Is the Western Anime market better now than it was a few years ago?

[Marik2]

There's a whole hell of a lot more light novels being brought over nowadays than even just 2-3 years ago, which is part of the broader "anime culture" permeating everything, which is amazing.


You know ToraDora? That amazing anime that came out like a decade ago? Well, they only recently started translating it's light novels, like this year I believe. And that one was a big name that most people respect, yet they didn't translate them despite having been out for so long.


We're at a new Renaissance now. It's truly awesome. You even have age old closeted anime fans like Elon Musk coming out.

Is there any quality in those light novels?

Mind writing down some examples of this Renaissance?

Light novels are just novels for teenagers. There's a lot more being licensed to the west these days, but they're still teenage power fantasies.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

There's a whole hell of a lot more light novels being brought over nowadays than even just 2-3 years ago, which is part of the broader "anime culture" permeating everything, which is amazing.


You know ToraDora? That amazing anime that came out like a decade ago? Well, they only recently started translating it's light novels, like this year I believe. And that one was a big name that most people respect, yet they didn't translate them despite having been out for so long.


We're at a new Renaissance now. It's truly awesome. You even have age old closeted anime fans like Elon Musk coming out.

Is there any quality in those light novels?

Mind writing down some examples of this Renaissance?

Yeah they're basically like reading anime. Lots of excellent stuff, most of which has become anime already.

Some of my favs are the Monogatari series (there's a bunch of them like with the anime), Spice and Wolf, Black Bullet, Overlord, Re:Zero, For the sake of my daughter I'd even fight the demon lord and the aforementioned ToraDora.


In the west we think that anime is the pinnacle but the way they handle it in Japan, the anime is basically a big advertisement for the light novels, since a lot of anime only go so far into the story so you have to read the rest to find out what happens. Then, once you get into it, you realize it's excellent so it's an extension of the anime fandom like how a game or a manga is.

There's a whole hell of a lot more light novels being brought over nowadays than even just 2-3 years ago, which is part of the broader "anime culture" permeating everything, which is amazing.


You know ToraDora? That amazing anime that came out like a decade ago? Well, they only recently started translating it's light novels, like this year I believe. And that one was a big name that most people respect, yet they didn't translate them despite having been out for so long.


We're at a new Renaissance now. It's truly awesome. You even have age old closeted anime fans like Elon Musk coming out.

Is there any quality in those light novels?

Mind writing down some examples of this Renaissance?

Light novels are just novels for teenagers. There's a lot more being licensed to the west these days, but they're still teenage power fantasies.

It depends on which one you speak of, something like Black Bullet is teenager-themed but stuff like Spice and Wolf or Re:Zero is beyond that level. One is about economics with barely any combat at all and most of the cast are grownups (or ancient beings that seem younger than they are) and the other is a mystery that turns all those teenage power fantasy components people have come to expect back on their head.

In a sense, going in expecting them to be teenage power fantasy is good since you will be quickly surprised and that surprise will birth interest. They actually fall within the broad "young adult fiction" category in the west.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

It's bigger for sure. But "better"?

 

[Marik2]

It's bigger for sure. But "better"?

This

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

More thinking it was a landmark film in the use of CGI, plus the film is pretty damn good as an adventure film that also manages to raise pertinent themes about the dangers of science for science's sake and whatnot, but hey, sure.

I don't know ... T2 was two years before it and the stuff in that was occasionally incredible. Some stuff God awful, but a lot of it amazing. Jurassic Park wasn't special on its own in terms of effects in sci-fi.

Kill it? No. But it's vague whether Bumblebee shares continuity with the Bay films, or is the start of a new continuity, possibly a shared Hasbro cinematic universe.

Don't particuarly care either way. All I know is that the film looks more appealing than any of the previous live action entries I've seen.

Haven't seen any of them, so I can't really comment.

In theory, no. But I think there's better ways to measure the scope of influence than box office gross. When you look at the highest grossing films of all time, and find that only 11 of them aren't sequels, then gross tends to come post-influence most of the time. Did the Harry Potter films succeed because they were just that good, or did they succeed because they were adapting insanely popular books?

Dunno. But I can call the HP films influential because after them you get a period of YA adaptations. I think that's a better metric of influence than just BO gross.

IDK ... Harry Potter is a bit harder to ape in these terms, however. I mean what exactly do they have that could have competed with it at the time?