14 ms·

Anime is eating the world

120 points by vishnurnair 2y ago

PawgerZ 2y ago
These articles from a16z with contributions from the writers of this article might shed some light on a16z's coming plans: https://a16z.com/the-next-generation-pixar/ https://a16z.com/the-next-generation-pixar/ https://a16z.com/announcement/investing-in-pahdo-labs/ https://a16z.com/announcement/investing-in-pahdo-labs/ Podcast in December that covers some of this, too. https://a16z.com/podcast/2024-big-ideas-voice-first-apps-ai-moats-never-ending-games-and-anime-takes-off/ https://a16z.com/podcast/2024-big-ideas-voice-first-apps-ai-... Looks like they want to capture the anime market and push AI Anime film/game combos.
pnt12 2y ago
Very disappointing article. It's true that anime (as in: TV shows and movies) is more popular than ever, but its business has lots of problems. I'd love for someone to improve this situation, so that we could have more episodes of beloved sagas that are somehow paused, eg Berserk and One Punch Man. But I'm completely uninterested in AI generation or parasocial stuff. Let art be art, even across mediums (comics, TV, games), but the rest just sucks the humanity out of the art.
CHB0403085482 2y ago
Mature and adult =/= edgy and violent See FRIEREN as an example ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avZ-7tEj9W8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avZ-7tEj9W8
earnesti 2y ago
[flagged]
- ethbr1 2y ago
  So much of it is written for <21s. Exceptions exist, but the average level of plot / characterization / dialog is terrible by adult standards.
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    Funny you say that, when probably some of the most memorable plot/characterization/dialog I experienced I could find in what can be considered anime. Maybe I am just juvenile in my tastes. I just can't find a western series (and nowadays not even movies) that does the same for me.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      The Wire?
- api 2y ago
  I too have never been able to get into it. The aesthetic just does nothing for me. Not sure why, just not my thing.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    Some of the technique is really impressive to me, it's basically an entirely different visual tradition. Especially the way motion and sound are depicted in manga I find just totally fascinating. It's so creative and effective at portraying these dynamic elements in a static form. Unfortunately still I've never really found any that worked for me as complete works of art for all the common reasons. Bad dialog and plotting, off-putting tropes, juvenile subject matter etc.
    - dmonitor 2y ago
      Try Chainsaw Man. The first ~100 chapters make up the first "arc" of the series and it is incredibly well done. The story starts to meander and the art seems more rushed in the second arc (currently ongoing), but the art of the first arc alone makes it well worth a read. Dungeon Meshi is also really good from beginning to end. Especially if you like D&D inspired material. It has a clever take on fantasy settings and avoids the more annoying anime tropes.
    - throw4847285 2y ago
      Drop the zero (the most popular shonen manga) get with the hero (the works of Taiyo Matsumoto).
  - haunter 2y ago
    >The aesthetic just does nothing for me Like what? This is like saying the aesthetics of Hollywood films just does nothing for me. Which can be Forrest Gump and the Avengers Endgame too
- renox 2y ago
  It's exactly like other media (TV, movies, books), most of it is uninteresting but from time to time there's a jewel.
- labster 2y ago
  Congrats on becoming an elitist.
- marcellus23 2y ago
  I never got the hype either. I tried watching Attack on Titan and it feels like it's aimed at young adults. All the characters just state out loud exactly how they're feeling about everything. The setting is interesting but I just can't take any of it seriously when the dialog is so childish.
  - kombine 2y ago
    > All the characters just state out loud exactly how they're feeling about everything. Yeah, this is one thing that I didn't like about AoT, especially in the first 4-5 episodes. Later I accepted it as its characteristic style, I think its strengths greatly overweigh this particular aspect. And, there is much more depth to the characters than the childish dialogs lead you to believe.
  - latexr 2y ago
    > I tried watching Attack on Titan and it feels like it's aimed at young adults. It’s aimed at children, that’s what shonen anime is, the word literally means “boy”. For something aimed at an older demographic, you’ll want to search seinen. Consider “Monster”, which is something that could’ve been a western show for adults. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_(manga) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_(manga)
    - marcellus23 2y ago
      Interesting, I had a lot of adults recommending AoT to me. I'll check out Monster.
      - latexr 2y ago
        To be fair, Gravity Falls is also aimed at children but is still fun for adults. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Falls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Falls Back to the seinen anime, Monster fits into the category of mystery/thriller. For science fiction/horror see Parasyte -the maxim- and for dark fantasy see Berserk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasyte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasyte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_(manga) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_(manga) Berserk in particular is a staple. It has influenced lots of other work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_(manga)#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_(manga)#Legacy Be sure to not watch the 2016 anime series, as it is reviled for its poor animation. The 1997 anime series or the film trilogy from 2012 are a better use of your time. Both cover the same section of the story. However, be forewarned the part they adapt is a specific arc of the story near the beginning and is thus unfinished. Still worth it. But I’d still recommend you start with Monster if you’re looking for something closer to live-action shows.
- jarule 2y ago
  I watched it when I was younger Yeah, it hits different when you start at 35.
dotnet00 2y ago
Unsurprising considering how a lot of other media has become nothing but an endless series of big budget, overly "safe" or overly ideologically motivated remakes/adaptations.
- jeffwask 2y ago
  Produced by the same 5-6 companies regurgitating the same stories and content I've already experienced and telling me I'm wrong for preferring the original. I've been into anime for over a decade and for fans of animation, it's a wealth of unique stories and characters tailored to any demographic. Like action, romance, slice of life, etc., there are stories for you most with unique voices from artists and creators doing it out of passion rather than just another writing gig.
scandox 2y ago
Sound of goose slaughtering knives being sharpened...
- gloryjulio 2y ago
  At the end the day, the successful ip solely depends the talent of the author. An army of marvel machines is not gonna produce attack on titan written and drawn(with some help) by a single person. Another example is one punch man. The source material is just some draft uploaded by some random guy. Nothing can topple the talent yet
  - npinsker 2y ago
    Yes, this is exactly it. Also makes me think a16z's games division may struggle to find a hit... generally the people who are hyper-focused on producing great work aren't also looking to make the next billion-dollar empire.
spondylosaurus 2y ago
(1) a16z has a games division? (2) Mixed feelings about lumping all gacha games under the "anime" umbrella based on art style, especially when so many gachas are original properties (Genshin Impact et al) or spinoffs of non-gacha games (Fire Emblem Heroes, Pokemon Masters). I get why they're drawing the association, so maybe I'm just being a purist for no reason, but in my head it's only an anime if it's an animated show or movie! ETA: Or how some gacha series get popular enough to have bona fide anime spinoffs—I think both Fate and Granblue fall under that category?
- dragontamer 2y ago
  Fate/SN was originally a porno before it became a non-prono anime before it became Fate/Grand Order. Fate/ is one of the weirdest meta-stories of all time. The evolution of that universe is utterly fascinating to me, more so than the actual story today. The gist is that Nasu always wanted to create a Comic book style shared universe, and that Nasu sees himself as a Stan Lee or George Lucas type who is in charge of a community of writers rather than just writing one singular plot.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    > Fate/ is one of the weirdest meta-stories of all time. That reminds me of a not-really-description I read once about Homestuck, basically saying that the many manifestations/spinoffs are too twisty to be worth explaining. BTW, this comment is not a request for clarification, I'm fine with my ignorance on the franchise itself.
  - Zircom 2y ago
    Calling FSN a porno because it has sex scenes is like calling Wolf of Wall Street a porno just because it has sex scenes. It's extremely reductive and entirely inaccurate. There's like literally 3 or 4 h-scenes in the entire novel, and collectively they all probably make up less than a few percent of the text/screentime.
    - dragontamer 2y ago
Trasmatta 2y ago
While there seems to be a lot of money in anime, the animators themselves are still underpaid and highly overworked: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/business/japan-anime.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/business/japan-anime.html There are so many stories of the insane hours that animators in Japan have to deal with. Part of that is the "normal" toxic overwork culture in Japan, but animation seems to be one of the biggest perpetrators.
- Geezus_42 2y ago
  Because people care about and are invested in the art they make. It makes them easier to exploit "because they should feel privileged to have the job they want." People who work in creative industries all over the world face this issue.
  - Onavo 2y ago
    Video games industry software engineers are usually paid peanuts
    - throw_pm23 2y ago
      This is exactly what the parent comment said.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    Who gets to define whether someone is ‘exploited’ or not? There are artists who would rather be paid even less, but given more creative freedom and control over the final product, (deciding on dubs, script changes, etc…) Especially in anime production.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Exploitation = leveraging a neverending stream of young people interested in working in an industry, initially for unsustainable wages, by dangling the prospect of eventual liveable wages in front of them, death marching them, and then firing them and hiring the next crop of new grads Other industries do that, but at least they have the decency to compensate fresh hires decently. (E.g. law, management consulting)
RandomThoughts3 2y ago
Is it me or this article is all over the place mixing together the manga industry, cartoon production in Japan and Korea and the style they use, ai companion (?), some style of games both in terms of what they look like and their gameplay and basically concluding nothing?
bdndndndbve 2y ago
"This is currently a trendy aesthetic". Cool guys. You're like Tiger Beat but you have billions of dollars.
anigbrowl 2y ago
Clichés are eating the world, and a clichéed headline like this promises commoditization, not creativity. Yes I know who originated it. Also, there is absolutely no way that the involvement of venture capitalists is going to improve anime culture. [shigechi.gif]
dragontamer 2y ago
It's because anime is multi-genre and sub-genres of anime cater to basically every demographic. Anime includes masterpieces like Spirited Away, trashy harem / male fantasies like Jobless Reincarnation, touching dramas like Anohana, female oriented romances like Fruitsbasket, literally pornography like... Erm... Well you know. Etc. etc. etc. It's not fair to compare one anime with another. It's not like cartoons in the USA that fall under the rough set of same humor or writers. Anime is much broader and thus has something for everyone And anime also has a lot that you'll hate. I personally hate recent male fantasy trends like Solo Leveling for example (despite enjoying Overlord, a male fantasy from yesteryear).
- entropicdrifter 2y ago
  Jobless Reincarnation is simultaneously trashy and also prestige drama. I feel like you could have picked almost any other harem show and been better off for your example lol
  - Devorlon 2y ago
    I think Jobless Reincarnation is a perfect example because of its paedophilic undertones if not outright being so.
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      Jobless Reincarnation has a lot of fucked-up trashy aspects to it, but it also explores how those things fuck people up, why and how, and goes deep into character development and a realistic depiction of what healing from trauma (and people who haven't healed from trauma) looks like. There are a lot of harem anime out there that do not do that type of deeper character work and function solely as male power-fantasies. See, for instance, Tsukimitchi or Rosario X Vampire That was and still is my point
    - claudiawerner 2y ago
      'Pedophilic undertones' doesn't relate to 'trashy' or 'harem', even if you read the anime that way. In fact, it can be extremely interesting to see something which is so rarely portrayed or discussed in fiction, even fiction for adults. The reality of child abuse is neither solved nor rebuked by depictions or explorations of psychology in adult fiction.
simianparrot 2y ago
I have a feeling the industry will sink a lot deeper a lot faster now that a16z has got their eyes on this goose, salivating at the thought of squeezing ""value"" out of what remains of it. RIP.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- chomp 2y ago
  I thought the same thing as soon as they wrote the statement about the value of the market being $50B. That private equity is remarking on its market size means they are definitely sizing up how to squeeze it. A16z has no shame and it shows here.
  - xattt 2y ago
    Given that certain portion of the anime fan crowd is somewhat socially vulnerable, a private equity firm stepping into this space will no doubt create some predatory scenarios.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago
  Ya, my first reaction was I'm not taking advice from a16z on what's "eating the world".
- dogleash 2y ago
  >salivating at the thought of squeezing ""value"" out of what remains of it I'm amused at their assumption that they can squeeze tighter than the currently existing notoriously abusive segment of the market. Also, the way they talk about exploiting parasocail relationships, I'm assuming their next big announcement will be funding a startup that is a call center to handle texting on behalf of onlyfans creators.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    New Dragonball-level animation budgets? Which is to say, a few dollars over $0?
mdni007 2y ago
The quality of anime has already started to decline especially after Sony and other greedy companies started getting their hands on animation studios.
- bbqfog 2y ago
  There's a lot of great anime being produced today. Have you watched Vinland Saga or Chainsaw Man?
- leotravis10 2y ago
  Also buying out streaming players such as Crunchyroll.
world2vec 2y ago
Anime quality has been on a steep decline. It's all isekai stuff these days and gacha is a disgusting mechanic no different from slot machines at the casinos. This article left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
- bbqfog 2y ago
  No doubt that it would be best for fans if a16z stayed far away from anime, but you're wrong about quality declining. There's a ton of great stuff from recent times: Vinland Saga, Ranking of Kings, Chainsaw Man, Dr. Stone... There's always been trash anime, but it feels like there's some very original work being produced.
- leotravis10 2y ago
  No question, especially when you have only two major players distributing most anime in Sony and Netflix. I enjoyed the good old days from the 1980s to the 2000s when it was actually more creative and good quality not to mention that there were more competition at that time period.
- rootsudo 2y ago
  100% this. I'm glad I'm not the only one. The article is definetely written for someone that is not in the hobby and looking for a place to park money for more enshitification of a platform that already was, pretty much unrecognizable from a decade ago.
outside1234 2y ago
Well, if this will get them off of crypto BS, I'm all for it.
- par 2y ago
  yeah but we don't want the crypto bs guys shifting their attention to anime.
- FinalDestiny 2y ago
  I think this is directly related to https://anime.com https://anime.com – a new product from the Azuki team (NFT collection) It was announced about a week ago. Surprised no one mentioned it yet.
msp26 2y ago
It's a breath of fresh air watching anime adaptations that actually love and respect the original author's work like dungeon meshi. Meanwhile western fantasy adaptations seem to be full of arrogant showrunners that think their vision is better: wheel of time, the Witcher, House of the dragon (to an extent). George RR Martin even publicly criticised HBO for this recently.
- coolbreezetft24 2y ago
  I loved the first two seasons of Wheel of Time (and also loved the books growing up) - what is wrong with it? Never read The Witcher or played the games but also really enjoyed the netflix series
  - adamkittelson 2y ago
    If you find that you like something that most people don't it's generally best to just leave it alone and be happy you enjoyed it. If you try to delve into why so many people don't like the thing you like then either they will manage to convince you the thing you like is actually bad, which doesn't benefit you, or you'll start to question whether or not your taste in media is bad, which doesn't benefit you.
    - coolbreezetft24 2y ago
      I guess I disagree with the premise that most people dislike those two things, which seem quite popular and were well-received
      - jasonlotito 2y ago
        Most people who watched it enjoyed it. Jordan fans were big on it (at least from what I saw at JordanCon and WoTCon). Will people not like certain things, sure. The issue is that YouTubers will complain about anything these days and rage videos get more traction, so it's easier to pile on, and people who wouldn't watch it complain about how bad it is. I wouldn't put to much weight on someone not liking something. After all, either they haven't watched it all, or they are watching something they don't like. And that's not someone's taste I trust.
clearleaf 2y ago
This has to be an AI generated article. It doesn't take 1/10th this much gobbledygook to announce you'll try injecting AI into anime and pray that money comes out somehow. Crap on crap on crap.
candiddevmike 2y ago
I'm finding myself pulled towards anime after being exhausted from CGI and terrible/reused set design. Live action shows are so boring and plain these days, everything looks the same with slightly different costumes. Nothing is really engaging visually, and the storylines seem to be held back by what they can do visually/"within their budget" for a lot shows.
- dmonitor 2y ago
  I think the manga format is really effective at letting new stories reach audiences. US media companies need to realize that funding authors/artists to test run their new stories as cheap comics and increasing funding to the 1/20 that gain traction is a great way to incubate the new talent that the industry desperately needs. American comic books are incredibly stagnant and have been so for the past 20 years. Not a single new character with any cultural relevancy (besides reboots of old characters) has been made in the last 20-odd years. Meanwhile, series like Attack on Titan, Chainsaw Man, and Jujutsu Kaisen have become million dollar global franchises in the last decade. The manga => anime => cultural zeitgeist pipeline has produced tons of recent compelling series.
  - hiccuphippo 2y ago
    What I like from manga is that there's usually a single author who envisions the whole story, there could be a small team of assistants and an editor to help but the story belongs to a person alone. Not a team of people writting a story by committee.
oDot 2y ago
I spend most of my time writing and researching live-action anime, and I can say that for it to really blow up, there needs to be a paradigm shift. Currently many of the efforts are trying to fit a peg into a square by either "westernizing" the content, as done in Hollywood, or completely jumping the shark as with most Japanese releases. Both only make for a less palatabl result. Instead, a selective "offset" approach should be taken. I illustrate this briefly in a YouTube mini-essay: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WiyqBHNNSlo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WiyqBHNNSlo It is also how I write my IP: https://www.weedonandscott.com/narrative/keepers-of-alteria https://www.weedonandscott.com/narrative/keepers-of-alteria And it's how I assess exiting IPs for adaptation. Until current stakeholders shake the current models out of their system, this field is leaving a lot of creative output (and profits) on the table.
- da02 2y ago
  Is this your day-job? That's impressive. Did you cry on the travesty of Netflix Cowboy Bebop?
  - oDot 2y ago
    No, not quite my day job yet. I have stopped watching the live-action Cowboy Bebop after about 5 minutes, so much of it was spared. The same production company (Tomorrow Studios) is currently making the live action One Piece, which, ironically, could be more detrimental to live-action anime than Cowboy Bebop was. The reason is that even though the live-action One Piece is not something I'd consider live-action _anime_, it's actually quite good and is definitely well received, which may cause producers to adopt its formula, and stop researching alternative adaptation paths.
  - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
    > travesty of Netflix Cowboy Bebop Ugh. I just… it was so… ugh.
- aspenmayer 2y ago
  > I spend most of my time writing and researching live-action anime What do you mean by live-action anime? This reads to me as contradiction in terms. Anime is a term of art for CJK animation, especially Japanese animation.
thefz 2y ago
Might be an US thing, I don't think I talked to anyone watching anime in the past IDK, 20 years? Besides kids watching dragon ball at the TV after lunch, if that counts as anime. I can't even tell a modern title or an author.
- bbqfog 2y ago
  Demon Slayer is incredibly popular with younger people.
- decafninja 2y ago
  Could certainly be a US thing, but I've found the tech crowd and the anime otaku crowd to overlap a lot. Ditto for science fiction.
  - codedokode 2y ago
    Also in screenshots from underground hacker forums in the news the users who leak databases or hack something often have anime-styled kind-looking avatar which creates a contrast with post content.
- rauljordan2020 2y ago
  Opposite experience. Here in the US, I've heard a lot more people watching anime than when I was a kid. Especially modern ones such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, etc.
  - decafninja 2y ago
    Same. Being into anime (and gaming, and RPGs, and sci-fi, etc.) marked you as an outcast nerd when I was a kid. Nowadays, most of it is nearly mainstream. Granted there is still some weirdness like grown 40yo men obsessed with schoolgirl harem anime...
    - Dweller1622 2y ago
      Take a guess at what they might have been into when they were kids!
wormlord 2y ago
I know that this is a website for startups, but looking at art that people enjoy and put their soul into and thinking "how can I extract profit from this" I think is actually close to a mental illness. I understand that commodification is inevitable (and yes anime is already a soulless business), but goddamn if it doesn't look like some form of neurosis. It's like walking into an old growth forest and seeing the potential for a toothpick factory.
- gruez 2y ago
  To a first approximation, "extract profit from this" means providing goods/services that people are willing to pay money for. If people are willing to pay for more anime content, companions, vtubers, and streaming sites, why is it a "mental illness" to provide that? >It's like walking into an old growth forest and seeing the potential for a toothpick factory. At least for old growth forests you could argue that it's mispriced because it's providing biodiversity/carbon sequestration which can't be sold on the market. Meanwhile the benefits provided by anime accrue solely to its consumers. What's the problem with getting them to pay for it?
  - jjulius 2y ago
    >To a first approximation, "extract profit from this" means providing goods/services that people are willing to pay money for. This is too generous, particularly with regards to a16z coming into an already existing market. In reality, it's more akin to taking something that already exists in a form that people enjoy and are already willing to pay for, and both bastardizing and cannibalizing it into something of lesser quality just so that you can have additional excuses to charge more money for things that you never used to charge money for before. "Nice thing you have there, be a shame if we fucked it up so that we could make more money off of it," is a mental illness.
    - AlexandrB 2y ago
      To put it another way, it's taking surplus value that was previously going to either the producers or consumers of the product and funneling it to Silicon Valley VCs instead.
asdf123qweasd 2y ago
The most important part about anime is- with computer assisted tooling, its cheaper to make - cheaper to make means less oversight by creative handicaps like financeer gremiums, means artists get a shot earlier, instead a few making it to the honey pots. Thus more artists, who want a shot try the medium instead of waiting for there day in the sun in some cooperate mausoleum. Tl,DR; All of culture is constantly fleeing the curse of the MBAs - the destroyers of all things good with the Middas touch.
FigurativeVoid 2y ago
If you’re new to anime, it’s hard to figure out where to start. If you’re able to tolerate some more intense themes, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is widely regarded as one of the best anime ever created, and rightly so.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Like a lot of things, I think it can also be hard to remember how much effort it took to get into it. Most anime’s pretty off-putting if you don’t know how to “read” it—you have to get used to all three of: quirks of the medium (e.g. how emotions are expressed visually, confused Engrish intro songs); cultural differences between your culture and Japan’s; and a pile of tropes that are very common in anime but less common elsewhere, which you can use as a way to understand the genre of what you’re watching and how it’s supposed to be read. It’s why Cowboy Bebop is such a popular gateway anime: Ed aside (and even there, only sometimes) there’s minimal reliance on alien-to-Westerners visual expression, the genre is entirely familiar and uses familiar tropes and archetypes, and it’s culturally hardly any more Japanese than Blade Runner. (Plus, I mean, it’s good—but so are a bunch of others that do not work well as gateway anime)
  - raxxorraxor 2y ago
    Cowboy Bebop is good, but what really makes the show is the music. Exceptional talents involved if you can deliver such a broad range of awesome tracks. But I know what you mean with the usual confused engrish songs...
FigurativeVoid 2y ago
I’ve recently gotten much more into anime, and I feel that I love it because I love fantasy. There just aren’t that many western fantasy shows that are nearly as good as Frieren or FMAB.
maxglute 2y ago
I was expecting report to acknowledge "AI Waifus / Husbandos" at some point, nevermind first point. Whatever the artistic merit of anime, it's nice to see analysis that acknowledges anime popularity is simply driven by sheer horniess by both genders. IMO functionally PG13 softer softcore pornography.
adamwong246 2y ago
While elevated Anime does exist, it by-and-large deserves it's reputation as pulp. It was cheap to produce by humans, and even cheaper to produce by machines, but the kids simply can't get enough of it. I am slightly terrified at the thought that should the matrix ever come to pass, it will appear as a endless tide of cat-girl avatars.
marginalia_nu 2y ago
Something has happened with western television where it's like everyone is angry all the time and can never come together to solve a problem without arguing about it for half a season first. I find it incredibly exhausting to watch. Anime can be a nice refuge from that, as can older tv-shows from before this was a thing.
- jwells89 2y ago
  That cynical bent you mention along with a takeover of dark/gritty aesthetic, with both being positioned as more "realistic" or "mature" and thus preferable has made western TV somewhat exhausting to me too.
  - marginalia_nu 2y ago
    Yeah, don't know how mature it actually is though, given how everyone acts like a self centered teenager now more than ever ;-) I think the transition to streaming is also an exaserbating factor, since it's less important to resolve events the same episode, characters can now hold much longer grudges.
    - jwells89 2y ago
      Yep, that's why I included those quotemarks. I don't think that behavior or gritty aesthetic is actually mature, but there's a popular conception that it is for reasons that are unclear to me. My best guess is that the overarching emotional climate biases what people consider "realistic" or "mature", and since the mid-to-late 2000s it's been pushing that perception in a more cynical direction.
      - marginalia_nu 2y ago
        I mostly think it's bad writing. You can make mature, gritty tv-shows without the protagonist running to their room and slamming the door very hard when they don't get what they want, but the problem is that this is much harder. Breaking Bad is a solid example that gets it right.
hyggetrold 2y ago
> AI is deepening the previously parasocial relationships we had with our favorite anime characters from passive linear media, into powerful new, interactive relationships. I truly can't believe they had the gall to publish this article. The more of the article I read the more I felt like I was reading their strategy for preying on the weak and unfortunate.
- adamwong246 2y ago
  You are right to be horrified but what is the use in maintaining the pretense that we are not strip-mining our citizens of their attention?
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  It is truly shameless - and they are this shameless because they can be, and may even be rewarded for it. AI "companions", if left unchecked, will be as harmful as addictive drugs, enabling companies to suck everything from some people.
  - imiric 2y ago
    But that future is coming regardless if VCs bet on it or not. I'm not defending the article and agree with you that it's despicable, but the only thing successful VC firms know how to do is to bet on companies that will make them money. It's clear that a future where AI companions exist is coming, and it will be a huge industry, so it's only logical that they would latch on to it and promote it in the only way they know how. As for AI companions themselves, sure. They will be addicting and harmful, but technology is already that. Yet loneliness is a worldwide epidemic, and I reckon that AI has the potential to also improve the quality of life for many people. This in turn will lead us to even lower birth rates, but that seems inescapable as well. The next 50 years will be interesting, to say the least.
    - Vegenoid 2y ago
      Personally, I foresee legislation restricting AI emotional/sexual companions, which I think I would support (depending on the details). Specifically, I would want to make it illegal to sell access to AI companions, but not criminalize talking to or using AI companions. This targets punishment at the exploiters rather than the exploited. It’s possible I could be swayed by the “these are more helpful than harmful” argument, but more evidence is required on both sides. I’m sure there will be plenty of evidence coming.
pupppet 2y ago
I watch a lot of anime but I'd be surprised if we don't see a crash similar to the video game crash of '83. There is a ton of garbage being cranked out right now.
Wuzado 2y ago
Holy hell, this is such a depressing, dehumanized, out-of-touch article—especially regarding the fascination with AI in the field of, admit it or not, art. The article even makes mistakes in the most basic factual areas, such as calling light novels "visual novels." It's deeply saddening. For a more positive outlook on the animation industry, check out "Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!"—an incredibly creative love letter to the joy and passion of creating art through the lens of animation.
- AndyKelley 2y ago
  Hey thanks for this recommendation! I'm a few episodes in and loving it. Your description is spot on. One thing that is striking to me is just how much budget Japanese high schools have for clubs and stuff. Meanwhile in America we have teachers buying basic school supplies from their meager wages...
dvh 2y ago
After 2+ decades of watching anime I was struggling to find something that would interest me, I thought I got tired of it. But then I made a scatter chart of my ratings of all 200+ anime I watched vs MAL rating and I found literally ZERO correlation! The MAL rating means nothing for my anime tastes. So now I start watching random anime starting from episode 1 and if I hate it I drop it, no bad feelings, if I don't love it by episode 3 I drop it as well. There are over 17000 anime. And finally I was able to find good anime again that I truly enjoy watching, easily 10*. I don't even read ratings or reviews beforehand as there is no correlation for me. Just pick random anime and watch.
- t-3 2y ago
  There's a lot of good stuff from China - Mo Dao Zu Shi, Thousand Autumns, Fairies Album, All Saints Street, Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, Fog Hill of Five Elements, Psychic Princess, Fei Ren Zai, Fabulous Beasts, No Choice but to Betray Earth, etc. There is of course a lot of mediocre and garbage stuff as well, but the tropes are far less annoying and thanks to Chinese censorship there's far less pandering and it's much more tasteful on average than Japanese anime.
legitster 2y ago
The traits that define anime all trace back to post-WWII creative innovations intended to work around limited budgets and resources. So pound-for-pound you can maximize the amount of "hit" you get from stories, characters, emotions, etc. And by its nature its cheap and fast to make. It's the ultimate form of mass-produced entertainment for the age of cheap, binge-able content. "Quantity has a quality all of it's own".
hintymad 2y ago
Following this, the next one that "eats the world" could be web novels (https://www.webnovel.com/ https://www.webnovel.com/). If I'm not mistaken, the trend was started by the Chinese authors. Chinese companies created those hyper competitive yet super lucrative platforms for the authors. Over the past 20 years, the authors truly evolved through generations of competition. They may lack of deep skills in writing world classics, but they certainly have mastered the art of creating captive stories with vast scale and scope. They also invented more genres than I can care about. Some of the stories were so intriguing that some readers on web novel resorted to Google translate to read the untranslated version -- something that I can't fathom. And it looks western authors have slowly picked up the trend, so I'm hopeful that we will see a lot more authors coming up with amazing stories.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  I like Xianxia... That is cultivation novels that end up in at least trivially planet if not more destroying power levels. Just finished Er Gen's Renegade Immortal and started Pursuit of Truth. Which first had actually interesting, and multi-layered world development. Still, one issue with these works is just big they are. And them often falling into repeating same patterns and tropes even inside the same work. Sadly medium does not do editing well. As very often you could easily get rid of 20% or even more and not loose too much... Still, Chinese and Korean works do offer something different. Even if you have to take some nationalism with it.
titanomachy 2y ago
"AI is deepening the previously parasocial relationships we had with our favorite anime characters from passive linear media, into powerful new, interactive relationships" One thing that troubles me about this is the idea of a human having [what they feel is a] deep, meaningful relationship with what ultimately is a bit of code and conversation history owned by a for-profit corporation. They might even experience [what they interpret as] romantic love towards this construct. This could give the controlling corporation unbelievable leverage over that person, even worse than casinos or cigarette companies, because AI companions aren't as fungible as these other highly-optimized dopamine delivery systems. Of course, Blade Runner 2049 explored this well.
TheAceOfHearts 2y ago
How do you go about directing / producing your own anime or animated series anyway? I have stories within me that scream out to be brought into this world. I've watched a lot of anime and western cartoons and feel like the bar isn't that high. I'm pretty confident I could write and direct something that's competitive with most of what's currently being produced. At a minimum, just making a solid show that doesn't abuse common tropes while including a strong story and art direction seems like it would put you miles ahead of most existing anime; see for example: Frieren. Frieren avoids common anime tropes and is happy to explore the setting while giving the characters room to breathe; this was enough to propel the series to the top of every anime rating website. Even evaluating top-tier producers like Studio Ghibli, despite being able to create S-tier art and animations, I think they no longer have any stories worth telling which they haven't already presented in some form or another. It's like they continue producing movies because the studio has to do something, but there's no strong driving force to guide them. Modern Studio Ghibli movies aren't driven by a burning passion from the director's soul to be summoned into this world.
- zhizdev 2y ago
  I am trying to produce an anime / webtoon with an AI assisted studio. Would love to chat more about your stories that scream to be brought into the world! (X @zhizdev)
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  The best story telling in anime doesn't come from anything close to Ghibli - at least not modern Ghibli. If you want high concept, good, unique stories, it's going to take you to some much more indie sutff. Serial Experiments Lain, The Tatami Galaxy, Perfect Blue (and everything that director made), Ghost in the Shell (the first movie), Akira, and a bunch of other weird 80s/90s anime films you likely wouldn't even consider.
  - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
    > Perfect Blue I saw it recommended somewhere. Had no idea I was in store for a legit psychological thriller.
CommieBobDole 2y ago
What a timely observation of this phenomenon that definitely didn't happen twenty years ago. Now that they've discovered anime, I wonder if they're going to start investing in other current crazes like Y2K compliance or maybe this hot new "world wide web" thing I keep hearing about.
PaulHoule 2y ago
So many things are wrong with this article but I’ll start with Haruhi Suzumiya being a ‘light novel’ (a novel printed in large text as if for seniors with a few illustrations) as opposed to a ‘visual novel’ (something you would make with https://www.renpy.org/ https://www.renpy.org/) It is hard to know because financials aren’t public but it’s not clear to me that Crunchyroll has really addressed the commercial problems anime had in western markets. In the VHS era there was a fight over subtitles vs dubs which was acute because you could not put multiple content tracks on the media, in the DVD age you could. More fundamentally, dubs cost a lot of money in comparison with subs and were always terrible until the people who made those terrible dubs gained experience and some of them got good. (Though they do their best work for game publishers like Idea Factory and ATLUS who care.) At the time people though subs had a limited market but now subprime anime (and sometimes good anime) gets shoveled onto Tubi and people watch it —- today we’re in the habit of watching movies with subtitles because you can’t make out the dialog on half of the new Hollywood movies anyway. Since crunchyroll is in the vainglorious subscription racket I can only assume they’re as profitable as Netflix, Disney Plus, Peacock, etc. The article touches on but doesn’t really stress how it is very rare for an anime to start out as an anime (Precure?) but rather it is the way you know you made it if you made a manga, light novel, visual novel, video game, etc. The economics are brutal and nobody is going to invest in it if the story, characters and settings haven’t been market tested. Of course this leads to problems like you can find out how the anime you like ends if it you look at the source material.
- skybrian 2y ago
  If that's an error, Wikipedia has it too: > Haruhi Suzumiya (Japanese: 涼宮ハルヒ, Hepburn: Suzumiya Haruhi) is a Japanese light novel series written by Nagaru Tanigawa and illustrated by Noizi Ito. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Haruhi_Suzumiya_light_novels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Haruhi_Suzumiya_light_... But apparently there's a Manga version too? Never read it. Is it any good?
  - Izkata 2y ago
    A common pattern is light novel -> manga adaptation -> anime adaptation. From the first few release dates on the sidebar of the main page, it looks like this one followed that pattern (with lots of spinoffs and sequels).
julianeon 2y ago
I wouldn't group anime with Roblox, at all. Roblox has 10 thousand different themes and game worlds, and a small fraction of them reflect anime, but that's not particularly interesting.
bawolff 2y ago
I think part of the reason, is a lot of western media has become very safe, and thus stale and repetitive. Western (live action) movies are sequel after sequel of predictable plots. Western animation is relegated almost exclusively to children (and ocassionally raunchy adult comedy). The formula is stale, so other media is taking its place.
aliasxneo 2y ago
I have limited time with my existing responsibilities, but with what little time I do have, I love investing it into a good movie or TV show. I don't mean whatever "binge-worthy" show is on the top 10 of Netflix. I like character development, good pacing, non-standard plots, etc. It's pretty much the opposite of what has come out in the West over the last five years. So, I started investing more into anime, and I have had zero regrets. Sure, there's plenty of low-quality near-pornographic trash, but I've found far more diamonds in the rough than I was initially expecting. Let me give a recent example: Kotaro Lives Alone. It's a story about a four-year-old who lives alone due to some extenuating circumstances I won't cover for the sake of spoilers. It's funny, heart-warming, cry-inducing, and overall, extremely entertaining for an otherwise outrageous plot. I've found dozens of gems like this in the past five years, and a lot of them are "recent" enough to give me hope that the Japanese haven't forgotten the art of making quality media.
slowhadoken 2y ago
Yeah it has been since the late 1990’s/early 2000’s. Audiences appreciate high concept and escalation of premise even if the themes and storytelling aren’t amazing.
par 2y ago
Honestly I feel a16z as a 'tech vc' firm is just getting weird now. It's like they're trying to be the de facto flag bearer for like weird crypto otaku types. And I say this as someone who has loved anime since the 90s, I don't think I want a16z getting their mits into my special interests. To see them talking about 'waifus' is just weird.
squidsoup 2y ago
Anime seems to have a quality problem. Other than Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon's work, I can't say there's much that has resonated with me. Evangelion was interesting, but that was almost thirty years ago!
- GaggiX 2y ago
  Do you actually remember the TV season of Evangelion? Especially the last episodes seem they have finished the budget. I'm sure the films are better, but I still have to watch them.
  - squidsoup 2y ago
    I thought the ambiguous ending was interesting and thought provoking, even if it may have been the result of budgeting issues, but I do recall they tied up the loose ends in the movies.
    - GaggiX 2y ago
      I think it's quite easy to find anime that are better than the TV season of Evangelion, if you like it.
      - squidsoup 2y ago
        Open to recommendations! I think what appealed to me about Evangelion was that it explored philosophical ideas about human relationships, identity and consciousness. I know there's lots of entertaining anime out there, but I'm looking for something a bit more.
        GaggiX 2y ago
        I wrote the response before you edited your comment but HN blocked me from posting it because I was writing comments too quickly, now that I have read your edit I would say something like "ghost in the shell", my original response: "You should look for stuff that's in your genre, a lot of stuff has been released in the last 30 years. As for stuff I like, the last anime I remember watching was Cyberpunk Edgerunner, I thought it was really good, but maybe it's not your genre."
SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
It’s getting like no love… but Blue Eye Samauri on Netflix was really something fucking else. SO hates animation things usually and really liked it.
citizenpaul 2y ago
I've always liked memes and anime for their entertainment. Though I've always cringed when people feel the need to try to bring them into their work or work life.
manicennui 2y ago
I mean this as unkindly as possible: please stay the fuck out of anime.
drbig 2y ago
"Please, keep _these_ people away from art and culture. Isn't blockchain AI enough already?" Well, of course it isn't! They ain't vampires - these just need blood an power, and also are completely fictional.
rootsudo 2y ago
Anime today isn't what it was a decade or two ago. While tastes and styles change, and I accept that, what this article defines as anime isn’t anime in any traditional sense. The article claims: "Anime is where the future of creation and play is happening—whether through mobile games, fanfiction, roleplaying, or AI interactions. We believe anime will become a dominant format for content engagement." But is this really "anime"? In my opinion, no. Vtubing and AI tools aren't anime. The article describes a fan’s journey as starting with popular IPs like Attack on Titan or One Piece, then moving into deeper social engagement with UGC, VTubing, and cosplay. They argue anime has evolved from passive to interactive. This shift, however, feels like a corporate "anime-as-a-service" model, exploiting aesthetics rather than preserving the original spirit of anime before the 2010s. And of course, the 2010s anime is nothing compared to the 00s which, really felt like the height of anime with fansub communities and then The 90s where the community really started cosplaying and trading by VHS tapes while being blinded by the futurism of Japan. This article really paints a dim future to what brought me joy and what pulled me into IT/Tech/NetSec/Programming and I couldn’t even get out of the first few paragraphs before I wrote all this. But I’m flabbergasted. Anime as a service is here.
codedokode 2y ago
My own observations in my country: - in recent year or two, saw lot of people in the streets wearing clothes with Japanese words. Saw such clothes in stores. I thought initially that they were fans of Japanese culture, but it seems that it is just a fashion trend and they probably cannot even read them. - when entering a bookstore or a school supplies store, there are notebooks and sketchbooks and other goods with anime-style characters, translations of novels. Novels are now even in some supermarkets. Again, it started recently. - that anime-styled Chinese RPG game is somewhat popular among young people, and when reading laptop reviews there are comments like "Will (anime-styled Chinese game) run on this?" - I am not sure if we can count anime-styled avatars on social media because I don't remember if they were always widespread or only recently Hope these trends will continue. I wonder is it our local (Russian) trend or something global?
stonethrowaway 2y ago
It’s Time to Destroy
AndyKelley 2y ago
As an anime enthusiast, seeing this breakdown from a powerful VC is depressing. How about you go play your capitalism game somewhere else. I'm sure my dishwasher can be made even worse than it already is by adding AI features to it. Anime is great precisely because it's mainly driven by artists with a creative vision, not by hyenas scavenging for rotting meat. Ew. I really hate this. I'll go back to studying my WaniKani flash cards for the day and hope that I forget that I read this by the end of it.
johnea 2y ago
I've been a major fan of anime for decades. Including starting to study Japanese at age 50 (not recommended). I could care less about the game spinoffs, or the vtubers, but I do hope we can get beyond the current plot trend of "living in an imaginary world with my smartphone, where I pretend to be dwarf listening to Irish jigg music". There are so many awesome anime: Heike Monogatari, House of Five Leaves, Angolmois - Genkou Kassenki (depicting the Mongol invasion of Japan in the 1200s). Sadly, anime for addults is not currently a factor in that blossoming industry described in the article.
B-Con 2y ago
I think anime still has a lot to figure out about licensing to fully embrace the western audience. Despite the insane popularity of anime, it feels like only a limited subset actually fully capitalize on the market. For example, take Violet Evergarden. It's a gorgeous show with a compelling emotional narrative, produced by Kyoto Animation, one of the most acclaimed studios. It's even on Netflix, available on demand for an international audience. There is zero merch for it anywhere. The only thing you can buy is the Blu Rays. If you like the show, you can't give them your money if you want to. This kind of thing is rampant in anime. A select few get merch and marketing out the wazoo, and a ton of other things are neglected, despite a clear interest from the fanbase.
disqard 2y ago
I did not bother reading this article, but it reminded me of Stephen Fry's words: "The greedy countries, corporations and criminals can see in AI unparalleled and unprecedented means to accrue wealth, power and influence." https://stephenfry.substack.com/p/ai-a-means-to-an-end-or-a-means-to https://stephenfry.substack.com/p/ai-a-means-to-an-end-or-a-...
- stonethrowaway 2y ago
  Mr. Fry could have said that about anything, not just AI.
anonymous56781 2y ago
Cartoons are for children.
- kps 2y ago
  “When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” — C S Lewis
  - anonymous56781 2y ago
    Doesn’t change the fact that cartoons are for children.
pentagrama 2y ago
It’s really hard to grasp how for-profit intentions influence the way art is studied, analyzed, and broken down through that lens. Corporations, driven by commercial interests, often view art not as a cultural or aesthetic value in itself, but as a resource to be exploited or a vehicle for profitability, and this article is a great example of this, who distorts the creative and critical process, reducing art to a product that can be segmented, commodified, and shaped to meet market demands, disregarding its original essence.
Palmik 2y ago
Is this article just a way to advertise and normalize their investments in this industry? They have done these kind of articles a few times in the past, so one has to wonder.

120 points by vishnurnair 2y ago

These articles from a16z with contributions from the writers of this article might shed some light on a16z's coming plans: https://a16z.com/the-next-generation-pixar/ https://a16z.com/the-next-generation-pixar/ https://a16z.com/announcement/investing-in-pahdo-labs/ https://a16z.com/announcement/investing-in-pahdo-labs/ Podcast in December that covers some of this, too. https://a16z.com/podcast/2024-big-ideas-voice-first-apps-ai-moats-never-ending-games-and-anime-takes-off/ https://a16z.com/podcast/2024-big-ideas-voice-first-apps-ai-... Looks like they want to capture the anime market and push AI Anime film/game combos.

pnt12 2y ago

Very disappointing article. It's true that anime (as in: TV shows and movies) is more popular than ever, but its business has lots of problems. I'd love for someone to improve this situation, so that we could have more episodes of beloved sagas that are somehow paused, eg Berserk and One Punch Man. But I'm completely uninterested in AI generation or parasocial stuff. Let art be art, even across mediums (comics, TV, games), but the rest just sucks the humanity out of the art.

CHB0403085482 2y ago

Mature and adult =/= edgy and violent See FRIEREN as an example ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avZ-7tEj9W8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avZ-7tEj9W8

earnesti 2y ago

[flagged]

ethbr1 2y ago
So much of it is written for <21s. Exceptions exist, but the average level of plot / characterization / dialog is terrible by adult standards.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  Funny you say that, when probably some of the most memorable plot/characterization/dialog I experienced I could find in what can be considered anime. Maybe I am just juvenile in my tastes. I just can't find a western series (and nowadays not even movies) that does the same for me.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    The Wire?
api 2y ago
I too have never been able to get into it. The aesthetic just does nothing for me. Not sure why, just not my thing.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  Some of the technique is really impressive to me, it's basically an entirely different visual tradition. Especially the way motion and sound are depicted in manga I find just totally fascinating. It's so creative and effective at portraying these dynamic elements in a static form. Unfortunately still I've never really found any that worked for me as complete works of art for all the common reasons. Bad dialog and plotting, off-putting tropes, juvenile subject matter etc.
  - dmonitor 2y ago
    Try Chainsaw Man. The first ~100 chapters make up the first "arc" of the series and it is incredibly well done. The story starts to meander and the art seems more rushed in the second arc (currently ongoing), but the art of the first arc alone makes it well worth a read. Dungeon Meshi is also really good from beginning to end. Especially if you like D&D inspired material. It has a clever take on fantasy settings and avoids the more annoying anime tropes.
  - throw4847285 2y ago
    Drop the zero (the most popular shonen manga) get with the hero (the works of Taiyo Matsumoto).
- haunter 2y ago
  >The aesthetic just does nothing for me Like what? This is like saying the aesthetics of Hollywood films just does nothing for me. Which can be Forrest Gump and the Avengers Endgame too
renox 2y ago
It's exactly like other media (TV, movies, books), most of it is uninteresting but from time to time there's a jewel.
labster 2y ago
Congrats on becoming an elitist.
marcellus23 2y ago
I never got the hype either. I tried watching Attack on Titan and it feels like it's aimed at young adults. All the characters just state out loud exactly how they're feeling about everything. The setting is interesting but I just can't take any of it seriously when the dialog is so childish.
- kombine 2y ago
  > All the characters just state out loud exactly how they're feeling about everything. Yeah, this is one thing that I didn't like about AoT, especially in the first 4-5 episodes. Later I accepted it as its characteristic style, I think its strengths greatly overweigh this particular aspect. And, there is much more depth to the characters than the childish dialogs lead you to believe.
- latexr 2y ago
  > I tried watching Attack on Titan and it feels like it's aimed at young adults. It’s aimed at children, that’s what shonen anime is, the word literally means “boy”. For something aimed at an older demographic, you’ll want to search seinen. Consider “Monster”, which is something that could’ve been a western show for adults. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_(manga) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_(manga)
  - marcellus23 2y ago
    Interesting, I had a lot of adults recommending AoT to me. I'll check out Monster.
    - latexr 2y ago
      To be fair, Gravity Falls is also aimed at children but is still fun for adults. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Falls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Falls Back to the seinen anime, Monster fits into the category of mystery/thriller. For science fiction/horror see Parasyte -the maxim- and for dark fantasy see Berserk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasyte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasyte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_(manga) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_(manga) Berserk in particular is a staple. It has influenced lots of other work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_(manga)#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserk_(manga)#Legacy Be sure to not watch the 2016 anime series, as it is reviled for its poor animation. The 1997 anime series or the film trilogy from 2012 are a better use of your time. Both cover the same section of the story. However, be forewarned the part they adapt is a specific arc of the story near the beginning and is thus unfinished. Still worth it. But I’d still recommend you start with Monster if you’re looking for something closer to live-action shows.
jarule 2y ago
I watched it when I was younger Yeah, it hits different when you start at 35.

dotnet00 2y ago

Unsurprising considering how a lot of other media has become nothing but an endless series of big budget, overly "safe" or overly ideologically motivated remakes/adaptations.

jeffwask 2y ago
Produced by the same 5-6 companies regurgitating the same stories and content I've already experienced and telling me I'm wrong for preferring the original. I've been into anime for over a decade and for fans of animation, it's a wealth of unique stories and characters tailored to any demographic. Like action, romance, slice of life, etc., there are stories for you most with unique voices from artists and creators doing it out of passion rather than just another writing gig.

scandox 2y ago

Sound of goose slaughtering knives being sharpened...

gloryjulio 2y ago
At the end the day, the successful ip solely depends the talent of the author. An army of marvel machines is not gonna produce attack on titan written and drawn(with some help) by a single person. Another example is one punch man. The source material is just some draft uploaded by some random guy. Nothing can topple the talent yet
- npinsker 2y ago
  Yes, this is exactly it. Also makes me think a16z's games division may struggle to find a hit... generally the people who are hyper-focused on producing great work aren't also looking to make the next billion-dollar empire.

spondylosaurus 2y ago

(1) a16z has a games division? (2) Mixed feelings about lumping all gacha games under the "anime" umbrella based on art style, especially when so many gachas are original properties (Genshin Impact et al) or spinoffs of non-gacha games (Fire Emblem Heroes, Pokemon Masters). I get why they're drawing the association, so maybe I'm just being a purist for no reason, but in my head it's only an anime if it's an animated show or movie! ETA: Or how some gacha series get popular enough to have bona fide anime spinoffs—I think both Fate and Granblue fall under that category?

dragontamer 2y ago
Fate/SN was originally a porno before it became a non-prono anime before it became Fate/Grand Order. Fate/ is one of the weirdest meta-stories of all time. The evolution of that universe is utterly fascinating to me, more so than the actual story today. The gist is that Nasu always wanted to create a Comic book style shared universe, and that Nasu sees himself as a Stan Lee or George Lucas type who is in charge of a community of writers rather than just writing one singular plot.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > Fate/ is one of the weirdest meta-stories of all time. That reminds me of a not-really-description I read once about Homestuck, basically saying that the many manifestations/spinoffs are too twisty to be worth explaining. BTW, this comment is not a request for clarification, I'm fine with my ignorance on the franchise itself.
- Zircom 2y ago
  Calling FSN a porno because it has sex scenes is like calling Wolf of Wall Street a porno just because it has sex scenes. It's extremely reductive and entirely inaccurate. There's like literally 3 or 4 h-scenes in the entire novel, and collectively they all probably make up less than a few percent of the text/screentime.
  - dragontamer 2y ago

Trasmatta 2y ago

While there seems to be a lot of money in anime, the animators themselves are still underpaid and highly overworked: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/business/japan-anime.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/business/japan-anime.html There are so many stories of the insane hours that animators in Japan have to deal with. Part of that is the "normal" toxic overwork culture in Japan, but animation seems to be one of the biggest perpetrators.

Geezus_42 2y ago
Because people care about and are invested in the art they make. It makes them easier to exploit "because they should feel privileged to have the job they want." People who work in creative industries all over the world face this issue.
- Onavo 2y ago
  Video games industry software engineers are usually paid peanuts
  - throw_pm23 2y ago
    This is exactly what the parent comment said.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  Who gets to define whether someone is ‘exploited’ or not? There are artists who would rather be paid even less, but given more creative freedom and control over the final product, (deciding on dubs, script changes, etc…) Especially in anime production.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Exploitation = leveraging a neverending stream of young people interested in working in an industry, initially for unsustainable wages, by dangling the prospect of eventual liveable wages in front of them, death marching them, and then firing them and hiring the next crop of new grads Other industries do that, but at least they have the decency to compensate fresh hires decently. (E.g. law, management consulting)

RandomThoughts3 2y ago

Is it me or this article is all over the place mixing together the manga industry, cartoon production in Japan and Korea and the style they use, ai companion (?), some style of games both in terms of what they look like and their gameplay and basically concluding nothing?

bdndndndbve 2y ago

"This is currently a trendy aesthetic". Cool guys. You're like Tiger Beat but you have billions of dollars.

anigbrowl 2y ago

Clichés are eating the world, and a clichéed headline like this promises commoditization, not creativity. Yes I know who originated it. Also, there is absolutely no way that the involvement of venture capitalists is going to improve anime culture. [shigechi.gif]

dragontamer 2y ago

It's because anime is multi-genre and sub-genres of anime cater to basically every demographic. Anime includes masterpieces like Spirited Away, trashy harem / male fantasies like Jobless Reincarnation, touching dramas like Anohana, female oriented romances like Fruitsbasket, literally pornography like... Erm... Well you know. Etc. etc. etc. It's not fair to compare one anime with another. It's not like cartoons in the USA that fall under the rough set of same humor or writers. Anime is much broader and thus has something for everyone And anime also has a lot that you'll hate. I personally hate recent male fantasy trends like Solo Leveling for example (despite enjoying Overlord, a male fantasy from yesteryear).

entropicdrifter 2y ago
Jobless Reincarnation is simultaneously trashy and also prestige drama. I feel like you could have picked almost any other harem show and been better off for your example lol
- Devorlon 2y ago
  I think Jobless Reincarnation is a perfect example because of its paedophilic undertones if not outright being so.
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    Jobless Reincarnation has a lot of fucked-up trashy aspects to it, but it also explores how those things fuck people up, why and how, and goes deep into character development and a realistic depiction of what healing from trauma (and people who haven't healed from trauma) looks like. There are a lot of harem anime out there that do not do that type of deeper character work and function solely as male power-fantasies. See, for instance, Tsukimitchi or Rosario X Vampire That was and still is my point
  - claudiawerner 2y ago
    'Pedophilic undertones' doesn't relate to 'trashy' or 'harem', even if you read the anime that way. In fact, it can be extremely interesting to see something which is so rarely portrayed or discussed in fiction, even fiction for adults. The reality of child abuse is neither solved nor rebuked by depictions or explorations of psychology in adult fiction.

simianparrot 2y ago

I have a feeling the industry will sink a lot deeper a lot faster now that a16z has got their eyes on this goose, salivating at the thought of squeezing ""value"" out of what remains of it. RIP.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
chomp 2y ago
I thought the same thing as soon as they wrote the statement about the value of the market being $50B. That private equity is remarking on its market size means they are definitely sizing up how to squeeze it. A16z has no shame and it shows here.
- xattt 2y ago
  Given that certain portion of the anime fan crowd is somewhat socially vulnerable, a private equity firm stepping into this space will no doubt create some predatory scenarios.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Ya, my first reaction was I'm not taking advice from a16z on what's "eating the world".
dogleash 2y ago
>salivating at the thought of squeezing ""value"" out of what remains of it I'm amused at their assumption that they can squeeze tighter than the currently existing notoriously abusive segment of the market. Also, the way they talk about exploiting parasocail relationships, I'm assuming their next big announcement will be funding a startup that is a call center to handle texting on behalf of onlyfans creators.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  New Dragonball-level animation budgets? Which is to say, a few dollars over $0?

mdni007 2y ago

The quality of anime has already started to decline especially after Sony and other greedy companies started getting their hands on animation studios.

bbqfog 2y ago
There's a lot of great anime being produced today. Have you watched Vinland Saga or Chainsaw Man?
leotravis10 2y ago
Also buying out streaming players such as Crunchyroll.

world2vec 2y ago

Anime quality has been on a steep decline. It's all isekai stuff these days and gacha is a disgusting mechanic no different from slot machines at the casinos. This article left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

bbqfog 2y ago
No doubt that it would be best for fans if a16z stayed far away from anime, but you're wrong about quality declining. There's a ton of great stuff from recent times: Vinland Saga, Ranking of Kings, Chainsaw Man, Dr. Stone... There's always been trash anime, but it feels like there's some very original work being produced.
leotravis10 2y ago
No question, especially when you have only two major players distributing most anime in Sony and Netflix. I enjoyed the good old days from the 1980s to the 2000s when it was actually more creative and good quality not to mention that there were more competition at that time period.
rootsudo 2y ago
100% this. I'm glad I'm not the only one. The article is definetely written for someone that is not in the hobby and looking for a place to park money for more enshitification of a platform that already was, pretty much unrecognizable from a decade ago.

outside1234 2y ago

Well, if this will get them off of crypto BS, I'm all for it.

par 2y ago
yeah but we don't want the crypto bs guys shifting their attention to anime.
FinalDestiny 2y ago
I think this is directly related to https://anime.com https://anime.com – a new product from the Azuki team (NFT collection) It was announced about a week ago. Surprised no one mentioned it yet.

msp26 2y ago

It's a breath of fresh air watching anime adaptations that actually love and respect the original author's work like dungeon meshi. Meanwhile western fantasy adaptations seem to be full of arrogant showrunners that think their vision is better: wheel of time, the Witcher, House of the dragon (to an extent). George RR Martin even publicly criticised HBO for this recently.

coolbreezetft24 2y ago
I loved the first two seasons of Wheel of Time (and also loved the books growing up) - what is wrong with it? Never read The Witcher or played the games but also really enjoyed the netflix series
- adamkittelson 2y ago
  If you find that you like something that most people don't it's generally best to just leave it alone and be happy you enjoyed it. If you try to delve into why so many people don't like the thing you like then either they will manage to convince you the thing you like is actually bad, which doesn't benefit you, or you'll start to question whether or not your taste in media is bad, which doesn't benefit you.
  - coolbreezetft24 2y ago
    I guess I disagree with the premise that most people dislike those two things, which seem quite popular and were well-received
    - jasonlotito 2y ago
      Most people who watched it enjoyed it. Jordan fans were big on it (at least from what I saw at JordanCon and WoTCon). Will people not like certain things, sure. The issue is that YouTubers will complain about anything these days and rage videos get more traction, so it's easier to pile on, and people who wouldn't watch it complain about how bad it is. I wouldn't put to much weight on someone not liking something. After all, either they haven't watched it all, or they are watching something they don't like. And that's not someone's taste I trust.

clearleaf 2y ago

This has to be an AI generated article. It doesn't take 1/10th this much gobbledygook to announce you'll try injecting AI into anime and pray that money comes out somehow. Crap on crap on crap.

candiddevmike 2y ago

I'm finding myself pulled towards anime after being exhausted from CGI and terrible/reused set design. Live action shows are so boring and plain these days, everything looks the same with slightly different costumes. Nothing is really engaging visually, and the storylines seem to be held back by what they can do visually/"within their budget" for a lot shows.

dmonitor 2y ago
I think the manga format is really effective at letting new stories reach audiences. US media companies need to realize that funding authors/artists to test run their new stories as cheap comics and increasing funding to the 1/20 that gain traction is a great way to incubate the new talent that the industry desperately needs. American comic books are incredibly stagnant and have been so for the past 20 years. Not a single new character with any cultural relevancy (besides reboots of old characters) has been made in the last 20-odd years. Meanwhile, series like Attack on Titan, Chainsaw Man, and Jujutsu Kaisen have become million dollar global franchises in the last decade. The manga => anime => cultural zeitgeist pipeline has produced tons of recent compelling series.
- hiccuphippo 2y ago
  What I like from manga is that there's usually a single author who envisions the whole story, there could be a small team of assistants and an editor to help but the story belongs to a person alone. Not a team of people writting a story by committee.

oDot 2y ago

I spend most of my time writing and researching live-action anime, and I can say that for it to really blow up, there needs to be a paradigm shift. Currently many of the efforts are trying to fit a peg into a square by either "westernizing" the content, as done in Hollywood, or completely jumping the shark as with most Japanese releases. Both only make for a less palatabl result. Instead, a selective "offset" approach should be taken. I illustrate this briefly in a YouTube mini-essay: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WiyqBHNNSlo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WiyqBHNNSlo It is also how I write my IP: https://www.weedonandscott.com/narrative/keepers-of-alteria https://www.weedonandscott.com/narrative/keepers-of-alteria And it's how I assess exiting IPs for adaptation. Until current stakeholders shake the current models out of their system, this field is leaving a lot of creative output (and profits) on the table.

da02 2y ago
Is this your day-job? That's impressive. Did you cry on the travesty of Netflix Cowboy Bebop?
- oDot 2y ago
  No, not quite my day job yet. I have stopped watching the live-action Cowboy Bebop after about 5 minutes, so much of it was spared. The same production company (Tomorrow Studios) is currently making the live action One Piece, which, ironically, could be more detrimental to live-action anime than Cowboy Bebop was. The reason is that even though the live-action One Piece is not something I'd consider live-action _anime_, it's actually quite good and is definitely well received, which may cause producers to adopt its formula, and stop researching alternative adaptation paths.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  > travesty of Netflix Cowboy Bebop Ugh. I just… it was so… ugh.
aspenmayer 2y ago
> I spend most of my time writing and researching live-action anime What do you mean by live-action anime? This reads to me as contradiction in terms. Anime is a term of art for CJK animation, especially Japanese animation.

thefz 2y ago

Might be an US thing, I don't think I talked to anyone watching anime in the past IDK, 20 years? Besides kids watching dragon ball at the TV after lunch, if that counts as anime. I can't even tell a modern title or an author.

bbqfog 2y ago
Demon Slayer is incredibly popular with younger people.
decafninja 2y ago
Could certainly be a US thing, but I've found the tech crowd and the anime otaku crowd to overlap a lot. Ditto for science fiction.
- codedokode 2y ago
  Also in screenshots from underground hacker forums in the news the users who leak databases or hack something often have anime-styled kind-looking avatar which creates a contrast with post content.
rauljordan2020 2y ago
Opposite experience. Here in the US, I've heard a lot more people watching anime than when I was a kid. Especially modern ones such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, etc.
- decafninja 2y ago
  Same. Being into anime (and gaming, and RPGs, and sci-fi, etc.) marked you as an outcast nerd when I was a kid. Nowadays, most of it is nearly mainstream. Granted there is still some weirdness like grown 40yo men obsessed with schoolgirl harem anime...
  - Dweller1622 2y ago
    Take a guess at what they might have been into when they were kids!

wormlord 2y ago

I know that this is a website for startups, but looking at art that people enjoy and put their soul into and thinking "how can I extract profit from this" I think is actually close to a mental illness. I understand that commodification is inevitable (and yes anime is already a soulless business), but goddamn if it doesn't look like some form of neurosis. It's like walking into an old growth forest and seeing the potential for a toothpick factory.

gruez 2y ago
To a first approximation, "extract profit from this" means providing goods/services that people are willing to pay money for. If people are willing to pay for more anime content, companions, vtubers, and streaming sites, why is it a "mental illness" to provide that? >It's like walking into an old growth forest and seeing the potential for a toothpick factory. At least for old growth forests you could argue that it's mispriced because it's providing biodiversity/carbon sequestration which can't be sold on the market. Meanwhile the benefits provided by anime accrue solely to its consumers. What's the problem with getting them to pay for it?
- jjulius 2y ago
  >To a first approximation, "extract profit from this" means providing goods/services that people are willing to pay money for. This is too generous, particularly with regards to a16z coming into an already existing market. In reality, it's more akin to taking something that already exists in a form that people enjoy and are already willing to pay for, and both bastardizing and cannibalizing it into something of lesser quality just so that you can have additional excuses to charge more money for things that you never used to charge money for before. "Nice thing you have there, be a shame if we fucked it up so that we could make more money off of it," is a mental illness.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    To put it another way, it's taking surplus value that was previously going to either the producers or consumers of the product and funneling it to Silicon Valley VCs instead.

asdf123qweasd 2y ago

The most important part about anime is- with computer assisted tooling, its cheaper to make - cheaper to make means less oversight by creative handicaps like financeer gremiums, means artists get a shot earlier, instead a few making it to the honey pots. Thus more artists, who want a shot try the medium instead of waiting for there day in the sun in some cooperate mausoleum. Tl,DR; All of culture is constantly fleeing the curse of the MBAs - the destroyers of all things good with the Middas touch.

FigurativeVoid 2y ago

If you’re new to anime, it’s hard to figure out where to start. If you’re able to tolerate some more intense themes, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is widely regarded as one of the best anime ever created, and rightly so.

vundercind 2y ago
Like a lot of things, I think it can also be hard to remember how much effort it took to get into it. Most anime’s pretty off-putting if you don’t know how to “read” it—you have to get used to all three of: quirks of the medium (e.g. how emotions are expressed visually, confused Engrish intro songs); cultural differences between your culture and Japan’s; and a pile of tropes that are very common in anime but less common elsewhere, which you can use as a way to understand the genre of what you’re watching and how it’s supposed to be read. It’s why Cowboy Bebop is such a popular gateway anime: Ed aside (and even there, only sometimes) there’s minimal reliance on alien-to-Westerners visual expression, the genre is entirely familiar and uses familiar tropes and archetypes, and it’s culturally hardly any more Japanese than Blade Runner. (Plus, I mean, it’s good—but so are a bunch of others that do not work well as gateway anime)
- raxxorraxor 2y ago
  Cowboy Bebop is good, but what really makes the show is the music. Exceptional talents involved if you can deliver such a broad range of awesome tracks. But I know what you mean with the usual confused engrish songs...

FigurativeVoid 2y ago

I’ve recently gotten much more into anime, and I feel that I love it because I love fantasy. There just aren’t that many western fantasy shows that are nearly as good as Frieren or FMAB.

maxglute 2y ago

I was expecting report to acknowledge "AI Waifus / Husbandos" at some point, nevermind first point. Whatever the artistic merit of anime, it's nice to see analysis that acknowledges anime popularity is simply driven by sheer horniess by both genders. IMO functionally PG13 softer softcore pornography.

adamwong246 2y ago

While elevated Anime does exist, it by-and-large deserves it's reputation as pulp. It was cheap to produce by humans, and even cheaper to produce by machines, but the kids simply can't get enough of it. I am slightly terrified at the thought that should the matrix ever come to pass, it will appear as a endless tide of cat-girl avatars.

marginalia_nu 2y ago

Something has happened with western television where it's like everyone is angry all the time and can never come together to solve a problem without arguing about it for half a season first. I find it incredibly exhausting to watch. Anime can be a nice refuge from that, as can older tv-shows from before this was a thing.

jwells89 2y ago
That cynical bent you mention along with a takeover of dark/gritty aesthetic, with both being positioned as more "realistic" or "mature" and thus preferable has made western TV somewhat exhausting to me too.
- marginalia_nu 2y ago
  Yeah, don't know how mature it actually is though, given how everyone acts like a self centered teenager now more than ever ;-) I think the transition to streaming is also an exaserbating factor, since it's less important to resolve events the same episode, characters can now hold much longer grudges.
  - jwells89 2y ago
    Yep, that's why I included those quotemarks. I don't think that behavior or gritty aesthetic is actually mature, but there's a popular conception that it is for reasons that are unclear to me. My best guess is that the overarching emotional climate biases what people consider "realistic" or "mature", and since the mid-to-late 2000s it's been pushing that perception in a more cynical direction.
    - marginalia_nu 2y ago
      I mostly think it's bad writing. You can make mature, gritty tv-shows without the protagonist running to their room and slamming the door very hard when they don't get what they want, but the problem is that this is much harder. Breaking Bad is a solid example that gets it right.

hyggetrold 2y ago

> AI is deepening the previously parasocial relationships we had with our favorite anime characters from passive linear media, into powerful new, interactive relationships. I truly can't believe they had the gall to publish this article. The more of the article I read the more I felt like I was reading their strategy for preying on the weak and unfortunate.

adamwong246 2y ago
You are right to be horrified but what is the use in maintaining the pretense that we are not strip-mining our citizens of their attention?
Vegenoid 2y ago
It is truly shameless - and they are this shameless because they can be, and may even be rewarded for it. AI "companions", if left unchecked, will be as harmful as addictive drugs, enabling companies to suck everything from some people.
- imiric 2y ago
  But that future is coming regardless if VCs bet on it or not. I'm not defending the article and agree with you that it's despicable, but the only thing successful VC firms know how to do is to bet on companies that will make them money. It's clear that a future where AI companions exist is coming, and it will be a huge industry, so it's only logical that they would latch on to it and promote it in the only way they know how. As for AI companions themselves, sure. They will be addicting and harmful, but technology is already that. Yet loneliness is a worldwide epidemic, and I reckon that AI has the potential to also improve the quality of life for many people. This in turn will lead us to even lower birth rates, but that seems inescapable as well. The next 50 years will be interesting, to say the least.
  - Vegenoid 2y ago
    Personally, I foresee legislation restricting AI emotional/sexual companions, which I think I would support (depending on the details). Specifically, I would want to make it illegal to sell access to AI companions, but not criminalize talking to or using AI companions. This targets punishment at the exploiters rather than the exploited. It’s possible I could be swayed by the “these are more helpful than harmful” argument, but more evidence is required on both sides. I’m sure there will be plenty of evidence coming.

pupppet 2y ago

I watch a lot of anime but I'd be surprised if we don't see a crash similar to the video game crash of '83. There is a ton of garbage being cranked out right now.

Wuzado 2y ago

Holy hell, this is such a depressing, dehumanized, out-of-touch article—especially regarding the fascination with AI in the field of, admit it or not, art. The article even makes mistakes in the most basic factual areas, such as calling light novels "visual novels." It's deeply saddening. For a more positive outlook on the animation industry, check out "Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!"—an incredibly creative love letter to the joy and passion of creating art through the lens of animation.

AndyKelley 2y ago
Hey thanks for this recommendation! I'm a few episodes in and loving it. Your description is spot on. One thing that is striking to me is just how much budget Japanese high schools have for clubs and stuff. Meanwhile in America we have teachers buying basic school supplies from their meager wages...

dvh 2y ago

After 2+ decades of watching anime I was struggling to find something that would interest me, I thought I got tired of it. But then I made a scatter chart of my ratings of all 200+ anime I watched vs MAL rating and I found literally ZERO correlation! The MAL rating means nothing for my anime tastes. So now I start watching random anime starting from episode 1 and if I hate it I drop it, no bad feelings, if I don't love it by episode 3 I drop it as well. There are over 17000 anime. And finally I was able to find good anime again that I truly enjoy watching, easily 10*. I don't even read ratings or reviews beforehand as there is no correlation for me. Just pick random anime and watch.

t-3 2y ago
There's a lot of good stuff from China - Mo Dao Zu Shi, Thousand Autumns, Fairies Album, All Saints Street, Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, Fog Hill of Five Elements, Psychic Princess, Fei Ren Zai, Fabulous Beasts, No Choice but to Betray Earth, etc. There is of course a lot of mediocre and garbage stuff as well, but the tropes are far less annoying and thanks to Chinese censorship there's far less pandering and it's much more tasteful on average than Japanese anime.

legitster 2y ago

The traits that define anime all trace back to post-WWII creative innovations intended to work around limited budgets and resources. So pound-for-pound you can maximize the amount of "hit" you get from stories, characters, emotions, etc. And by its nature its cheap and fast to make. It's the ultimate form of mass-produced entertainment for the age of cheap, binge-able content. "Quantity has a quality all of it's own".

hintymad 2y ago

Following this, the next one that "eats the world" could be web novels (https://www.webnovel.com/ https://www.webnovel.com/). If I'm not mistaken, the trend was started by the Chinese authors. Chinese companies created those hyper competitive yet super lucrative platforms for the authors. Over the past 20 years, the authors truly evolved through generations of competition. They may lack of deep skills in writing world classics, but they certainly have mastered the art of creating captive stories with vast scale and scope. They also invented more genres than I can care about. Some of the stories were so intriguing that some readers on web novel resorted to Google translate to read the untranslated version -- something that I can't fathom. And it looks western authors have slowly picked up the trend, so I'm hopeful that we will see a lot more authors coming up with amazing stories.

Ekaros 2y ago
I like Xianxia... That is cultivation novels that end up in at least trivially planet if not more destroying power levels. Just finished Er Gen's Renegade Immortal and started Pursuit of Truth. Which first had actually interesting, and multi-layered world development. Still, one issue with these works is just big they are. And them often falling into repeating same patterns and tropes even inside the same work. Sadly medium does not do editing well. As very often you could easily get rid of 20% or even more and not loose too much... Still, Chinese and Korean works do offer something different. Even if you have to take some nationalism with it.

titanomachy 2y ago

"AI is deepening the previously parasocial relationships we had with our favorite anime characters from passive linear media, into powerful new, interactive relationships" One thing that troubles me about this is the idea of a human having [what they feel is a] deep, meaningful relationship with what ultimately is a bit of code and conversation history owned by a for-profit corporation. They might even experience [what they interpret as] romantic love towards this construct. This could give the controlling corporation unbelievable leverage over that person, even worse than casinos or cigarette companies, because AI companions aren't as fungible as these other highly-optimized dopamine delivery systems. Of course, Blade Runner 2049 explored this well.

TheAceOfHearts 2y ago

How do you go about directing / producing your own anime or animated series anyway? I have stories within me that scream out to be brought into this world. I've watched a lot of anime and western cartoons and feel like the bar isn't that high. I'm pretty confident I could write and direct something that's competitive with most of what's currently being produced. At a minimum, just making a solid show that doesn't abuse common tropes while including a strong story and art direction seems like it would put you miles ahead of most existing anime; see for example: Frieren. Frieren avoids common anime tropes and is happy to explore the setting while giving the characters room to breathe; this was enough to propel the series to the top of every anime rating website. Even evaluating top-tier producers like Studio Ghibli, despite being able to create S-tier art and animations, I think they no longer have any stories worth telling which they haven't already presented in some form or another. It's like they continue producing movies because the studio has to do something, but there's no strong driving force to guide them. Modern Studio Ghibli movies aren't driven by a burning passion from the director's soul to be summoned into this world.

zhizdev 2y ago
I am trying to produce an anime / webtoon with an AI assisted studio. Would love to chat more about your stories that scream to be brought into the world! (X @zhizdev)
Der_Einzige 2y ago
The best story telling in anime doesn't come from anything close to Ghibli - at least not modern Ghibli. If you want high concept, good, unique stories, it's going to take you to some much more indie sutff. Serial Experiments Lain, The Tatami Galaxy, Perfect Blue (and everything that director made), Ghost in the Shell (the first movie), Akira, and a bunch of other weird 80s/90s anime films you likely wouldn't even consider.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  > Perfect Blue I saw it recommended somewhere. Had no idea I was in store for a legit psychological thriller.

CommieBobDole 2y ago

What a timely observation of this phenomenon that definitely didn't happen twenty years ago. Now that they've discovered anime, I wonder if they're going to start investing in other current crazes like Y2K compliance or maybe this hot new "world wide web" thing I keep hearing about.

PaulHoule 2y ago

So many things are wrong with this article but I’ll start with Haruhi Suzumiya being a ‘light novel’ (a novel printed in large text as if for seniors with a few illustrations) as opposed to a ‘visual novel’ (something you would make with https://www.renpy.org/ https://www.renpy.org/) It is hard to know because financials aren’t public but it’s not clear to me that Crunchyroll has really addressed the commercial problems anime had in western markets. In the VHS era there was a fight over subtitles vs dubs which was acute because you could not put multiple content tracks on the media, in the DVD age you could. More fundamentally, dubs cost a lot of money in comparison with subs and were always terrible until the people who made those terrible dubs gained experience and some of them got good. (Though they do their best work for game publishers like Idea Factory and ATLUS who care.) At the time people though subs had a limited market but now subprime anime (and sometimes good anime) gets shoveled onto Tubi and people watch it —- today we’re in the habit of watching movies with subtitles because you can’t make out the dialog on half of the new Hollywood movies anyway. Since crunchyroll is in the vainglorious subscription racket I can only assume they’re as profitable as Netflix, Disney Plus, Peacock, etc. The article touches on but doesn’t really stress how it is very rare for an anime to start out as an anime (Precure?) but rather it is the way you know you made it if you made a manga, light novel, visual novel, video game, etc. The economics are brutal and nobody is going to invest in it if the story, characters and settings haven’t been market tested. Of course this leads to problems like you can find out how the anime you like ends if it you look at the source material.

skybrian 2y ago
If that's an error, Wikipedia has it too: > Haruhi Suzumiya (Japanese: 涼宮ハルヒ, Hepburn: Suzumiya Haruhi) is a Japanese light novel series written by Nagaru Tanigawa and illustrated by Noizi Ito. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Haruhi_Suzumiya_light_novels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Haruhi_Suzumiya_light_... But apparently there's a Manga version too? Never read it. Is it any good?
- Izkata 2y ago
  A common pattern is light novel -> manga adaptation -> anime adaptation. From the first few release dates on the sidebar of the main page, it looks like this one followed that pattern (with lots of spinoffs and sequels).

julianeon 2y ago

I wouldn't group anime with Roblox, at all. Roblox has 10 thousand different themes and game worlds, and a small fraction of them reflect anime, but that's not particularly interesting.

bawolff 2y ago

I think part of the reason, is a lot of western media has become very safe, and thus stale and repetitive. Western (live action) movies are sequel after sequel of predictable plots. Western animation is relegated almost exclusively to children (and ocassionally raunchy adult comedy). The formula is stale, so other media is taking its place.

aliasxneo 2y ago

I have limited time with my existing responsibilities, but with what little time I do have, I love investing it into a good movie or TV show. I don't mean whatever "binge-worthy" show is on the top 10 of Netflix. I like character development, good pacing, non-standard plots, etc. It's pretty much the opposite of what has come out in the West over the last five years. So, I started investing more into anime, and I have had zero regrets. Sure, there's plenty of low-quality near-pornographic trash, but I've found far more diamonds in the rough than I was initially expecting. Let me give a recent example: Kotaro Lives Alone. It's a story about a four-year-old who lives alone due to some extenuating circumstances I won't cover for the sake of spoilers. It's funny, heart-warming, cry-inducing, and overall, extremely entertaining for an otherwise outrageous plot. I've found dozens of gems like this in the past five years, and a lot of them are "recent" enough to give me hope that the Japanese haven't forgotten the art of making quality media.

slowhadoken 2y ago

Yeah it has been since the late 1990’s/early 2000’s. Audiences appreciate high concept and escalation of premise even if the themes and storytelling aren’t amazing.

par 2y ago

Honestly I feel a16z as a 'tech vc' firm is just getting weird now. It's like they're trying to be the de facto flag bearer for like weird crypto otaku types. And I say this as someone who has loved anime since the 90s, I don't think I want a16z getting their mits into my special interests. To see them talking about 'waifus' is just weird.

squidsoup 2y ago

Anime seems to have a quality problem. Other than Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon's work, I can't say there's much that has resonated with me. Evangelion was interesting, but that was almost thirty years ago!

GaggiX 2y ago
Do you actually remember the TV season of Evangelion? Especially the last episodes seem they have finished the budget. I'm sure the films are better, but I still have to watch them.
- squidsoup 2y ago
  I thought the ambiguous ending was interesting and thought provoking, even if it may have been the result of budgeting issues, but I do recall they tied up the loose ends in the movies.
  - GaggiX 2y ago
    I think it's quite easy to find anime that are better than the TV season of Evangelion, if you like it.
    - squidsoup 2y ago
      Open to recommendations! I think what appealed to me about Evangelion was that it explored philosophical ideas about human relationships, identity and consciousness. I know there's lots of entertaining anime out there, but I'm looking for something a bit more.
      - GaggiX 2y ago
        I wrote the response before you edited your comment but HN blocked me from posting it because I was writing comments too quickly, now that I have read your edit I would say something like "ghost in the shell", my original response: "You should look for stuff that's in your genre, a lot of stuff has been released in the last 30 years. As for stuff I like, the last anime I remember watching was Cyberpunk Edgerunner, I thought it was really good, but maybe it's not your genre."

SV_BubbleTime 2y ago

It’s getting like no love… but Blue Eye Samauri on Netflix was really something fucking else. SO hates animation things usually and really liked it.

citizenpaul 2y ago

I've always liked memes and anime for their entertainment. Though I've always cringed when people feel the need to try to bring them into their work or work life.

manicennui 2y ago

I mean this as unkindly as possible: please stay the fuck out of anime.

drbig 2y ago

"Please, keep _these_ people away from art and culture. Isn't blockchain AI enough already?" Well, of course it isn't! They ain't vampires - these just need blood an power, and also are completely fictional.

rootsudo 2y ago

Anime today isn't what it was a decade or two ago. While tastes and styles change, and I accept that, what this article defines as anime isn’t anime in any traditional sense. The article claims: "Anime is where the future of creation and play is happening—whether through mobile games, fanfiction, roleplaying, or AI interactions. We believe anime will become a dominant format for content engagement." But is this really "anime"? In my opinion, no. Vtubing and AI tools aren't anime. The article describes a fan’s journey as starting with popular IPs like Attack on Titan or One Piece, then moving into deeper social engagement with UGC, VTubing, and cosplay. They argue anime has evolved from passive to interactive. This shift, however, feels like a corporate "anime-as-a-service" model, exploiting aesthetics rather than preserving the original spirit of anime before the 2010s. And of course, the 2010s anime is nothing compared to the 00s which, really felt like the height of anime with fansub communities and then The 90s where the community really started cosplaying and trading by VHS tapes while being blinded by the futurism of Japan. This article really paints a dim future to what brought me joy and what pulled me into IT/Tech/NetSec/Programming and I couldn’t even get out of the first few paragraphs before I wrote all this. But I’m flabbergasted. Anime as a service is here.

codedokode 2y ago

My own observations in my country: - in recent year or two, saw lot of people in the streets wearing clothes with Japanese words. Saw such clothes in stores. I thought initially that they were fans of Japanese culture, but it seems that it is just a fashion trend and they probably cannot even read them. - when entering a bookstore or a school supplies store, there are notebooks and sketchbooks and other goods with anime-style characters, translations of novels. Novels are now even in some supermarkets. Again, it started recently. - that anime-styled Chinese RPG game is somewhat popular among young people, and when reading laptop reviews there are comments like "Will (anime-styled Chinese game) run on this?" - I am not sure if we can count anime-styled avatars on social media because I don't remember if they were always widespread or only recently Hope these trends will continue. I wonder is it our local (Russian) trend or something global?

stonethrowaway 2y ago

It’s Time to Destroy

AndyKelley 2y ago

As an anime enthusiast, seeing this breakdown from a powerful VC is depressing. How about you go play your capitalism game somewhere else. I'm sure my dishwasher can be made even worse than it already is by adding AI features to it. Anime is great precisely because it's mainly driven by artists with a creative vision, not by hyenas scavenging for rotting meat. Ew. I really hate this. I'll go back to studying my WaniKani flash cards for the day and hope that I forget that I read this by the end of it.

johnea 2y ago

I've been a major fan of anime for decades. Including starting to study Japanese at age 50 (not recommended). I could care less about the game spinoffs, or the vtubers, but I do hope we can get beyond the current plot trend of "living in an imaginary world with my smartphone, where I pretend to be dwarf listening to Irish jigg music". There are so many awesome anime: Heike Monogatari, House of Five Leaves, Angolmois - Genkou Kassenki (depicting the Mongol invasion of Japan in the 1200s). Sadly, anime for addults is not currently a factor in that blossoming industry described in the article.

B-Con 2y ago

I think anime still has a lot to figure out about licensing to fully embrace the western audience. Despite the insane popularity of anime, it feels like only a limited subset actually fully capitalize on the market. For example, take Violet Evergarden. It's a gorgeous show with a compelling emotional narrative, produced by Kyoto Animation, one of the most acclaimed studios. It's even on Netflix, available on demand for an international audience. There is zero merch for it anywhere. The only thing you can buy is the Blu Rays. If you like the show, you can't give them your money if you want to. This kind of thing is rampant in anime. A select few get merch and marketing out the wazoo, and a ton of other things are neglected, despite a clear interest from the fanbase.

disqard 2y ago

I did not bother reading this article, but it reminded me of Stephen Fry's words: "The greedy countries, corporations and criminals can see in AI unparalleled and unprecedented means to accrue wealth, power and influence." https://stephenfry.substack.com/p/ai-a-means-to-an-end-or-a-means-to https://stephenfry.substack.com/p/ai-a-means-to-an-end-or-a-...

stonethrowaway 2y ago
Mr. Fry could have said that about anything, not just AI.

anonymous56781 2y ago

Cartoons are for children.

kps 2y ago
“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” — C S Lewis
- anonymous56781 2y ago
  Doesn’t change the fact that cartoons are for children.

pentagrama 2y ago

It’s really hard to grasp how for-profit intentions influence the way art is studied, analyzed, and broken down through that lens. Corporations, driven by commercial interests, often view art not as a cultural or aesthetic value in itself, but as a resource to be exploited or a vehicle for profitability, and this article is a great example of this, who distorts the creative and critical process, reducing art to a product that can be segmented, commodified, and shaped to meet market demands, disregarding its original essence.

Palmik 2y ago

Is this article just a way to advertise and normalize their investments in this industry? They have done these kind of articles a few times in the past, so one has to wonder.