giving it some thought, I believe that there are five phases of entertainment.

In other words, that in each and every entertainment medium (be it movies, mainstream American TV, video games, western comic books, manga, anime, or anything else) there are five phases that the entertainment medium continually goes through, at least barring the existence and growth of major distinguishing subdivisions within the medium itself. Such subdivisions could manifest themselves through clear and pronounced differentiation between various genres (i.e. sci-fi TV shows being drastically different from horror TV shows being drastically different from sitcoms).

However, putting such subdivisions aside for a moment, here are the five phases of entertainment...



Phase One: Revolution - This would include an entertainment medium at its very birth. All such births are inherently revolutionary, as they bring a brand new entertainment form to society at large. So, this is actually the beginning point of all entertainment genres and mediums, even those which sprout out of pre-existing mediums (superhero comics arising out of the broader comic medium, for example).

Revolutions also can occur within pre-existing entertainment mediums without creating a brand new entertainment medium unto itself, though. What happens in this case is that the pre-existing entertainment medium is revolutionized in this stage. This doesn't mean the entertainment medium gets a fresh coat of paint in the form of superior visual graphics (video games), higher quality paper (books), or improved audio quality (music). It doesn't just mean a format update, or some other sort of sustaining innovation.

It means an innovation that presents a brand new content-driven element into the entertainment medium. A Revolution is obvious in that you can point to what came after it, and be able to instantly tell just what content impact the Revolution had.

With this in mind, here are two examples of Revolutions within various entertainment mediums...

1) Pro Wrestling - The Hulk Hogan/Vince McMahon Jr. Revolution, circa mid-to-late 1980s. Pro wrestlers become increasingly gaudy and colorful and distinctive in their dress and personas. Almost every wreslter has a particular gimmick or element to his character that he plays up with every interview and match. It's appropriate that the Hulkster's in-ring name is borrowed from a prominent Marvel Comics superhero, because this revolution made a lot of pro wrestlers feel just like comic book superheroes and supervillains.

Before the Hulk Hogan/Vince McMahon Jr. Revolution, pro wrestling took itself a fair bit more seriously, and tried to closely emulate professional boxing and amateur wrestling. This was reflected in long-standing WWF Champions like Bruno Sammartino and Bob Backlund, who presented themselves as great atheletes first and foremost, and rarely as larger than life charismatic personas.

2) Video Games - The home console revolution, circa mid-to-late 1980s. Just as pro wrestling was undergoing a Revolution, so were video games. Prior to the home console revolution, video games were played primarily at arcades and on computers. What the home console revolution did is try to bring the sort of gameplay enjoyed in arcades into home entertainment systems, particularly for the benefit of children and teens. Nintendo was of great importance in this revolution, but there were other home consoles that played a role in it.

Now, by games being played on home consoles, this also slightly altered how games were played, and what types of games there were. Arcade games could often run continuously through the inclusion of more quarters, even if you were playing poorly, but these home console games would have limited lives and continues to make them more challenging.


As you can see with these two Revolutions, a Revolution within an entertainment medium or industry means a content-driven change. What comes after doesn't just look like a newer and sleeker version of what came before. What comes after has notably different content, bearing the marks of the change wrought by the Revolution. By "content", I mean elements like predominant character types (where applicable), and narrative approaches (where applicable). These elements go above and beyond presentation style.



Phase Two: Inspiration - The Revolution usually comes in the form of a few new revolutionary entries within the pre-existing entertainment medium, or in the form of the first few entries of a brand new entertainment medium. In the case of superhero comics, the first Revolution would be seen in comics like Action Comics #1, and Marvel Comics #1. These comics represented the revolutionary birth of the superhero comics, and in a very short period of time, other comics would follow their lead, as the writers of those comics would be inspired by them.

The Inspiration phase is a phase of early growth and true creative outpouring. In this phase, outright copying of the revolutionary work or works is not going on, but key elements of those works are being used by other creators as sources of inspiration. Other creators may take some of the ideas put forward by the Revolution and apply them in different contexts.

So, for example, very independent superheroes like Superman and the original Human Torch are put in the context of an empowered patriotic WW 2-era American fighting directly against the Nazis. And so, Captain America is born. The revolutionary superhero concept is still there, but is placed in a somewhat different context and predominant setting (fighting wars in Europe instead of fighting common crooks at home).

In the inspiration phase, the revolutionary few become the inspired dozen or so.



Phase Three: Explosion - If this phase is reached, it means that the revolutionary works, and the immediately following works that were inspired by the revolutionary works, have met with a considerable degree of commercial success, critical acclaim, popular hype, or some combination thereof.

The entertainment world has effectively stood up and taken notice of the Revolution.

In the case of a brand new entertainment medium, their place in the broader entertainment world is cemented by the Explosion.

In the case of a pre-existing entertainment medium that recently underwent a Revolution, the old stalwarts of every corner of that medium now realize that the impact left by the Revolution is more than just a fad, and will be here to stay for a long time (probably until the next Revolution, if not longer).

So, commercial interests get more involved, either by a rapid increase of brand new entries into the brand new entertainment medium or by the pre-existing entertainment medium increasingly trying to ride on the coat-tails of the revolutionary works.

The business leaders of entertainment industries tell the creators and developers to produce more works like the revolutionary ones that have been great successes. As such, we start to move closer to true copying here.

For a recent example of an Explosion, look at the rapidly surging numbers of Reality TV entries shortly after Survivor had two or three highly successful season. This Explosion proved that Reality TV had truly revolutionized the North American TV entertainment medium.

Explosions like this often requires a lot of capital, and a lot of investment, on the part of commercial interests. That, and simple numbers, is the key difference between the Inspiration phase and the Explosion one.

In the explosion phase, the revolutionary few become the inspired dozen become the explosive dozens (plural) . For many fans of the Revolution, the explosion phase is often the best phase. This is because the Revolution that they loved has now fully arrived, and has grown to dominate much of a pre-existing entertainment medium, or to become a new and stable one. This is also because the explosion phase gives fans of the Revolution a lot of what they like.



Phase Four: Derivatives - If this phase is reached, it means that the most recent truly revolutionary works are no longer seen as revolutionary. They are now, merely, the forebears of the new reality. The initial hype of the Revolution, the Inspiration, and the Explosion, is slowly beginning to fade, as more and more people grow accustomed to the new status quo.

In the case of a brand new entertainment medium, this new status quo is the stable place of that relatively new entertainment medium within the broader entertainment world.

In the case of a pre-existing entertainment medium, this new status quo is simply what that entertainment medium looks like today. The pre-last-Revolution era for that entertainment medium now becomes a somewhat hazey memory.

People who weren't fans of the Revolution, now look back on those pre-Revolution days with a great sense of nostalgia. Many new fans to the entertainment medium are not even aware of what the entertainment medium looked like pre-Revolution.

A very sizable number, and overall large percentage, of the works within the entertainment industry often seem very derivative in this phase. And, in fact, they often are derivative in this phase.

The Revolution has been efficiently distilled down into largely predictble and potent formulas for economic success in the post-Revolution era. Hence, works become very formulaic. Most fans now expect the continued increased presence of character types and/or narrative approaches (in the case of books, for example) popularized by the Revolution. Some older fans, though, grow resentful of them, if not tired of them.

The internal lore of the last Revolution, and the Inspiration and Explosion which followed it, begins to build up. This internal lore becomes seen as "required knowledge" for any and all serious fans of the entertainment medium. Fans of the entertainment medium who are not thoroughly familiarized with this internal lore are sometimes looked down upon, or even outright ostracized. This internal lore tends to have a fandom all of its own, and many fans are increasingly amused by the entertainment medium engaging in self-referential humor and even plain reference droppings and cameo appearances.

This makes the entertainment medium less accessible to new people, whereas it was very accessible during the Revolution, Inspiration, and Explosion phases as the medium was in a state of frenzied flux at the time, and every fan was just trying to keep up with it all.

A good example of this may be western comic books (DC Comics in particular) shortly before Crisis on Infinite Earths. Before Crisis on Infinite Earths, the DC multiverse was incredibly complex and filled with voluminous amounts of nuanced details and interlocking continuity chains. Earth 2 alone could be a lot to keep track of.

In the derivatives phase, the revolution is not the Revolution any more. It's now simply the admitted status quo.



Phase Five: Stagnation - If this phase is reached, it means that the last truly revolutionary works are themselves becoming hazey memories. The names of these works are still held in high esteem, and viewed as important classics of the entertainment medium that they belong to, but fewer and fewer people have actually watched them, or remember their content if they did watch them. Only the most passionate of older, long-standing fans can clearly remember most of their content.

In the Stagnation phase, the entertainment medium often feels like its always been the way it currently is. For many fans, it's hard to imagine the entertainment medium being much different than it is right now. The internal lore mentioned in the Derivatives phase is now no longer lore. It now defines the medium through-and-through.

In the Stagnation phase, the entertainment medium is probably not growing; at least not to any extent beyond the growth of the general population. In this phase, many fans may choose to leave the entertainment medium out of a sense of boredom, looking for something new and exciting elsewhere. So, if anything, the Stagnation phase may bring with it a commercial decline, as well as a possible decline in the total number of fans. However, in the stagnation phase, fans are likely to gravitate around a handful of particular entries of generally high quality. When everything is derivative, having the best coat of paint does make a huge difference.

During this phase, there is a sense amongst many fans that a new Revolution is needed. That the entertainment medium could badly use a New Big Thing to really shake it up, and breath new life into it. But, it's hard to see what that New Big Thing may be, or where in the medium it might come from, as the creators and commercial interests within the entertainment industry are firmly entrenched into churning out new products that are almost carbon copies of a hundred products that came before.

Somebody needs to take a real risk, but nobody seems willing to.

A good recent example of Stagnation is probably North American TV entertainment just before Reality TV revolutionized the airwaves. That's a controversial statement that I'm willing to consider contrary opinions for, but it is a statement that I feel has some accuracy to it. However, it's a statement that also serves another point.

Stagnation often leads into a new Revolution, completing the circle.

When it doesn't, however, stagnation tends to lead into either...

1) A small niche cottage industry, kept up almost exclusively by a hardcore fanbase.

2) Death.


So, those are the five phases of entertainment, for each and every enterainment industry and medium.

At this point, you might be wondering... what does any of this have to do with anime?

Great question, and one I might address more thoroughly in a future blog entry.

For now, though, I answer that question with another one; one that I think may poignantly close out this blog:


Which of the five phases of entertainment do you think anime is in right now?