Anime losing influence in America?

I've been watching anime since I was a kid on cable programs like Toonami or Ani-Monday, But I always resented that anime was banished to late night TV, rare occasion movies, or On Demand. But lately I've noticed that they've not even been on programs like those!

Do you fello Fakku-ers think anime is in decline in America?

Maybe in the mainstream media. I noticed a while back that even Adult Swim has relegated anime to it's late night slots, and only on Saturdays. Kinda says something about a programming block that started off with nothing but anime.

In general, though, I don't think so. Every year I go to ACen in Chicago, I always see more people than the last, so that seems like a good sign to me. Of course, that's simply one facet I'm looking at, but I'm pretty confident that it has a solid foothold here in America that will not go away very soon.

It's going away from cartoon-network, but cartoon network sucks anyways (maybe there's a connection...). It has started to air on some other kids channels, but their horribly censured.

I watch it online, so I don't care about the decline of anime on TV

The market has changed since the 90's and early 2000's when it was in more mainstream TV. Actually the market is pretty much the same but I think American culture has done most of the changing since then.

What I mean by that is that anime's target audience is (for the most part) teens and people in their early 20's. Not saying there's anything wrong with being 25, 45, or 95 and anything in between and watching Madoka. We know it sells in Japan.

On the other hand, US teens and people in their early 20's watch reality TV and sitcoms and almost anything animated (Family Guy, South Park, etc excepted) is seen as unrealistic or kids stuff. This means that the anime that comes to the US ends up on Cartoon Network and so on which are targeted at kids around 8 or 9. I can't speak for every kid out there but when I was that age I loved Dragonball. (Thank you Toonami)

So why did One Piece, Naruto, etc disappear from after school TV? I think its because some parents saw their kids re-enacting it and flipped out. TV stations then moved the show to a block where 8 year olds are asleep (late night) but those of us that actually like the show are far too few in number to make it profitable for TV. And so its mostly DVD's. All of this is just my guess btw. I havent been watching anime for too long so someone could fill me in on 90's anime that aired in the US.

The companies that license and bring us English translations are completely aware we exist and will buy their products. They probably know its getting more popular too but it needs to become mainstream for them to put it on TV again. I never want to see it become popular because the price of merchandise will skyrocket.

Very eloquently spoken, sir or madam.

I wish to point out that America, which most of us live in, I am assuming, has many political problems of its own currently and congress is trying to pass some pretty ridiculous and harmful laws right now, which makes me lose even more faith that our government will improve, but will rather, continue rotting until it collapses from the bottom-up.

For example, the two laws abbreviated SOPA and PIPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Internet Protocol (IP) Act, have the positive, and also the negative effect in the same sense, of allowing companies to shut sites down for infringement.

However, given the nature of corporate bodies in the United States today, I can only interpret the effects of either of these laws being passed as negative. While copyright infringement and piracy are indeed problems faced by the world, the US congress is attempting to pass a law that will allow them to instantly shut down any site which 'could possibly contain infringing material whether present in user accounts or the site itself', in order to control and dominate the market, and also the internet.

Say goodbye to online streaming sites, the pirate bay, and many other places that many of us visit every day, and say hello to corporate lawsuits on otherwise innocent and law-abiding individuals for multiple millions of dollars, whether it is in the US or internationally, they will enforce it via either one of these laws.

Also, the differences between the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Internet Protocol Act may seem different if taken at face value, but they have very similar functions. However, the Protect Internet Protocol Act is even more dangerous than the stop online piracy act, and not just for common citizenry - for corporations such as banks and national vaults including the treasury.

The Protect Internet Protocol Act, if successfully passed, essentially protects the user of an IP address entering a site by law, and so if, for instance, an extremely skilled hacker compromised a bank's security systems at night and locked themself inside the bank vault, by law, the police would be forced to allow them to have their way with people's money without reprimand or punishment until they left the banking establishment. Also, unless they left with cash in hand, it would be nearly impossible to capture or track said hacker who completely compromised their security, and even if they could, the law would prevent said person from being a criminal.

Think about all your savings accounts, suddenly empty one morning and it's the law that you cannot do anything about it. Quite a nice situation, no?

Absolutely not.

It also doesn't help that Bandai just basically shut down it's American branch. We will always have anime, if the internet has taught me anything it's that if you want it, someone can get it for you. As for here in America while anime is definitely more popular than ever it's just as obscure and foreign, but it's also way more accessible, so I guess what I'm saying is that the American anime market has never been big, we're just noticing it more now.

Oh god. I would love it if they stopped airing Anime on TV.
I hate it.

Hehe, dude, you should see Mexico, generaly latin dubbed anime is good, but for some reason there are no T.V. channel that airs it, and if they did, they never finish to dub it and leave it in half, not only that, dubbing studios only choose certains anime to air, I'll never see anime mostly because of that.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell that the main problem here is that even when they are actually airing some anime in Mexico in some channels, they do in at very late at night, (like 2:00 am or something)

I think a main reason is that Most American Dubbing is not that great. Some are good and all but just not many of them are that good compared to the original. Like you can go to funimation's site or chrunchyroll's site and there are a lot of animes being subbed.

People still speak latin nowadays?

Law students on Fakku? Who'da thunk it...

Anyway, Such a situation is terrifying, But the law is not completely without merit. I can only imagine how much money is lost in the international market of media due to pirating of movies and music. Passing a law as extreme as this one is not the right answer, But a law that would prevent pirating in a less pants-soiling direction would be much appreciated.

Pirating is easy, But hurts our favorite company's and musicians.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY FUNAMATION!

I remember when I used to watch anime on CN and Locomotion. It was rather thrilling and it's kinda sad that kids nowadays won't know that feel. Although, I don't really think that the youth these days are actually interested in anime. I see 8 year olds talking about Jersey Shore and shows like that. It's really awful.

It not because Sopa or Acta, nor any kinda piracy... ever think of who we watch shit now... via ipod, ipad, streaming from netflicks and funimation off your phones and laptops. Actually Sopa and Acta has more to do with non anime/manga/and hentai like your knockoff bags, electroics , and seeds/meds. Programs like photshop and sony vegas will still be found, Torrents are virually untractable if you don't seed(you get caught sharing is when you get busted) plus Dl's off mediafire and megaupload unless taged with code or a claim filed are safe. The only thing sopa is closely affected is overtaking of web domains and filtering.. with any five year old can bypass... literly i did it in korea.

Yes, anime as an industry in America is definitely on the decline, the thing is, anime first got its American reboot as sort of aimed towards younger people living in the mid-late 90s, and really continued on with stuff like Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. But than the anime aimed at younger people dried up, and as the 2000s continue anime began to become more and more a niche group. Many of the people I know think I'm freaky, and some are even downright outrageous in their portrayal of anime, for example I once knew a person who thought all anime was porn, and I also knew a person who thought that all anime was the same. So not only is anime on the decline industry wise, but also culturally, the word of mouth and rumor has somehow given anime a bad rep.

And again with the demographic issue, you have to give credit to Pokemon (4kids or not) for the rapid spread of anime in the generation born in the mid 90s, back then, Pokemon was the national video game of choice and Yu-Gi-Oh the national obsession (yes modified a quote from the New York Times about the 20s). Nowadays...Call of Duty is the national video game and Justin Bieber the national obsession. I rest my case

Oh, sorry, I was refering to latin spanish (not the same as the spanish from Spain), you know, the spanish used in all America.

I know what you meant, I was just messing with ya. Spanish in the Americas is Espanol and Spanish in Spain is Castillano.

As long as there's still Anime Cons here, I doubt it. Maybe in the laymen's/casual's eyes though, yes.

If people think that Anime is on the decline, they need to look deeper. I was getting my fill only on adult swim until someone said I was a drone of mainstream.

It's a shame really, but we were born in an unprecedented era. I know that I wouldn't have gained the knowledge or the desire to obtain the knowledge, if not for the adventurous world of animation. I remember watching for example Kikaider and seeing these cyborgs/artificial intelligence and I was like "wicked cool". Then there was Inuyasha, sure you knew it was fiction but it felt real to you because of the setting in Feudal Japan. Earlier shows like Pokemon, Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura also set the precedent.

Oh, and can't forget Gundam Wing my first taste in politics(though I didn't understand it's political plot. All I knew was that Heero Yuy blew shit up, had a calm face about it and constantly threatened a woman so witless she didn't even bother to report it :D).

The quality of anime is still pretty top notch, Madoka, Nanoha and Rozen Maiden are some of my favorite Mahou Shoujo series that would surpass the level of epicness that Sailor Moon once had. Nanoha might have more of the Serena/Usagi-Chan appeal, but I can see Madoka being the Gundam Wing of this generation. I forgot Gosick(it's a pretty generic plot, but for a beginner in the anime world I'd reccomend it).

All we have to do is promote the reality of anime as something that can captivate a child's imagination and actually make him use it. With that, will come some accidents but would you rather have your daughter idolizing a generally mediocre 17-18 year old brat? Same with Lady Gaga, who the hell comes up with this stuff?

I hate reality TV/Drama TV as having a one-dimensional plot, never changing and it can only gauge my mind for maybe a few seconds. These kids, our little brothers and sisters and cousins, etc they don't know any better.

They have our apathetic media and our even more apathetic parents, we're the only ones left that can espouse the truth of our great times.

I would like to say cultural differences. Any sort of animation is still being said to be "kid stuff" over in the West, not so in Japan. It can be hard to categorize seeing how franchises like Hokuto no Ken and Code Geass are not meant for kids, but some adults will find no interest at all. This happened with "Batman: The Animated Series" back when it came out, it had a ton of viewership in the regular kids shows block, when it got moved to primetime, it's views went down.

One can sell stuff like Pokemon since it appeals to kids and it's a big market, but one cannot sell Code Geass to a Western adult that easily. Their reactions would be either "it's a cartoons, it's meant for kids" or "what kind of sick kids cartoon show is this?!" and it would later cause controversy unless there is some censorship, which has the possibility of ruining a lot of the story in a ton of animes, among other things.

This, actually.

Anime never really had 'influence' in our culture. Not.. legitimately. It's always sort of been this... 'exotic' thing that only some people are into, after a certain age. To be honest, it's still normal to get kind of an odd look if you say you like anime. It sort of creates this unintentional image of a very sad-looking dork in a kitty cat beanie, eating ramen on a couch, alone.

At least.. that' how I feel. x.x