Wow $70 for two tapes

Great blog, and probably right on the money.

More manly mahjongg, please.

Companies have learned what people want and have learned to deliver more of it faster. Combined with more efficient distribution, we get the feeling of oversaturation. Not a good thing for anyone.

This hits it right on the head...although I love slice of life anime. I don't want to see it fade away. :(

Yup, I agree. We look at anime based on seasons when we used to look at based on the year or multiple year periods when you go back to the 80s-early 90s. For the years before Internet fan subs became big and the like we don't have the vast majority of crappy shows even subbed, so we barely know they exist let alone have seen them. And with crunchyroll and other simulcasts it becomes that much easier for everyone to see/sample stuff as they come out without any of the fan sub moral ambiguity. So even if you are someone who buys anime dvds in the US and doesn't touch fan subs (I mostly fall into that group) you still have alot of access to new shows in Japan by season as they come out. And really when it comes down to it "the sky is falling" is a trope for most pop culture mediums that comes and goes in cycles. It is always the decline era for what you like when the current fad doesn't fit your interests.

aye this is the best argument yet, like i only knew one other kid during middle school who knew wat it was, and in my hs not untill i was a sophmore did they get a anime club going, right now we got like 30 ppl :)

Where's the Fap button for this blog? I don't think I could click it hard enough...

This article is so true.

I had to watch the first episode of Bubblegum Crisis dubbed last night. When it ended, I could only appreciate how far we've gotten since.

It's not just that we are more exposed, there's also the fact that Animation has become MUCH cheaper to produce. Back in the day there was a cost thresh-hold that prevented the REALLY bad shows from being created in the first place. Fewer bad titles meant that the market wasn't very fractured and made the good ones more profitable, and thus we got more good shows.

These days there are so many shows, good and bad, that studios can't risk sinking too much money into them fro fear that they won't be able to recoup their costs.

I think we should just ratify Sturgeon's Law into the Constitution. It's the most common theme I'm noticing in the blogs that argue in favor of the question.

Stuff used to just be impossible to get. My friend Jared had dozens of VHS tapes lovingly [read: slowly] hand-fansubbed and copied one slow play at a time between multiple VCRs. The rest were copies of terrible English dubs (maybe some fandubs), which were just as hard to find. You could only get most anime if you had the connections; it was like having an incredibly specialized drug dealer. He introduced me to tons of anime I would never have seen on TV at all.

Then, when you could buy anime at first, it was freaking expensive. This is what drove Suncoast out of business.

Now, there's the Internet, where everything's free and instant.

I quite agree with this post; old anime fans (we who used to barely get a title or two a year through dubious VHS) think nowadays anime is crap because there's just so much of it and unlike before we're getting it all.

I concur with your point. Moar anime titles = moar crap anime to haet. If it's deemed worthy to be saved, it enjoys good sales numbers (hello, Bakemonogatari & Gundam Unicorn ep. 1) and, maybe, get the chance to be licensed worldwide. Hopefully, there will be more air-worthy titles from now on.

You guys fail to realize that he went from a 50% success rate to a 40% success rate. CLEARLY ANIME HAS GOTTEN WORSE!

On a more serious note, there's probably only one show every five years or so that really wows me. That hasn't really changed with time. On the upside, I do get a lot of exposure to some pretty good stuff. Way more than I did back 'in the day'.

Holy carp, when the hell did this get promoted? I didn't even realize it.

@The-Excel
I agree with you on BGC, along with lots of other 80s-90s. Time has ravaged its once useful good looks. Hell, even some titles from 5 years ago look dated by today's standards.

@Treis
Totally. Also, since we're talking about back in the day, there was a time when Japanese corporations actually had money to blow on crazy stuff like animation projects. They weren't always the best, but damn were they pretty.
Now that we can create anime out of Flash animation as well as export it to lower labor cost studios (what was that anime done completely in flash? I can't remember the name), that creates another potential avenue to mass-produce anime. Since the production method is cheap, that's why we see reoccurring themes all the time.

@Nihon
Tell me about it. I'm lucky to have had the comic book store, and Japanimation at 11:00 on Channel 62 (with half hour long commercial breaks for phone sex lines). Other than that, it was the yearly dealer's room at Anime Central. Waiting a year to satisfy a fix SUCKED!

@Archwright
STATISTICS?! NOOOOO!! Although it does drive home the point that the market's more diluted now.

Well, that depends on the people who watch it. Personally, I do not have a problem with the new kind of animations they are advocating here. They look really good, funny as well sa innovative to me. Of course, all of this started with the Japanese anime which started up recently. Things weren’t the same back in the nineties for sure. I think you could see the difference if you watch Cartoon Network and Animax.
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This was a great article. I actually feel the same way sometimes. I think this was such a funny article. There are people out there that really like it. Thanks Megan Marks - Hard Disk Data Recovery

Of course anima doesn't suck, its the best. I really feel a strong movement of it coming along in the near future.
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Of course anima doesn't suck, its the best. I really feel a strong movement of it coming along in the near future.
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