Anime in a creative slump period?

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

...or have audiences' tastes gotten lower?

It seems for the past 2 years, the anime output has been somewhat lacking creatively, or socially. I'm not saying we don't still have good shows coming out--Azumanga Daioh is a "good" show, and there are well-made comedies like Midori, but it seems these days it's either "good, but generic" or "bad and generic." Where are the controversial shows, the shows that inspire talk from fans? You can argue about Neon Genesis Evangelion's quality, but you can't argue the discussion it provoked from fans. It may not have been VERY new in content, but the narrative style and focus was fresh. Even a mainstream-skewing hit like Sailor Moon, at the time, was a fairly fresh show--at the time it came out, magical girl superheroes weren't a wildly popular anime staple yet.

We have some shows doing interesting things like Paranoia Agent, but fans haven't responded to it in droves--it isn't "speaking" to many people.

I guess I'm looking for shows that have something personal to say--something that pushes people's buttons or gets a lot of people talking. I mean sure, it's fun to watch a "fun" well-produced show like Princess Tutu or a slick "parody" like Abenoboshi, but I guess I feel that lately the anime that's coming out seems to be lacking a distinct sense of edge or something personal. They just don't seem to have anything different to say.

And I can't say I'm getting jaded since I've been an anime fan since the 80s, and I've seen more generic anime than you can count, but there was always a surprise or two every 2 years.

I don't expect this creative drought to last forever, of course. Anime went through a creative drought from 1988-1992 as well.

[Behonkiss]

It seems the same to me that it always has.

[Ben]

Hmmm... honestly, I can't really see what you're saying.

Right now, we have Samurai Champloo, Paranoia Agent, Howl's Moving Castle, GitS 2: Innocence, Steamboy, Windy Tales, Texhnolyze, and those are just off the top of my head. All those works are very creative in format. If you want evidence of people responding to creative anime, Spirited Away won an Oscar last year and The Animatrix was in the top ten DVDs sold for a relatively long time. Plus Innocence just passed the million dollar mark at the box office, pretty dang good for such a limited release.

If this is a slump, when was there a boom?

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Hmmm... honestly, I can't really see what you're saying.

Right now, we have Samurai Champloo, Paranoia Agent, Howl's Moving Castle, GitS 2: Innocence, Steamboy, Windy Tales, Texhnolyze, and those are just off the top of my head. All those works are very creative in format. If you want evidence of people responding to creative anime, Spirited Away won an Oscar last year and The Animatrix was in the top ten DVDs sold for a relatively long time. Plus Innocence just passed the million dollar mark at the box office, pretty dang good for such a limited release.

If this is a slump, when was there a boom?Those are all good stuff, but they don't exactly SAY anything interesting. Champloo? Stylish show mixing genres, but has nothing really to say. Steamboy is a crowd pleasing movie that isn't saying anything. Howl's Moving Castle is probably good, but I feel Miyazaki has been repeating himself for a while now. The rest of your examples are all good but they don't really have anything new to say.

Like I said, I didn't say that there wasn't good anime out there. I'm saying that there isn't any anime that has anything to say that's new. There's a difference.

Like, for example, comparing Dirty Harry to the Getaway. The Getaway was a very good movie, directed by a master (Peckinpah), but didn't say anything other heist movies didn't before. Dirty Harry's anti-hero cop had something different to say. It was right-wingish and Hollywood never had a cop so far right before. It had a voice, something to say.

It's like comparing Medium Cool to Easy Rider. Or The Conversation to Breakfast at Tiffany's. All good movies, but only one of them actually has anything to say beyond just "entertaining" the audience.

Mobile Suit Gundam was a show that wasn't perfect, but it had something to new to say at the time--a reluctant hero in a unglorified setting.

Evangelion internalized the hero's angst to the extreme, and had something to say about depression and the human condition. It had been touched on by previous anime, but Evangelion took it to a clinical extreme. It had something to say.

Also, texno and windy tales, they all get some buzz, but where are the shows that REALLY get people talking? I can count maybe Azumanga. That's it. And Azumanga is really more about innocuous observations than something radical.

I guess I'm just looking for an anime that's really saying something radical, something that many anime these days aren't doing much. Something that either pisses a lot of people off or has a lot of fans.

[RogueMartian]

It's difficult to compare anything to eva. Most fans and enemies of the show still aren't entirely sure what happened in it. But yes, it's drama and story were enthralling.

There have been a few which compare. Cowboy Bebop should immediately come to mind. Fruits Basket i tout ad nauseum, but it's characters and subtle style is quite brilliant. Now and Then, Here and There was incredible...though few people have seen it. Serial Expirements Lain was extremely good in it's own subtle way. FLCL was really good, I understood it and thought it was incredible at first sight, but a lot of other people had problems. Tokyo Godfathers was good. The Samurai X/Rurouni Kenshin OVAs had my jaw on the ground.

I found all those titles to be as good if not better than EVA. However, let's be honest, I don't think it's a drain on intelligence or creativity. It's just stastics. Not every show can be brilliant and controversial, if every show was....then they wouldn't be brilliant and controversial. We must suffer through 100 "decent" or "par" shows to get to that one brilliant one. Be thankful that while you wait there are decent or par shows. Imagine the alternative. *cough*Reality TV*cough*

[Rabi~en~Rose]

yeah animes been in a slump all year and then some meanwhile cartoons seem to be getting better go figure :confused:

[Ben]

Those are all good stuff, but they don't exactly SAY anything interesting. Champloo? Stylish show mixing genres, but has nothing really to say. Steamboy is a crowd pleasing movie that isn't saying anything. Howl's Moving Castle is probably good, but I feel Miyazaki has been repeating himself for a while now. The rest of your examples are all good but they don't really have anything new to say.

Name one anime that really has something new to say and I'll hand you a pizza trophy. Lain covered pretty established cyberpunk ground, underneath the philosophical pretensions EVA's "message" (if you can call it that) was a very old one, Mobile Suit Gundam=Star Wars (I'm not buying your "unglorified setting" -- the scenes with Gundam in them were pretty "glorified" if you ask me) and Azumanga doesn't cover anything that other newspaper comics haven't covered. The significance of all these works is not the message but how it was relayed. I think your bar is set too high even for what you give as examples.

Stuff like Innocence may not have "gotten people talking" in this forum but it's made an impact in different anime communities and in the general community. I also really don't think you can discount The Animatrix so easily. I think those shorts were, on the whole, more creative than EVA and as popular, at least in the short term.


I guess I'm just looking for an anime that's really saying something radical, something that many anime these days aren't doing much. Something that either pisses a lot of people off or has a lot of fans.

It sounds to me like you're looking for another EVA. EVA redefined anime in a lot of ways. It was a paradigm shift, and by definition those are rare. You can't possibly expect anime to come along every year that have that kind of massive influence. Was anime "in a slump" before as well as since EVA?

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

It sounds to me like you're looking for another EVA. EVA redefined anime in a lot of ways. It was a paradigm shift, and by definition those are rare. You can't possibly expect anime to come along every year that have that kind of massive influence. Was anime "in a slump" before as well as since EVA?

Actually anime was in a slump before Sailor Moon. 88-91 they were losing a lot of money and nobody cared what was coming out. Ratings were low for many shows.

But anyway, I'm not looking for another Eva. I didn't really "like" Eva, but I appreciated the fact that it shook things up a bit in fandom--that's what I'm looking for.

I just think it's time for another anime that shook things up similar to MSG, Eva, and Ashita no Joe. And yes, I suppose Cowboy Bebop can also be put on this list of shows that really stirred up fandom.

I mean yes, a lot of anime can veer into pretension but I think in recent years they've been more concerned with just doing things "popular" or doing things "right" than pushing the envelope just a bit.

I know the "I'm tired of anime" statement has become a sort of cliche of sorts around some parts here, but I'm not so much tired of anime as I am wondering when a show that's going to come out that a lot of people who may not be anime fans will watch, and will have strong opinions about.

I mean, there's Paranoia Agent which should be different enough to provoke discussion but it barely registered a blip in Japan, and there's only a small following/expectation for it here. Are fans just not receptive to these kind of shows anymore?


I don't expect some groundbreaking anime every year but IMO it's been nearly 4-5 years now since some anime show really caused a lot of buzz even outside of fandom, and that was Cowboy Bebop. I think we're due. Miyazaki films don't count since he's a mainstream figure in Japan, and he's a crowd pleaser.

[Pepperidge]

That's because ever since around 1999 or 2000, anime has had no incentive to be innovative because, thanks to a marketing strategy that capitalizes squarely on the otaku virtually every "original" show produced has been pushed to after-1am timeslots. There used to be a few more innovative shows floating around when this first started, but companies are now pretty much pandering to otaku audiences with harem show after harem show after harem show. Hell, now even shows based off of popular manga like Negima and Midori no Hibi are relegated to such timeslots. No one else seems to mind, but I'm quite frankly sick of it.

Of course this has had some benefits. The "popular" shows that do air in prime time have gone up in quality substantially (ie: FMA, Bleach), but I honestly don't think it comes even close to period in the mid-to-late nineties when we had innovative original shows like Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, and Utena all in prime time.

The problem is that EVERYONE is trying to capitalize on the otaku market. Animation studios are popping up in hoardes and producing more late night anime than the average otaku can possibly once. It's predicted that this is going to oversaturate this small market regarding in a huge crash. Personally, I hope it happens - the industry seriously needs to be purged.

[Weatherman]

Give Paranoia Agent some time to build some team. Bebop took awhile to take off and so did Eva. Granted, it will probably never acheive the sheer monolithic popularity of those two shows, but it is right up ther ewith them in terms of getting you to think about what it's saying.

I will say that anyone looking for "another Eva" or "another Gundam" or somethign liek that for awhile will probably be a little disapointed as there's just to much product coming out right now for anything to really stuck out as much as those 2 did. You pretty much only get one show like those per decade, and we still have 5 more years to go in this one.

[Classic Speedy]

Anime in a creative slump? Not when visually assaulting and creative stuff like "Dead Leaves" and "FLCL" are hitting the scene.

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Well, maybe I'm just in a *****y mood or something and I'm not seeing stuff.

Oh by the way, maybe "creative slump" isn't quite applicable to this topic since my complaint concerns a wider nature than just creativity itself.

[Go-chin]

Screw deep and stylish animes.

Give me DVDs of Air Master and Eiken and a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper and I'll be fine.

[Ben]

Give me DVDs of Air Master and Eiken and a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper and I'll be fine.

You are the best.

[Leaping Larry Jojo]

Hokuto No Ken is one of my favourite anime. But I fancy myself as a person who never likes to have too much mainstream material. I gotta satisfy the rebel in myself occasionally, even if it is a pretentious rebel.

I don't see why it's so offensive to some people to suggest that just because there are some anime shows right now that are "good" and well made doesn't mean all is well and good in anime land. I'm not attacking the hobby or anything. :yawn:

[AstroNerdBoy]

I think the more anime you watch, the more you see the similarities in titles. At over 205 titles (TV series, OAVs, movies), I find myself more atuned to this. For example, Hand Maid May was one of the first titles I watched. I still love the series, but I also see that there are many better 'artificial girl'/harem titles out there.

Right now I'm working through Kenran Butoh Sai and I see elements of Full Metal Panic, Inuyasha (especially in the music), Vandread, and more. KBS hasn't been boring to me, but it certainly isn't anything special.

I'm sure there are lots of titles which are similar to other titles within a certain genre or genres. With good writing, those things can be overcome.

Sometimes, something old (the harem sub-genre of romantic comedies) can be given a fresh twist. I liked seeing a reverse harem in Fruits Basket.

[Hey_yu]

Screw deep and stylish animes.

Give me DVDs of Air Master and Eiken and a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper and I'll be fine.No seriously, you are the best. I wish more anime fans had an attitude like yours. I'm not saying deep and stylish anime are bad, I just wish that anime fans could sit down and enjoy a title instead of expecting EVERY anime title to somehow change their lives.

That's not to say nothing new is worth investigating; but it is to say that it may be harder to impress someone who's been watching anime consistently for 10 or 15 years.

As far as anime being in a creative slump, as the saying goes, there's nothing new under the sun. Yes, if you watch a ton of anime, you begin to see similarities. But same goes with movies, games, music, books... you see or read enough, and it's inevitable that you'll start to see similarities. Was it Campbell who once said there were only something like 26 or so original plotlines upon which all stories are based? But with the millions of stories out there, in books, movies, and so on, even though they work with the same basic premises, the originality is all in the details and the characters and the fleshing-out of the premise.

[Tash]

Of course this has had some benefits. The "popular" shows that do air in prime time have gone up in quality substantially (ie: FMA, Bleach), but I honestly don't think it comes even close to period in the mid-to-late nineties when we had innovative original shows like Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, and Utena all in prime time.Yes, I see what you're sayin, that there haven't been any "Great" anime latly. None of the stuff out now will be remembered in 10 years. (except MAYBE Azumanga, but even that may be a strech.)

[Weatherman]

Yes, I see what you're sayin, that there haven't been any "Great" anime latly. None of the stuff out now will be remembered in 10 years. (except MAYBE Azumanga, but even that may be a strech.)
Ya know, peopel probably said the same thing around the time Eva premired. If nothing else, Beserk should be remembered well into the future, though that title is a couple years old now. One Piece will definately be remembered, as will Naruto, FMA, Ghost in the Shell: SAC and Gash/Zatch Bell if things work out well for it.

[lostrune]

And I can't say I'm getting jaded since I've been an anime fan since the 80s, and I've seen more generic anime than you can count, but there was always a surprise or two every 2 years.
Dude! You know we always talk about this in anime fandom every couple of years! :)

And don't even ask the anime creators/producers/directors - they always say the anime industry is in a creative slump. (It's true - just read all the interviews!) :D

[rubberchicken]

Bah. Anime's just another medium, like anything else. It'll go through stagnant periods. Just look at live TV right now and the stomach-turning proliferation of "reality" TV and teenybopper dramas.

Don't worry. Sooner or later somebody will come along and re-re-re-revolutionize animated story telling, the way Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Frank Miller did for comics.

[Lynxara]

But the problem with anime right now isn't a lack of visionary creators-- we've got BONES, Gonzo, GAINAX, Satoshi Kon, Ghibli, and a host of others still active. The problem is a lack of budget. Most of anime's historical slump periods are accompanied by a downturn in the Japanese economy, and a resulting lack of funds for animators to work with. In situations like that, companies are more likely to try and put out several bad-but-easily-marketable titles in the process of trying to build up funds for bigger, more artistic products. GAINAX's production history over the past decade or so is a decent example of this.

Google around and check anime.slashdot.com's archives, there's actually been a lot written in the past five or so years about the financial mess that anime production is in, and how it's hurting the product. It doesn't seem likely to change until the Japanese economy, and the world economy in general, starts doing better. Until it changes, you're going to see more anime produced that are adaptations of video games or part of big multimedia franchises, just because an association with other media will make getting a workable production budget easier.

[Tash]

Ya know, peopel probably said the same thing around the time Eva premired. If nothing else, Beserk should be remembered well into the future, though that title is a couple years old now. One Piece will definately be remembered, as will Naruto, FMA, Ghost in the Shell: SAC and Gash/Zatch Bell if things work out well for it.Yeah, but most of those are more than 2 years old. (except maybe Gash Bell, but that doesn't strike me as something memerable, but I haven't seen it yet)

[Go-chin]

But the problem with anime right now isn't a lack of visionary creators-- we've got BONES, Gonzo, GAINAX, Satoshi Kon, Ghibli, and a host of others still active. The problem is a lack of budget.
I'm sorry, but have you watched Gankutsuou?
As Edible said on another board: I can name the amount of movies and OVAs with production values like this on one hand.

Seriously.


Then again, it's GONZO. They always pull a great show out of their ass for every 2 or 3 that suck.

[Lynxara]

I haven't been watching Gankutsuoh, no. I shall attempt to do so if it's supposed to be of such high quality.

However, I don't think citing a reference to a single title cancels out my argument. I didn't say that there were no good anime being made anymore, just that signal-noise ratio is falling. For every Gankutsuoh, there's a dozen Ryuusei Sentai Musumets-- that's the problem.

[Weatherman]

Eh, there's always been a dozen crap titles for every good one. Well, maybe not quite that high a ratio, but there have been alot historically. The plunge in production costs associated with the change over to digital mediums has made it alot easier for someone to animate whatever they want on a small budget in comparison to years past when it was all ink and paint stuff.

[Lynxara]

Not exactly. Sorting through older titles, quality is distributed more like a bell curve; most titles tended to be somewhere around average, and then there were a handful of really great and really awful titles at the far ends of the spectrum.

Quality in the past few seasons has felt more strictly like a sloping line. While we're seeing as many well-produced avant-garde anime as ever, there's fewer average and above average products, and a far more overwhelming number of sub-par and awful products. I tend to have a lot of interest in the "above-average" band of the anime spectrum, so I've felt the shift rather acutely. I suppose if you primarily look to the avant garde titles, it feels like less has changed.

Now, it is true that the shift to digital has done a lot to foster the spread of independent anime production studios, and that's good. However, it's also been used to justify slashing dwindling budgets even further. As a result, we've seen a little bit less in the way of progress from the digital revolution than I think we would've if the Japanese economy was as healthy now as it was in the early 90's. If there's an upturn, as I said, I think the "bell curve" distribution will reassert itself again.

[Go-chin]

For every Gankutsuoh, there's a dozen Ryuusei Sentai Musumets-- that's the problem. Musumet has sentai and ditzy engrish speaking girls.
"Mista Yamato, next your lesson ballgame change shite, ok!?"

And for the record, the show is now officially called "Ryuusei Sentai Otomet", as the Saotome sisters have completely stolen the show. And they're hot.

Musumet rocks whether you think so or not. :evil:

[Weatherman]

One can hope the bell curve will reasert itself a bit once the Japanese ecconomy recovers a bit more, though the recent direct infusion of US money seems to have had some great benefits. A very large number of the best recent titles have been funded in part by the US licensors directly. Hopefully the trend can contiue to produce stuff like Kino's Journey and Paranoia Agent and heck, even stuff like Big O season 2.

[Karl Olson]

Personally, I think the era of paradigm shift level anime may be somewhat over. There are atleast two to three new anime being produced each year with emotionally weighty stories and/or very unique direction and/or visual-style. Sure they are usually only 12/13 episodes, but a lot of them only need 12/13 episodes to tell the story. Besides, Japan's media has begun to segment and become more targeted like American media due cable and satellite gaining more and more subscribers. It's not national broadcast or nothing anymore, and though that means that Bebops and Evas never show up on standard broadcasts, it also means that they aren't a once every couple year happening, and they can get away with a lot more content. It's more like a two/three per year thing and those two or three can really go as far as they need content wise. If that segmenting and targetting wasn't there, I doubt much or any of what's been produced as 12/13 episode shows lately would be produced at all, and really, that's where the innovation is now.

[O-chan]

Personally I came into anime during the pre-Pokemon boom when series like Ranma 1/2 were uber popular and Miyazaki's best work was Naussica, Totoro, and Porco Rosso.

These days it's a lot harder for me to get into an anime series (and to a latter extent a manga series) because we've evolved to a point where being creative is actually in itself...generic.

There are very series I'm able to really get into unless it brings something really good to the plate. This is why I'm so fanatical about One Piece. It really is this generation's Dragonball (without the dragging on...). Also it's like how Inu-Yasha took up the long-running Takahashi series tier that Ranma once held. We can also expect GAINAX to put out at least two or three decent series each new anime generation.

Still there are quite a few good storytelling gems like Saiyuki, Naruto, Paranoia Agent, Kiddy Grade, Twelve Kingdoms, Kaleido Star which suprise me.

Right now we're probably just experience the calm after the storm. Anime has become much more recognized so it'll be a few years before the next big "phase-change" occurs.

O-chan