Anno interview by Russia: Anime has about 5 years left

[Sailor Star Dust]

I wonder if there will be a translation soon, is all I can say!

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[pwhodges]

That kind of prediction is the most unreliable imaginable. Change of some sort or another may be inevitable, but disappearance is surely not.

[hui43210]

Well, better get out 3.0+1.0 before then! That said, I'm curious of his reasoning behind the statement, as I don't see the industry dieing that fast as of now.

[Xard]

It's real enough.

Anon summary is quite accurate:

In interview to russian state news agency, Anno told that anime is dieing and in less than 20 years might disappear completely.

http://ria.ru/interview/20150522/1065883205.html

He says decline and death is inevitable, the "death" might result in new rebirth, but no one know if it`ll happen and if than in what form.

In current form, everything is in decline - saying there will be no enougth people in industry to maintain it, not enought money into it, situation in a country contribute to it dieing even faster.

He says, death of anime in Japan does not mean death of it as phenomenon though - since it can reappear in other asian countries instead - Japan will just stop being center and core of it.

To be precise Anno predicts fall and destruction of anime industry as is, perhaps as soon as five years from now but definetly within 20. He doesn't think anime as a movie "genre" completely disappears but that its production will spread throughout Asia and Japan won't be the heart and brain anymore.

Well, it's pretty much given that in a country committing a slow suicide niche industry with horrible pays catering to niche audience who don't have much interest in breeding and building future generation of enthusiasts it's going to go down drain big time sooner or later.


It'll probably be good thing, considering that if anime industry was a person he'd deserve to end up in the nastiest spot of 2nd or 3rd circle of Dante's hell. Fuck this shit, really. Anime was healthier when focusing on children shows and having occasional space opera for teenage boys. Maybe downsizing they'll refocus on core cartoon demographies instead of greyhaired remaining otakus who wasted their semen on PVC figures.

Xard off.

[Sailor Star Dust]

I definitely think anime overall does need some kind of wakeup call for sure. Hopefully it'll get a kick in the pants it needs--It just seems like a different style/approach these days compared to 80/90's and earlier programs. I think the revitalization is more to it than just the content these days (just examples: moe, imouto-chan, Loli), though I can't place what exactly is wrong. FWIW: I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with those examples I listed, they're generally not my cup of tea, though.

I'm generally into shows from 90's (and earlier) or backlogged enough that I haven't been paying attention to the current scene. But I definitely get the sense (since maybe 2009 or 2010?) a shakeup needs to happen, which is just depressing in some ways to me.

Hell, maybe FINAL could give anime the kick-in-the-pants it needs to wake up, but I'm worried THAT would just re-start the cycle that NGE started...But instead of starting up moe and midnight anime (both thanks to NGE), it'd be whatever the NEXT big anime thing would be.

[Guy Nacks]

Maybe downsizing they'll refocus on core cartoon audio demographies instead of greyhaired remaining otakus who wasted their semen on PVC figures.

I think it would be interesting that when people die they be presented with a series of inane statistics such as how many pens and pencils they've lost during their lifetime and how many liters of cum were wasted on targets other than for pure babymaking.

I just thought of an interesting philosophical question: Could an effective argument be made that, just like Lucas inadvertently contributed to the destruction of film as a true artistic medium with Star Wars, Anno destroyed anime with NGE, as both led to the rapid shallow commercialization of both mediums?

Hell, maybe FINAL could give anime the kick-in-the-pants it needs to wake up, but I'm worried THAT would just re-start the cycle that NGE started...But instead of starting up moe and midnight anime (both thanks to NGE), it'd be whatever the NEXT big anime thing would be.

I highly doubt FINAL is going to live up to Anno's Yamakan-esque proclamation at the beginning of Rebuild.

[Fireball]

Nah, Trigger will keep saving it.

[Justacrazyguy]

To be precise Anno predicts fall and destruction of anime industry as is, perhaps as soon as five years from now but definetly within 20. He doesn't think anime as a movie "genre" completely disappears but that its production will spread throughout Asia

Chinese cartoons would stop being a joke?

I love this pessimism, the next 20 years are going to be fun.

[::KL7::]

I agree with PW.

[Reichu]

Chinese cartoons would stop being a joke?

Well, if South Korea could get its act together (remember back in the 90s when you could tell which episodes of a show were done by Korean studios because they looked so much shittier?), why not China?

[Ray]

Cause china is ruled by The Anti thought, Anti hope, Anti creativity, Communist Party?

[C.A.P.]

I'll give it a week.

[Gendo'sPapa]

I'd argue anime is pretty much dead right now. But then nerds get all upset & try to explain why the current hit niche show is a sign of some magical resurgence.

[Ray]

I don't think anime will die out. It'll just be less popular, it's existence eclipsed by other things .

Case in point Rock N Roll is still around, doesn't change that most of what's on the radio is Katy Perry.

[pwhodges]

I'd argue anime is pretty much dead right now.

The meaning that suggests to me is: "None of my favourite shows were made in the past three years".

[Gendo'sPapa]

^ Nah. I loved "Kill La Kill". But Hiroyuki Imaishi can't save anime despite the meme's people sprout.

But an industry that generally has employees work 11 hours a day on a regular basis & has those same employees make less than $10,000 annually & then those works just barely scrape by with a small profit margin can't stay afloat forever.

It of course doesn't help that a large portion of the audience who watches these works refuse to pay for it. There will always be anime works. Just fewer. Or the industry will have to find some magical way to make everyone involved more money so it stays an appealing business.

Though I do think we'll start seeing more interesting independent works being made by young filmmakers who are doing it all on their own. The technology is there.

[pwhodges]

Increasingly tight margins and change are neither unique to the anime industry nor new, though. Sure there will be changes - there always are - but there will be continuity in some direction even if we can't correctly predict how it will work out.

[Fireball]

The problem lies much deeper in the plummeting Japanese economy. The real anime age died long ago when the bubble crashed in the '90s and the only chance to save it was to rely on the niche who was always there to support it and here we are with over 150 new anime each year still with some jewels once in a while. This is just Anno being a gloomy fuck again.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Gloomy fuck or not, I think there's some truth to what he's saying--whether or not it ends up being true.

I definitely agree about real anime dying sometime back and the Japanese economy not helping. The niche market stuff (like I mentioned in my earlier post) does frustrate me for sure--with anime, and anything really, I prefer the quality of the show to quantity of anime overall--but I do understand the reasoning behind it.

[Mr. Tines]

Chinese cartoons would stop being a joke?

There was a Three Kingdoms anime listed on the season charts some time in the last ~5 years that was a co-production with a Chinese outfit (something like Glorious Beijing Animation). It got no subs, but it happened.

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We can see the connection between anime and the wider economy all the time -- 2008 was a boom year, but winter 2009 had lowest the number of titles for a long while.