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oricami-art · 1 year
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March is for Fakir! I learned about Princess Tutu from a @noralities video and loved it! I introduced @loreofmars to it recently and I fell in love with Fakir all over again. If you haven't seen it, I really do recommend giving it a try!
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Anime: is it changing for better or Worse
This is a editorial piece i created for an extended project at College, it is a good example of the kind of writing i can create and the vain of editorial that i would like to create in future for potential & hopeful entertainment journalism jobs.
If you read this editorial and have any positive or negative criticism please feel free to message me that criticism. Be kind xD, this is like one of the first things i written on this sort of scale. Hope you enjoy this if you read it.
Is Anime changing for better or worse?
Anime is a Japanese pop-culture behemoth that has grown from its mid-20th century origins to a near worldwide phenomenon in the 2010s. Personally, I have been a dedicated fan of anime for around three to five years although I was aware of the medium since I was around 5 or so spending a lot of my childhood watching kid-oriented 4kids dubs of Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh. Anime has become one of my favorite entertainment mediums with beautifully sad movies such A Silent Voice, Thrilling Psychological films like Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue and interesting adventures shows like Made in Abyss, a great bustling fanbase and a huge amount of wonderful and genius crew members who work on anime; living and dead. However, it is also a medium that I have so many problems with from the ridiculous treatment of the people who work in it to the shaky western approach to the medium and the crazy over-saturation there is in the amount of pandering generic anime. So here at the start my opinion on anime is as follows; yes, anime is something I love and will continuously support due to the amazing content and creators in anime but as an industry it is so intensely toxic with all the behind the scenes problems it cast a bleak shadow over anime and as it continues to grow larger and goes further than ever before the shadow glooms darker.
Anime took Japan by storm in the early 1960s with Osamu Tezuka’s revolutionary animations such as Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. Even though Tezuka’s work weren’t the first animes they were the first to gain a big level of traction. Tezuka’s animes led the way for other iconic animes such as 70s greats like Lupin III and Mobile Suit Gundam. The 80s booms of anime with staples such as the first Ghibli films, Akira and Dragon Ball. The 90s produced new age classics such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost in the shell, Pokémon, Cowboy Bebop and Sailor Moon. The 2000s came soon after adding more iconic animes with shows like Death Note, Naruto, Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, One Piece and the Oscar award winning Ghibli film, Spirited Away growing the anime community to new heights.
Now in the 2010s anime is still growing in popularity with shows like Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, One Punch Man, Tokyo Ghoul, Yuri on ice, Boku No Hero Academia and the highest grossing anime film of all time; Your Name leading the future of the medium. Over the life span of the anime industry it has grown from a small medium in the 60s which was mostly based in japan to something that became a cult phenomenon outside of its Japanese home of a genre in the late 90s to becoming a near worldwide mainstream hit in modern day. The fact that each decade there is at least a handful of shows produced that gain big fan acclaim shows and are remembered years later shows that anime has always been strong in its ability to produce great content and as time progresses more and more shows are getting noticed by anime fans. In the 60s there might have been around 5-10 shows that are still remembered today, but three decades later in the 90s easily 20-30 shows have stuck with the anime fanbase to today.
Western fans of anime have gained the name Otakus a Japanese word which celebrates their love for a medium such as anime. In the internet era a term has been coined "Weeaboo" which is a negative word to call someone who is an anime fan, a Weeaboo or Weeb is someone who watch anime but stupidly and ignorantly disrespects the culture, bastardise it and acts like Japanese culture is their own culture. Let me just state for the record, most anime fans are not Weebs but a select few fit their descriptions and their loud obnoxious personalities make the public sadly see them as these derogatory things. Sadly, it is common for society to see the worst in a community and see the bad as the norm for the entire group even though it might not be entirely true. Being a fan of anime for many years I have seen into the anime fanbase and have only come across individuals who fit the weeaboo archetype maybe once or twice out of 100s if not 1000s of individuals on numerous social media platforms.
Although the anime industry clearly has hit a big level in over-saturation in the amount of series it produces, it’s large quantity has opened-up the industry to many new and great creators. In the wake of the call for more series to be produced more talent has been brought to anime. In the world of directing, new visionary directors such as Makoto Shinkai are being brought to the industry creating some of the most beautifully crafted animations ever made with great music, art and story such as his films 5 centimetres per second, The Garden of Words and of course Your Name. Great musical talent that previously was neglected or ignored by Japan is now acknowledged with artists such as TK, Myth & Roid, Teddyloid and Daoko giving their vocal talent as more opening themes are needed. New Composer, Hiroyuki Sawano has become an iconic anime composer, composing music for many action animes that have come out in the big surge of animes in the last few years. Of course, voice actors or seiyuus as they are called in Japan are still very integral to anime with them being even more needed with more animes being produced with new voice talents such as Rie Takahashi, Jun Fukushima, Sora Amamiya and Inori Minase doing numerous voices a season, although this can be very taxing on a seiyuu with low pay and over working. Whole new studios have formed to combat the demand for new animes such as the crazily imaginative studio Trigger, WIT Studio, NUT, Kinema Citrus, MAPPA and Lerche that feature talent that will go on to shape the world of anime.
Even if the landscape of anime is changing the creators of old, those who shaped the world of anime before anyone else won’t be forgotten. Works from directors such as Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon and Mamoru Hosoda, Animes made by Studios Madhouse, Production I.G, Gainax and Bones and iconic openings from J-pop history legends such as Flow, Asian Kung Fu Generation, The Pillows, Kumiko Noma, Yoko Takahashi and The Seatbelts. The individuals who make the anime that anime fans consume and adore, have always been the shining beacon in the many problems of anime and right now more than ever with the abundance of cast and crew needed to staff all the anime is made, this beacon is shining brighter than it has ever before.
Anime is typically released in waves with a handful of shows being released every seasonal period, the seasons being; Winter season that lasts from January to March, Spring season from April to June, Summer season from July to September and finally Fall season that starts in October and ends in December and then the cycle resets.
A big problem in the anime industry in 2018 is the level of anime that’s produced; anime production has become much more quantity over quality in the past few years. With over forty-three new anime tv series being released in just the short time span of the winter 2018 season alone. Not including the eight series that are ongoing from the previous season, the four animes that came out exclusively to Netflix and the eleven-short form shows that also were released during the period. In total that’s sixty-six different anime series being released in the space between just two months, 66 in 2 months is a ridiculous amount. In winter 2016 sixty-two Tv animes were released, in winter 2014 sixty-seven Tv animes were released again similar big amounts of animes being produced, but in the winter of 2012 only twenty-six were released and in winter 2010 only twenty-one came out. 
So, what changed, well simply the anime industry grew to new heights with the birth of streaming sites, Crunchyroll and Funimation. Crunchyroll started as a website that hosted anime illegally at its creation but eventually became officially licensed in 2009 and in late 2012 to 2013 it took off as the best place for western anime fans to legally consume anime soon after it aired in Japan. Funimation is a company that has played a big part in the anime industry since the mid-90s being the main distributor for anime in the west, allowing numerous shows to be brought to home video and Tv and had a big part in the creation of official localizations of animes for non-Japanese speakers in the forms of both accurate subtitles and professional dubbing. Funimation eventually made a mark on online streaming giving the type of quality they give but online, the companies streaming is now known as FunimationNow with it primarily focusing on streaming of dubbed anime giving a majority of its subbed anime to Crunchyroll though a partnership the two companies developed in 2016. Once Japan saw this they clearly and naturally saw it as a great business venture and produced more and more content to give Crunchyroll, Funimation and their competitors, which clearly paid off as in 2015, the export value of the anime industry reached a new high of 349 billion yen and in 2016 the anime industry reached an industry income milestone of 2.9 trillion yen with a large portion being from export value. Yes, it works well in a business standpoint but is it worth the cost of the anime content itself and the backlash the fans and people in the industry have towards the over-saturation.
Others saw the success of Crunchyroll & Funimation and clearly decided to jump on the bandwagon while it’s still piping hot. Netflix and Amazon are the two biggest culprits of doing this, both streaming sites had some animes on their streaming sites prior to the anime streaming boom even though they were mostly just shows that had reached an audience outside of the usual anime sphere. Netflix and Amazons approaches to anime are in no way to the standard of streaming that we as western anime fans have come to expect with Crunchyroll & Funimation. Crunchyroll is probably the best thing to happen to the western anime scene in the 2010s, even though it has had small missteps such as the badly run Crunchyroll anime awards and its shaky legal issues in its origins. The biggest draw of Crunchyroll is the fact that they release the anime within an hour of it airing on Japanese Tv networks such as the NHK with the shows being subbed also within that hour, much quicker than some not so legal streaming sites can get the shows uploaded and subbed; with the subbing being not terribly accurate. Amazon seems to understand the importance of trying to bring new animes as soon as possible vowing to do so; when they became heavily involved in anime streaming in 2017, the airing of shows was terribly unreliable with shows sometimes appearing hours or a day late something that won’t help a new service get off the ground. Netflix for the most part completely ignored this crucial part of anime streaming, with them only bringing the animes they had the licenses for months later after they finished airing, you could argue this was done to fit the Netflix model of series being released all at once. However, with US live-action shows such as Orphan Black and Better Call Saul being added to Netflix as they air on Tv, it raises the question of why they aren’t doing this for their anime shows. They might have finally realized that they need to do simulcasts of animes to keep up with the competition as this past season they released Kyoto Animations’ long-awaited anime series Violet Evergarden as it aired in Japan, although this is one show out of the handful of shows they have licenses for in the 2018 winter period. Another reason why the streaming scene has been so successful for the last few years is because you would be able to go to one of the big two streaming sites and be able to view most of the biggest and best shows on one site for one cost. Now that Amazon and Netflix have joined the fray the licenses for animes are spread all over the streaming space. In the past you could go to just Crunchyroll or Funimation and find all the shows you’d want to watch from a new season albeit maybe one or two being hosted by smaller sites.  But now every new season five shows you want to watch might be on Crunchyroll, three might be on Netflix and two other great ones might be on Amazon. You see the problem, right? If the average avid otaku wants to check out all the shows that interest them in a release season they must pay out to get numerous streaming sites. Amazon took advantage of the anime fanbase when they got into anime streaming, gating their animes behind an extra paywall in places such as the states where you would have to buy amazon prime and then buy amazons anime strike service on top of prime; thankfully they realized the negative backlash and finally got rid of the extra paywall at the start of this year.
In the case of Netflix, you must wait months for Netflix to actually utilize the licenses they own and then you’re paying for months in between new releases with nothing new. It’s so anti-consumer the way licenses are strung around the different sites and the way that amazon and Netflix give their anime. It makes otakus feel more inclined to use illegal sites or download torrents which hurt the industry and those who work hours upon painful hours making these animes. But when they make it seem like their working against the consumer they don’t help themselves. They make the free illegal alternative sites appealing which is so wrong, with the expensive numerous expensive sites and the abnormal streaming methods of both Amazon and Netflix. Even though Netflix certainly aren’t the best when it comes to dealing with bringing Tv animes to Netflix they are trying to help the industry by funding anime studios to make animes purely for them which they can release in a binge format, with Netflix reportedly putting a large part  of their 2018 budget into funding animes, Anime would represent about a quarter of their new content. Funding shows by studios such as Bones and WIT studio who are two of the biggest anime studios who created the two biggest action series of 2017; Boku No Hero Academia 2nd Season and the long awaited second season of Attack on Titan, respectively. This has proven good for the industry with shows like Devilman Crybaby which would never have been allowed to be created on Tv due to its crazy soundtrack, unique art and very mature content now having somewhere to belong. Netflix’s approach to funding the industry could really help excel it into the mainstream and if they can do simulcasts like Crunchyroll, Netflix could take over the western anime scene.
If you have been anywhere in the anime community sphere in the past six-ish years, you have probably seen someone bashing on a little-known series called Sword Art Online (SAO). I’m not trying to beat the already dead horse that is SAO hating just trying to add to the conversation and add a view on it that I personally haven’t seen before in the numerous articles and YouTube videos on SAO, SAO’s repercussions on anime.
But just in case for anyone who hasn’t heard of Sword Art Online…Sword Art Online, is an anime based off a light novel that took over the industry and shaped it for worse. Sword Art Online (SAO) came out in 2012 to commercial success, critically the show was not a success; the show had many problems from its contrived borderline creepy romance storylines, shallow character arcs, inconsistent animation quality & its non-existence understanding of the video games mechanics when its video game based. The show is of the Isekai (another world) genre, Isekai series typically feature the protagonist getting trapped or transported in another world; in the case of SAO the protagonist, Kirito and 100s of other gamers get stuck inside of a video game. The protagonist, Kirito is a typical young adult with black hair (the most common hair colour in the world) who before entering an isekai is a socially numb shut-in and once he enters the isekai is overly powered and unbelievably hopelessly attractive to everyone. Kirito is something known as a self-insert protagonist which is a protagonist that is designed in a specific way so that the average anime watcher can easily connect to the character and practically insert themselves into the character and then get invested in the show. Even though the show is terribly flawed from a critical standpoint it was still very popular due to its intriguing concept, its self-insert protagonist and was very successful commercially. The anime industry saw the cash cow SAO became and unfortunately ran with it. Then the flood gates opened, once SAO ended numerous other anime producers created shows in similar veins. Isekai changed from something that was used sparingly in anime to something that became its own genre, every seasonal period contains one or even a handful of Isekai shows. There was also a bigger influx in the amount of self-insert protagonists where before these types of protagonist were kept to just tongue and cheek romcom harem animes, now they appear in romance dramas and even some action shows. Light novel adaptions also have become much more common place as many Japanese light novels have self-insert protagonists and intriguing yet hollow premises. Even though SAO led the way for so many trashy by the numbers samey light novel isekai animes there are some good shining through such as Re: Zero Kara Hajimeru isekai Seikatsu which starts as a basic isekai show with a self-insert protagonist that later turns into a meta character building show with surprises around every corner with twisted time travel twists. Re: Zero and maybe 4 other shows are diamonds in the much larger rough which aren’t worth the Isekai insane oversaturation that SAO caused.
Just like the west have taken anime and adapted to our streaming platforms, they have also adapted it in other ways. Hollywood have leached onto anime as of late, after anime being around for numerous years they were bound to take a stab at trying to milk it for money and now that it has gained near mainstream popularity in the last 10 to 15 years they have taken stabs. Three notable stabs from Hollywood at anime were their live action adaptations of Dragon Ball, Ghost in the shell and Death Note. These three adaptations made Hollywood a quick buck due to the names that are tied to them but were all critical failures from fans and critics alike. These adaptations completely miss what makes anime, anime. They change plot, characters, cultural differences and ultimately brutalize what made them good to begin with. The Dragon Ball movie titled Dragon Ball: Evolution was just a complete train wreck that tried to condense the entire plot of a 200+ episodes anime into a less than 90 minutes long movie with terrible script, acting and CGI. The Ghost in the shell movie and Death Note movie were still pretty darn terrible but at least they were kind of competent at being movies with decent effects, passable scripting and acting. But both just felt like empty lifeless imitations of their predecessors. Ghost in the shell turned from an iconic cyberpunk with punchy dialogue and stellar visuals to pretty much a bog-standard action sci-fi flick.
Death Note’s Live action version completely misses the originals appeal, the original anime was a tense psychological drama as we saw the protagonist Light a genius anti-hero who is popular, trying to avoid getting caught by the master detective, L; Light manipulates those close to him and practically is the antagonist even though he’s the protagonist. In the Hollywood version Light is still an anti-hero and is still trying to avoid getting caught by L but he’s not a genius and instead is a moody outcast, he doesn’t manipulate those close to him, he gets manipulated. One of the biggest parts of the anime was how Light manipulates a character called Misa Amane, we see how far he’ll go to get his goals and how far he’s fallen; in the live action its almost like the roles of Light and Misa had reversed with Misa, changed to Mia in the live action manipulating Light and makes Light have another adversary for no reason except for just creating unnecessary drama. On top of this, in the live action version they take away the tense psychological theming and replaces it with over the top gory death scenes, the Death Note anime does have death scenes but their never overly extreme just to shock the deaths in the anime are much more about how Light manged to kill them. Overly Gory deaths isn’t and never should be Death Note.
Where the west completely fails with its live action adaptions, it excels for the most part in its cartoon shows it has produced in the past few years that are heavily inspired. It is not unusual for a western media product to take influence with people like the Wachowskis siblings who were inspired by Ghost in the Shell when they made The Matrix in the 90s. But in the last few years the anime inspired western content has been much more frequent. RWBY, Castlevania, Voltron and Legend of Korra are four western shows that are very anime inspired in storytelling and animation styles. These shows are all held in high regard by fans and critics alike, largely because of how much they are like anime in the way they are more mature like anime is than the usual run of the mill western cartoon were most adult cartoons are just comedies and not serious like these four examples. Of course, there’s exceptions to these great western anime inspired shows one notably being, Neo Yokio that was co-created by the US and Japan which was poorly animated with terrible voice work and just a mess in terms of tone. Other than Neo Yokio, anime inspired western content is pretty great and doesn’t seem to be slowing down in terms of quality. This is one of the better parts of the wests approach to anime.
Japan has an overworking problem, it is something that is prominent in most Japanese industries and Anime is no different. On average an animator or mangaka (an artist for manga) work 10hrs + a day in uncomfortable conditions this is because they are paid on the amount of work they get done not on a set pay roll like a normal job. This leads to either people giving up on their anime industry dreams due to the insane pressure to get work done with short deadlines or overworking themselves to poor health; mentally and physically, or in extreme cases to death. Overworking is such a problem in Japan that the Japanese made a word to describe death by overworking, Karoshi. In the past few years industry greats have passed away most likely because of Karoshi. In 2017, Hiromi Tsuru, a seiyuu who was famous for her work as Bulma in the Dragon Ball series died from Aortic dissection which is often caused by high blood pressure. High blood pressure is very common from stress which is common in overworking in stressful conditions, so her death is most likely Karoshi. In 2010 a staff member at the animation studio, A-1 Pictures committed suicide; Shinjuku Labour Standards Inspection Office cited depression due to overwork as the cause and medical facilities caring for the staff member recorded that he worked 600 hours a month. The problem of overworking and Karoshi is already a big problem in japan and the Japanese anime industry is not helping this change, in fact its making it a whole lot worse.
I love anime but hearing about these cases are so disheartening and upsetting, I believe that anime is a great artform and it should be something that should have a lot of time focused upon it but when people are dying for the making of anime. It makes anime not worth it. As I mentioned much earlier in this essay the anime industry is making more money than it ever has at 2.9 trillion yen which translates to one billion nine hundred fifty-nine million eight hundred twenty thousand pounds. If the industry is making as much as it says why are those in the industry being payed so little, those who work in anime are payed practically pennies. In November of 2016 an animator who works for the studio, P.A Works posted a picture of their budget on their twitter and according to that budget the highest pay the animator got was 67,569 yen (£456) in October 2016. For the number of hours that the staff put in and their health that they risk just to make a living and to achieve a dream of working in anime that kind of pay is disgusting.                                                                                                       On a lighter note now that anime has opened more to the west and westerners are hearing about the conditions of working on anime in japan, some westerners are reaching out to try to support creators, so they don’t have to overwork themselves as hard such as the 2017 animator dormitory project which was a fundraiser for animators to have stable living conditions. The project was able to raise $26,442 USD to help animators.
 This whole situation gets even more ridiculous when overworked creators become too ill to even do their work. Hunter X Hunter is a very famous manga and anime series; its mangaka, Yoshihiro Togashi is clearly very overworked. Hunter x Hunter has been in publication since 1998. It is meant to be a weekly series appearing in the Japanese magazine, Weekly Shounen Jump. Out of the 20 years that its been in publication its actually only appeared in Shounen Jump 382 (39.3%) of the 971 potential times it could of. That means that in the past 20 years, Togashi could have not been payed for 589 weeks out of the 971 weeks he has been making Hunter x Hunter; we don’t know that for sure but that’s a potential reality caused by the fact that creators like Togashi are pushed to illness because of overworking to the point that they simply can’t work and if they push themselves too far karoshi could occur.
To conclude anime has changed in many ways, in some way heavily for the better but in some ways extremely for the worst. To most parts of anime there is a better and a negative. In terms of the anime that is created there is more anime being created than ever this allows greater gems to be made but then it also allows for the market to be heavily over-saturated and certain genres such Isekai are getting way too much focus upon them. There is a good fanbase surrounding anime but it’s over casted heavily by the bad vocal minority of the fanbase, so this is a change for the worse that keeps getting worse as this minority sadly grows louder. In terms of the accessibility to anime in the west it is getting a lot better but sites like Netflix are throttling this accessibility. Hollywood isn’t helping anime change for the better at all with its tarnishing versions of animes, but the anime inspired cartoons in the west are a great homage to anime. One of the best changes in anime is the great new influx of anime creators that are bringing anime to new heights. But the treatment of the creators behind the scenes is a disgusting plague on anime that is dragging the anime industry into The. Fucking. Dirt.
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oricami-art · 1 year
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This was the fanart I decided to make for February! (Yes I actually drew it in February, I'm just bad at posting here...I'll get better, I hope) Reigen is one of my favorite anime characters overall and I am so happy with how this piece came out! He was my phone wallpaper for many many years and now it can be of my own art! I also recently got his nendroid in the mail and it is so cute!
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