Sunday saw the Tokyo Anime Fair come to a close, GaijinPot was there to catch some of the action.
After reaching a peak in 2006, the number of anime minutes made for Japanese TV fell 20% to 108,342 in 2009, according to the Association of Japanese Animations.
What’s to blame for this? Observers of Japanese pop culture at the show blamed the industry itself. The world’s hunger for anime accelerated around 2000, with a lot of Hollywood movies incorporating anime scenes and inspiration. Since then however more and more adult-oriented niche titles have turned off the general audience.
On top of that, the industry is famous for persistently low pay and poor working conditions, meaning many young people no longer want to work in anime and thus forcing Japanese animation companies to outsource much of their work.
By outsourcing actual production work to China and Korea, Japanese anime companies have in effect trained a work force of people who are now far more ambitious and far more hungry than a lot of Japanese animators are.
During the press event the man behind the Tokyo anime fair acknowledged that the worldwide interest in anime has waned but seemed confident that foreign competition poses a threat, expressing confidence that a new boom will emerge in time. His argument? That Japanese animation is rooted in a rich 60-year history that cannot be replicated elsewhere , Japan he said, is the home of Astro Boy creator and “godfather of anime” Osamu Tezuka. Are you still watching anime? What do you think of its current situation?
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God, love those school clothes, they look so cute in them, like little dolls.
hahah, you gotta love Japanese school uniforms. They're adorable. *drool*
I wish I could go to a Japanese convention… sucks I live so far away lol.
Its getting really hard to find good stories in anime nowadays.
Interesting thoughts on the state of the anime industry guys.
One thing I have always thought however is that even if the quanitity goes down, Japan only has to produce 3-4 hits a year and it will remain the leading player. It is a long time before these other countries produce a Miyazaki, or like the article says, Osamu.
There will always remain an audience for the MOE stuff, I just hope that it is kept far away from the mainstream stuff so that nobody can confuse it with the hits of Ghibli etc..
There were a lot of excellent independent artists there, too!
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The quality and diversity of anime titles has been declining in the recent years and some absolutely terrible titles released (Black Cat, Dragonaut to name two off the top of my head). It also doesn't help when animation studios complete destroy semi-decent mangas by re-writing the story so it fits the “moe-blob” genre (I'm looking at you Rosario+Vampire).
It has definitely become harder to look for the gems amongst the generic fodder that is thrown around, K-On being a prime example. I'll get flamed for saying that, but it's what I honestly think. In between K-On series 1 and the upcoming series 2 is Sora no Woto which after watching the first few episodes struck me as a K-On copy.
There has always been generic fodder; looking back at the 90s you had “All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku” and “Saber Marionette” but in there were titles such as “Macross Plus” and “Ghost in the Shell” which really balanced it all out*. The trouble with animes of recent is it's all catering for a small specific number of people (myself included) whereby it's all about “moe”.
Going back further, you had real classics like Space Pirate Captain Harlock and MS Gundam (0083 era) as well as the original Macross and not to mention Astro boy.
Unless the animation studios get a grip of themselves and start producing decent material then the industry will slowly wittle away into a very niche form of entertainment.
*You could argue Neon Genesis Evangelion is an epic title for the 90s but I found it so contrived and pretentious I find it a massive let down.
I want to see Sailor Moon redone. Or, at least another live action series.
interesting that you end your article with pictures of dolls from K-ON!, the moe anime. lots of people blame moe for the loss in quality in japanese animation. I agree to a certain extent, that in the last years, the focus was more on optical attraction, than a good story.
personally, I don't think japanese anime these days, or what's running on japanese television, is interesting. they do have some good movies, made by Ghibli or Madhouse “Summer Wars”, and some studios are creative and try new stuff (like 4°C), but it's tough to get into the mainstream, because the big studios don't want to risk the market, that's paying for moe anyway.
it's a complicated story, but you mentioned several reasons already (low pay, outsourcing to china).
personally, I don't know where all is headed, but I think the demand for japanese animation worldwide will shrink in the next 10 years, if they don't change something