I see. Well then, does it still produce some shows to your liking on occasion?
True. But really I don't think anymore that anime is mainstream. It's pretty much an extremely niche thing aside from the popular shounen stuff like Attack on Titan, One Piece, Sword Art Online, Pokemon, DBZ etc. I wouldn't even call Death Note or Sailor Moon mainstream. Even the mainstream stuff isn't as popular as something like Sports, Disney, TV Sitcoms, etc.
Well yeah. As it becomes more profitable, people are willing to invest more, but the more people invest, the less risk they want, so they forego the niche aspects to "widen the appeal". Even though one of the reasons niche things are so interesting in the first place is exactly the fact that people give less of a smurf and just make what they want to. I wouldn't even say they're catering to their niche, they just make their stuff and the people who like it find it. It's part of the reason why I'm so big into visual novels right now ^^
I guess that may sound hipster. When niche things start to stop catering to their niche I feel like they lose their feel and appeal. Especially something as niche as anime before the SAO/AoT boom.
Nah, that was just how I intuitively read what you wrote. So I take it the medium itself becoming mainstream is the issue?
Are you saying:"Some anime are mainstream, but overall the medium is niche?"
Mainstream? You mean new shows just doing "what's popular" rather than "what's interesting"?
Well, for some reason it feels like it has become extremely mainstream.
Nice to hear =) IIRC you've pretty much given up on Japanese anime culture?
Pretty good.
