Anime as a global product

[Vashdaman]

I read a statistic today that the anime industry is today worth something to the tune of 25 billion dollars, and that 80% of the industry's sales are from the international anime consuming audience as opposed to domestic. I guess this makes sense seeing how truly globally popular anime today is, it's got to the point where Luffy is apparently a totem of anti establishment rebellion in all sorts of far flung nations (which is a subject I know very little about but which I find absolutely fascinating nonetheless, potentially a subject for another thread?), but anyway that 80 percent figure still somewhat surprised me.

I suppose it's partly due to this idea that I think many anime fans have or had about anime being a very culturally distinct and particular product made for a Japanese audience by Japanese creators in a discernably Japanese anime style. Obviously this definition is inherently silly considering the fact that that viewpoint is also only held, ironically, by non-Japanese anime fans. And for years now that position has been increasingly impossible to hold as the line between Japanese anime and international anime becomes more and more blurred. But still that figure kind of surprised me, and it made me wonder how this evident shift over time towards a more important foreign market is impacting the kind of anime getting made today. I haven't paid close enough attention to the anime landscape of late to really notice if there is an increasing number of shows obviously targeting a foreign audience or not. Or if the idea at the anime studios is that people want that characteristic "Japanese" anime flavour and are maybe leaning in to it even more in an exaggerated sort of way. Or maybe the idea is that if it ain't broke don't fix it?

What trends in this regard have you noticed, and what do you make of it all?

 

[Shadow Cat]

A few factors to consider

Size - US/UK/AU together are considerably larger than Japan. This doesnt even take into account the number of non english speaking places

Price (BD/DVD) - International market is considerably cheaper than domested, means the sets can be purchased by pretty much everyone over here. Rather than the few elite who want to spend £210 on a 12 episode series

Merch - I wouldnt be surprised if looking at the merch market seperate to the industry as whole, Japan would be quite a higher %

Yen - does this report go into the yen being pretty poor at the moment? 1 million yen 5 years ago is quite a bit different today

 

[Vashdaman]

Those are all interesting points that are worth discussing, and just to say I have no clue as to the veracity of the figures I read (it came from an article quoting a Japanese anime organisation at the Tokyo film festival), but surely it's not controversial at this point to say that the non domestic anime audience has grown exponentially in recent years and is of increasing significance to the industry. In the 90s or early 00s for example it felt like the Japanese anime industry gave close to zero tosses about the western market because it was so niche at that stage. Now presumably the western (and foreign market as a whole) is big buissness. So I was curious about whether this was having a influence on the type of anime being produced, it's hard to imagine that it isn't.

But all the shows that have really gone gangbusters in recent years that I know of (Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen for example) are just your ordinary manga adaptations, so maybe the consensus is that there's no point trying to deliberately chase the foreign market?

 

[BrokenPhoenix]

So I was curious about whether this was having a influence on the type of anime being produced, it's hard to imagine that it isn't.

But all the shows that have really gone gangbusters in recent years that I know of (Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen for example) are just your ordinary manga adaptations, so maybe the consensus is that there's no point trying to deliberately chase the foreign market?

I was going to raise this point: some of the most popular anime today are quite "Japanese" in style, such as Demon Slayer. Anime is an incredible soft power for Japan - it's a bit like the English Premier League for the UK, so I feel switching it up would be to its detriment. Like, we all enjoy anime because it's Japanese in style, and it's something different to what we're used to with western media.

However, I would say that there has definitely been an influence of the foreign market on the kinds of anime that is being made and produced (how big you feel that influence is is another question).

If you look at other popular anime today - there's a tonne of action/fantasy type anime - which appeals to western audiences; it's no coincidence that the typical "very Japanese" slice-of-life anime set in Japanese schools, are less popular. I think if you want to go truly mainstream with your anime in the west, it needs to be some kind of high-action/fantasy series; anything too Japanese, then a lot of people will just switch off.

The kinds of anime that tend to get big cinema releases over here are very action-heavy, generally fantasy, with a lot of cinematic qualities (i.e., think the recent Chainsaw Man and Demon Slayer films).

Cyberpunk Edgerunners is another example of foreign influence - an anime based on a western video game. You also have anime based on Korean webtoons/novels like Solo Levelling and Tower of God.

There's definitely been a rise of foreign streaming companies (from the US, Korea, China, etc) and other companies commissioning and funding these sorts of projects - streaming services like Netflix want anime on their platform that they feel will appeal to their audience.

 

[Dai]

I suspect the impact on the type of anime being made is less than you would think, and that comes down to the medium's status as being almost entirely adaptations of light novels and manga. Light novels, in particular, won't be translated unless they become hits in Japan, and by that point the decision of whether to produce an anime adaptation may have already been made. Sure, some people may be reading fan translations, but publishers don't care about the tastes of people who aren't paying customers. The ability for international customers to vote with their wallets just comes too late in an IP's life cycle for it to influence anime production decisions. The main exception is if an anime adaptation becomes a break-out hit internationally, then that may encourage the production committee to greenlight additional seasons for that show.

If most anime were original works, I imagine the influence of international viewers would be higher. But when so much of the western market seems content to gobble up the same pandering power-fantasy junk that floods Japanese light novel platforms, there's not much reason for publishers to change anything.

 

[Rui]

There are definitely some shows which are aggressively chasing the foreign market, and I think it's usually to the detriment of the overall experience. I've read many interviews over the last few decades where manga creators were baffled at the popularity of their work overseas and made comments to the effect of not being sure how much of the wordplay/cultural references actually made sense in translation at all, but ultimately most individual creators lack the resources to tailor their work to a global audience and seem to treat that success as a happy accident.

Not so for big projects, which involve large marketing and research teams and have the power to target specific audiences to pander towards. There can be some big successes when they get the balance right; it wasn't a hit for me but I felt that Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (I typed this before it was namedropped above, I swear!) was a high quality project and there are plenty of other examples of more 'westernised' anime that stays true to what makes anime cool while also making it more accessible. That's a win for everyone. And there are creators who simply like western movies/games/culture and want to pay tribute to that in their work, which leads to some titles naturally having a more global feel.

But then there are the projects which feel cynically designed by committee deliberately to appeal to a non-Japanese audience at the expense of artistic integrity or, well, purpose. Back in the day, people would moan that a show was designed 'entirely to sell merchandise' which I never personally felt was a bad thing, with the genre having been responsible for some genuine classics in its own right. The modern equivalent seems to be the shows designed to pander to a perceived audience's perceived preferences without actually having an identity of their own. (And the trend-chasing gimmick shows calculatedly designed to go viral despite only having enough plot for about 20 minutes of animation, but those seem equally popular in Japan...)

I think the big problem with these shows is that they carve the audience up into categories and aggressively target the ones that they think will make them the most money, making a lot of the big projects feel very 'samey' and - while they are often perfectly entertaining in the moment - sacrificing some of the character which leads to titles becoming beloved memories for decades to come. Everyone knows that there's money in anime but very few people know how to harness that in a sustainable way. It's fascinating to see the titles which pop up at overseas (and domestic) trade shows and merchandise shops because they're not the ones which are getting heavily pushed online. Crunchyroll adores its western RPG-flavoured isekai titles but last week's Animate pop-up store in London was only trading in merchandise for battle titles, sports manga, gacha games and... Evangelion.

I feel it even more in the gaming market, where Japanese titles used to feel very distinctive and now the big titles all feel exactly the same as western games, with the exact same trends and assumptions about their audience's likes and dislikes. Fortunately smaller projects are still thriving, but the big gaming projects don't really do it for me because what's currently considered fashionable in character design, story writing and gameplay isn't compatible with what I enjoy. Anime is the same way when it chases the global market too heavily, in my mind, and it's resulted in me looking farther afield to what China is doing. Modern Chinese animation can be very high quality but very much targeted at its (vast) domestic market first and foremost, which - for now - gives it a more distinctive feel which I really enjoy.

And there's still lots of great anime being made too, though for me it's the stuff which takes risks and embraces its eccentricities which really hits the mark. I love learning about other cultures through entertainment; I don't need all of the flavour stripped away and replaced with generic walled pseudo-European fantasy castle towns in every single show! The insane global popularity of Demon Slayer, which doesn't even try to hide its Japanese references, is definitely a positive step on that front. It's just a shame that with so much anime being made now, the really great stuff is often harder to find - and we're still in the situation where entire regions are cut off from simulcasts for no good reason! We're not going to buy merchandise for shows we can't watch

R

 

[Vashdaman]

Some really interesting answers here. I'm slightly surprised to hear all those pseudo European fantasy set isekai shows might have been targeting western audiences. My assumption has always been that a safe, tried and tested way to appeal to an audience is by giving them something "exotic" regardless of whether or not the depiction of said culture is realistic. I know it doesn't always work out that way of course, and I could be very wrong about this, but I've always thought that, with anime in particular, western audiences don't want their own cultures realistically reflected back to them and more so crave some distorted warped image of Japanese culture. I'd argue that's exactly what a not insignificant amount of anime classics are. And an also not insignificant amount being distorted warped visions of western culture. It can often be problematic for sure, but I think that's something anime has always done very well, and through its exaggerations and distortions can reveal something about ourselves more grounded fiction might struggle to get to.

But yeah that sort of focus group design by comittee cynically targeted approach that @Rui describes hardly ever yields anything good. You can always tell when something is made with passion. I think treating international success as a happy accident is always the best attitude, and I'd even go further and say treating any success like a happy accident is usually the best approach as opposed to setting out to chase "a hit".

The best example in anime of undiluted artistic integrity yielding seemingly infinite and unending commercial success has to be Evangelion, which as Rui notes above is still pumping out merch like no tomorrow. It's such a fascinating example of an experimental and challenging show, verging on the avant garde (certainly End of Eva is!) and made presumably for an incredibly niche audience of geeks, somehow becoming a totally mainstream runaway hit, and whose popularity refuses to dim even three decades on. You can't really predict that sort of success. At the same time it is a bit bittersweet, as while I love to see the enthusiasm for Eva continue on, I do kind feel conflicted about it becoming yet another franchise consumed by its own success and becoming more about consumerism than any of the important ideas the show tried to get across.

 

[Vashdaman]

Also interesting point about Chinese animation hitting the spot that Japanese anime is sometimes struggling to these days! That actually makes total sense given that Chinese creators have a big enough domestic audience not to feel the pressure to appeal to other markets, and thus ending up with more uncompromised projects. I'll really have to check out more Chinese stuff.

I also heartily echo Rui's feelings on big budget video games becoming more homogeneous too!

 

[Professor Irony]

My experience of Chinese animation is by no means exhaustive, and I imagine it affects some things more than others, but I have often struggled to shake the feeling of their domestic works being created within a noticeably more narrow field of what you can and can’t say. The raw talent is clearly there in abundance, but yeah, not sure I’d use the word ‘uncompromised’, to be honest…

 

[BrokenPhoenix]

. My assumption has always been that a safe, tried and tested way to appeal to an audience is by giving them something "exotic" regardless of whether or not the depiction of said culture is realistic. I know it doesn't always work out that way of course, and I could be very wrong about this, but I've always thought that, with anime in particular, western audiences don't want their own cultures realistically reflected back to them and more so crave some distorted warped image of Japanese culture.

I think this is true for the somewhat more "hardcore" anime fans, like us who visit forums like this one, and keep up-to-date with the latest anime offerings, news, and releases.

However, I think the wider, mainstream anime audience prefer something that is familiar, but in anime-form (e.g., something high-action and fantastical in nature).

It's only anecdotal, but I have some friends who are not anime fans in the slightest (they'll scoff at playing JRPGs and rebuke at watching anime in general). However, the one anime that they actually sat and watched all the way through and enjoyed, was Attack on Titan. Which is very action heavy and has a fairly big European influence in its design and characters.

You can see this kind of effect with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Very much a Japanese-style RPG but with a European flavour, which attracted many people who had never even played a JRPG before. Many citing that the traditional anime-style JRPG turned them off from trying a game in that genre before.

It's one thing to capture your core, dedicated audience, but it's another to go fully mainstream and capture the casual western viewer.

 

[Vashdaman]

My experience of Chinese animation is by no means exhaustive, and I imagine it affects some things more than others, but I have often struggled to shake the feeling of their domestic works being created within a noticeably more narrow field of what you can and can’t say. The raw talent is clearly there in abundance, but yeah, not sure I’d use the word ‘uncompromised’, to be honest…

Yeah, I'm not well versed in the subject, but it seems pretty obvious that media in China has a lot of red lines that can't be crossed, and very obviously there's little to no tolerance of openly critical political sentiment. It's a real shame the Chinese government won't relinquish its control over the country's vast but restricted creative talent.


@BrokenPhoenix

I don't disagree with anything you wrote there really, and there is definitely a sizable demographic of people who are very turned off by anime aesthetics, especially of the "moe" esque variety for instance (and as a former strident moe hater, I can sympathise with those people to an extent, but I hate it when people tar an entire medium). But I think the key thing to note with say Attack on Titan or Clair Obscure is that they weren't made cynically to appeal to that demographic who usually hate anime or JRPGs, both of them are not only very well made but clearly projects of sincere passion.

But also, I don't think it's a representation of an unfamiliar national culture that necessarily puts people off a show. People aren't really put off by ninja or samurai or daimyo or Yakuza or even modern day Japanese high schools or whatever. Well apart from people who really dislike ninja and samurai for their own reasons (that I will never understand!). Take Shogun for example, yes it features a western protagonist, but nevertheless it's rooted in Japanese history, it was a hit in the 70s and so was the recent TV adaptation, on the contrary people aren't put off by the foreign aspect of it but attracted.

I think many people who outright dismiss anime and have a problem with it, don't do so simply because it's unfamiliar. Well it's partly that, but I think it's also this unfortunate association anime has with "creepy sexists", backwards representation of women, and sexualisation of young looking characters. Regardless of whether that association is justified or not, unfortunately that's how some people view it. I think there's also a broader issue perhaps of a lot of anime tending to be quite tropey and formulaic, or at least sharing a visual language, and this obscuring the incredible variety that still exists in the medium.

Studio Ghibli has managed to stand outside of this for various reasons, and again despite the very deeply rooted cultural "Japanese-ness" of its films, has levels of global appreciation most anime will never know. But when someone uninitiated sees Evangelion, Dandadan, Full Metal Alchemist, Demon Slayer or Monogatari "it's all just anime". And that's their loss, but it's more a stylistic prejudice than anything, I feel.

 

[Dai]

I'm slightly surprised to hear all those pseudo European fantasy set isekai shows might have been targeting western audiences.

I don't think this is the case. The thing to bear in mind about modern isekai is that it's a misnomer. These aren't other worlds; they're game worlds. Specifically they're game worlds that appeal to Japanese gamers: dating sims and D&D-inspired MMOs. The Japanese fascination with D&D can be traced back to the 80s, where it informed the style of early Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games. I can't overstate how big Dragon Quest is in Japan; it consistently outsells the more internationally popular Final Fantasy. Its more generic western fantasy settings and heavily grinding-based game structure was formative in how Japanese audiences first experienced RPGs. In anime at the time, you famously have one of the most popular fantasy OAVs of the era, Record of Lodoss War, which was literally an adaptation of the author's D&D campaign.

Fast forward a couple of decades and you have .hack introducing the idea of immersing yourself in a fantasy world through a VR game. The break-out success of Sword Art Online cemented this idea in the anime zeitgeist, and the template was set. Many isekai explicitly state that they're in a VR game or a world that (by unexplained contrivance) is exactly like the protagonist's favourite game. Even in isekai that make no link to a specific MMO, how many have you seen that still revolve around members of adventurer guilds killing monsters to gain experience points, level up, and defeat the demon lord?

We often bemoan the everyman protagonist, the cardboard cutout character who is so bland and generic that they can act as the self-insert avatar for any viewer. The result is often boring at best and insulting at worst. Likewise, isekai worlds are designed to be the everygame; D&D-derived RPGs that are generic enough to be familiar to anyone who has heard of Dragon Quest.

 

[Vashdaman]

Thanks for that really interesting charting of Isekai history, @Dai! I find the stubborn popularity of what on the surface sounds like a creatively fairly barren genre to be fascinating in a morbid kind of way, but I cannot muster the willpower to actually watch a single one of these shows, still to this day I haven't watched a single episode. I keep thinking I should, but I haven't managed it yet. My assumption was that isekai persist being produced in large quantities mainly because they strike a chord with the Japanese audience for whatever reason, but how popular are they for example in the west? I always imagine they get grudgingly consumed by anime fans over here out of desperation more often than out of genuine enthusiasm, but I could be very wrong. This forum is pretty small and my only real contact with proper anime fandom so it's hard to really gauge.

 

[Rui]

Sorry, more stream-of-consciousness rambling!

I think it's fairly clear that isekai shows are popular globally too; Sentai have almost stopped releasing any other shows on BD entirely unless they're colossal hits and Crunchyroll has heavily invested overseas funding in a few of the bigger anime adaptations. I do find it interesting that if you go to a big convention (or merchandise shop) there is very little isekai representation at all, though. Almost nobody cosplays isekai characters or talks about them in panels; they may as well not exist, which is weird because you can't browse Crunchyroll without falling over dozens of them on every page of listings. They're the summer blockbusters of modern anime, scratching a comfy itch for those who don't hate them but barely ever sticking around once the series reaches its end - with a couple of notable exceptions which never seem to die, or have appealing enough female character designs to fuel a constant stream of bishoujo figures.

I agree that most isekai worlds originate in games (overtly, in most cases). I've already mostly written the isekai genre off at this point; it's a trend and it will pass in time, and there's a lot that can be said about how it is a reaction to distinctly Japanese outlooks on the unfairness of modern society and the cycle of reincarnation. What I find irritating is the actual fantasy shows (non-isekai or those isekai shows which attempt to include legitimate world building) which still pander to derivative world building or clearly think that they're accurately portraying medieval Europe; Japan is capable of great western-style fantasy shows, however derivative, like Lodoss/Grimgar/Guin Saga, but in a post-Attack on Titan world everyone is writing the exact same drivel about kings and walled cities, and sexist tropes they copied word for word from Game of Thrones.

It's partly why I loved Orb so much; it felt as though the staff had actually done some basic research about the setting and its ugly side instead of trying to suck up to the global audience, and fantasy shows which pick different influences (i.e. avoiding idyllic pseudo-medieval Europe villages) for their setting can really allow creators to explore more interesting worlds. In contrast, there are shows which are clearly pitched at a global audience where the staff will try to show off how much they know about another country by putting in something they saw in a movie (or videogame) and it's so painfully off that it spoils the moment. I'd like to think that we don't need to feel validated by seeing off-kilter takes on our own traditions, just as it's awkward when a British title will attempt to include something 'authentically Japanese' and be so wrong that it's uncomfortable to watch.

To undermine my own point a little, though, last season's Clevatess was surprisingly good despite fundamentally being a jumble of typical western fantasy tropes. And it even pandered to the global market by incorporating music from a British pop star, though I'd like to imagine that it was a creative choice. It felt as though it had a story that it wanted to tell around its generic fantasy trappings, though, instead of a desperate yearning to appeal above else, and the characters were all rough around the edges instead of being the typical 'self-insert dude', 'angry love interest', 'brainless bimbo' and so on. Thinking about that show leads me on to something else...

The use of western music in a show is often one of the big 'tells' that it's trying to blow up globally, with Kaiju No. 8 probably being the best example I can think of recently which is openly courting the overseas market and has some high profile western songs as its themes. They would have already known how popular it was going to be overseas before the anime was made, since Shounen Jump publishes internationally and they'll have data on which of their series are doing well in each market. Westerners have always loved kaiju movies and the Japanese themes are part of the genre already so in the case of Kaiju No. 8, I think it was a savvy move to pitch the anime globally right from the outset. We'll probably never know how much of the data was fed back into the creative process by the mangaka's editors but it would be fascinating to learn about it. I quite like Kaiju No. 8 but I can see a lot of potential for red flags in the way that big projects might be derailed by public opinion early on and cause pressure to be applied to the original creator; I hope that doesn't actually happen.

On the subject of Chinese censorship, while it is obviously still an issue (and as a fan of BL in particular, it's almost comical - in a sad way - how they have to skirt around the obvious restrictions in storytelling) I would argue that the rest of the world isn't a whole lot more free. There is no overt government censorship but there is still soft censorship in what kind of content will receive funding and if your show isn't a generic formulaic crowd-pleaser, it's probably going to get one season at best if it ever gets made at all. The obvious gap in assumptions about the market are one of the biggest red flags; it feels as though there are proportionally more Chinese titles which acknowledge the existence of a non-male audience, which is genuinely weird.

You can self-publish content on pretty much anything overseas, which is hard to do in China unless you don't mind being silently jailed for years at a time with all of your finances confiscated, but when it comes to creating a mainstream adaptation it feels as though the barriers are there no matter where you are. There are subjects which are effectively taboo in the west or Japan, and titles which will never see an overseas release or a stream even if you get them made because the content isn't considered socially acceptable - which is why progressive shows often fall back upon allegorical storytelling. What I'm seeing in the Chinese titles I've enjoyed is that even with stifling restrictions in place, creative minds can tell great stories and cater to audiences who are not being served in a commercial market strangled by old assumptions about audience demographics and mass appeal. And the fact that they've been created against a backdrop of mainstream censorship makes some of the allegorical stories all the more meaningful to me.

This links up with something else which has developed alongside the push for global fame and fortune. I like the idea of how modern shows are often coming from less restrictive origins, like webtoons and online novels (a lot of which are effectively fan fiction of other titles with all of the identifying features sanded away). But what's actually ended up happening so far is that instead of a utopia of varied stories coming from people with different life experiences and different voices, we've built a model where the most gimmicky, derivative, clout-chasing content of all is rushed from online publication to blockbuster television adaptation with no editorial oversight whatsoever. I thought that bypassing the big publishers who have biases and agendas would lead to more diversity in our entertainment but what's actually happening so far is the opposite; people without the life experience (or writing experience) to craft emotionally aware, thought-provoking tales are churning out an endless sea of copy-paste stories. This is brilliant for online publication as you get a lot of interesting, quirky takes on an idea very quickly, leading to a limitless supply of entertainment. However, while a lot of the ideas come with the perfect amount of enthusiasm, the lack of an experienced, guiding hand in shaping those ideas into the best form they can take is sorely missed.

I'm not saying it's all bad. There are gems out there which only exist because of creators self-publishing work that would never have been published traditionally, and even some of the schlocky nonsense is enjoyable for achieving what it set out to do in an engaging way. And there's nothing inherently wrong with people enjoying comfortable, repetitive shows; entertainment as relaxation is valid. But my goodness, there are an awful lot of ideas which would really have benefited from being developed more skilfully by an experienced editor, or by at least having someone around to point out that (for example) horrifically misogynistic content won't age well when the creator looks back on their work later on. And then there are those where the source material is ok in text form - except that the anime adaptation is rushed out so desperately to chase short-lived fame that it's just a crummy-looking word-for-word copy of the prose, which utterly fails to expand the audience. Global success won't materialise around a half-baked project that was rushed out overnight because the source material got a bunch of likes on a webtoon site.

I hope that things will settle down at some point and the 'race to the bottom' of trying to pump out popular shows with no concern for making them the best adaptations of their source material can stop. There'll always be crummy anime being made - it's the nature of the beast - but I can smell when an adaptation is desperate for success at the cost of its own integrity, and it's really not a good look.

R

 

[D1tchd1gger]

Only skimmed all that, but seeing a lot of debate about the influence of the West in anime. I mean the medium as whole (and manga) started as Japanese artists wanting to make their own comics and cartoons. And there's been plenty of borrowing from the West in ideas too like World Masterpiece Theatre, Lupin III, the "cartoons" in grew up on in the 80s that turned out to be anime (Ulysses 31, Cities of Gold, Dogtanian and Willy Fogg were all written/adapted by European writers), [EDIT]almost forgot the cyberpunk worlds of Akira and Ghost in the Shell, et al influenced by Moebius and Blade Runner [/EDIT], numerous Ghibli films, Cowboy Bebop (in fact most of Watanabe's stuff has some sort of Western influence, mostly music) and isekai based on RPG fantasy worlds as the early JRPGs were all influenced by earlier Western RPGs which were all influenced by D&D.
So as the saying goes nothing is new! For example productions like Cyberpunk:Edgerunners (Western writers, Japanese animation) had been done 40 years (ouch!) earlier!

It's partly why I loved Orb so much; it felt as though the staff had actually done some basic research about the setting and its ugly side instead of trying to suck up to the global audience, and fantasy shows which pick different influences (i.e. avoiding idyllic pseudo-medieval Europe villages) for their setting can really allow creators to explore more interesting worlds.

Haven't got round to Orb yet, but another example would be Vinland Saga, a well researched period piece from a completely different place in the world to the, obviously, abundant Japanese historical shows. Although historical shows are a lot more interesting to me than the vast majority of isekai and fantasy, although again there has been some great fantasy shows like Frieren. My favourite isekai also do things differently from the over powered male fantasy, stuff like KonoSuba and Bookworm are so much better to me than those others

[EDIT2]I was trying to think of the most uniquely Japanese anime I've seen. I saw school romances being mentioned, but romance is worldwide, equally, obviously, Japanese history is unique to themselves, but every country produces historical dramas, so I'm thinking something that involves Shintoism and/or Spirits like Spirited Away or A Letter to Momo, but then I landed on Mushishi.[/EDIT2]

 

[Vashdaman]

Genuinely awesome post there, @Rui! I think that might be my favourite anime related AUKN forum post of the year, it's deserving of professional publication! A fascinating analysis of the modern anime landscape and a great read!

This morning I'm currently not feeling incredibly optimistic about the industry escaping that race to the bottom any time very soon though. That feeling isn't based off of much thought or analysis at all, I suppose it's more a vague malaise I feel these days about much of mainstream modern media and entertainment in general and not just relating to anime. It's interesting to read Rui's post and hear about how some shows appear to have given up on the concept of editorial oversight and quality control in the desperation to churn out content rapidly, while other shows run the risk of too much cynical data driven editorial influence. Maybe those two things are really one and the same, or at least two sides of the same coin, united in a desperation for a hit rather than making something genuinely good first and foremost. I know financial viability has always been an important factor for commercial projects, but it really does feel increasingly like whatever sweaty stage of capitalism we're now in is warping our entertainment industries (and world generally) in some truly awful ways. But I've been informed AI is here to save us, yay...

Sorry I haven't had my coffee yet, I shouldn't be this much of a downer, there are still plenty reasons to be optimistic! I expect the isekai craze will fade sooner rather than later and it'll be exciting to see what comes next and whether a globalised anime industry can deliver on its potential and produce more shows that seek to pander less and tell more meaningful stories.

 

[Demelza]

Sorry I haven't had my coffee yet, I shouldn't be this much of a downer, there are still plenty reasons to be optimistic! I expect the isekai craze will fade sooner rather than later and it'll be exciting to see what comes next and whether a globalised anime industry can deliver on its potential and produce more shows that seek to pander less and tell more meaningful stories.

This is more from a publishing perspective than anime, but I think it perhaps feeds into it all the same. In Japan, while isekai is of course still popular, they've actually been going through much more of a romance boom lately when it comes to their light novels (which are of course the root cause of the isekai anime boom). But here in the Western market, all attempts to introduce the romance stuff is resulting in sales that aren't anything like what the fantasy / isekai books bring in. This is only a single publisher, but J-Novel Club for example are very reluctant to license further romance books because of such poor sales. Fantasy settings for romance (such as more female-targeted works) seem to work out, but that's because they still share quite a few of the tropes. But your bog-standard boy-meets-girl set in Japan just isn't doing it.

So, I feel like we're going to be stuck in the fantasy / isekai trend for a lot longer for any productions that strongly want to have that worldwide appeal since by the numbers, well, we want the isekai. To a degree, same with manga. Shojo and josei titles are largely ignored (although it is getting better!) and don't seem to be making it big enough on either side of the pond to be driving significant amounts of anime adaptations. Everyone complains there's too much isekai every season, but when you really look at why, it's not particularly surprising...

 

[Rui]

Shoujo/josei is weird because the former always seems to do really well in the manga market, with strong titles performing very well indeed, yet life as a josei fan has always meant scrambling for content in a barren wasteland in the west, with most series being cancelled and running out of steam as nobody knows they exist. And then when it comes to anime adaptations, shoujo titles are lucky to get one show per season a lot of the time and - if they're lucky - a drama CD or two. And a shoujo (or heaven forbid, josei) anime which actually has enough of a budget to attract people outside of the existing market is the rarest of all.

Which is weird because there have been some spectacularly successful shoujo anime adaptations in the past. Even in the west, enough people are still buying the unfinished, kind-of-ancient NANA manga that it had to be reprinted and people are still drawing tons of fan art for it at conventions. Sailor Moon and Fushigi Yuugi were darlings of their eras and the former is still getting prominent films on Netflix and an internationally touring musical show. Hana Yori Dango didn't get much of a UK release but in other markets it's enjoyed countless remakes and tributes. Kimi Ni Todoke got a Netflix run years after everyone had enjoyed it. Fruits Basket was so beloved in the US that it kept getting rereleased, received a lengthy remake and still shows up at conventions today.

I don't think shoujo anime shifts many discs - because it tends to be long, and less rewatchable, and bothering to animate it creatively takes effort that hardly anyone bothers spending - and I guess romance shows in general have a similar problem. But selling discs isn't the point for most shows these days so I hope that we do end up with more interesting romance titles getting lively adaptations too. They can have a really long tail when it comes to merchandise sales if people pitch them cleverly.

R

 

[Sarah]

Exciting developments, though, for 2026 on the shojo/josei front (I mustn't get too excited but...) with josei manga Ikkoku Nikki by Tomoko Yamashita getting an anime series in January and now-classic shojo manga Hana Kimi at last getting an anime series in January too (one of the first shojo manga series I collected back in the day). A sign of changing attitudes, maybe? Or just a flash in the pan? I hope they open the door for more josei and shojo series (more Yona anime would be nice too , just sayin', as the manga comes to an end...)

S

 

[RadFemHedonist]

Exciting developments, though, for 2026 on the shojo/josei front (I mustn't get too excited but...) with josei manga Ikkoku Nikki by Tomoko Yamashita getting an anime series in January and now-classic shojo manga Hana Kimi at last getting an anime series in January too (one of the first shojo manga series I collected back in the day). A sign of changing attitudes, maybe? Or just a flash in the pan? I hope they open the door for more josei and shojo series (more Yona anime would be nice too , just sayin', as the manga comes to an end...)

S

I'm so psyched for Hana-Kimi!!