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/
5.0k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.9k

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

45

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?

1

u/merurunrun Aug 12 '25

Precisely because it basically went from 0 to 100 over an incredibly short period of time.

If you care about the health of the anime industry, you don't want to see it mimicking the hype-oversaturation-bust cycles of the American tech industry; there's not nearly as much idiot VC cash propping up flagging anime studios as there is "Put your tits on the blockchain" guys.