Mar 26 2009
Has the Internet Hurt Anime More Than Helped?
Working retail in a very tourist centric economy has lead to a lot of things lately, the most of which is free time at work to think about things that I wish I could be writing about. Earlier this week I had another one of those thoughts that actually started to pan out in my mind… has the internet hurt the anime industry more than it has helped it?
When someone mentions anime and the internet in the same sentence it’s usually to complain about/praise fansubs (not what this article is about by the way). But the internet has done much more than just provide a new outlet for pirates to share “their” wares, it provided a new outlet for the entire community. Over the last couple of decades, the anime industry has gone through different growth spurts as technology as improved. Right Stuf, for instance, started with licensing and releasing ‘Astro Boy’ on VHS tapes back in the eighties. Eventually companies started to spring forward that made anime more widely available and the community on both sides of the Pacific started to grow closer.
Over the next few years the medium expanded out to DVDs. Fans had more options to choose from, more titles were readily available and the community grew closer again. From here we expanded onto the internet and anime became more mainstream than it ever had before. Fans were now tuning into programs almost immediately and the community grew by leaps and bounds.
The anime market is in a slow decline at the moment and there are a dozen arguments for why that is. Again, fansubs can be blamed for part of this but anyone who tries to pin the blame on that entirely is just looking for a scapegoat. The next logical argument is that Japanese companies and studios did it to themselves by stubbornly refusing to adjust their business plans for an increasing world market. Perhaps had the studios realized nine years ago that there was a large market for anime beyond their shores things would be vastly different? Then there is the declining birth rate in Japan, with fewer people in the key teen and 20 something adult demographics there are fewer people to support fifty years of industry build up.
Personally, I am willing to put a large amount of the blame on the internet. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the internet and would die a slow withering death were it ever taken away from me (seriously, don’t ever try to take my laptop away unless you desperately want to pull back a nub where your hand used to be). The internet has been a wonderful tool unleashed on the world and has done a world of good for the global anime community. Fans now have access to thousands of new sources that fans from twenty years ago could only dream about: message boards, picture galleries, fan subs, streaming video, downloads… the list goes on. And that’s the problem: the list goes on and on and on to the point where the community is completely overwhelmed.
The internet has been a wonderful tool for anime community but our overreliance on it has created yet another problem: over saturation. With the explosion of the global anime community, studios and companies have seen those numbers and automatically assumed that those numbers would automatically buy DVDs. Thus more and more anime was created every year and released to DVD, regardless if it’s good or not. Ten years later we are looking at decreasing profits and a burnt out fan base who can barely keep up with new releases let alone find the time to enjoy the classics of years ago.
The problem isn’t that there are too many fans; the problem is that there is too much anime and too many ways to access it. Over the last couple of months, startling reports are starting to surface outlining how bad animators and manga-ka have to suffer in order to produce their art and get it seen by an audience and for the good of the industry, it’s time for fans to say enough!
Perhaps it’s time for everyone to realize that the latest growth spurt in the industry made it TOO big to handle and it’s time to scale back a little. In April-May alone, there will be over forty new series debuting with most of them seeing premieres within a two week span. Are we really so desperate for new series that we need that many in a two month span? Let’s not forget that in another three months we’ll have another forty to sixty titles hitting the airwaves. Maybe it really is time for us to stop focusing on quantity and go back to focusing on quality. If there is one thing that I am going to be taking away from this global recession it’s that too much of anything is never a good thing… even when it comes to anime.
And look at how many run on sentences he used, what a loser!
I’m with you on focusing on quality. It hasn’t quite gotten to the level of some of the budget cartoons on this side of the Pacific, but it does seem like it’s gotten harder and harder to find series I’d get seriously interested in, and there’s too much information for me to track. Then Sturgeon’s Law kicks in, and at about that point I decide I’d be better off working on short-term things and checking out the stuff I haven’t seen yet that’s attested good by people better able to keep up with the onslaught.
It’s the age of information. I agree about oversaturation — inevitable when there’s so much information around. People can always limit how much they access, though…(and most people do, myself included.) What do you think about the companies getting into online publishing, though? (Like Crunchyroll with the itunes model..)
“it’s time for fans to say enough!” Uh, how? ._. If they don’t back the companies…isn’t that even worse? -wry-
@jennkei: Crunchyroll, Hulu, Joost, etc are part of the point I was trying to make. It’s obvious that fans are starting to migrate towards online distribution (though I still prefer to watch DVDs but that’s just how I roll ^_^) and I wouldn’t be against studios and companies starting to move that direction as well which many are.
I predict now that sometime within the next few years there will be a studio that succeeds by launching their programming online exclusively for a worldwide audience.
“it’s time for fans to say enough!” Uh, how? ._. If they don’t back the companies…isn’t that even worse? -wry-
Touche’! I agree that fans can’t just disappear and stop supporting studios entirely and I don’t have a perfect solution. I do believe that while every series has some kind of audience, there must be a viable way to help studios realize that fans (I’m speaking generally and am not trying to incapsulate the entire anime fandom) would be happier with a few well done series rather than a couple of well done series and a heap of average to bad series.
Then again, maybe I’m just the weirdo in the back of the room who just shouts things to be heard but offers no real solutions. ^_^;;;
@otakureview: Ahh, nodnod. Yeah, there’re a lot of people who would stream…me, I’d rather read a good book. I was a bibliophile long before I was an animephile (is there such a word?! XD), and generally I watch my anime once, then not again..
Hmm, the thing about quality is interesting, though. How can companies gauge the popularity of the series? One man’s rubbish is another’s treasure, eh? What’s popular in Japan might not be popular in US, and vice versa. If yvia the internet fanbase…there’s still a difference between who will watch, and who’ll actually buy…
Of course, there’re some that’re just obviously terrible. Like I hope Akikan never gets a US release…XD