What do you think caused the anime slump in North America?

A lack of a Dragonball Z style hit, CN only airing kidified anime and Adult Swim airing their anime at late night hours and pushing it off weekdays hasn't helped things. There's also the fact that no other channels are picking up anime, besides Sci-Fi and IFC (sort of).
 
I think the more salient question is, what caused the anime bubble in North America? Because for a while there it clearly got larger than the market could support in the long term. The current "slump" is just one stage in things reaching a more sustainable equilibrium, coupled with a depressed economy in general.
 
That begs the question on why there hasn't been a DBZ style hit and why CN is only airing kiddified anime, they are clearly willing to air PG rated shows on their channel, so why is that the case with anime on CN?
 
the economy ........ plus the lack of a major hit in America ..... Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon.. these shows brought forth anime here..... since then nothing has come close to replicate the success of these shows
 
Well, I've said this before, Cartoon Network betrayed us, but ever since that one day I picked up an issue of Anime Insider, and started reading it, I've pretty much gave up on mainstream anime since then
 
Economy, Geneon's fall and many companies like ADV becoming defunct for the most part besides distribution. Personally, I'm not buying anymore DVRAB in singles anymore thanks to FUNI's packaged tactics, which a lot of people might be doing. Why buy Gungrave vol 1. now when you can buy Gungrave the boxset for not even double the cost of 1?
 
How have they betrayed you? CN is not obligated to show anime and if new anime shows like Blue dragon don't bring in ratings, why should they show them? They haven't betrayed you, because they have no obligationto you, peroid. They have obligation to bring in ratings and make money and you may not like shows about Canadian teenagers doing stupid things at a mall or summer camp, but if the kiRAB like those shows, why should cN show Blue dragon instead?
 
I understand what you're saying, but a lot of us felt a sense a betrayal from Cartoon Network

And did say I gave up mainstream anime prior to that, actually it was in 2000, when I began to get tired of seeing the same stuff over and over again
 
That's all well and nice, but your feelings are irrelevant, that's not how the concept of betrayal works. They can only betray you if they have obligation to me, in the first place, that's like saying fox betrayed me when they canceled Arrested development, it wasn't a betrayal, it was a business decision. CN is business their objectgive is to make CN and if showing anime doesn't bring in the ratings or make them money, why they should do it?

The question is, why is airing anime less profitable then before?
 
Everything is in a Slump. TV has been Going down in quality overall since late 03...& CN has been Going downhill sonce 05...True 08 was somewhat of a revival for the network...But still The "Anime SLump" like a slump in any medium is temporary...True will naver have DBZ style hits again...ALthough Naruto, Bleach & One piece all came close...but sort of fell of the mountin a few steps before the top perse..Im sure if you give it some time (2-5 more years) will see a Decent amount of Quality anime airing at decent time slots again!


P.S. This is unrelated But is $19.82 a good Price to pay for Disgaea2 ?
 
I can understand your point, and then again that's TV for ya

But honestly, that doesn't change my opinion of Cartoon Network, or the fact that I barely watch anything on TV these days

And maybe it's because they keep showing the same stuff that makes it less profitable
 
Okay, I'm not complaining about Cartoon Network cancelling Blue Dragon since it was an hackdub, but Blue Dragon didn't get bad ratings. Go look up it's ratings in the ratings thread on the Cartoon Network board if you don't believe me. And yes, there is a sense of betrayal when you watch a network for a long time and then they give you the shaft. I mean, really, if you're seeing a girl and she cheats on you, you will still feel a sense of betrayal even though you weren't married. Sure, you weren't married so there was no obligation on her part to stay faithful to you, but you will still probably feel betrayed.
 
I'd say a nuraber of things:

Geneon's collapse the year before
ADV's fallout with Sojitz and restructuring
Toonami getting canceled
Adult Swim taking action off weeknights and relegating anime premieres to early morning hours
Cartoon Network focusing more on American-produced action shows (Batman, Star Wars, Secret Saturdays)
The US economic downturn in general, more people wanting to save their money these days
No particularly successful new title in 2008

But that's just my opinion.
 
Good lord.

Why are you comparing Cartoon Network's business decisions regarding anime to a cheating wife or girlfriend. That analogy doesn't work at all.

Although I'm sure someone will throw a million and one reasons at me why I'm wrong I don't think anything that CN does that offenRAB anime fans is supposed to be personal. They do what they have to do in order to run their netwrk as well as they can and at the end of the day the most important thing to the people programming the network is ratings. So when they remove someone's favorite show from the line-ip they know they may be upsetting some fans but it's what they have to do. Taking it personally it ridiculous.

Nobody ever promised that Japanese animation would always have a place on American TV.
 
I'm going to say overproduction and not enough demand. As we all know, anime fans have always overrated the mainstream popularity of anime, and when it started making inroaRAB into the mainstream, they jacked up production to get multiple copies of no-name shows into stores. Of course, mostly they just sit there and collect space, especially those ridiculous special edition DVRAB that cost about $20 more for just an extra box.

Stores eventually see that they take up space and don't move, and stop ordering them. Cue downfall of profits.
 
I think the reason why anime is slumping is because they brought too much over. Instead of a highly filtered selection of great and financially viable shows, the market got too bloated and saturated. There were no more filters, and companies started releasing any series they could get their hanRAB on, regardless of quality and interest in said show. Companies like ADV released too many titles. Many of them didn't sell well (mainly because of quality, or being too niche), and now they are paying the price.
 
Every time someone cries and moans about "betrayal" in terms of anime from CN, I get physically ill.

It's obvious that mainstream popularity of anime was a brief fad, and the only reason Cartoon Network was airing so much anime on Toonami and Adult Swim is because during this period of time, the ratings were above average. Many tweens and teenagers have since moved on, and only otaku remain. They aren't pulling in the ratings that are acceptable by the network, so they scaled back how much anime they air, and when they air it.

It's sad, but you can't be mad at them for being concerned about bottom line. The only thing you could do as a consumer is to spread word of mouth in an attempt to boost ratings.

Sci-Fi has typically lower standarRAB in terms of ratings, especially during the late night weeknight slots (as evident by their programming catalog being pretty pathetic), so to them, otaku nurabers are probably their average.
 
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