Welcome to the weekend! Hopefully you're having a good one.
This above video was posted on Twitter just a few days ago, found on a VHS tape from 1999. It really shows you the different about how things were back then versus how they are, especially anime. They were also advertised much differently, as well.
For those unaware, anime was known as the alternative underground option that was sold on hardcore action and adventure and the weird. Throughout the '90s, thanks to companies like Streamline Pictures, ADVision, and Manga Entertainment, anime quickly became the source of bizarre, wonderful, new worlds, as the mainstream western industry was slowly being swallowed up by the changes brought on by the ACT and the streamlining of animation as safe, corporatized, edutainment product. Even by 1999, anime hadn't fully broken out in the West, but it was on the cusp, as the video shows. People wanted actual variety.
This was still the time period where there was a sizeable audience for animation aside from those wanting "comfy" shows where nothing happens and everyone learns a Captain Planet-style lesson at the end. This was all that existed even though viewers still had a hunger for wonder. They still do, but it's not as obvious today was it was then. Back then the western industry's take on animation was completely one note and harmful to creativity. It led to the dire state of things today.
At the time, animation itself was caught in a false dichotomy between "kid" and "adult" instead of just being a medium to translate ideas and new worlds. It was not really treated as a place of possibilities, and it still isn't today. This shallow dichotomy only worsened over the years to the point where now Adults primarily watch programming for Kids, and Kids primarily watch programming for adults . . . if they watch modern western media at all. It has gotten that broken over the years. This is what decades of letting a problem fester instead of addressing it does.
You didn't read that wrong. The majority of people watching the network where the material "isn't made for them" but for children, are nearing middle age. Children are no longer watching.
This comes hot on the heels of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block now taking over all of the prime time slots on the channel. This is a channel on its death bed. Children no longer watch television, never mind cartoon channels. All that remains are adults who want to watch children's programming (ostensibly) aimed at them instead. So children are consumed in the once adult internet and adults are consumed in the once childish network. Though CN still is kid focused in their material, it is just adults wanting to watch Captain Planet-level material instead of demanding more things in the vein of Gargoyles or even old HBO fare like Spawn, something that could be built on. They want children's programming, for whatever reason. This is a weird backwards mentality currently dragging the whole industry down and keeping anything original from being made. Eventually the independents will be all that is left. The mainstream did this to themselves
The above world of 1999 isn't around anymore. It's trapped in the same cliché product mill that things like Isekai are currently trapped in. There is no attempt to reach wider audiences or try new things. There isn't even an attempt to do justice to old things. It's just the same things rehashed over and over again to dwindling audiences. The only animation trying anything at all in the vein of what used to exist, are independent creators. The mainstream has decided up is down, down is up, adult is childish, childish is adult, and everything is backwards, and the people still there, what little remains, likes it that way. There is a reason these industries are only shrinking and dying: there is no growth here. There is no future down this road.
Anime's obsession with "comfy" also exists, but at the very least they are trying things like the new ONA idea to bring back some of that wonder again. There are still some new projects being attempted. They have not completely given up like the West has. There is a reason Japan has consumed the West in their animated and comic book mediums, and isn't just because Japan is better at it. It is because the West has given up entirely. Hopefully we will be able to right the ship sooner than later, but it will only happen in the underground. The mainstream West is done.
All that is left are the mavericks. Be sure to seek them out and support them when you can! That is where the future lies.
That's it for this time! Have some more promos, this time from 1997, to tide you over. Enjoy your weekend!
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