The ramblings of a mad Tyr/the pokemon generation

[Josquius]

I'm bored at work. Due to the snow everything is confused.
At lunch I hit upon an interesting thought about Japanese culture and its visibility in the west and decided to try and write an article about it.
I got a bit sidetracked and devolved into rambling on about my life with anime....enjoy().
There will be an actual point at the end so feel free to skip to there.


I remember when I was a child in the 90s anime was a completely unknown concept.
Sure, it has always been out there. The likes of Speed Racer and Battle of the Planets enjoyed quite some success in the English speaking world.  In the US Robotech was a rather popular highly Americanised slash-job of Macross and several other anime series.
These individual shows however, were not seen as part of any particular style or genre, most people may not even have been aware of their Japanese origins, particularly given how heavily altered they often were.
My childhood interest in Japan was thus sated just as easily by Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles as it was by Samurai Pizza Cats.
As I grew older and more discerning in my tastes I uncovered the actual niche genre that was anime. In the UK, all but synonymous with Manga Entertainment (leading to a great deal of confusion amongst the masses even to this day about whether anime and manga are the same thing) there has been a steady trickle of English releases since virtually the dawn of VHS, with the relative success of Akira the tiny niche really took off and exploded into being a well known quantity; amongst nerdy circles at the least. Steadily expanding throughout the 90s until it became worthy of being shown on late night TV and having a few shelves in larger HMV stores devoted to it.
It was around then that I truly became interested in anime, my interest primarily being born of its Japaneseness and video-game associations. The sci-fi channel had a regular post-midnight Thursday slot where they would show anime. Without fail I always made sure before I went to bed that the sky box was set to sci-fi, my parents were told not to turn it over on pain of death, and my video recorder was loaded up with one of my overly reused blank tapes and ready to go.
To say the sci-fi channel's early faire was largely crap is quite an understatement. They seemingly had nobody planning the slot, with every week it just being a case of running whatever was the first video they found, as such the same dross was frequently repeated and series were always out of order.
I recall an early favourite was Bubblegum Crash- Bubblegum Crisis was not shown until many years later. Ghost in the Shell was also appreciated greatly. Akira however is something I've never been a fan of. A frequent hate was the incomprehensible Overfiend series. Looking back on things I'm now glad that my parents never investigated what I was taping, falling into the old anime=kid's stuff, cliché, never once considering all that tentacle rape I was being exposed to long before I had any interest in the opposite sex. Maybe that explains why I'm so fucked up on that front?....nah.
Yes, truly those were the days; anime was just big enough that it could be obtained without too much trouble and there was discussion to be had on line. But it wasn't even in the mainstream of geekdom let alone in the general public consciousness. These were the days before broadband and youtube, one couldn't just watch any anime you wanted, you had to take what you were given, and every morsel was precious.

Then in the early noughties things began to change.
It was slow at first. The sci-fi channel began to show consistency in what they showed. New never shown before anime began to appear. Occasionally there would even be an introduction by Jonathon Clements- some sort of East Asian media expert journalisty person. I was happy. My hobby was finally getting its recognition.
Then it appeared.
Pokémon.
At first it remained a thoroughly niche show shown only at inconvenient times on sky one. Nonetheless I managed to catch the first episode and was instantly hooked. Its job done I instantly started trawling the phone book for game importers to get hold of an American copy of Pokémon Blue (which incidentally was one of the best games ever). I even managed to get a friend to follow me down the Pokémon rabbit hole- I needed somebody else to get interested in it so that he could buy the red version and I could collect them all. Damn was I a social retard in those days. All I cared about were his Pokémon....And no, that's not an innuendo.
But then it erupted onto ITV...and things were changed forever. With the help of Ant and Dec's sketches Pokémon became a phenomena. At first this was wonderful. Lots of people were into something I knew so much about. I was king! But alas I was 14, despite fighting the enforced early outgrowth I was now naturally outgrowing such kids stuff. Punk, history and Europa Universalis beckoned. It wasn't long before I stopped considering myself the rather ridiculous 'anime fan' (how can one be a fan of an entire freaking medium?), I kept an interest to some degree.
Dipping in and out.
I got really into manga at one point though the price tags and lag of space in my room put at end to that. The internet wasn't yet developed enough for me to easily enjoy anime online either.
There were some positive anime spots. Cowboy Bebop was a revelation. DragonballZ was always a pleasure, a believed to be guilty one until I learned that several other guys liked it too. The sci-fi channel experimented with Saturday morning TV, showing some really quality stuff like the original Evangelion.
By university however my interest was completely on the wane. Which is strange because apparently at the same time anime was really taking off amongst the mainstream populace. Though I had gotten into Pokémon at the older end of its intended target group and thus had a rather short dalliance with pocket monstery, there were children out there for whom the timing of Pokémon's release was bang on correct. For them there was no childhood interest in Japan and a seeking out of anime. It was shoved down their throats from the get go.
Whilst when I was at school I was the only kid around who liked anime, by the time I was in university it had erupted firmly into the mainstream of teenage nerdery. By today it had grown to become outright mainstream with modern kids.
This makes me wonder, what does tomorrow hold? We've a generation which has grown up with anime. The future certainly looks bright for the Japanese tourist board...



So in summary-
Folks on languish who watch a bit of anime most likely know it as a niche geeky thing.
With kids these days however it is thoroughly mainstream.
What will this mean for the future? As the Pokemon Generation graduates from university and enters into productive life (not too long yet, already we have their forward scouts) will Japan enjoy increased success with its cultural exports?
Or for the anti-anime folks out there; Is civilization doomed?

[Lettow77]

 To say anime is thoroughly mainstream is to sell it too hard. Anime fans are big, embarrassing losers- their huge interest in another culture is frequently explained away by how little acceptance they won in their own due to their poor social skills. It's one thing to (as tim said) have a passing interest in something that aired on american television, like cowboy bebop, but past that the quality of human being drops pretty far and pretty fast.

  I would actually say the seeds of anime being as big as it presently owes to the success of anime compared to american cartoons when my generation was growing up; dragon ball Z, sailor moon, outlaw star, gundam wing and things like it all came on after school when you got home, and they were better than the competition. (And the pokemon craze, almost a separate matter, obviously helped a lot.) 

However, that said, I think we've turned a corner- the internet may make it easier to watch anime than ever before, and exposes people who choose to do so an enormous variety of anime, but it is mostly for the benefit of a crowd that grew up enjoying japanese shows in the first place. American cartoons are better than they- things like Adventure Time, Regular Show, and My Little Pony command huge audiences, while anime that comes on in the afternoon for kids (other than sops to nostalgia like DBZ reruns) have declined enormously as a share. So in that respect, I think that for now interest in anime may have peaked, and the up-and-coming generation won't like it quite as much.

Edit: another point against anime being as big in the future as it is now is the direction anime sensibilities are heading. Giant robots are anachronistic, and space operas are more or less dead. The industry is increasingly dominated by the premise "young girls do _____" which is fine and desirable, but less likely to appeal to westerners. (This only matters a little, as of course the west will (as it did in the past) cherrypick the shows most likely to appeal to them, like Cowboy Bebop, but it is just that very few of these shows are being made. From the current season.. Psycho Pass? Jojo at a stretch? )

[Jaron]

This is the type of thread I don't see ending well.

[Jacob]

This is the type of thread I don't see ending well.

Do you see it beginning well?

[Jaron]

It is Tyr and Lettow. It began as expected.

[DGuller]

This is the type of thread I don't see ending well.

Do you see it beginning well?

[garbon]

Even I'm not that bored.

[Admiral Yi]

Do you see it beginning well?

[Razgovory]

Even I'm not that bored.

I'm pretty bored but I didn't finish reading the opening post.  Something about snow and Pokemon.

[Grey Fox]

Gotta catch them motherfuckers.

[jimmy olsen]

To say anime is thoroughly mainstream is to sell it too hard. Anime fans are big, embarrassing losers- their huge interest in another culture is frequently explained away by how little acceptance they won in their own due to their poor social skills. It's one thing to (as tim said) have a passing interest in something that aired on american television, like cowboy bebop, but past that the quality of human being drops pretty far and pretty fast.

This may have changed in the last 3 years I've been gone but I used to see tweens and young teens reading manga quite a bit, and bookstores had really big selections to choose from.

[Lettow77]

 Be advised; after two episodes there is sufficient evidence to confirm without a doubt, barring shocking derailment
Tamako Market is the anime of the season

kyoani has surpassed its usual standard for good quality