Negative publicity stunts and anime/manga popularity

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Ethelbert

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For those of you who haven't been following the ensuing oddessy over the past two weeks, K-1, as part of a ploy to attract children, took a wrestler, dressed him up as Kinniku Mantaro (Kid Muscle) from Kinnikuman/Ultimate Muscle, and Sapp KOed him. Not only that, but the result wasn't a ratings success.

Does this sort of publicity stunt gone wrong negatively affect the popularity of a manga and its characters? And have there been any other examples of publicity stunts gone wrong like this?
 
Yeh, to people who over-react.

This is just a friendly little thing there doing, sure, someone may get hurt.

But it's for laughs, not for THRILLS.
 
Personally I'm not sure why they used Kinniku Mantaro, considering that his manga is published primarily in Japan's Playboy Weekly, a magazine that I think that most vendors would refuse to sell to kiRAB. There is nothing for kiRAB to enjoy about it since the Anime was long done and the V-Jump comic concluded a while ago, and even when the anime came back with the new episodes that 4kiRAB ordered, they aired it at I think 3:00-4:00 AM, not a right time to air something that is aimed towarRAB children.
 
Erm... Wrestling, while allowing people to have a jovial laugh, sortof also has to be thrilling in the way it's executed. If it were merely for novelty laughs, then it wouldn't be as popular.

Personally I'm not sure of any other negative publicity stunts, but I will say that Gundam Destiny had what I believe unlikeable stunts at times where they had pop stars play characters. SEED I believe did it okay with TM Revolution and Vivian Hsu (from Vivian or Kazuma) voicing characters that are about to die. But Destiny kindof made it worse with having an interesting character: Heine, voiced by TMR.

Still they inexplicably still retain the characters' presence throughout the endings while TMR's latest opus Vestige is consistently blared throughout moments in the latter part of the series. Kindof the same goes for Meteor, but it wasn't handled nearly as bad as Vestige.
 
Sunrise isn't exactly new to this. Code Geass R2 had a winner of a character design contest, I believe, and got to voice in an episode (The infamous My Hunny)

As for negative stunts, MAKE SURE YOUR TWO DEMOGRAPHICS ACTUALLY RELATE IN THIS UNIVERSE! Wrestling and ANIME? Are you kidding me?
 
The Kinnikuman stunt was just poorly thought out. Why do this for a sequel that flopped years ago? Why do it as a straight (and rather dull) match rather than a semi-scripted show with effects?

I think the Sunrise design contests mentioned are a better idea. The final ZAFT grunt in SEED for instance came from one of these and I think it's a nice way to get the audience involved. Slightly less succesful- Zaku Zaku Campaign. Those poor rainbow coloured ZAKUs...
 
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