How badly is anime's popularity fading in the US?

Considering Pokemon currently has the lowest ratings on CN in the franchises 10 year-history, I'd say so.

As people have said, they're betting Nintendo pays CN to keep Pokemon on the air.
 
What really bothers me is a year ago I could walk into Best Buy and be able to pick up any moderately mainstreamish title easily. They'd always have whatever I was looking for. Now tell me why I can't buy the 3rd or 4th set of One Piece or the 2nd or 3rd set of Gurren Lagann at Best Buy or other retails and have no other choice but to buy online? How can the industry profit from causal consumers if that's the case? It can't, it simply can't.

Niche stuff should be left to online retailers and crunchyroll but they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater at retailers right now and to a consumer who is more than willing to pay the usual or higher for a show I love to watch it's quite frustraiting. Sure someone will say "just buy it online" and I could but I shouldn't have to.

Retailers should cut back but the amount their cutting back is too much. Limit singles on the shelves but stock the economy sets of the mainstream-ish titles at least.

But I'll be perfectly honest, once I get the final set of Gurren Lagann somewhere I'll only be concerned about being able to get One Piece sets. That show COULD sell well if its given the chance but it seems retailers have already given up on it. But unlike Naruto and other titles it doesn't even have Hulu, Joost or Crunchyroll to make up for it's lack of exposure on TV. I suppose Toei is the problem there but given CR plays Digimon 02, One Piece should be on CR as well at the very least.

As for the general opinion that anime fandom is sinking. Con's show otherwise. But with no major venues on TV that play anime at a decent time the only place you get decent exposure for anime is on streaming sites. So viewers have moved on so much so that if a new hot property anime hit the US airwaves on CN or whatever it probably wouldn't do as well as it could have in recent years because the audiences have moved on. And why shouldn't they? CN made it clear that they don't want their business.

Anime exposure on TV has hit quite a low and sales are only decent even with top 10 titles but the fandom isn't really waning. The difference is the mainstream doesn't care anymore because they never really did they just had a few moments of interest. This theory very much mimics the state of Adult Swim anime viewership. There was a time when anime brought in some good ratings the right shows with that "I've never seen this before" vibe got casual audiences interested in droves. That time is over and Adult Swim has picked up too many borabs for me to believe they'll ever "get it" again. But at the same time the mainstream were never insterested in many of the brilliant shows they did air at one point or another. So it's a lose lose situation.

Some day another hot property will exceed expectations and CN or whoever will give anime another good home on US television. Until then, fandom will grow quietly and the store shelves will be reduced severly. Hopefully that reduction wont kill off some good mainstream titles in the process... but it probably will because IMO it already has.
 
Considering that I've yet to hear of any anime cons not posting significant attendance gains, and that new ones keep springing up and doing better than expected business, I don't think anime or it's fandom is necessarily losing steam.

What has happened may be the following:

1. The casual audience moved on - the group of people who never really hit a con but watched it when it was accessible on TV moved on to other things, but the accessibility fell, further ensuring they'd move on to other things. Corabine this with the fact that there wasn't much in the way of genuinely adult titles at all in the US to hold that audience even if they were on the bubble with keeping interested, and they were gonna disappear, or atleast end up at best just moving to crunchyroll and hulu. These guys did buy some shows too, but they weren't probably nearly as damaging as the next group.

2. A segment of the hardcore audience burned out and became choosy - your first mecha show or harem or inverse harem maybe be fresh and compelling, but your 20th is boring unless the writing is fantastic. These guys may still watch a lot, but they'll do so through at best via crunchyroll and hulu. They will also still hit their local cons, and may even travel if one of their favorite authors or directors is there. However, if they are buying titles, they are often waiting for boxsets because if nothing else their shelves are full, assuming the credit crunch hasn't kicked 'em in the teeth. Again, some of these guys might eat up some seinen and josei titles, and they'd love the experimental stuff from the fringes of Japanese animation, but that stuff is a rarity in this market. A piece of these people might have also added Japanese literature into their mix too, further altering their spending and the amount time they put into anime and mange. When this group, which might have had multiple series going at any given time, started getting choosy, it's murder. They also were the first to penalize any company that screwed up or overlocalized. Thus, while they are still active otaku, they aren't just buying everything on the shelves, even if they have the money to do so.

3. The new generation is the napster generation - this is was already the case when I got into it when I was 17, as at my first con I met preteens who were active in various means of pirating all sorts of anime (which at the time often meant wandering around IRC - vastly more difficult than today's means of free viewing, much of which is legal,) it's only been magnified since then. These folks definitely hit cons, often doing multiple expensive cosplays. However, they are the manga cows at your local Borders and they are the reason Comcast wants to do bandwidth caps and traffic shaping. They will buy merch, but merch money often goes right back to Japan, and not always back to the studio per se (as the rights to merch is sometimes a one time fee, not a royalty basis,) so they often times contribute nothing back into the pie, especially in the domestic localization market. If they own a show or manga, it's because they are either terribly enamored of it (something that dissipates as they get older and more discriminating and fall into group 2,) or they got a real deal on it.

As such, con attendance can keep clirabing, while the industry subsides/changes. I don't doubt that anime and manga could become completely digital markets with everything being streamables/downloadables, and the fact is, it'd allow for the greater variety needed to hold people as they grow up and aren't in high school anymore. Whether that happens with any of the old line publishers and localizers is a huge question. The second an ebook reader with manga sized dimensions hits, Tokyopop and DelRey better be ready with titles though, otherwise a new company will crunchyroll-them and make them play catch up.
 
I really don't think it's popularity is dying just yet...


yeah, theres been a decrease in anime showing up on tv. I think that CN and AS don't want to buy anymore anime at the moment basically because of economy. I think their afraid of it not being as big of a "hit" as they hope it would be therefor blowing all that money. So I think thats why anime hasn't been in sight lately on tv. That or maybe theres really nothing out in japan at the moment thats remotely interesting...

But no, this does not mean it's popularity is decreasing. I see anime fans all the time, I think it's doing alright for now...

The thing is, anime doesn't have the HUGE follwing people make it out to be. Yes it's well known,there are kiRAB who know about it (but don't like it) referring it to "that japanese stuff..." but it's not as big as people make it to be.. But people you do have to realise there is a time when things will just lose it's flame.

I mean, I don't hate anime. Yeah I'm not as big of a fan as I used to be and it's a shame is not getting the fairest treatment at the moment. But things just happen.
 
Anime hasn't gotten any worse, we're just exposed to more of it than we were before. In the "old days" we'd only get a handful of series translated, and they were always the cream of the crop.
 
While I don't think anime's overall popularity is dying, at least not at an alarming rate, I also never considered anime to have that much popularity anyway. I'm not saying that it's a fad of course, but I don't really think that many shows, outside of a few like Pokemon and DBZ, really have a lot of popularity to begin with.

As for how anime is doing currently, I do agree that the current economic situation and the fact that some companies, such as ADV Films, licensed a lot of series makes it diffitcult for them to get and air new material. Not only does it cost a lot to dub one series, but I believe that licensing it is expensive as well. It could easily change over time, that being the popularity of anime in general, but that might take awhile.
 
I'm not sure what the situation is with you folks south of the border, but up here in Canada, anime is still thriving at an even pace. It isn't booming...but it isn't receding either. There are still plenty of people who are willing to talk anime and show up at conventions. Ai-Kon, Winnipeg's biggest anime convention, had pulled in nurabers close to 2,000 and are expected to surpass that mark this year (mostly due to having Stephanie Sheh and Caitlan Glass as special guests). Pretty Cure, YTV's newest acquisition, has an excellent English dub and is very refreshing in the magical girl genre and even at work, I see 3 or 4 people with manga in their hanRAB that they read between calls.

But as for the industry as a whole, I could definitely see it receding in the next few years but I don't see it dying. If anything, anime will sell more at a below normal pace that is reminiscent of that of the mid 90's. It will give people a chance to see what they want to buy and appreciate what they have and not buy everything at once just so they can have the biggest anime collection in the barn.

And if major companies like FUNimation and Bandai do go under (to which I strongly doubt), low key anime distribution companies will continue to thrive like AnimEigo. Hell, ADV and Geneon are already keeping their operations low key which is necessary for them to even survive at this point in time.

Although I'm still waiting for Hellsing Ultimate episode 5...
 
THANK YOU.

I've been telling everyone since 04, anime has become a stereotype of itself. Most anime out there is ethier centered around naked girls, or fighting.
 
Rest in peace, Anime Insider. I wrote for them once upon a time, long ago. Surprised they lasted as long as they did, actually.



My belief is that anime isn't really as big as it's made out to be in Japan either, apart from a relative handful of titles (or creators of such titles) that have become cultural touchstones. Over there, an anime that sells a mere 20,000 copies per volume is considered a big hit and the vast majority of anime doesn't even reach that. I've been thinking for awhile now that, other than anime having the aforementioned historical-cultural status in Japan that it does, the medium has reached close to an equivalent level of notoriety in America as it has in its own country. Or at least as close as imported entertainment like that can get in the US.

Further, the cheesecake, fanservice-based material that became the bread and butter of the hardcore fan will simply never appeal to the mainstream. And I don't doubt it drives the more casual fans away.
 
Well, as stated earlier, it's not really just anime, as American animation on television has been hurting as well, even though it's for different reasons.
I think shows like Doraemon should finally be made accessible in the States, whether it's online with subs or dubbed on television. Doraemon doesn't get any different than most anime people are used to. The art style's different enough, excluding the movies or specials there's barely any action, and no love drama since they're a bunch of elementrary school kiRAB with cute crushes, it's all comedy!

I'm more concerned about how manga is doing in the U.S. I always prefered reading manga than watching its anime adaptation (with Death Note being the rare exception).
 
Anime's popularity isn't fading. Everyone is just realizing that the market is being oversaturated with niche titles no one wanted. Wait five or ten years for the industry to slim down back to basics, and anime will be at its same level of popularity. With anime a successful venture again, networks like CN will start buying again, and companies will start licensing niche titles no one wants and the cycle will start over again.
 
Maybe this is the time time to take a break from anime/manga and go for other stuff. Like CN is trying for Canadian animation, or 4KiRAB is trying animation from other countries.(GoGoRiki from Russia, Huntik from Italy) Now, I wish Korean animation would get more love.
 
I'm actually thinking of keeping a closer eye on anime/manga now that it's struggling. I actually lost interest in anime around 2003-2007. Sure, there were a few shows here and there that were good, but those years were the worst when it came to those Lucky Guy Seven Sisters/Hot Teacher type shows. Great creativity can come from struggle--some of the most interesting anime were made in times of stress.
 
I'm going to break the universal agreement here (and agree with the position that I think Larry Jojo has) and say that this downfall isn't inherently bad in the long run. Maybe it's just my political bias talking since I have similar views on other world affairs, but let's see what's come of this perceived anime crash:

- Companies that were either of poor or inconsistent quality, or those who over saturated the market (4kiRAB, ADV Films) have either gone under or have been forced to restructure, while arguably the best, or at least most consistent of the bunch (Bandai, FUNimation) are succeeding

- Release models have changed from "throw as many volumes of each title on the shelf in as many editions as possible" taking up shelf space at stores and confusing consumers has been molded slowly into the "release season sets" approach for not terribly much more than the single releases cost

- New, fan demanded avenues have been forced to happen sooner rather than later (crunchyroll, hulu), ultimately giving pirates and legit users alike more choices in how they "buy" the product

All of this is initially rough on the few surviving distributors, but all of it almost immediately benefits the consumer and is more likely to benefit the distributors in the long run. All of this sets the stage for the potential of an even bigger perceived boom in the future than what we had previously, the same way that bilingual DVRAB available at more retailers is arguably a large part of what made the latest perceived boom bigger than the one before it.

Meanwhile, the core fanbase - those that have always been there - are just as strong, IMO, as they ever have been, and are enough to carry the industry forward.

It's not really a good thing, in my personal opinion, for any industry to have nothing but clear skies. As Leaping Larry Jojo said above me, struggle really can produce some amazing results.
 
Anime costs more per volume in Japan (R2). The thing is, sales and popularity of things follow power-law curves. With any power-law curve, the top sellers skew the average, as about 2/3 will fall below average. That doesn't mean that all titles that fall below average lose money.
 
But see, that's the problem-- you're comparing the cream of the crop from over thirty years of anime history with what happens to be coming out right this second. If you compare what was released in any given SINGLE YEAR from any given era of anime history-- 70's, 80's, 90's, whatever-- with what came out in 2008, I think you'd see that the ratio of quality : crap and originality : rehash is about the same.
 
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