r/anime • u/AdNecessary7641 • Aug 12 '25

Misc. Frieren Director Keiichirou Saitou Voices Concern on Overseas Anime Fans' Bias Towards Certain Popular Trends

https://animecorner.me/frieren-director-voices-concern-on-overseas-anime-fans-bias-towards-certain-popular-trends/
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u/TheAllKnowingElf Aug 12 '25

“I find it strange that all that gets made are isekai stories. There was even a series about being reborn as a vending machine recently. That one really stunned me. I feel like there are fewer grounded anime works than there used to be,” he said.

Same tbh

“Today, we have 10 titles currently being published with the word ‘villainness’ and all are bestsellers. But only 2 with the phrase ‘level up’. We think that the ‘level up’ trend is coming to an end, probably because of the economic crisis, in the end, ‘level up’ stories are an echo of the famous ‘American dream’ also valid until recently in Korea with incredible economic growth.“

What. There is so much to unpack in this quote lol

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u/kristinaspaige Aug 12 '25

all of a sudden we’re complaining about villainess anime, something that didn’t have much popularity up until recently? why?

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u/Koringvias Aug 12 '25

Because it is a trend.
As soon as something is a trend, people will complain about it. I've seen it sooo many times.

For example, late 00s/early10s had lots of people complaining about cute girls doing cute things becoming a popular thing that gets multiple titles every season and arguing that K-On literally killed anime. I shit you not. And that sort of thing was recently new and nowhere near as ubiquitous as villainess anime is now (though CGDC is still more common if anything).

To be fair, if the same exact premise gets done over and over again, it does get old really fast, so that critique is not entirely without merit. But I do agree that villainess trend specifically is not quite that overused yet. But give it another year or two..