>>275430
Five minutes in, and it sounds like his thesis is that anime only became popular because of it's relatively "undeground" rise in the world until recently, that went largely untouched until the past few years, which is why everything is so "Sterile" now. However, Without having watched the rest of the video, I can already see myself poking holes in this theory because of several reasons:
<Anime already dominated the west by the 1990's
Anime has actually been localized and translated into the Western market as far back as the 1960's, included popular series in Japan like
Gatchaman,
Speed Racer, and
Kimba. However, during the 80's there was a stark contrast in how anime was implemented into Western media. Aside from cultural hits like
Robotech,
Vultron, and
Power Rangers (Though, that was in the 90's); something that a lot of companies began doing is outsourcing all the animation work for series
TO Japan.
Transformers,
ThunderCats,
Zorro, and so on. And, they did it because it was cheaper than Western animation and produced better art than what the West was putting out at the time. And, this only skyrocketed once the 90's came around as people can easily point to
Batman,
Tiny Toons, and
Scooby Doo all being animated in Japan. And, speaking of WB, that brings up to...
<Theatrical releases of anime films
Pokemon: The First Movie,
Digimon: The Movie,
Yu-Gi-Oh! Pyramid of Light, all of these films were huge cultural phenomenon (Especially
Pokemon) at the time, with companies spending millions distributing these, all with exclusive soundtracks and even exclusive merchandise for the film releases. That's not to mention that the
only reason why Miyazaki is even known is due to Disney distributing
Spirited Away and
Princess Mononoke with big-budget voice actors. You couldn't throw a dart during the Aughts without hitting
someone who had interest in anime. Whether that be the series I just mentioned, or "less popular" series like
Dragon Ball,
Sailor Moon,
One Piece,
Kirby,
Naruto, and even Sonic
. I know people are going to fight me about the popularity of DB'', but I cannot for the life of me remember seeing the series having that much presence outside of it's airings on Toonami. And, that's not even counting "underground" material where...
<Dark Horse, Right Stuff, ADV, etc.
As far back as the 80's, these companies setup huge exclusives contracts with Japan when it came to distributing the more risque media, which is how anime gained the flare in the adult circles about being nothing more than tits, giant robots, and gore. And, one cannot deny that they were a "small niche" as you had exclusively OEL comics (Long before Tokyopop attempted it) released over here like
The Dirty Pair and
M.D. Geist: Ground Zero because of just how popular this material was. Which brings us to another showing this material has
long lost it's underground status because off...
<The Knock-Offs
One of the most identifiable traits of the Aughts cartoons was it's attempt to imitate anime, which
everyone was doing. WB did
Teen Titans, Nick had
Speed Racer: Next Gen and
Kappa Mickey, 4Kids gave us
TMNT, and the French gave us
Totally Spies and
Code Lyoko. Hell, there was even attempts in the comicsphere with publishers like Antarctic Press putting out their "pesudo-manga" like
Ninja High School and
Gold Digger. And all of this is in addition to...
<Official manga of Western media...
This has also been going on for decades, as you can find manga and anime adaptations of Western media like
James Bond novels, Disney cartoons, children's books, and so on. However, around the time on the 90's/Aughts, this also changed to where you had comic publishers, like Top Cow and Marvel, who paid Japanese studios to produce anime based on their works, and then
brought those series back to the states. This also happened with a few films such as
Ultraviolet.
Compounding all of this together, anime practically "lost" it's underground status over 20 years ago. But, then that brings forth the question I assume is trying to be established in the video, which is
why are Japanese games and media becoming so sterile in their content? The answer is rather simple:
It's because EVERYTHING is becoming sterile in it's content, worldwide!
Japan hasn't been some exclusive safe haven of a 100% preserved culture ever since Admiral Perry busted down their doors in 1853. Japan is as effected by the goings on of the rest of the world was we are. And, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but there's a global conspiracy going on, who's goal is to remake the world into a Socialist power structure where only the elites have control over the events of your life and you do not. Where they tell you to jump, and you ask how high.
This is not some isolated incident. It's a worldwide issue. Look at how much video games in the West has fallen. Western cinema has fallen. Western novels have fallen. Western television has fallen. Comic books have already fallen, but even today's standards make their place a few decades ago look like a pipedream. This is a
global problem, and trying to act like kicking the localizers out of companies is going to solve the problem is one of the
DUMBEST takes one can walk away with.