Quote from: Rhiannon;1113859Not seeing this. Japanese anime is largely targeted at teenagers. Manga on the other hand has a much wider range but the better material is only slowly translated.

The genres marketed toward the 18-30 demographic are josei (for women) and seinen (for men). Naturally, the English streaming services don't tell you which anime are josei or seinen.

Quote from: Rhiannon;1113859Not seeing this. Japanese anime is largely targeted at teenagers. Manga on the other hand has a much wider range but the better material is only slowly translated.

I think as a whole, there's anime aimed at all kinds of different groups, but maybe EVERYTHING is aimed at teenagers to one degree or another.  Or saying that something appeals to teens is the least descriptive thing you COULD say.  If the show is engaging/exciting/well-written it's going to appeal to teens and adults.  If it's cartoonish but not dumb it'll appeal to kids and teens.  

I don't think a film like Grave of the Fireflies is specifically aimed at a teen market, nor do I think that Tanuki Wars is directly aimed at teens.  Black Heaven (How Hard Rock saved the Space!) really seems aimed more at the mid-life crisis crowd than high school students.  

There are series/films that are aimed DIRECTLY at teens/pre-teens but if they're done well they should appeal broadly.  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is enjoyed by adults even if it is for 13+; there's no reason adults couldn't enjoy Bubblegum Crisis, Trigun, or Cowboy Beebop.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1113754The US considers 2D cartoons of any kind to be artistically worthless. 3D cartoons nowadays really are artistically void, but make oodles of money anyway.

Into the Spiderverse had both artistic value and financial success, and think something akin to that might be a breakout success. I don't think the "next big thing" will be either traditional animation nor anime, but a blend of some kind that captures the zeitgeist.

Hollywood is learning the unnecessary remake and bad sequel train is a very hit and miss venture. Sooner or later, something like 300 will be made and become a surprise hit that spins off its own imitators.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1113754When was the last time you watched anime? 2000?

I prefer reading manga to watching anime, but I've watched modern anime and there's a spectrum of plots. I don't think "nerd wish fulfillment fantasy" is new or Japanese. It was the plot of Never Ending Story, Back to the Future and plenty of other classic Western movies because it speaks loudly to both teens and adults.

Quote from: Dimitrios;1113638This. Between Star Wars, Marvel Comics, endless remakes and reboots & etc., it creeps me out the extent to which popular culture continues to be dominated by things my friends and I were into when we were 10 years old.

Its not so much that as in many cases a variation on outrage marketing.

Take something that was liked years ago and remake it in the worst ways possible. All the complaints will draw attention to your atrocity. Except it doesnt really work and instead you are more likely to lose money. Or your career if your name gets indelibly connected to the problem. But venues will continue to try it because hay, it worked maybee once and marketing says its free advertising!

And if it is a failure you can then blame the failure on those mean ol fans who must be misogynists and racists to hate this poor defenseless agenda, er, product!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1113754The US considers 2D cartoons of any kind to be artistically worthless. 3D cartoons nowadays really are artistically void, but make oodles of money anyway.

That is debatable. CGI animation tends to be horrendously expensive unless you cut alot of corners which then damages chances of success. Theres a growing list of CGI movies that have failed, sometimes massively so.

And it is not so much that the US considers traditional cartoons worthless as Hollywood considers them not profitable. And CGI shows will take the next hit at some point and we will see a swing back to trad art or something else. I dont think it will happen anytime soon unless theres a really big bomb that really shakes up the industry against CGI. But more likely they will create some new fake excuse for why it failed like they did with "uncanny valley".

Quote from: Spinachcat;1113971Into the Spiderverse had both artistic value and financial success, and think something akin to that might be a breakout success. I don't think the "next big thing" will be either traditional animation nor anime, but a blend of some kind that captures the zeitgeist.

Hollywood is learning the unnecessary remake and bad sequel train is a very hit and miss venture. Sooner or later, something like 300 will be made and become a surprise hit that spins off its own imitators.

The problem is Sturgeon's Law. Most media in general will be mediocre, especially in saturated markets. CGI animation and franchises are saturated right now, so the absolute number of bad ones is much higher than if it was not saturated even though the relative number remains constant (the Law claims 90-99% is crap).

Naturally, all the bad stuff from the past is forgotten and ignored whenever people nostalgically claim things are worse now than they were before. The past is chock full of mediocre media, and even media that is fondly remembered may not hold up to modern scrutiny.

For example, the Ben 10 franchise has been rebooted several times since it's a toy franchise. The first few times were technically soft-reboots within the same supposed continuity (retools?) but a bunch of retcons were involved (one episode made a joke where they pointed this out and stated that the reboots were made in-universe by incompetent omnipotent aliens; and other episodes explain that there is a multiverse of alternate timelines). If you rewatch it as an adult and don't let yourself be blinded by nostalgia, then you probably notice that the writing has tons of issues (not just the pointless retcons, the show also is full of filler, unfinished arcs, idiot plots, etc) and the animation commonly suffers from budgeting limitations (e.g. rampant copypasting of background extras, recycling character designs, off-model animation). Whenever a new retool of the franchise comes out, it starts out fairly competent but then the overall quality quickly degrades with every subsequent season of that retool. The most recent retool/reboot is unique in that it maintains a consistent level of quality across seasons... because the quality to start with was so awful that it can't get worse. We're talking Spongebob post-movie levels of bad, and every Cartoon Network show nowadays is like that.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1113971I prefer reading manga to watching anime, but I've watched modern anime and there's a spectrum of plots. I don't think "nerd wish fulfillment fantasy" is new or Japanese. It was the plot of Never Ending Story, Back to the Future and plenty of other classic Western movies because it speaks loudly to both teens and adults.

The difference is that those Western examples actually put effort into their plots. That's why we remember them and not the deluge of bad movies that came out around the same time.

I'm not talking out of my ass. The current nerd wish fulfillment trend in anime is called "isekai" (read: obnoxious nerd travels to a generic D&D campaign setting, gets victory and harem girls handed to him on a silver platter without effort; basic idea dates back at least to 1666 with Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World). The market so saturated that publishers have started banning it from submissions.

You can immediately judge the quality of an isekai by the protagonist on the cover art. If the protagonist is a teenage boy (or a teenage boy in the body of his video game avatar), then it will be horrible. If the protagonist is a grown man, or a girl of any age, then it may be worth watching.

Quote from: Omega;1113977That is debatable. CGI animation tends to be horrendously expensive unless you cut alot of corners which then damages chances of success. Theres a growing list of CGI movies that have failed, sometimes massively so.

And it is not so much that the US considers traditional cartoons worthless as Hollywood considers them not profitable. And CGI shows will take the next hit at some point and we will see a swing back to trad art or something else. I dont think it will happen anytime soon unless theres a really big bomb that really shakes up the industry against CGI. But more likely they will create some new fake excuse for why it failed like they did with "uncanny valley".

The uncanny valley isn't a fake excuse. There's actual science behind it. I watched the first episode of The Mandalorian and I found myself more interested in trying to distinguish the CGI. That's not a good thing.

That means something was wrong with the show, with the market, and with myself. The show obviously didn't interest me (although that may just be me since I have trouble mustering interest in anything nowadays). Unless the entire movie is CGI, the CGI should not itself be the focus of the movie. The market has trained me to look specifically for CGI when I should be enjoying the story, even when the CGI isn't the main focus. The constant use of cheap ugly fake CGI across the board has trained me to be hyper-focused on the effects when I shouldn't be. While watching, I constantly find myself holding an internal contest to determine whether a given effect is practical or CGI. I find myself wondering why they didn't just film everything in very cheap CGI and photoshop the actors' faces in later, because I would genuinely find that more entertaining. My suspension of disbelief is thoroughly broken from the moment I start watching because I simply don't care about anything but mocking the technical work.

This problem is not unique to CGI either. Any kind of mixed media will elicit the same reaction unless it serves a purpose in the story. The old Zoids anime used a mix of 2D animation and CGI, but the CGI was filtered to make it blend with the 2D animation. Nowadays no such effort is put in and all the cheap CGI is extremely jarring. By contrast, Puella Magi uses Dada art and stop-motion for its acid trip sequences to make then standout; this is infinitely more creative and entertaining than any CGI I've ever seen in my life.

Congratulations Hollywood. Your narcissistic idiotic obsession with showing how expensive and hyper-realistic your CGI is has destroyed my ability to enjoy your media. I can't even enjoy practical effects anymore because I've been trained to focus on it by you.

Damn SFX. Damn SFX to hell.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1113988Congratulations Hollywood. Your narcissistic idiotic obsession with showing how expensive and hyper-realistic your CGI is has destroyed my ability to enjoy your media. I can't even enjoy practical effects anymore because I've been trained to focus on it by you.

I agree with your entire post. It's a good breakdown of the current entertainment media scene.

Unless movie has solid writing and solid acting, its definitely harder to get lost in the story and ignore the FX wobbles. Instead, the vast majority of movies are poorly written with mediocre acting so we're not engaged enough to forgive the FX, and even worse as you pointed out, many studios think flashy FX can carry the movie, but that ship sailed years ago.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1113770Totally agree with you. All Western animation nowadays is either idiocy aimed at small children, enjoyable by the whole family, or dead baby comedy.

What's an example of dead baby comedy?

Quote from: Aglondir;1114150What's an example of dead baby comedy?

Family Guy, American Dad, etc. Basically cartoons marketed as "mature" when what they really mean is "immature humor for adults."

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114171Family Guy, American Dad, etc. Basically cartoons marketed as "mature" when what they really mean is "immature humor for adults."

Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal on AS is excellent. And Europe and South America continue to produce quality animated features like The Red Turtle and Bunuel in the Labyrinth of Turtles on a regular basis.

I loathed Primal, and, of course, Bojak is the exception that proves the rules. As was the Frisky Dingo crowd of projects in their era.

The glut of crap makes it easier to immediately identify something good when you see it ... and also disguises it, making it harder to find in the first place. You pretty much HAVE to find a curator you trust ... or burn a lot of time and energy being disappointed.