China is.
But relying on China is dumb since they will have their own likely massive animation market in 5 to 10 years.
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Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
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China is.
But relying on China is dumb since they will have their own likely massive animation market in 5 to 10 years.
Also, targeting underserved niches is always a way to ensure a loyal, paying fanbase. If there's a demographic that wants soft, romantic bircs/cats/dragons with humour and a good story instead of just human guys boning submissive women? Maybe cater to that. Heh. I believe the likes of Hustle Cat, Angels with Scaly Wings, and Purrfect Date have enjoyed some success due to this. So it doesn't surprise me that otomege makes more money. Underserved demographics are always ludicrously loyal. I'm part of a few myself, so i've definitely seen that.
Just wanted to say, loved Larsen's recent answer to that issue in Savage Dragon:I feel like if you look at it from a meta perspective that makes sense, but in all honestly the books just sucked ass.
While diversity is nice, the actual contents of the book matter a lot more. I liked Static Shock not just becasue he was black like me, but because the show was cool and appealing.
For example I was excited that they were going to give America Chavez her own series because she was cool in the Young Avengers, but the art is hot garbage, the story is bland, and the dialogue is the most hamfisted shit ever.
It is just so lame, and a lot of their books have these kind of "woke" lines and it just makes me cringe.
Again, 5 years ago comics were doing pretty well, but this really poor attempt to appeal to minorities like me really turned me off.
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/12/28/week-savage-dragon-punching-nazis-promised/
HypedBeast
Thing is, nine times out of ten in my experience, it does matter. America is the exception that proves the rule. That's just my perspective, but most of my favourite comics aren't written by straight, white dudes. Sorry. I tend to find they have a dull, overly conservative and traditional way of looking at the world. How many of them are Grant Morrison?
Thing is, nine times out of ten in my experience, it does matter. America is the exception that proves the rule. That's just my perspective, but most of my favourite comics aren't written by straight, white dudes. Sorry. I tend to find they have a dull, overly conservative and traditional way of looking at the world. How many of them are Grant Morrison?
I'd say that lack of diversity among creators is a real problem; hell, it might be the real crux of most of media's issues with representation. Most of the people working on anime are dudes that mainly enjoy working on dude stuff, for example; manga is more narratively and thematically diverse for a reason. YoI was directed by Sayo Yamamoto and written by Mitsurou Kubo, 2 women.
Im talking about the current run of She-Hulk (or Hulk, they keep changing the title of this).
In my opinion, its just kind of weak, though maybe that kind of humor and stroytelling just isnt my thing.
I do know that I got #160 for free and that art....
That is a really broad brush to paint of white writers. Like most of the writers working in comics are liberal ( some to an obnoxious degree), with a few exceptions like Frank Miller.
Marvel does have a bunch of pretty throwaway artists working for them. I didn't mention (She-)Hulk among the books that lucked out with a good, or at least supposedly good, team for a reason.
I don't think StonedCrows meant conservative in the political sense, but rather in the sense that they tend to follow existing patterns, tropes, and cliches. Though I may be wrong.
People with different genders and/or ethnicities can provide different works according to their life experiences and worldviews. I don't think a male writer/director team could have made something that resonated with their audience as much as Yuri on Ice.
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Yep, Fujoshi is a growing audience that is getting more influence with each passing year with more anime catering to them.Though, you would most likely get the adverse of cgdct with cute guys doing cute things and boy love instead of more female lead shows.
Can't say much about Keijo other than it was already a failure in its magazine and continue to do so in animated form. Shows you need some semblance of name recognition or advertisement budget to get sales.
Its a bit more broad than that, it is just that depending on what works influence you, those elements often appear in their work.
Black Dyanamite was a cartoon created primarily by Black people, and also features a great black animator, LeSean Thomas.
Besides the blaxploitation vibe of the show, it still features tropes like damsels in distress, sexualized women and hyper aggressive, hyper masculine men, violence as the answer for everything, and more.
It has a different flavor than shows made by white dudes; that's the main purpose of creator diversity.
Most definitely, but I wouldnt want that to be the primary reason someone gets hired for their role on a project, thay should be a bonus.
The Boondocks wouldnt be as good as it is without Aaron McGruder (which is why Season 4 is hot garbage) because he could encapsulate the black experience and problems that the black community deals with in an witty and satirical way.
Marvels problem was that they hired writers who plainly cannot write. They lack subtlety, and it really affects the qualitt of their work.
I don't think what you said disagrees at all with what I suggested. :P
Especially since The End was in MGS3 and he's not in a tight speedo. If they have the technology to have him live despite him having the same condition, why does Quiet need to not wear armor? It makes no sense even within their own universe.
Sure but a lot of writers and artist in genral follow those tropes (Black, Japanese, Korean).
I just dont feel you can guage someones outlook and perspective by their race and sexuality.
Im Black and straight, but I dont think you can determine my political beliefs, my dreams, my world view, or writing style just from that information alone.
What's weird about Silent, to me anyway, is how later you just get the option to put her in her old army uniform. Why not just give me that option from the beginning? Why give me gold and silver body paints first before actual clothes? It boggles me.
Again, I don't think that disagrees with anything I said! I agree with you! You can't assume anything about an individual based on how they look.
But it's also true that straight white men do on average tend to act in certain ways, regardless of the aforementioned fact. Straight white men write from the perspective of straight white men, which leads to homogeneous settings and plot devices. This is literally the entire reason people ask for and appreciate diversity in creators. Diversity allows for new perspectives, even when approaching the same subject. Hence: straight white men tend to write conservatively. Or, in other words, they tend to write what already exists, because what already exists is mostly written by straight white men.
The worst part about Hushed is that there existed another character with an identical condition to hers in MGS3. The End, however, wore full camouflage during the entire game. AND he was also a sniper!
...Okay, I mostly just wanted to come up with another name, I admit. I am ashamed of my words and deeds. EDIT: And now I see I missed the part where someone else already brought up The End. I'm a failure.
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i'll just quote myself from earlier in the thread:
Yeah, sorry I wasn't clear enough to start. Also sorry if it sounded like I was lecturing you. I know you already said some of the stuff I said there. :P
You good man, sometimes I end up skipping words and misinterpreting someones statement.
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As someone who gives zero fucks and is happily deliberately ignorant about superheroes and superhero movies, this post made me chuckle.
...Because even I know that Wonder Woman is DC, not Marvel. :D
Sorry, had to.
I know that. Saying in general. And how long Marvel has had their cinematic universe why haven't they made a female led superhero movie, and that it's great that DC made Wonder Woman.
A character needs to be consistent. Sex appeal is often just randomly tossed in there with no thought for how it fits within the character because, well sex sells. *That* is what bothers me. Bayonetta whose character is being comfortable in her own body? No big deal, in fact I like to see an empowering woman owning that she is attractive and knows it.
I've been out of the comic landscape for so long that I don't feel I can add anything to that conversation. I stopped buying comics regularly after the Civil War event ran its course and it was just tiring, the same old tropes all around. Even then I was more interested in smaller publishers and also Vertigo books.
Some advice I was given a long time ago was to follow good writers and not the heroes themselves since they change hands so often.
Harking back to the anime industry, who here remembers when Bandai tried to do close to Japanese pricing on their USA released DVDs?
$40 for each disc, two episodes.
Some advice I was given a long time ago was to follow good writers and not the heroes themselves since they change hands so often.
Harking back to the anime industry, who here remembers when Bandai tried to do close to Japanese pricing on their USA released DVDs?
$40 for each disc, two episodes.
StonedCrow's post was a response to the the idea that it was healthy to "oogle the human body". They directly compared looking at characters on a screen to being verbally and physically harassed in public. It is healthy precisely because it is harmless while those other actions are unhealthy because they directly negatively affect other people.
It's true that I have a hard time understanding the sheer weight of that discomfort but there hasn't been very deep explanations behind how major that discomfort is.
I don't think the current state of anime is unsustainable precisely because of its success. Even garbage like Magical Highschool and the Asterisk war, poorly written light novel adaptations that have disturbing amounts of fan service and edgy fetish stuff, have a world audience because Otaku-types exist everywhere.
I don't think the appeal of anime is that is on these groups anyway. You'll find plenty of light novels, books and manga in book stores and DvDs are available for purchase. This is where the money is, figures and pillows or whatever are not everything and to get people to buy the written works you simply must tell a story that people want to continue with or have a fan that wants to support the show. They don't need be the type of person to have a warehouse of stuff and I think that belief is a myth in the first place. You don't need to be obsessed to buy a book or DvD.
What's wrong with challenging the ideas that people have put forward? I've been directly responding to the ideas of women (and quite a few men) to get more answers.
You gotta hold localizers to a higher standard or else they'll continue to put out garbage.That's all there is to it. I don't think there is really a gendered divide as this seems to be the case with all things coming out of Japan. The fan sub and fan translation scene was massive (still kinda is) precisely because of the fact that many professionals are either just sloppy or feel the need to "correct" what they see as "problematic". The incredible success experienced by Xseed is a good example of this. They don't try to change things to fit sensibilities (unless its adding something that fits) but rather change things so that people can have relatable jokes. Their seal is a mark of extremely high quality and people such as myself have purchased games based on that seal without any knowledge of the game they're buying.
Well it's a parody of blaxploitation films where every trope is taken to an insane extreme so...
Not to say that you're arguing this but to address the conversation as a whole... I don't think the race or sex of the staff should matter to be honest. They just have to be smart. Look up The Nutshack and watch the opening. It's the product of a Filipino comedian and a largely Filipino staff but it's hardly representative of Filipino people and the struggles of immigrants. The Madea series has entered my bad movies circuit and it has a black staff and it sure is something. On the other hand, Glory was written and directed by white people and is somewhat of a masterpiece. Needless to say there are plenty of black writers and directors who have made stories about black people but I don't think the race is a bonus since every individual has a different experience and a different skill set. I think to suggest otherwise is to argue that a different ethnicities and sexes simply can't understand each other.
I don't know if you've read this series of articles, but you really should: http://neojaponisme.com/2011/11/28/the-great-shift-in-japanese-pop-culture-part-one/
As for otaku being a myth, I can tell you that they're definitely not. Also, "success" needs a lot of qualifiers. Most shows in anime right now are complete bombs, and heavily depend on aftermarket merchandising to sustain them (which also tends to fail). An industry that only ever has a handful of true successes a year does not ring as a successful industry, it rings as an industry that is extremely sickly. And what's worse, is that rather than trying to create an industry that has a wider and more diverse audience, they're basically doubling down. It's an industry built on a foundation of sand, and instead of moving to sturdier, more stable material, they've decided they're going to use more sand (and what's worse is the delusion that it's going to work after already having failed).
Im not super into anime, but It is kind of weird that a lot of it seems to fail when even shows that bomb get a ton of memes and press.
I dont think the industry in necessarily sick, since anime encompasses both TV series and movies (and they have been killing it with their movies), I just think there are a lot of shows being produced, and by law of averages most of them are gonna be shit.
As long as the big names are doing well (Toei, Trigger, Madhouse), I dont think there is much to worry about since those are the shows that become relevant in the west and go on to become successful. Those are the shows that sustain the industry, so you just need more high quality studios.
Its definitely diffrent than western cartoons, where you get fewer series, but good quality per show (wasnt always that way, damn you Canada!)
I feel like the only option would to cut down on the amount of shows per season, but then you are putting more people out of jobs.
Definitely could be better though.
This thread has been a complex, long, and messy back and forth that changes topics on a regular basis, so you're right that there's a lot of stuff that probably hasn't been touched on or articulated in nearly enough detail. I actually think it'd be nice if, at some point, a generalized collective "manifesto" of some sort could be put together that better articulates shared and agreed upon arguments in more detail. There are, of course, numerous editorials and the like on the subject, but they're deeply personal and specific in their subject matter.
Like I said, I don't think anyone who doesn't feel it can have a proper frame of reference for how That Goddamned Camera Shit (read also: Male Gaze) can actually feel to see when you're not deliberately and knowingly consuming a product that specifically panders to that kind of userbase and are either bracing yourself for it or actively seeking it. Especially because social paradigms mean that it's likely a very different reaction than a lot of men expressed to seeing, say, the design of Wol in Mobius Final Fantasy or those times in superhero movies when the shirts come off, for example.
But it's definitely the biggest offender for many people, of all potential offenders. It certainly is for me. It sucks to be taken out of the narrative and reminded casually of all of the actual serious, insidious shit that goes on in actual proper society every time the camera wants to give a dude a quick thrill. It acts as a magnifying effect on all the other offending elements, and makes them several orders of magnitude worse. A long, long time ago in this same thread I mentioned that it'd be entirely possible to see a berserker archetype woman go into battle almost completely nude, wearing less than your usual bikini armor, and not have it be sexualized. That's the camera and the incongruous bikini shit, not strictly the amount of clothing. Leotards aren't inherently sexualized, even if it'd be kinda dumb to wear one into combat. That's the camera. I could go all day with this, but I'm sure you get my point. There's a reason that a character's outfit doesn't even necessarily have to change in a classic JRPG remake and it still winds up being a problem.
The camera is the worst part of this entire ordeal. It makes anything else you could take issue with worse, and can make things that otherwise wouldn't even be a concern an offender by proximity.
And the most annoying part is it's not even a particularly important component in making a character sexy or appealing. Plenty of people have always lusted after and continue to lust after characters in works that don't even have a dynamic camera, or a camera at all. It's such a marginal change, for such incredibly massive value, and removing its magnifying effect would help make it easier to hash out the remaining elements as they'd actually be taken if the camera wasn't constantly sniffing its way up a character's ass in something that's ostensibly supposed to be shooting for a straight female audience too.
I don't think the anime merch industry itself is in any particular danger, it's in the middle of a pretty big boom in the west relative to where it was a few years ago, even. There's a difference between anime (the merchandise umbrella) and Anime (the actual cartoons) and I think we kinda get muddled here sometimes. Anime (the cartoons) largely exist as a commercial for anime (the merchandise umbrella) goods. They themselves very frequently don't even sell enough copies to make back production money, but they do peddle that further merchandise, whether it's figures, CDs, tankobon of the manga, or volumes of the light novel. A show can actually tank and still be successful. You only need to look at the sales numbers posted upthread for context. Those numbers in the triple digits are not abbreviated. That's what they sold. Anime (the merchandise umbrella) is very safe right now, for the moment. Especially because manga (and to a lesser extent light novels) fall under the category and are about the broadest an audience can actually get for a medium. Anime (the actual cartoons), though? Ehhh...
Because the shows are developed as commercials, actual auteur projects need to be made at a loss for the art of it. That's the absolute worst part of the current industry paradigm, and the most criticized. Auteur projects in any medium are often made at a loss for the art of it, but we're talking losses in the order of selling a few hundred discs in total and having no other merch to peddle to fall back on. Films are, naturally, better off because they have a better distribution method and can achieve mass audience success. Being hamstrung by the need to be a commercial isn't the best situation an entire medium can find itself in, though.
On the subject of consumers, it's not that "normal people" aren't purchasing these things, either. Hell, you can even own a few shelves worth of figures and not be a capital-O Otaku, you can buy an idol CD here and there, have a tapestry or two on your wall, own several dozen anime series on disc, and so on. But the uh, the "stereotype" IS real. Some of it becomes an escalating self-parody joke, but even the people who perpetrate those jokes are feeding into the market in the same way.
I know you're Part of the Culture, as it were. Are you familiar with the concept of "shrines," or old enough to remember the time that it came out that the main heroine of Kannagi (a literal cartoon character) wasn't a virgin canonically and the violent reaction afterward?
Those people are capital-O Otaku. They're extremely lucrative and easy to exploit because they have actual compulsions toward proving their worth through obsessive consumption. They're a lot like mobile game whales, and they're a very real phenomenon. It's not that the entire market is completely sustained by them, that'd be fallacious. But they ARE the trendsetters and form the backbone of the industry's stability at the moment, because normal fans are just willing enough to go along with the stuff that panders to them to continue to act as the main body of consumption while ignoring the the subset of stuff that panders directly and exclusively to them, which operates on a margin that can be sustained just being bought by otaku. There's a reason the trashiest shows have atrocious animation budgets, basically.
As a more specific example of the interplay, Love Live! exists in large part to sell CDs, concerts recordings, and its own IP to teenagers and it does a good job of it, but you better bet they're not selling 12,800jpy a pop figures of Kanan in a partially unzipped, slick wetsuit to the middle school demographic.
You'll find no argument from me on the notion that localizers need to be held to a higher standard, because my god being an anime fan who speaks English as a first language and consumes enough other media to have a proper frame of reference really makes it difficult to put up with the average level of quality that you see in localization of Japanese media. I'm with you on the assertion that Xseed's logo is such a clear indicator of quality that I actually buy DLC in their games or purchase things on multiple platforms just to double down on my purchases.
I also think that otome titles are very nearly to the point where they're completely secure and the market can actually start ignoring the garbage that some companies are spewing out while safely assuming that they're not going to stop being catered to. For context, Otaku shit is in a HUGE boom right now itself, but it was only ten years ago that we got very nearly NONE of the obscure games and shows that we now get so many of that no single person can consume it all. More Visual Novels released in a single week of December 2017 than released in the entire year of 2007. That boom happened in part because people bought ALL the niche anime crap that came out, and now there's so much of it that nobody could ever hope to continue doing so. For the record, I expect we're in a bubble, but even after it breaks things will settle better than they were a decade ago.
The otome game fanbase is in a transitional period where their mindset is, and to an extent must be, on ensuring that publishers aren't going to decide to stop catering to them because they boycotted one or two releases, much like general anime fans in 2007. The fact that Xseed is not so secretly stepping into the market via Hatsuu's "secret" upcoming project is a clear indicator that they're probably going to be safe now, they won their relevance.
*I'm not an expert on any of these industries, I can only talk about stuff I've picked up through osmosis and following industry discussion over the years.
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Internet popularity doesn't always translate to real world success. It's like how Minecraft is an enormous IP irl but you rarely see it being discussed on ERA, for example.
If I'm being completely realistic, having fewer shows could potentially be a boon for jobs, because it allows the industry to focus (i.e., fewer studios with bigger budgets and more consistent hiring and production). Even as computers have helped tremendously in the production of animation, there's still no easy way to mimic hand-drawn cells and that has shown in the quality of an average anime in the past ten years. Anime, as a niche product to begin with, needs to focus on quality over quantity. And that isn't what we've been seeing in the past decade, and that's had a very real impact on the product and the audience.
It would be similar to the way AAA game production has gone which very much used to have the same boom and bust thing going on, a lot of developers would just lose their jobs after finishing a product. AAA publishers bring out fewer games per year now and they don't have the same problems.I mean it would probably work for the anime industry too?
That also increses the risk since if the show fails, you cant easily recoup the cost as easily.
I forget which anime company it was but they went from making really well acclaimed animes to makong generic school stuff because all of their anime were risky and didnt make their money back.
I feel if more studios make a Patreon like Trigger, you can kind of skip the middle man, but I know how archaic Japanese companies can be.
There are also Nollywood movies, targetting the diaspora of non-African countries
WRT the anime stuff, I don't think going a AAA game industry route would work very well. A LOT of anime are adaptations of other works, which is how they get greenlit in the first place. We'd see a lot less completely new anime as a result of the industry focusing on a few ideas rather than a bunch.
MusclesAreGirly I just wanted to thank you for offering your perspective on the matter even if you didn't get many responses. I think your viewpoint is perfectly legitimate, especially since your recognize such stuff isn't for everyone and not everything needs to have it.
MusclesAreGirly I just wanted to thank you for offering your perspective on the matter even if you didn't get many responses. I think your viewpoint is perfectly legitimate, especially since your recognize such stuff isn't for everyone and not everything needs to have it.
Imagine people looking at you merely because of what they want to do to your body.
To spice it up, imagine you also have no idea what that entails.
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To add to this, because I know many straight men would see this and think "yes please", imagine someone who you aren't interested in, who is very likely to be physically stronger than you and who you, on average, have no chance of defending yourself against, looking at you merely because of what they want to do to your body.
Hey! It's your own fault you're dressed the way you are! Why not just hold up a sign saying FREE SEX?
/s
I think an apt analogy might be being the new guy in a prison. It's joked about all the time, "Don't drop the soap!", but it seems odd to me it isn't brought up more as a way to illustrate what women go through to guys. I mean, unless I'm missing something.
This is why you need a diverse portfolio, so you can recoup costs from other properties if a show bombs. This is how pretty much every big company, from EA to Microsoft, insulates themselves from risk.
This story has been common across all of anime for a long time, and it's because of poor business practice. For however bad they are, Disney's business practices are what pretty much every other animation organization should seek to emulate. Diverse portfolio, multiple properties, promote those properties heavily while finding a marketable niche for the product.
Patreon is great for individuals but has little or no traction for whole companies. It's not a strong enough revenue stream to support more than a handful of people. Crowdfunding isn't practical for most projects that need scale to succeed. Fig is a more interesting idea that might actually be viable - but investment streams online still remain questionable.
Probably because most people think it'll never happen to them, as in, "I won't ever go to prison", so it's not a real everyday fear or concern for them.
Reminds me of a quote I saw somewhere (tumblr?) that said that it's pretty telling that one of the things men fear the most about going to prison is something that women deal with on a daily basis.
In the case of small companies like Trigger with a large fan following, I think crowdfunding actually be pretty effective, since you are giving the creators money directly, in comparison to streaming services where that is not the case.
Now relying exclusively on crowdfunding on the other hand? I dont think that would be a good idea.
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