balladbird said:You're right, of course. in terms of general appeal, anime has stayed pretty constant and popular the world over. The issue comes with the companies that make it. They treat outside markets the way Kirk Vanhouten's cracker company treats single people: Maybe the outside world enjoys anime, they don't know... frankly, they don't wanna know, but it's a market they can live without!inu-kun said:Why dwindling market? If anything with the increasing popularity outside of Japan, online streaming and going to more demographics I can't see the market being smaller than decades ago. I won't immediately drop light novels (watch Chaika, it even has an ending) but I agree it is usually statistically worse, but it's pretty much standard YA book quality.
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These days, anime producers are only interested in domestic appeal, in particular, appealing to the 18-30, single, employed japanese males who are willing to pay the king's ransom that anime dvds and merchandise cost over there. The result has been somewhat self defeating. Since they only really care about that one particular market, they pander to it absolutely, this results in diminished appeal to people outside of that demographic, which results in the domestic market for anime shrinking, which results in the producers pandering even harder to their base in order to milk more money out of them, and on and on it goes.
It's actually gotten better in recent years, with a few companies taking more risks, but for a few years there it was scary to watch.
Also, sorry if this post isn't particularly coherent... I'm on pain meds for migraines... since the weather has been so warm that my body decided it must be time for spring headaches, already. >.<
edit: also, you're the second person to recommend Chaika, so I may actually check that out! I'll let you know what I think if I do.
See, if anime has gotten greater appeal while being as you describe, it being thus is a good thing.
It's kinda like Jrpgs being westernized to target a larger audience resulting in the people who liked them not liking them any more because they lost that Japanese-only component which was what they had liked initially. Anime is like that too. Despite it being aimed at the demographic you describe, it still is liked by a lot of people and continues to grow in popularity. This indicates that despite the aim, anime already appeals to other groups too, and trying to change anime to appeal to those other groups more based on focus testing or whatever is actually much more likely to make anime less appealing, similarly to how westernized Japanese games ended up being meh for both western and Japanese audiences.
It's this weird catch 22 where you clearly see a ton of otaku-centric, in-joke laden anime being made, which logically should only be liked by a tiny amount of people, but these same shows DO get loved by a broader audience anyways, so there really need be no changes at all outside of the organic progress of the medium that happens without anyone directly pushing it one way or another.