18
votes
What anime do you think could have strong crossover appeal if correctly publicized?
I'm old enough that I watched the Simpsons, South Park and more recently Bojack Horseman change the perception of animation in the US. I'm only a casual anime fan, who started watching because my husband studies japanese. However, I think Aggretsuko for example could appeal to fans of the Office. What else is out there in the anime world that is not stereotypical and might appeal to a wider audience?
If I'm being perfectly honest, none of them.
Anime is almost always weird. That weirdness is the primary thing that draws me to it, but it's also the thing that drives people away from it.
To use a slightly different example, there is a lot of furry media that I would describe as S+ - if they aren't masterpieces they are close to it. There's even some anime crossover like Beastars and Oddtaxi. But a huge number of people absolutely hate anything vaguely furry in nature. A while back I posted a topic with a video about a furry visual novel and I got a comment with 12 votes chiding me for not adding a furry tag so that people could filter it out. The situation is much the same for Anime.
I have a coworker who I know with absolute certainty that she would love the storyline and message of a handful of shows, but she won't watch any of them because in her mind it's full of annoying screaming baby voices. I don't really blame her for that aversion because I have heard a lot of dubs with voices much more screachy and annoying than the original Japanese ones, and if you're not actively watching it - as she were likely to have experienced with her kid liking My Hero Academia - it's incredibly irritating. Once you get that kind of association it's extremely difficult to invest into that kind of thing. It doesn't help that the most popular anime tends to be shonen stuff that is made with young boys as the primary audience; it means that most people's introduction to anime will be something that will turn them off of it.
For the most part, I think the anime that were most likely to have crossed over already have. You don't hear from them that often online, but there are certainly people who love the Studio Ghibli films who don't otherwise like anime. There are other anime films that are appreciated by people who are not enthused by animation in general, but those people tend to be film buffs - people who are more interested in the art of film than the medium itself. It feels less common for TV shows.
Would you mind naming the shows you think your coworker might enjoy if they were open to it?
I have a selfish interest in finding anime to watch with my husband.
The biggest one is Violet Evergarden. That's one that could very easily work as a live-action show with the sole exception of her mechanical hands. The other one is Vivy - Flourite Eye's Song, because of it's commentary on artistic creation and expression. These are both great shows I would recommend to anyone because they're my personal favorites, but these were also very personalized recommendations for her tastes. In general they are both going to appeal a lot more to the average woman than the average man. Vivy would probably be the better option to watch with your husband; it's got really good music and action scenes in it, whereas Violet Evergarden is very much invested in being a melodrama above all else.
Do watch Violet Evergarden, though. It's just an astonishingly beautiful piece of art in every single aspect. I would absolutely classify it as a masterpiece.
I really want to mass proselytize to everyone the masterpiece that is Frieren. It's high fantasy adventures: we all understand the Fighter Mage Cleric Swordsman party composition and defeating big bads right?
I just want to randomly share how much I like Frieren. I started watching it and it didn't really click with me until a few episodes in and then something just snapped and I fell in love with it. I usually don't watch still running anime and once I caught up the past few weeks I would visibly groan out loud in frustration when the credits popped up so fast and it was over already.
I can't really place why the show is drawing me in so much, I think the introspection is through the roof in the plot and that is something that really appeals to me greatly. Frieren really is inside her head a lot and maybe that is also something I really associate with as I feel I'm generally the same, but the show does a great job making you think she isn't noticing or thinking about things but hits you with a lot of moments where she very clearly did think a lot and for a long time about them.
I think if I were a younger person I maybe wouldn't be as in love with the show but for me right now I'll join the rest of the internet in loving this series!
Absolutely, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Frieren is my favorite slow burn romance series. It's an extremely slow coming of age, I think. Himmel is a patient man: when you fall in love with someone who is really
slowdenserelaxed about certain things and darn near immortal, everything takes a while. The whole story is Frieren taking a bit of a breather after an exciting teenaged adventure, and pausing for just a moment to think about how she feels about Himmel.That's a great recommendation! I just don't like to recommend anything that's still running because I like to think of them as a whole. Sometimes they fall over on the landing, and it's really common for them to end without a satisfying conclusion; I really don't like when that happens.
I could have also recommended To Your Eternity. Everyone should at least watch the first episode. Now that I think about it, I think it was what Production I.G. was working on before Freiren.
Thanks. I enjoyed Your Lie in April
she's not wrong. That's an intentional and cultural tick of much of Japanese society : https://www.fluentu.com/blog/japanese/aizuchi/
I just hope she does say that to an actual Japanese person, I suppose. It'd be like walking into America and saying "why is everyone so fat?"? They are right, but rude haha. Some anime do "localize" that out, but it's inherently hard given that dubs need to match lip flaps (and very few anime will redraw for a "proper" localization)
On the larger topic, I kind of agree. Anime for me is simply filling a demand western adult animation refuses to do: themes that aren't raunchy sex jokes or potty humor. Trying to tell a larger story and advance the characters and environment it built. We don't really get much Fantasy or Action or Romance animation because "the good ones" tend to become movie franchises (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, That percy Jackson movie that doesn't exist, etc) and it seems other ideas turn into live action instead (Pick your favorite Disney sitcom for "romance" genre).
And then there's the trend setters. Family Guy has more or less contorted 99% of every "adult" animated cartoon in the 2000's and early 2010's around it, and just when I thought Bojack might bring an end to this trend Rick and Morty drops in. If there were more Boondocks and Metalocalypses, or even more Love Death and Robots style of animation, I probably wouldn't consume so much Japanese media. But alas.
(I like FG and R&M btw, but I don't want ALL my media trying to be cynical edgy humor, thanks)
That was my intention. This is more of a fundamental way in how Japan approaches conversation rather than a focus on Japanese acting and voice direction. A cultural difference and theme is highlighted right in the beginning: Japan doesn't really like having dead air whenever there is more than one person in the room facing each other, or scene in this case.
If you want more trivia, the kinds of grunts done is action media is Kiai, simply a part of martials arts (or any form of fighting) and how you're taught to exhale with your attacks. Some of
it is showboating/entertainment, but the general science of how our body and muscles work show that is does give more power and follow-through to each movement.
But that's different from non-combat "noises". if you ever notice and get bothered by dubbing like this (which is half and half. And then just some normal panting sounds from sprinting about), part of that is simply because of a more literal localization of how the Japanese speak.
Most FF's do tend to "localize" around this stuff. You'd barely find any of this in FF15 for instance (not as sure about FF16, but I heard they actually VA'd in English first). But every localization is different and I'm sure all this is based on hired 3rd parties anyway.
I haven't looked much specifically into Japanese VA's but I'm sure there's similar differences specifically to conform and appeal to their culture. They definitely do for writing (which can be equally frustrating for westerners when more directly translated).
I'd go further and say that there's a strong correlation between my enjoyment of any specific anime and how unique and original it is. Let's use Oddtaxi (Odotaxi) as an example. What is the answer to "who might like Oddtaxi?" I strongly suspect it's "the people who like Oddtaxi." It's a whole thing. People love it, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because they like anything else in particular. It made me happy because it expanded my range of tastes.
I know of someone like that! Anything with even a whiff of shounen anime vibes, he'll immediately reject. But there's a wide gamut of shows featuring boys, and some are actually really good! It gets to the point where his argument for not giving a show a try is addressed or deconstructed by the show itself, if it's a smart show. It's very unfortunate.
I pretty much agree with this. Anime shines brightest when it tells stories that will never be mainstream, but that may strike a chord with specific viewers, deeper and stronger than a story that tries to appeal to all.
Air (2005) is a melancholy story, about a traveler who arrives at a small seaside town in Japan, on his search for a winged girl from a fairytale his mother told him as a child, before she died.
It does everything well. It's paced perfectly at 12 episodes (much better pacing than Clannad by the same creators). But some people still won't connect to it. Might find it boring, sad as that is for me to imagine.
It's not a show you put on with friends in the living room. Not because there's anything raunchy or weird, but because it's a low-key and deeply personal story.
That's the magic of anime. Show it to your friends and they won't get it. But you know that, out there, there are thousands of people like you, who feel the same things you feel.
Can you suggest more such low key and personal stories?
I'm in love with the series Midnight Diner, a live action slice of life show that is full of low key personal stories alongside beautiful shots, especially shots of food being cooked or served
I'd second the recommendation of Violet Evergarden. It's pretty and will give you feels.
If you like Midnight Diner (nice!) then the anime Nana might be up your alley. It's about a starry-eyed 20-year-old woman who moves to Tokyo to be with her boyfriend. On the train ride there, she makes friends with another woman the same age, who's in a band. It's about friendships and relationship drama, basically a small town girl in a big city story. It's an incredibly popular manga.
I think there are a lot of great emotional anime/manga stories written by women for a female audience—"shoujo" stories, to contrast with stereotypical "shounen" anime targeted at teenage boys. Of course among that is a lot of overly pandering product too. But that would be one place to start the search.
This is flying in the face of the thread since these examples are all very steeped in Japanese culture, but if you happen to like supernatural detective series there are a TON of fantastic shows about yokai and Japanese spirits like this, and you don't need to have any yokai knowledge to enjoy them. The form factor of dealing with a personal or interpersonal problem obscured behind spirits and magical realism is really, really conducive to flexible episodic stories.
Natsume's Book of Friends is about a teenage boy who's able to see spirits everywhere and discovers his late grandma kept a book of contracts tied to spirits. Since yokai hunt him for their binds with the book, he works to resolve the contracts in mutually-agreeable terms, or sometimes with force. It has a lot of shoujo tropes and trappings, and it's the least episodic of these with a ton of recurring characters, but it tends to stick to a central story about a particular conflict most episodes and the continuity works very positively with good character development.
Mushishi is about a medicine man, Ginko, who travels around the Edo and Meiji periods and takes on cases of people with odd afflictions to exorcise the related spirits. The spirits here are called Mushi, though, and they often act like a kind of organism or parasite that require Ginko to deal with them in a measured way. It's very calmly paced, but there's an intensity to the Mushi being unreasonable forces of faux-biology and nature driven by the social circumstances around their hosts and victims; it gives the narratives urgency, and Ginko is a fantastic protagonist to drive it. There's very little tying the stories together if that's of more interest to you.
Mononoke is about an unnamed medicine man who... travels around the Edo and Meiji periods and takes on cases of people with odd afflictions to exorcise the related spirits. However he has a very specific method of dealing with the spirits - he has a sword which can slay the yokai if he has the shape, truth, and reasoning of why it exists. Mononoke is more structured around its mystery and horror elements, but in a way it feels more free with how it handles the story surrounding the circumstance by modulating the tone. It's only one season and still goes all over the place with the few stories it tells. Also has some wild visual direction, it's basically intended to be a moving woodcut piece. There's a movie coming out this year, I'm praying it makes it to a theater stateside.
Each of these shows are very deliberate and methodically-told, but very sentimental and warm in their own ways.
I think a big problem with anime, especially on mainstream streaming platforms, is that it's presented as a genre and not a medium. Like if you bring up the anime category on someone's Netflix, the first line would have a spread like Baki, Hunter Hunter, Scott Pilgram, Sonic, My Happy Marriage and Jojo. Not exactly an effective way for a new viewer to explore.
I know people that would love Berserk or Bocchi or even Nichijou but they'd never come across it because the algorithm weighs all animation as the same. And with a lot of platforms currently having on animation, I don't think it will change soon.
But to your original question, in a perfect world, the shows I think could be exceptionally impactful would be Monster, Anohan, the original Trigun and Frieren. These series are wonderfully written, animated and voiced but I don't think they have the bloated scale and fan pressure of something like Hunter Hunter, Jojo or Demon Slayer. They also challenge peoples expectations of animated story telling but still staying mostly coherent and not leaning too much into Japanese culture.
Also they're just some of my favorite series and I'd love nothing more than for them to become popular so I can shout "told you so" to everyone I k know.
That's an excellent point.
Now I'm getting all the flashbacks to high school arguing with people about just that.
Anime's biggest barrier to wider appeal is how pervy it is. Many anime fans become accustomed to it and forget that it's there, leading them to recommend shows that would otherwise be great.
A prime example is One Piece, a great show that has a lot of well endowed women in skimpy outfits, the Netflix live action show removes all that horniness and is way more accessible for it.
And it's not just obvious stuff, smaller things like how many scenes are characters talking while the camera is focused on their ass, talking about lolis, and other stuff like that.
And for the record I think Odd taxi is a great recommendation, Beastars is not.
I think one piece is a perfect example of how well these things can do if you strip out some of the "anime nonsense" or whatever you want to call it.
As for the pervyness,
It's not just that it's pervy (or the extra concerning pervyness of the underage), but also that it's extremely low effort pervy?
Tropes tend to suck because they're phoned in plot devices we've seen before. The majority of porn "with plot" barely has any because it turns out people will watch it anyways. Fanservice and the like is much the same in that it's usually a crutch to string things along. Good shows have fanservice, but it's usually the first sign of something that's low effort. There are ways to use sexuality in telling a story, but "lol lets make sure we see up their skirt in this scene" isn't adding much.
With all that said, my "wider audience" recs over the years -
Patlabor 1 and 2 - If you can get over the technobabble, especially in the first one, they're very good stories.
Golden Age Arc Berserk Movies or Original Anime - If you enjoy movies like Chinatown or Oldboy, this is an easy recommendation usually. Probably GoT and Westworld as well.
Psychopass/Evangelion and it's string of films- Much the same as the previous category with cross over for people who liked things like Blade Runner.
Almost anything Ghibli - The obvious avoids are obvious and the rest range from gorgeous but potentially boring to just straight up classics.
Shounen wise I've found **MHA/JJK/FMA:B/HxH **to all be good enough to justify some of the weirder stuff they've done and to be less absurd about it. I know tons of people loved naruto and bleach but I feel both had major plot drop off issues so I personally don't bother to rec them.
Gurren Lagaan and Fate Zero have also made the rounds as recs to my non anime friends. I recognize that both of these fly in the face of some of what i've talked about, but their still high quality elsewhere which tends to make up for it.
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few more, but those are probably my main go to's when I've got someone who's not normally an anime fan.
Edit-
Totally forgot that what hit adult swim was a pretty good list of things to maybe recommend. Cowboy Bebop and Trigun are the ones that stick out in my memory.
Fate zero is a tough one to reccomend to start though, Caster is REALLY hard for a lot of people to watch, myself included.
Yeah it's in the same group of people who don't have issues with things like Westworld or GoT. Absolutely wouldn't just recommend it to someone randomly.
Yeah, I would say the sexualization is a big barrier, but gore comes into a close second with some of them. I had thought about bringing up Re:Zero as an example, but then I thought about all the loli characters, and then I thought even if they were turned down there's still a huge amount of body horror.
I think Beastars is actually a bit more relatable than OddTaxi in some ways, but I can understand why you would think the opposite. Perhaps it's because I appreciate the multitudinous direct social messages it contains.
To be clear I personally am a fan of both, but OddTaxi is a show where the characters happen to be animals, Beastars on the other hand, the characters being animals is a big part of the story, and the characters are also horny teenagers, it is very much a furry show.
So for that reason I'll have no problem recommending OddTaxi to someone but I'll make sure the coast is clear before I even mention Beastars.
I mean, I guess Beastars is as much a furry show as Bojack Horseman. They are still animals and still very roughly depict sex. The furry thematics aren't quite as strong as Beastars but still way above OddTaxi (you know, minus the puns. So many puns in Bojack).
I'd hope in both cases audiences won't just go "wow that dog had sex with a woman" and instead go "oh, that 30's celebrity seeked out and had sex with a barely legal woman". But I guess that's wishful thinking. People can't seem to disassociate from real life long enough to immerse themselves into another world for 20 minutes, where (regardless of earth morals) anthropomorphic beings are commonplace and simply exist without discimination (at least, no more discrmination than women/minorities in our world). Understanding their world =/= accepting those concepts in our world.
I would argue that the prevalence of animal traits to the plot and characters is the key indicator of furry-ness. Zootopia is more of a furry story than Bojack because the plot focuses on the dynamics between animals, you can replace all the animals in Bojack with people and all you really lose are a lot of great puns and jokes.
Likewise Beastars is just CW Zootopia.
Also just in general Furries get a bad wrap, and that has lead to a knee jerk reaction against these kinds of story telling tropes.
What I’d be curious to know if the those who avoid anime for its sexual content and violence also take issue with western media doing the same. There’s no shortage of popular TV and movies that are considerably more gratuitous than the popular anime, but I haven’t heard nearly as much about distaste for these, at least outside of religious circles.
Of course, there are differences in what constitutes these types of content between mediums, but it’s not as if all anime is pervy and/or violent. There’s plenty of western stuff that’s as bad or worse than the average anime.
To be fair the target audience for these shows makes a difference, One Piece and Cowboy bebop both have well endowed characters but One Piece is a Shonen made for kids (not that there is anything wrong with that), cowboy bebop is for teens.
There is also a difference between live action and animated sexual content. I can't explain it but I think most would agree there is something different about it (not saying that there is anything wrong about it though).
simple, we were conditioned to assossiate animation with child's content. A very deliberate assosiation because
So even if we have the most obvious adult cartoon with all the swearing, sexual content, bloody violence, and dystopian fatalism themes, we still have some piece of our mind deep down that says "drawings -> kids media". So some will still freak out and say "why is this on TV" despite being on HBO with the appropriated rated TV-MA with all the proper forewarnings before it. the conditioning is that deep (BTW video games are the same way for similar reasons, so prepare for the "GTA VI is corrupting the youth!" despite the very obvious M rating it'll get).
Or as a real exmaple: I know some people that Love The Boys but treat Invincible as too gore-y for their tastes. Yes, the conditioning is that deep for some people. It won't be cut off in a generation or even two. It's in the interest of networks like Disney and Viacom to keep that assossiation.
I took half this spiel from this video using the Netflix Avatar as a centerpiece of the wider topic, but it wasn't the first video I heard to mention this
That association is unfortunate, because it prevents animation from being used in genres where it’s actually one of the cheaper options.
Legend of Galactic Heroes comes to mind. The budget for a live action show of its kind — a space opera in a sprawling universe with numerous locales and battles (in space and on planet surfaces) with 110 episodes, running for nearly a decade — would’ve been much greater.
The potential of animation is massive yet consistently slept on.
indeed. It's a short termed thinking for small, consistent profit. Meanwhile, the most popular franchises span decades (See: Avatar the Last Airbender despite all the strong arming) and everyone tries and fails to jump on that trend. A true mystery why imitations fall short...
The main counterargument here is that some pieces of animation do indeed get a global appeal, where kids and adults enjoy it alike. Disney for instance got this in the more classical "for everyone" way with (formerly?) quality art/characters/story that can be enjoyed by all. Dreamworks does it in a "only adults get this joke" way. That's one angle to get in through, but it's still a very niche train of thought in the boardroom of Hollywood execs.
CG animation is also a lot more expensive than people like to admit. Aside from the obvious "extras" you have to do with CG like modeling, rigging, shading, lighting, etc., animation by itself is really hard and expensive. Even with expensive motion capture (where you also have to pay for the technicians and actors, by the way) you generally still need to clean things up by hand. A one-second animation of a character doing a jump can take hours to perfect. Once again using Beastars as an example, since it's primarilly animated with 3D models, there's a ton of stuff that isn't made 3D because of the expense; a lot of the backgrounds and even some characters get drawn in 2D instead.
I absolutely agree. I still can't get used to it, and it's off putting pretty much every single time, even if the rest of the show is great. It's a major barrier for a lot of people, but it seems it's something a large portion of anime fans want, so I don't see it going away any time soon. The fan base that loves that sort of thing is another huge barrier for the average person, and it feels like a self-perpetuating cycle at this point. Not every anime enjoyer is like this, but it's definitely a big enough problem to put off people.
I remember seeing Kill la Kill getting praised to the high heavens when it was released, and as a person who hadn't watched a lot of anime because the perviness was a turnoff, I was shocked how borderline porn that show was (and while the world was somewhat cool, the story was kinda nothing, imo).
At the time people seemed really blind to the appropriateness of sexualizing underaged people, I think that's gotten better now, though.
Kill La Kill is probably the least applicable example you could use. The entire show is built around empowerment rather than the often used denigration/accidental/unwanted sexual advances that are forced upon the (usually) female characters.
I understand what the show looks like on the surface, but while it's showing skin it's also poking fun at -if not outright chastising- the medium as a whole to treat sexuality normally and not as a cheap tool for teenage boy engagements.
The characters in the show that are perverts are ridiculed, the characters that feel strong in their own skin and body are empowered.
Context matters. I feel like 90% of the sex scenes in Game of Thrones could be deleted and the story would unfold the same, but you can't make Kill La Kill without the skimpy clothes. It's literally the point and makes sense for the story.
And yet... I get it. I wouldn't watch KLK with anyone else in the room either.
Nevertheless, the nudity in that show is miles and miles better than any other show that does panty shots for cheap clicks. It actually has substance. Don't sleep on it.
That's the then touted sell for KLK. I disbelieved it when it aired, and this many years later I still disagree.
The young ladies didn't choose near nakedness: they embraced the power that comes as a trade off and in spite of it, and learned to shrugg off the foisted on guilt. But they didn't choose it until after trading shame for power. That's not empowerment that's comprising to a warped system without internalizing the shame. The members of something-beach, maybe they chose it.
But you cant seriously tell me the show creators weren't intentionally selling sex.
Respectfully, I didn't say they weren't selling sex. I said it wasn't cheaply done like panty shots/boob jiggle/gaze camera during serious moments that take away from the whole. Contrary to cheap bait, KLK is using sex as a vehicle to mean something, or at worst they're using sex and also have it mean something in the story.
To me, it's clear that they're ridiculing the medium for using sex without substance just to try and make a mediocre show better (which usually fails and makes it worse in my opinion), and by extension the audience for falling for it.
The warped system is touched upon too, by that group you mentioned that are forever nude by choice. It's been too long ago for me to remember what exactly their point was so forgive me for not expanding on this more. As far as I could tell, it wasn't supposed to be normal to magical girl into a skimpy outfit.
Edit to add: it sounds like you saw it, or at least partially. Wouldn't you agree that the method of selling sex is at least healthier than how it's done in most other anime? Anime tends to rely on accidental groping or unwanted harassment and play it off like a joke. Kill la Kill didn't act like that was normal.
On your last point, oh yes for sure, at least the nudity is --- it's Nudist Beach! Those guys were called nudist beach! -- acknowledged outright instead of played off like normal or accidental. there was a tiny bit of harrassment iirc, with the weird alien mom groping the white costumed daughter (ew) but yeah at least the whole series is very upfront about the nudity and fetish costumes and such. I also appreciated that there were equally happy to show nude men as well as women.
Versus..... Recently I tried to show a tween classic Dragon Ball, which was aired as definitely a children's show. (KLK was older teens and up iirc) Dragon Ball (classic) is even more lewd than I had already explained it was going to be. We did not go on to watch episode two.
I remember reading the Dragonball manga as a kid and went wide eyed as Krillin straight up pulls down Bulma's top and exposing her chests to Master Roshi. Completely involuntary by the by.
For sure, things are much better these days. yikes on the casual sexual harrassment/assults on all the girls.
Even wholesome family staple Doraemon had (hopefully past tense???) the decades old, very unfunny, running gag of folks randomly surprising Shizuka while she's in a bath.
I'd say that mostly it's better than it was but it's more pervasive. Waifu and Moe culture is seeping into all anime and (again mostly female) characters are now specifically designed to be cute and have a certain personality trait that appeals to a specific demographic. That's doesn't mean sexual advances are all sexual harassment nowadays and I'd even argue it's the minority, but characters are often defined by niche personality traits and won't grow beyond that -lest they lose their fanbase- to the detriment of the overall plot and story.
I'd say the change is clearly for the better. I don't think it's always bad that characters are drawn to appeal to a certain crowd and it's often a good thing that characters have their own unique selling point. When supply far outstrips demand, drawing and writing your characters to be unique is worth it. Spy x Family shows that having a wholesome and well written plot (the real plot) doesn't need fanservice. The characters are all pretty but you have the same thing in all media, I don't consider that a bad thing.
Even so, while Spy x Family is undoubtedly an all ages oriented show, a few personality traits do cross the boundary into weird. The brother of the main female lead character is a little too much in love with his sister to be considered normal. Better than sexual harassment? Yes. Still weird and overstepping? Also yes.
As long as anime remains focused on shonen we won't see a drastic change anytime soon. If your target demographic is mainly teenage males, and I must stress lonely, you are bound to get some fanservice.
As an example of Anime and their userbase (somewhat) maturing, or at least understanding that harassment is no bueno, you even have the ecchi harem anime "100 girlfriends who really love you" with actual well written characters with decently healthy relationships.
Long story short, it feels like anime and by extension manga is improving in terms of what sexuality is healthy and what isn't. It's slow going and for the example I gave you can probably find a thousand counter examples but the popular ones that rise to the top seem to have sexuality framed in more normal terms than before. Not normal, but more than it was.
Edit to add: I'm not sure what prompted me to write this post but the conversation is nice, so thanks for that.
I really liked reading your opinions on anime, thank you. So many good points! Yes, I also find that many series settle on archetypes instead of presenting real human beings with complexity and desires separate from type. Which makes it all the more precious when a series breaks it up.
One of my favourite surprises from last year was Skip And Loafer - high school people normal daily lives. No tropes, I promise. It was so authentic and sincere and clean and beautiful..... Aaahh youth!
Kill la Kill is ultimately a show meant for anime fans. It is poking fun at a lot of the tropes of anime by being hyper sexual and violent. The art is in the spectacle, so to speak, but it asks a lot of familiarity with the conventions of the medium and culture.
That isn't to necessarily excuse it - the show is over the top gratuitousfor sure. But hyperbolizing the tropes to tell a story with a straight face is why many anime fans like it. I would never recommend it to someone just getting into anime, just like I wouldn't recommend Gurren Lagan even though it's a favorite.
As to your last point - yes that is just a constant problem with most anime. It's titillating when you are a teenager, but at a certain point you realize how weird it is and it can detract from the story.
I can accept that I just didn't get it and thanks for sharing a different perspective. But to me, poking fun of the horny and violent by being horny and violent doesn't really excuse it from the criticism -- and of course that doesn't mean people aren't allowed to like the show. This is probably a bit mean but it was truly a show I felt embarrassed watching even totally alone.
There was one from a previous generation that was much touted as being subverting the norms etc: the melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. The series beings with a young girl nearly in tears from the embarrassment of being made to wear a playboy bunny suit.
Fans will say the series is good in spite of or even because of it, but I'm old enough to know they included it because sex sells.
Do you remember which series it was ?
I'm not even sexually attracted to women but I also remember seeing the cover of Masakazu Katsura's I"S at a friend's home and I was immediately smitten. Went out and purchased the whole set the next chance I got. Years later bought the Japanese anniversary edition. I can't imagine what some of the artwork would do to a heterosexual teenaged male.
I would also like to add that the sexualization was generally less about objectifying and degrading the characters depicted, and generally used as a form of empowerment.
But of course not all the time, and there are certainly exceptions, and it doesn't prevent it from being problematic. There's a lot to unpack. Media analysis is hard.
KLK was the Rick And Morty of its day. Edgy kids be edgy, that's a constant throughout the years. With North American viewers there's less sex but there's way way way more horrific violence. See: Invincible.
I think there are a few vectors:
External pop relevance that gets pulled via cultural osmosis. Jojo's is weird, but the memes are all over because there isn't anything quite like it. I don't think anyone goes into a title labeled "Bizarre Adventure" without knowing it's gonna be a ride. Even my mom who doesn't watch any anime is familiar with it.
Adding to that, as @Akir mentioned, the artsy fartsy crowd jumps over cultural gaps for things that are influential or relevant.
Things with adaptations. Pirates are global, One Piece gets an adaptation, and anyone with enough attachment to it will probably pick up the rest when it ends, much like most adaptations of anything globally. I've always thought Initial D is an extremely fucking obvious choice to get a crappy Netflix adaptation, US audiences like JDM car culture... Or they should have Tommy the pizza driver in 90's California doing canyon racing in a sleeper Taurus SHO or Foxbody. (and the spin twins have a Corvette and Firebird, and the dumb friend buys a regular Taurus...)
Very obvious western influence - Baccano, Big O, Cowboy Bebop/Samurai Champloo make it extremely easy to look past unfamiliarity because the parallels are so straightforward.
I think the most difficult bridge is comedy; hell I don't tend to vibe with most Japanese comedy. But high-concept stuff tends to work well if it leans really hard on it. There have been a ton of crossover successes there recently, especially Spy x Family and Kaguya-sama. There isn't really much of a gap when the humor is so high-concept around bad subterfuge, it's extremely easy to understand. Aggretsuko also worked for the reasons you mentioned, and Sanrio understands global appeal. I'm personally seeing Bocchi blow up in friend groups because everyone knows music and social anxiety, and the (literally) ballistic direction bulldozes through a lot of things that don't translate.
Samurai Champloo absolutely: Adidas wearing, ghetto blaster carrying 1900's era Japanese punks lol
Also: Takeshi's Castle inspired American Gladiator
Definitely physical humour carries over
Also Simpsons Go To Japan episode
When you say it like that it's kind of crazy that they haven't yet. I think it could benefit the same way YuYu Hakusho did by tightening up the editing/storylines and maybe aging everyone up a few years.
Right? It's so universal, the base narratives and character conflicts hold up because they're so simple, and 90's JDM is chic now. Even if you switched the cars or the music to Americanize it, as long as they had a consistent aesthetic I think it'd still work.
I've thought I should write a screenplay with it, with zero concept of how to do that. It should be so EAAAASY
Speaking of that, MF Ghost is a new anime, done based on a newish manga, that works as a sequel to Initial D. It includes european and american cars, it could have done everything you just said, but what turned me off was how nonchalantly they treat a character that's most likely in his 30s and has a crush on a high school girl. The show knows is not right, but not in a "this guy is a creep" way, it's a "what a rascal" situation. That's the sort of stuff that turns away people, I don't think there's any western media where that would ever be ok, or even aired.
On top of that the author has a comical view of Japanese superiority. The protagonist, who comes from England, is always blown away by japanese food, as if he never ate anything good in his life before coming to Japan.
The manga is also a love letter to a real japanese location and it's nice to see the appreciation shown to the local people and culture, even if they throw cheap shots to other cultures here and there.
Well damn, now it’s time for me to go watch Initial D again.
and by that I mean the 3 movies, but the Eurobeat-soundtrack-replaced (bringing the Eurobeat from the anime replacing the movie music) versions I somehow found a couple years back.
Vinland Saga gets a solid 10/10 in my book as a piece of historical fiction, animated or not. The main plotline (Thorfinn) is fictional, following the son of an Icelandic warrior as he gets embroiled in the Danish conquest of England - but the B-plot (Cnut) and the setting are completely historical, and well-researched.
The start of the show is peppered with so many little details that make the world feel real and alive in a way that people living through the real events a thousand years ago would have recognized: open air ships on a frozen sea with men huddled under furs for warmth, grubhouses, hand-carved ivory combs, starlit skies with a full view of the milky way, berserker warriors consuming strange intoxicating mushrooms, etc. The show doesn’t really depict any gods, but there’s an unavoidable sense that they are real because the characters believe them to be. It’s a truly excellent cross-cultural window into the lives of people living through the late Viking era.
I posted this before finishing Vinland Saga, but Dan Carlin’s Twilight of the Aesir offers the perfect historical companion piece, covering the run-up and events depicted through Vinland Saga S2: https://tildes.net/~humanities.history/1ca3/twilight_of_the_aesir_part_2_dan_carlin.
Vinland is another of my all time favorites here as well. The two seasons go hand in hand and are honestly amazing how much the both reinforce one another. The way season one is set up as typical action anime as thorofin grows up on the battlefield and warrior culture draws you in along with him, and in season two stepping out and being so self reflective about everything that happened is amazing and even brings you along with it because it was so easy to revel in the fighting as a viewer as well. I know a lot of people did not like the pace change but I found it amazing and the two as companion pieces are amazing, I wish more people would be able to watch the whole of it.
I think all of that perverted anime really puts western audiences off. There are shows like HunterxHunter, Jiujitsu Kaisen, and Demon Slayer which are very good, but even those shows still have rare instances of out of place sexualization. Other anime will just go way too far into rape jokes, sexualizing minors, or injecting some weird pervert scene that felt awkwardly shoved into the show.
Modern US animation still has crass comedies like Family Guy or South Park, but there are also shows like Bojack Horseman that is just a drama/comedy that happens to be animated.
Anime is taking off because more serious anime is coming out. Anime is definitely evolving past the tropes of the past, so I imagine it will become more popular as time moves on.
Do we really have any animated shows like Bojack Horseman still being produced, though? We had Tuca and Bertie for a short while, but I can't think of anything else besides Carol and the End of the World, which I haven't heard anyone say anything about and wasn't particularly enthused by.
If you like adult animation that doesn't revolve around penis jokes I recommend the following shows:
Edit: Probably too late to add this but I was also pleasantly surprised by Don't Tear Me Down and the follow up Tear Along the Dotted Line. Funny but also quite poignant, each season touched on some difficult topics but handled them well I think. I recommend watching the English dubbed version.
I liked Fiona and Cake. It is a spinoff of Adventure Time, but they address some common anxieties of young adult life. It's actually pretty cool how a show that I watched as a child grew at the same pace as I have to stay relevant.
The new seasons of Futurama
I strongly agree 100% and is why I always hesitate to show anime to people that aren't anime viewers. It's because the stuff goes far beyond just a racy flash of skin and just casually shoves a taboo uncomfortable topic into something that didn't need it. I am all for people making stories about whatever they want, if that is the main theme, then fine, it can be edgy work. But it really is just inserting something so out of place in a story it is baffling. It's like you are sitting watching a historical documentry that cuts to live action periodically as things are described, except that 3 minute cut is hardcore pornography for just that one part of the 16 hour documentry on the US revolutionary war.
There are only a couple of shows I can think of as someone who doesn't really like anime but did enjoy a few titles.
The first is Delicious in Dungeon(Dungeon Meshi). It is funny, the characters are endearing, the story is great and there's no overt sexualisation. It's got some silly over the top scenes like any anime, but I think it adds to the charm. It's only just started on Netflix but having read the manga (after I started watching the show, and I don't even like manga) it's a pretty faithful adaptation and I'm excited to see where they take it.
The other is Odd Taxi. It may not appeal to everyone but it's an interesting story, and again it avoids the sexualisation you see so often in anime. I don't know if it would have widespread appeal, but it would probably be more palatable for non-anime enjoying audiences.
Edit: Also do shows like Castlevania or Cyberpunk Edgerunners count as anime? They do sexualise characters (both male and female) but it's not meant to be subtle, these are R rated shows. Both are very good series even if they're short.
There's no overt sexualization, and none even subvert of nearly all characters except Senshi :) panties were extremely briefly shown in this week's episode
(Senshi is a heavily bearded middle aged dwarven chef)
That's true, I get the feeling they're making fun of the trope of sexualising female characters.
I really appreciate Dungeon Meshi's lack of fanservice. There are so many points in the series that could have been made pervy, and yet the only upskirt we ever see is Senshi, and the only boobs are on demihuman monsters. Some of them sexualized, but I can't imagine drawing a succubus without some amount of sexualization.
Is a hot dog a sandwich? It depends on how you define it. I'm a descriptivist, so my position is that as long as people refer to something as anime, it's anime. That includes genuine Japanese animations, and non-Japanese animations that are clearly influenced by it. Like, there's a pretty stark contrast between Adventure Time and Boondocks. One of those can reasonably be called anime, even though they're both American shows.
I'm ride or die for Dungeon Meshi but actually now you mention it, there is one part of the manga that's likely to weird people out and it does
"sexualise" one of the creatures and not in a subtle way (spoilers)
I'm talking about the female minotaurs, which have large breasts about where you'd expect
Not sure how the anime will handle that but if it's faithful to the manga and rated 16+ on Netflix, then I'm guessing they're not going to omit that part...
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners most definitely is Anime without a doubt. It has the styling and it is made by my favorite anime studio: Trigger.
Castlevania is great, based on a Japanese IP, and beautifully done. Not a true Anime as it does not fall into the tropes commonly found in Japanese animation (for both good and bad). It does solidly represent the non-potty joke western animation category though. I would highly recommend it.
Shonen Anime, and especially Battle Shonen, tends to get conflated with the entire medium in conversation since it's the most popular genre. Anime is a really broad medium, and there is a bunch of it that side steps a lot of shonen's very obvious faults (fan service, trope-y action, etc...).
I'm a diehard subtitle user, but have marked a couple series that have very good english dubs.
A couple series that may appeal to folks who enjoy dark/gritty dramas (a la HBO):
Over-the-top comedy in an every day setting (loosely in the same vein as The Office, Arrested Development, etc...)
A couple series that I think would be easy recommends, but don't have an easy parallel to media that's been insanely popular.
edit: Vindland -> Vinland
Now I'm tempted to watch it again just to see how they handled the infamous potato chip scene.
In the vein of Space Brothers, Planetes is another one I freely recommend to people regardless of whether they watch anime or not - it's very hard sci-fi following space janitors cleaning up dangerous orbit debris as humanity has colonized the moon. Mix of character drama following the career paths of people doing this dirty work, the stories around the troubles and quirks of humanity expanding off Earth, the political intrigue as borders dissolve and erect as we move outward, and trying to capture the kinds of hope and wonder we need to explore space. Really wonderful show; animation is a fantastic medium for space sci-fi.
"strong appeal" for any media, any genre, and target is a multi billion dollar question indeed: every single studio is constantly trying to find the next Squid Game, Game of Thrones, MCU etc.
So I don't know anything about what would be popular or even acceptable. A non- cop out guess.
It will happen, and eventually they'll have a mega hit out of seemingly nowhere, but the foundations have long since been laid by the likes of Avatar the Last Air Bender, Legend of Korra, Shera Princess of power, Steven Universe: these all already strongly blur the line between anime and American cartoons. FLCL (2000) famously has a South Park cross over visual gag sequence.
In fact, the writers of Steven Universe said in the series commentary that one of the characters was written based on a popular anime series protagonist -
Greg Universe is sort of their inside joke of what if Tenchi from Tenchi Muyo grew to be middle aged(mild series meta spoiler)
Transformation sequences galore in some if not all of the above mentioned series as well. Steven Universe in fact has SO many anime references thrown in, it's a treat for this anime fan. The entire Initial D episode was hilarious. In fact, the Fast & Furious series is probably one hugely successful cross over of ye olde racing anime genre (Family! Friendship! Rivalry! Crazy power ups!)
So, "strongly inspired" is already happening : out right licensed collab has also already happened with Disney x Final Fantasy = Kingdom Hearts (2002).
See also Dragon Ball Evolution (2009) (RIP Toriyama Sensei), Ninja Turtles anime, Power Rangers (1993)
Haha, your Initial D <-> F&F connection is spot on. In an alternate universe F&F: Tokyo Drift could have just been rebranded a (poorly executed) live action Initial D.
Clarification: I love Tokyo Drift. I think it's my favorite of the Fast franchise (probably because of the Initial D similarity). But in a contest between the two I will pick Initial D hands down.
I have also been made aware that the kids are having Overwatch x Cowboy Bebop collab ....
"Reincarnated as a slime" and "by the grace of the gods" both are slime anime, would be fun to see a crossover
Crossover would be with horror? Horror is not something I intentionally watch or read with the exception of classics like Frankenstein or Dracula. But yes, there is a large audience for horror that doesn't necesarily overlap with anime fans.
My brain was half off reading this, actually probably closer to 75% off. My brain just skipped the last sentience or two. I need to get more sleep.
There are a TON of horror anime and especially ero or ero-adjacent games.