Too Much Cute or Laziness?

Can anime be too cute? I recently read an article on Anime Hearld (you're welcome). It was "study" on why there has been a drop in anime popularity in North America. One of his arguments was the type of stories that were being told in this so-called "era" of anime. The "cute girl doing cute things." My first reaction was "yea right..... I don't see any cute girls doing cute things here." I dwelled on it some more, and started to remember an anime my girlfriend was watching. Madoka Magica, has a dark story behind it, but I was thrown off because of the cutness. That being said I think most westerners would dismiss the show at first glance just by how the character's look. Let's face it, it's very cutesy looking. I know the trademark's that are associated with anime, and I'm not asking them to change it but I'm just observing a pattern here that's all. I'm just guessing its probably a focus on a certain market, or production companies are trying not to take risk anymore and going the safe route.

The room of an Otaku

The market I was talking about earlier is the otaku market. A very small market, but also the most vocal. I didn't really believe that this group of people could really sway a market. I do agree with the point of there being a new era, but I don't think the otakus brought it on, they may have influenced, however. H.O.T.D. (High School of the Dead) can be "cutesy" and not taken very seriously. It follows the same tropes as other zombie horror media but from the point of view of teenagers, and add in some nice characterization you got yourself a good show. The big boobs however can be very distracting and all the pantie shots. I tried recommending that show to some people but half of them said they couldn't get it into it. "But I thought you loved zombies stuff" I would say back to them. I usually get the reply of "Can't really watch it" or "Too awkward." The show does play in my opinion, to the otaku (and fetish) markets, but that's not my call. There are other anime shows I don't watch because I'm not seeing anything substantial, and if I find something good it's distracted with big boobs, or some weird fetish.

You almost tricked me

Anime is not known to take the safe route, but when characters start to look similar, a certain style gets reused, or boring plots and over the top nonsense. Think about some the anime that came out in the 90's over here ,in America of course, there were martial arts, giant robots, bounty hunters and powerful witches. Some were basic, others were epic you got the best of both worlds in a sense. I'm not saying that anime production companies need to cater to American audiences, especially if they have a big enough market in their home country, but even over there seems to be some rehashing. I know not all anime is going to succeed over here but at least give us something we haven't seen before or at least remotely interesting. They seem to find that a lot of people like a certain style based on viewership or the sales, which could be misleading. Let's consider this Dragon Ball Z was incredibly popular in America and in Japan, because of that they assume that we like these very long, sometimes mudane anime series, so they recreate or recapture that magic with newer series. I mean even with other properties such as Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood, and Eureka Seven Pocket Full of Rainbows are just re-imaginaning of their respective series. It's obvious when you start to re-release things with different names that there is something a foot.


When you look at it from distance it seems nothing is wrong but you look up close then you see all the cracks. Fortunately not all anime is effected by these trends, and I maybe wrong (I probably am). I still think that an anime is popular animation form in the west it just so happened to die down when something was shoved into the market, what that is I don't know.

Posted in: DBZ and DBZ Kai,Eureka Seven Pocketfull of Rainbows,madoka magica,otaku market,reimaganings,stone ramen,too much cute or laziness