Hayao Miyazaki: Anime Suffers Because the Industry is Full of "Otaku"

[neoontime]

YES!!! FINALLY NOW I CAN FEEL RELIEVED THINKING AND SAYING THAT SHITAKUS ARE RUINING ANIME!
Phew, I first thought my opinion was one that could be brushed off by anime fans but now I have "The God of Anime" supporting this truth. Yes, no more hiding or worrying about these truths. Of course, this may now be the thing that can change anime since criticism like this can't be brushed off since the guy who helped make anime so popular says it himself. UMMMM, being right and smug about it feels so good!

 

[Coakle]

Sorry that Rie Matsumoto, Kotaro Tamura, and Hiro Kaburaki are ruining anime for you, Miyazaki. It's also a real shame that all those Otaku animators can only crank out cheap, low quality material. I mean, maybe it could be justified if it was common practice for a single animator to work on multiple projects of varying quality at the same time.

I'm not being that fair, since it was a real off-the-cuff remark. It's simply aggravating when people re-purpose Miyazaki's personal tastes into ammunition against current anime. I mean, I share some of his pet peeves as well, but I don't put them up as the standard that all other anime should be judged on.

 

[Scrythe]

Well it's good to see that someone from inside of the industry has the stones to call this out.

Too many shows out there do weird for the sake of weird, and their zealous fans call the wacky randumb "deep".

 

[Ipsen]

Huuuu, no. No offense to Miyazaki -love his movies- but I expected something more intelligent to come out of his mouth.

The Anime industry is suffering because it's becoming hollywood, as in, there's no will to invest or risk anymore. Producers want to invest in what's sure to bring back money, and that sadly means the same old formula almost all the time, with the same kind of characters and protagonists and humour, with fanservice taking over things like plot, character design and even animation, sometimes.

When was the last time we had a series planned to last over 13 or 25/26 episodes in the last few years, even when it comes to manga adaptations, which causes constrictions and cutting of the original source material which most of the times ruins the source material? (with due exceptions. The Jojo Anime did real well in condensing the manga's sometimes really dragged out chapters, and I can't wait for Stardust Crusaders).

The Otakus are not on the inside, the Otakus are on the outside. On the inside there are people who want easy money.

...Can't both fit? Anime going hollywood doesn't invariably stop Otaku from joining the industry. They'd probably have an easier time percieving what the Otaku fanbase wants, since it falls in with their interest. Nothing I've seen about 'Otaku culture' repels the notion of making easy money, but yes, it still leads to this same issue.

I also don't think anime would be where it is today without interest from the west and the rest of the world for the past few decades, and it's sort of a trophy for the industry, one that keeps their pride...even, or perhaps especially in making samey, risk-averse product year after year. Japan's Otaku may be the target audience, but that doesn't stop the world from finding relation in that culture.

What really sucks about this is that anime has shifted into this paradigm of general blandness. 'New blood' coming in, a fair portion were most likely inspired by anime as they were growing up, but never learned what experiences it took to make those classics. Thus, you have trope recycling. Better stated than I have, I'll just QFT Chemical Alia's post.

I think I like this guy. One of the reasons I really can't stand anime is that it always feels like it's derived from other anime, and once you get into a cycle of turning to your own industry for the majority of your inspiration, reference, and where you pull your ideas and creativity from, it becomes very stale and predictable. It's why I also can't stand styles like steampunk and even traditional high fantasy to a point.

The same problem exists in video games as well, where you have artists pulling from comics, anime and other games instead of looking outside of the "nerd kingdom" to history, culture and art history. I hear about people not getting jobs because they're not as "passionate of gamers" as the team wants them to be, but they might bring something new and valuable with their experience that may be slightly nontraditional.

In my opinion, the solution is to welcome people who might come from different backgrounds, and the more variety you have in the people making the game, anime, or whatever, that cycle will eventually break and more people will become interested in pursuing these kinds of careers.

Case in point, I immediately thought of Nobuo Uematsu (and SquaresoftEnix by extension) after reading this. I find it unlikely that we'd have anywhere near as memorable tracks from him if he was, say, heavily inspired by just fantasy lore (or his own success).

 

[Elfgore]

I do agree with what he has to say. A lot of anime is very unrealistic and seems to fall flat when it comes to character and story. Though I'm not sure if he is calling the fanbase otaku or the writers and artist.

Ironically, I love the anime he is complaining about. I just eat that crap up. Airheaded, big-boobed, pink-haired female characters are some of my favorite female leads.

 

[Headsprouter]

Yeah.

Anime is quite often a protagonist the writer wants to be surrounded by characters that writer wishes to be around.

Hence, super-cool male surrounded by a troop of super-hot anime babes. Otaku writer, otaku fantasy. Because we all remember when we walked into high school as the cool-as-ice part westerner, immediately were surrounded by a variety of fetishes and were asked to take our pick.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

Can I clap harder?

Being a shut in really doesn't help you creatively, and if anime is being developed by shut in's, they're going to act like every other anime character.
See Highshool of Dead, where all teh female characters seem to be infatuated with lead, even though he doen't have any likeable quality's... appart from not being obese.

 

[Nouw]

Reminds me of what Scott Mcloud had to say about art, well with comicbooks as an example, and the six steps of creating it. Here we have an excess of imitations where so many shows feel hollow. Of course, this critique also can be said for pretty much every artform there is.

 

[Kuredan]

Just watched Nausicaa again for the first time in what seems like decades. I was like "Oh yeah! That's what great anime looks like!" I want back to what I usually watch and it so... much... less...

It's like the difference between Fillet and Steak-Ums (Steak? Ummmmm)

Needless to say I found Miyazaki's comments rather apropos.

 

[maninahat]

I think hikikomori would have been a better word than otaku. Hikikomori are the people who don't socialize or interact with other human beings. Otaku are just obsessed in the context he's using, and that doesn't exactly exclude social interactions, but hikikomori does.

I'd give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that as a Japanese person, he knows what Japanese words mean.

The point about Otakus is that they fetishise anime (not just in a sexual sense), so there is a tendency to stick to the same old regressive stuff, recycle a lot of concepts, and generally don't write with the intention of appealing to people who aren't first and foremost anime fans. It would be like designing Disney cartoons to appeal only to one demographic or hardcore fanbase.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Yeah.

Anime is quite often a protagonist the writer wants to be surrounded by characters that writer wishes to be around.

Hence, super-cool male surrounded by a troop of super-hot anime babes. Otaku writer, otaku fantasy. Because we all remember when we walked into high school as the cool-as-ice part westerner, immediately were surrounded by a variety of fetishes and were asked to take our pick.

God but wouldn't it have made those four years suck a whole lot less?

Can I clap harder?

Being a shut in really doesn't help you creatively, and if anime is being developed by shut in's, they're going to act like every other anime character.
See Highshool of Dead, where all teh female characters seem to be infatuated with lead, even though he doen't have any likeable quality's... appart from not being obese.

In small doses, such material is fine. Escapist fantasy, nothing more. But I agree; the less life experience the creators have, both of the good and the bad or even just the mundane, robs their creations of meaningful conflict and drama:

Ah! My Goddess is fantastical and absurd in equal measure, but the anchor point of the series, Keichi is someone we can identify with: he's a tad shy around girls he's attracted to but doesn't act like a social spastic at their mere presence and his struggles are ones we understand (finishing university; future employment etc) so we have a frame of reference for all the wacky and insane shit Belldandy, Urd and Skuld (along with Mara and Hild when they fancy a laugh) bring down upon his head.

 

[medv4380]

I think hikikomori would have been a better word than otaku. Hikikomori are the people who don't socialize or interact with other human beings. Otaku are just obsessed in the context he's using, and that doesn't exactly exclude social interactions, but hikikomori does.

I'd give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that as a Japanese person, he knows what Japanese words mean.

The point about Otakus is that they fetishise anime (not just in a sexual sense), so there is a tendency to stick to the same old regressive stuff, recycle a lot of concepts, and generally don't write with the intention of appealing to people who aren't first and foremost anime fans. It would be like designing Disney cartoons to appeal only to one demographic or hardcore fanbase.

I think it has more to do with his prior comments about animators from when he did Spirited Away. When he asked them to draw the dragon getting medicine like you would a a dog being given medicine all the animators didn't know what he was talking about. None of them even owned a dog or had given a dog medicine by hand. He's just expanding it to include all social interaction.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I think I like this guy. One of the reasons I really can't stand anime is that it always feels like it's derived from other anime, and once you get into a cycle of turning to your own industry for the majority of your inspiration, reference, and where you pull your ideas and creativity from, it becomes very stale and predictable. It's why I also can't stand styles like steampunk and even traditional high fantasy to a point.

This is especially true.
I never got into Anime during its so called "golden age".
And the degree of self-derivation and cannibalism of concepts in what I do see is just so damned tepid and tired.

 

[volcanblade]

They're a whole stable of "cute girl" archetypes that are used instead of characters now, and they're all varying flavors of moe. Not that all shows do this, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was the majority now.

Oh, I'm sure they are the majority. I just doubt that there was ever a time when they WEREN'T the majority.

Again, take a look at my previously linked yearly chart from the era of FLCL and Samurai Shamploo. Moe everywhere.

I don't know, the example he used was SAO. That's a fairly normal action anime that had an incest sublot out of the blue in the second arc, totally creepified what had been a great series up to that point. It used to be that the incest stuff in anime stayed in the darker corners of the hentai section, now its in mainstream shows.

SAO is not a mainstream anime, it had a midnight airing on Tokyo MX, in-betwen To-Love-Ru and Little Busters, and made it's profits from otaku DVD sales.

Eh, it's mainstream in the west[footnote]And I'm surprised to hear it's not in Japan, it's a fairly standard action show aside from that sub-plot in the second half of the show[/footnote], and /most/ anime makes its profits from otaku DVD sales. That's why Bandai pulled out of the US market, they were unwilling to charge rates for DVDs that are reasonable in the US, they expected American nerds to pay the exorbitant rates that Japanese otaku are willing to.

Edit: Also moe is a fairly new thing in the last 10 or 15 years. If you watch anime from anywhere before the mid 2000's, it's totally different, especially stuff from the 70's through the 90's.

I would like to politely point out that SAO was a Light Novel nearly 4 years before it became an anime, and was designed for that form, so the anime had to cut large amounts of context and important details which had made it come alive much much more as a novel. In short, the anime had to compress large amounts of detail and it suffered in the human department. I highly recommend the novels, as they give a much more in depth, human depiction of everything and elaborated on the second arc much more.

More on topic, he has some points, but it is also important to note that people don't always want characters that are human in those ways. I love Princess Mononoke, but his type of characters would have destroyed other shows I like. We need a mix, not one or the other.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

They're a whole stable of "cute girl" archetypes that are used instead of characters now, and they're all varying flavors of moe. Not that all shows do this, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was the majority now.

Oh, I'm sure they are the majority. I just doubt that there was ever a time when they WEREN'T the majority.

Again, take a look at my previously linked yearly chart from the era of FLCL and Samurai Shamploo. Moe everywhere.

I don't know, the example he used was SAO. That's a fairly normal action anime that had an incest sublot out of the blue in the second arc, totally creepified what had been a great series up to that point. It used to be that the incest stuff in anime stayed in the darker corners of the hentai section, now its in mainstream shows.

SAO is not a mainstream anime, it had a midnight airing on Tokyo MX, in-betwen To-Love-Ru and Little Busters, and made it's profits from otaku DVD sales.

Eh, it's mainstream in the west[footnote]And I'm surprised to hear it's not in Japan, it's a fairly standard action show aside from that sub-plot in the second half of the show[/footnote], and /most/ anime makes its profits from otaku DVD sales. That's why Bandai pulled out of the US market, they were unwilling to charge rates for DVDs that are reasonable in the US, they expected American nerds to pay the exorbitant rates that Japanese otaku are willing to.

Edit: Also moe is a fairly new thing in the last 10 or 15 years. If you watch anime from anywhere before the mid 2000's, it's totally different, especially stuff from the 70's through the 90's.

I would like to politely point out that SAO was a Light Novel nearly 4 years before it became an anime, and was designed for that form, so the anime had to cut large amounts of context and important details which had made it come alive much much more as a novel. In short, the anime had to compress large amounts of detail and it suffered in the human department. I highly recommend the novels, as they give a much more in depth, human depiction of everything and elaborated on the second arc much more.

More on topic, he has some points, but it is also important to note that people don't always want characters that are human in those ways. I love Princess Mononoke, but his type of characters would have destroyed other shows I like. We need a mix, not one or the other.

I'm aware of the novel origins, and I think SAO did a great job considering it crammed two novels into 30-ish episodes, I only brought it up because of this exchange from further upthread:

You look at Samurai Shamploo, FLCL, Trigun, Fullmetal Alchemist, these where shows that were clearly made because the artists wanted to make something like nothing else. You even look at DBZ and how Akira Toriyama was inspired by Walt Disney's 101 Dalmatians, You can tell that he made it because he wanted to. Now, look at the anime today, the Fairy Tail, Sword Art Online, and the rise of Incest animes, these didn't have that same creative spirit, but feel more like a check list of what an anime should have, almost like if it was focus tested.

You don't compare modern incest anime to Samurai Shamploo, you compare it to Onegai Twins, which was released one year before Samurai Shamploo.

Sword Art Online isn't the new FLCL, it's the new Tales of Eternia. THIS [http://chartfag.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/2001-export.jpg] is how anime in general looked like in the Good Old Days.


There are plenty of modern series with quirky narratives, or visuals, or both, if you are looking for them and not for selective examples to make your point.

Basically I was pointing out the irony of saying incest in anime is still relegated to porn stuff like it used to be when SAO has it as a major subplot.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Is one an "obsessive fan" when one panders to he lowest common denominator to push sales further? I do not think so..... Least that's the first thing that comes to mind as for the art itself I've seen enough to like many variations and I do not think its the art style that's damaging the industry rather adding dumb fan service to an otherwise good show in hopes it sales more and via he has a point about fans damaging things....

 

[RJ Dalton]

I don't know if he worded it quite the way I would have, but he's definitely got a point. A lot of anime these days seem way too focused on the things that were quirks of older anime, like fanservice, for example. Anime, like any medium, always had its share of mediocrity, but there seem to be a lot less interesting ideas in the newer anime than in the older ones.

 

[DeltaEdge]

I agree with Miyazaki for the most part, and this is coming from someone who tends to enjoy at least one or two anime each season even in the current "recycled garbage age". While I don't think that anime should be solely comprised of "real/believable" characters, as I quite enjoy some of the more unrealistic portrayals of characters to an extent depending on the setting/genre, I do think that a major problem with current anime, if not the greatest problem with it, is that people don't see it as a medium, and in a practical sense, it really isn't, and can be likened more closely to a genre than a medium.

Ideally, it would be in the same category as TV shows, where being a TV show gives no indication of what it entails, and blanket stating that you don't like TV would likely garner some strange looks. Anime fails in this regard as you can ascertain a general idea of what someone's interests might be just by knowing that they like anime. It's rather unfortunate, but most people looking to tell a realistic story with human characters probably wouldn't even glance at using anime to convey their story unless the story was being told from the perspective of an otaku/nerd or someone who otherwise appreciates/relates to anime's currently most prevalent tropes and morality, because they wouldn't look at it as a medium, they would look at it as a thing for kids or nerds, and with the way that anime currently is, this is a rather justified way of viewing it, and I unfortunately don't see this changing any time soon, as it is likely easier to keep working on entertaining the current fans than trying to diversify and catch the attention of people who likely already have a fairly strong negative opinion of anime already deeply ingrained within them.

tldr; Anime practically isn't even a medium in the practical sense, and is more like a genre, and people's views of anime as a thing for kids/nerds and the functionality of the current systems will likely keep anime from diversifying beyond the otaku perspective for as long as people view anime in the way they do.