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Was Hayao Miyazaki right?

Miyazaki is right for sure but the question is whether we can do anything about it. Stuff is worse now than it was, but that's because the before times were times that had not yet been fully cored out by the corporate machinery of global capitalism. We live now on a hollow earth where the only people with anything interesting to say will never be able to find a way to say it. Anime is a highly visible casualty of this because the unique flaws of the industry expose the problem to much more light than might otherwise be expected.
 
Anime is experiencing a nearly industry-wide production crunch that has even a monster studio like Sunrise on the ropes. The huge boom caused by the streaming era has had increasingly severe ramifications and where in the past churn was slower and more capable of covering up the limits in the industry, this is no longer the case. It's not hard to imagine that it's going to result in a crash, which will be painful in the short term and may not stop being painful, even if the Japanese government were to step in (which is possible but likely to be pretty limited in effect).

With that in mind, Miyazaki's 'the problem is that the industry is full of otaku' comment could be said to be wrong. Mind you, he made that comment a pretty long time ago. Like ten years or so.

... also his best friend is Anno lol, the biggest otaku in the industry lol
 
Kingcrusader said:
Yeah, that is stupid.
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You realised it's not something only linked at anime, but movies in general ? I mean, it's almost the same thing with all the movies who sell only because they have bankable actors or just "we have Transformers" point. Same could be applied to music too.

You never just only watch the show, you watch the people too.
 
Corti said:
You realised it's not something only linked at anime, but movies in general ? I mean, it's almost the same thing with all the movies who sell only because they have bankable actors or just "we have Transformers" point. Same could be applied to music too.

You never just only watch the show, you watch the people too.
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You have a point on that one. I remember watching the two kickboxer movies. The first one had Dave Bautista in it and the second one has Mike Tyson. Music? I really don't see it there.
 
Hasn't designing character first been a thing in fiction of all sorts for longer than anime has existed? That's basically what stuff like Sherlock, Conan, all sorts of major figures in media going back for centuries had going on, even in the sense of it being intended to drive fan discussion/works (those have mostly exploded in the last few decades just due to the internet and drastically improved ease of communication). It's extremely common to start from a character and build the story around/from that, even with an eye to drive secondary/tertiary works around them.
 
Frumple said:
Hasn't designing character first been a thing in fiction of all sorts for longer than anime has existed? That's basically what stuff like Sherlock, Conan, all sorts of major figures in media going back for centuries had going on, even in the sense of it being intended to drive fan discussion/works (those have mostly exploded in the last few decades just due to the internet and drastically improved ease of communication). It's extremely common to start from a character and build the story around/from that, even with an eye to drive secondary/tertiary works around them.
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Well, I'll note it's not "character design' here is primarily the *visual* design, and that design made to be appealing divorced from the work it is in.

Which sure, has existed in the past but it's now a proven and highly profitable business model
 
I mean, Conan's right there (and finds himself or expies in all sorts of works). Barbarella, Elvira, piles of comic book characters, etc. It's largely always been a fairly proven and (relatively, reliant on the size of the industry itself, which is much larger in currentyear) profitable business model. The concept just doesn't strike me as something... anything, really? It's not novel, unusual, new, untested, nothing like that. It's as old as, probably older than, visual media. The sheer quantity might be a new thing, though.
 
Frumple said:
Hasn't designing character first been a thing in fiction of all sorts for longer than anime has existed?
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Yeah, but those characters were created as more than their appearance. It wasn't a case that Doyle wrote two paragraphs about the incredibly moe Holmes, and the fans went "Wai! Wai! Let me write 100,000 words about moe Holmes!"

Honestly, a lot of the arguments I'm seeing on this thread recently seen to boil down to "A Tale of Two Cities used words, and "Reincarnated as the Buffest, Strongest Bestest Character With One Overwhelming Trick" uses words, so they really are no different, and so why are people criticizing things anyway?,"
 
RoseEmbolism said:
Yeah, but those characters were created as more than their appearance. It wasn't a case that Doyle wrote two paragraphs about the incredibly moe Holmes, and the fans went "Wai! Wai! Let me write 100,000 words about moe Holmes!"

Honestly, a lot of the arguments I'm seeing on this thread recently seen to boil down to "A Tale of Two Cities used words, and "Reincarnated as the Buffest, Strongest Bestest Character With One Overwhelming Trick" uses words, so they really are no different, and so why are people criticizing things anyway?,"
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This. Like, Conan isn't just a cool drawing of a barbarian. He's a character in a story (and a damn good character and story) who achieved enough popularity to become embedded in culture and become a brand in and of itself.

The shift to *starting* with the brand and relying on that to carry a character's story is new (though clearly an outgrowth of how characters like Conan *became* brands)
 
Oooooooh Conan the barbarian

I was wondering why y'all were talking about Detective Conan in that context...
 
RoseEmbolism said:
Honestly, a lot of the arguments I'm seeing on this thread recently seen to boil down to "A Tale of Two Cities used words, and "Reincarnated as the Buffest, Strongest Bestest Character With One Overwhelming Trick" uses words, so they really are no different, and so why are people criticizing things anyway?,"
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This webzone has a big problem with discourse in this respect imo. It's like a bunch of people that sat through a class on post-modernism and understood the subjectivity part and that's about it.
 
This whole 'waifu culture' digression seems a little bizarre. 'Lum-chan is the cutest!' is a war cry from the 70s, and the argument that we can just sell things based on the cute art, unlike in the past, seems pretty rose tinted.
 
Ford Prefect said:
This whole 'waifu culture' digression seems a little bizarre. 'Lum-chan is the cutest!' is a war cry from the 70s, and the argument that we can just sell things based on the cute art, unlike in the past, seems pretty rose tinted.
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It's also a complete misrepresentation of my argument which is why it seems so rose tinted.

No one is arguing that art was a part of selling things in the past. Of course it was.

But the rise of franchises like Fate, Ship Girls, RWBY, etc is a relatively recent phenomenon (as, really is the rise of otaky culture which Miyazaki is lamenting and the two are directly intertwined). These franchises have a proven, profitable, and *marketable* business strategy of focusing their time.and effort on the design of their characters rather than the quality of thejr writing or animation or "whatever*.

These works can do that because the rise of the internet and otaku culture has allowed fandom to become a force in th market, and one which can prop up a works weaker qualities of that work is able to capture their attention. And the most important part of capturing that attention is *marketable characters*. A cute design, a fun personality, these are things which makes people want to talk about a character, draw them in different scenarios, and write about them in fanfiction.
 
BossFight said:
No one is arguing that art was a part of selling things in the past. Of course it was.

But the rise of franchises like Fate, Ship Girls, RWBY, etc is a relatively recent phenomenon (as, really is the rise of otaky culture which Miyazaki is lamenting and the two are directly intertwined). These franchises have a proven, profitable, and *marketable* business strategy of focusing their time.and effort on the design of their characters rather than the quality of thejr writing or animation or "whatever*.
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Not that recent; I can't speak for Japan, but certainly here in the US there have been plenty of franchises/shows for decades that were basically overlong toy commercials. If there's a difference it's that the target audience is older.
 
BossFight said:
But the rise of franchises like Fate, Ship Girls, RWBY, etc is a relatively recent phenomenon (as, really is the rise of otaky culture which Miyazaki is lamenting and the two are directly intertwined). These franchises have a proven, profitable, and *marketable* business strategy of focusing their time.and effort on the design of their characters rather than the quality of thejr writing or animation or "whatever*.
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You cannot possibly put the Fate franchise in that category, like what the hell? Say what you like about Fate Grand Order but absolutely does not sacrifice writing or animation in favour of character designs. Say what you like about Fate Grand Order but that shit is like five hundred novels stacked on top of each other, it can't even do a goofy lighthearted side story without it being the size of a dictionary. People don't like it because it's some hollow thing, it has huge volumes of content that people love.

And there is no way that is the 'strategy' for RWBY. That is just not believable. It straight up doesn't make any sense, no one is falling over themselves to buy RWBY products purely on the strength of the most recent character designs lmao
 
I didn't watch all the video, but I see its point. I remember in pre-2010, in the french anime blogger websphere who was was very active and large at this time (don't know how it is now), things were particularly heated between people who like more "serious" anime (more usually anime before this time) and the ones who like more "cute girls doing cute things" with K-On as the forefront.
The war was causing by the fact there is more and more "moe/slice of live" anime and less and less anime with a "real" story. The first side was already calling about the end of anime at the time (so yeah, it's almost 15 years that I heard the anime world will crunch,... which make me doubtful it will happen one day, even if the reasons who could bring a crunch have changed. It's a reality that anime production have still been to adapt to its market in the last decade and continue to grow finally).

And basically, moe/slice of life anime are driven by the characters, when others can have a story which push the character around.
So yeah, the argument of how anime production had switched because of waifu culture, was on the point fifteen years ago (but honestly, I am more interested about the societal/psychological reasons that people begin to prefer to watch "moe" than serious things. The fact the market have switched this way is the consequence, not the cause, and I don't think the video has addressed this issue).

For today... Things are a little bit more mixed as far as I know. Or have switched again in the direction of isekai, which doesn't seem really to fit the full waifu thing even if they have a big dip in it in the same time (because harem, but in the same time, harem is an old trope, so....).
 
Delirium said:
Miyazaki is right for sure but the question is whether we can do anything about it. Stuff is worse now than it was, but that's because the before times were times that had not yet been fully cored out by the corporate machinery of global capitalism. We live now on a hollow earth where the only people with anything interesting to say will never be able to find a way to say it. Anime is a highly visible casualty of this because the unique flaws of the industry expose the problem to much more light than might otherwise be expected.
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Stuff is not worse. Modern anime has some of the best anime ever produced. It's fantastic.

Because there's a lot of anime, which means a lot of bad anime, doesn't mean there isn't truly amazing anime too.
 
stratigo said:
Stuff is not worse. Modern anime has some of the best anime ever produced. It's fantastic.

Because there's a lot of anime, which means a lot of bad anime, doesn't mean there isn't truly amazing anime too.
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I mean I don't agree that the modern anime industry produces many interesting bangers in the first place (primarily because anime in general has a lowish hit rate) but that doesn't actually matter. Stuff being generally worse doesn't preclude exceptions existing.
 
Delirium said:
I mean I don't agree that the modern anime industry produces many interesting bangers in the first place (primarily because anime in general has a lowish hit rate) but that doesn't actually matter. Stuff being generally worse doesn't preclude exceptions existing.
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Bad anime (slash manga) Has existed in large quantities forever. It just, you know, isn't remembered.

I feel like this is just nostalgia based on what survived in popular memory. Of course the bad shit of the 80s doesn't get talked about, because no one remembers it.
 
They spelled out the /, would have been more clearly put as bad anime/manga, or anime(/manga). Probably wasn't throwing shade at the BL.
 
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