OMG SEASONAL ANIME IS KILLING ANIME!
...is what I could say, or sprout some other kind of similar nonsense
because that’s the kind of mentality I’ve seen in the community far too often over the
past number of years.
But in some ways I don’t think we can completely disregard that notion despite how absurd
it might sound initially.
The viewer mentality that I’ve been seeing more and more of is this kind of:
“Hey what’s the new hotness that I need to watch to keep up with the times”
and much less of: “Hey what’s a really good anime I haven’t seen yet”.
As anime is becoming more and more mainstream it is evolving, and changing to suit the needs
of its ever-growing audience.
An audience who is used to an industry that is able to keep up with their demands for
more anime, and that anime has to be available NOW.
It didn’t used to be that way, in North America we usually had to wait a year+ for
a new anime series to make their way across the ocean officially and even then we were
limited by what some licensing company decided to be what we wanted to watch.
So now instead of a "Anime Fan" you have
Shounen junkies, slice of life junkies, Mecha junkies, Idol…worshippers
each with their own dedicated community and they don’t necessarily mingle with each other.
Like, that’s not to say there’s no crossover AT ALL because that’s blatantly untrue but
what I’m trying to get at is that there’s no longer a standardized list of anime that
all fans must watch to be considered an anime fan.
Now it’s a much more social experience, it’s about discussing new stuff so that
EVERYONE is on a level playing field, and perhaps it’s able to avoid the elitism that
might come with watching works that have been put up on an unreachable pedestal.
It gives you consistent opportunities to talk to people and make friends.
You have topics readily available to you which makes it feel like we’re all in the same
boat, and empathising with new people is...generally easier.
Granted, anime has always been a social experience, the reason I started making videos was because
I needed people to talk anime with and videos were a good outlet for that, but it’s become
even more important now.
Why?
Because the weekly-watching experience is being marketed by so many outlets as being the
closest thing we can get to watching anime as a fan in Japan.
Not only do the shows come out within an hour or so of airing there, streamed in high definition,
but voice actors, animators and creators from Japan are all over social media now and their
comments, interviews and impressions can be translated a lot quicker than they ever could
be before.
So we kind of get the impression that we are a part of THEIR direct audience rather than
a secondary audience specified by wherever we happen to live.
On top of which, time is precious, there’s a looooot of shit to watch and only so much
time to do it.
And really, what sounds more important: a show that’s currently airing that all your
friends are watching and talking about? or a show from 20 years or so ago that’s mentioned
occasionally but even some of your other friends haven’t seen it?
As much as some of us say that watching a classic like Cowboy Bebop is a thing everyone
does, if no one in YOUR specific circle of friends holds it in high regard, then you wouldn’t
really have a reason to watch it out of obligation now do you?
These olden goldies may have had the time to age like fine wine but nowadays, the notability
of an anime gets refreshed every 4 months*.
Think of this as a replacement for what used to be known as the Big 3: Bleach, One Piece
and Boruto’s Dad.
Those shows maintained massive popularity for so many years because they were a constant,
and the fans of those shows never really had a breather to NOT talk about them.
Now, the seasonal cycle itself is the gift that keeps on giving but for an individual
IP to stick out in this cavalcade of content, it has to have its hand on the pulse of this pattern.
My Hero Academia’s popularity has exploded earlier this year with the airing
of its second season, mostly because there was a gap of only one year since its previous season.
Compare that to Attack on Titan which had a
4 year gap between S1 and S2.
No matter how big it was back in 2013 (and it was pretty big) it seemed to be barely a fraction of that in 2017.
Heck, even Sword Art Online has actually managed to maintain popularity better than Attack on Titan.
With new releases in relatively recent intervals throughout the years, it’s still relevant
to a very large amount of fans.
Take this year alone 2017: we had the release of the film Ordinal Scale at the start, and
just recently we had the announcement of season 3 AND a spin-off.
In contrast, we can just think back to the big anime of even last year in 2016.
How many people are still talking about Re;Zero?
Or hell Erased?
It doesn’t matter largely for the anime fans that were watching those shows when they
were airing, but what if you got into anime in the middle of 2016 after Erased ended,
how inclined might you be to watch it when everyone else started to move on?
Even the success of Yuri on Ice has only really been kept within its own dedicated fanbase
and it probably won’t start spreading again till the movie.
However, a lot of seasonal anime regurgitates popular trends so the classics by comparison
appear unique.
They contain what used to be popular trends but are no longer, as well as the origins
for other trends.
Different takes that you might not see come out in shows now because…
Well it’s been done before.
Buuut this is sort of why people like me got to watching anime to begin with.
Anime is full of things that western cartoons and live-action films don’t have.
So is anime like Hollywood now?
Where the classics are the niche?
Will Classic anime become its own genre soon?
Has it already done so?
It saddens me that Made in Abyss just finished about 3 weeks ago, but what little discussion I
used to see is now barely a drop in the bucket.
It has all the makings of a classic...but it just doesn’t seem have that opportunity
to become one because of the seasonal cycle.
Is that fair?
It certainly isn’t something I’d wish upon any of my old favourites now that I think about it...
Some shows have inherent qualities that allow them to weather this storm because of how
they are structured.
Like for example arcs in anime, especially shounen anime are not necessarily new, but
the way that shows like HeroAca and SAO present them really benefits from this social change.
Their stories and their arcs work in a way where, if marketed well, they can be cleanly
separated into adjacent seasons however they still flow naturally.
SAO works by dividing arcs into seasons and storylines based on new videogames that the
characters get tossed into.
MHA is a little less clean-cut than that but it has very strong and clear finishes to its arcs.
It doesn’t really try them blend them all that smoothly but it doesn’t need to.
If anyone wonders why I occasionally go off rails for a few weeks and do some videos on shows no one has
seen in years like Aria, and Eureka Seven, and the entirety of Gundam!
This is my little way of counterbalancing this wave.
I like the ability to appreciate what has come before so that it might give me a new
perspective on what’s to come.
Ultimately, I don’t think the seasonal cycle is REALLY killing classic anime, because
they will always be there.
However it’s much fairer to say that it IS killing the potential for things to BECOME classics.
What we’re witnessing is the depreciation of the very term “classic”, something
that has “lasting value”.
Instead all we want is something that has value...and that literally lasts.
And as for everything else, well...
forgetting has never been easier.
and that's it from me, thank you for taking the time to watch this video, I hope you enjoyed it!
As always I would like to thank my patrons for supporting these videos as without
you they would not be possible.
In particular, I’d like to thank Joshua Garcia, Yunru Dovaqueen, Robert Chumsae, Calhounboy,
Siri Yamiko, and Viktor Ekmark for being especially awesome.
And until next time, stay frosty everyone!