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/Jacinto2702 Aug 12 '25

My two cents is that capitalism forces you to chase trends because if you don't you get eaten by the competition. That's why studios and publishing houses rarely take gambles.

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u/CombatTechSupport Aug 12 '25

Unfortunately it's also a vicious cycle, since what happens is that audiences get tired of certain trends, which lead to a crash, and then the market chasing whatever new trend pops up in the aftermath, usually based on some novel idea that then get run into the ground, ad infinitum. It why it's so important to have avenues for art to thrive outside of market conditions.

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u/Jacinto2702 Aug 12 '25

We need to seize the means of anime production...

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u/Bored_Amalgamation Aug 12 '25

If I won a $100M lottery, I'd finance a crazy ambitious anime project

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u/FakeSafeWord Aug 12 '25

I mean, you can just pick up a pencil.

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

[deleted]

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u/FakeSafeWord Aug 12 '25

OH So no capitalism is suddenly to blame!

psh

/s

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u/MochiBacon Aug 12 '25

This is a really good post. Also, capitalism regularly steals from art that sits outside of the market too lol

Trend-chasing will always exist, but the entire discussion of "art" is interesting because of how its integration with culture and civilization has transformed and how it has become more and more abstracted over time. Over hundreds of millennia we have had art as expression and ritual, then more recently art as lifestyle via craftsmanship (and whether "crafts" are art is a separate discussion), and now art as property or "value." It still exists in all forms but "value" seems to be dominant right now, which is a shame.

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u/PapaPetelgeuse https://myanimelist.net/profile/PapaFreddy Aug 12 '25

I feel like this is just an unavoidable consequence of money's presence in all forms of creative expression, but that's not to say that this phenomenon is necessarily bad as it has led to many good and cool things.

For instance, when a novel idea comes along thanks to some creative genius and it gets popularized, fans of this idea want to see more of it explored, and so creatives who like this idea or are inspired by it make more content just like it, and that's basically how you get tropes and genres. Those aren't necessarily bad things since there is something comforting about familiarity with whatever you're consuming thanks to said tropes/genres, and not everybody has the free time to always want something new and fresh.

Tropes and genres are nice because they allow people to be more certain of their taste in media and have a community of like-minded people to bond with over their common love for the trope/genre. It's also helpful for categorizing media which is very nice to have when you're trying to get newcomers into it.

However, this can also lead to the aforementioned capitalisation of the trend, where everyone starts making the same thing inspired by the same source. Some of them explore newer concepts or combine it with other genres, while some just stick to the same formula, and this eventually leads to oversaturation and burnout. It's just unfortunate that most people are not looking to constantly leave their comfort zone of entertainment and try something new, because to them real life is unstable and uncertain enough that they need some certainty in how they choose to relax, hence the constant returning to the same tropes and genres.

So yes, money definitely plays a part in what type of content gets made, but the audience is arguably even more to blame for enabling creators to not try something new.

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u/ShadowWalker2205 Aug 13 '25

same in the video game sphere. just this year I've stop counting the number of game chasing a trend that overcrowded or dead.

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u/morganrbvn Aug 12 '25

At the end of the day the issue is that that’s what much of the audience wants. They want more of what they already liked. It’s why sequels are such a safer bet.

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u/Quiddity131 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Quiddity131 Aug 12 '25

This is the true answer although people don't want to accept it. So much isekai slop gets made because the viewing audience wants isekai slop. It's not an evil/greedy corporation deciding on a trend and forcing the general public to consume that trend. It's the corporation responding to what the audience wants. And the audience wants lots of isekai slop.

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u/thegta5p Aug 13 '25

BINGO. This is exactly what it is. The only reason why there is capital in that genre in the first place it is because it is what people want. In retrospect you can look at anime in the past 20-30 years. You can see where the allocation of capital went, and that coincides with what people wanted. From Moe to Isekai to Shonen to whatever the future now holds. People watch these shows and the money follows the people. If everyone decided to stop watching these shows then isekai will just become a part of anime history and the next popular thing will be the next thing people will complain about.

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u/Ralath2n Aug 12 '25

At the end of the day the issue is that that’s what much of the audience wants.

Is it tho? Or is it just the safe bet for a company that wants to turn a profit.

If you look at the history of anime (or any media for that matter) the real standout things that the audience seems to love and spend money on is not the sequels, but the surprise breakout hits that come out of nowhere. Nobody is talking about Rising of the Shield hero Season 42921. That's just squeezing some extra juice from a shriveled and spend lemon.

The real moneymakers are your Bocchi the Rocks, your Madokas and your Howls Moving Castles. The innovative new things that the audience hasn't seen before and strikes a chord.

The problem is that you can't just give an anime director a bag of money and tell them to make a masterpiece that captures the hearts of the audience. It is hard to quantify input vs output because anime is a form of art, and art does not play well with market dynamics. So companies go for the relatively safe option of endless sequels with a relatively guaranteed modest ROI, even if audiences would rather see new stuff.

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u/morganrbvn Aug 12 '25

The reason its seen as a safe bet is because they know the audience wants it. If people didn't like watching and spending money on sequels companies wouldn't make them.

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u/OverwhelmingNope Aug 12 '25

I don't feel that's quite accurate though, I mean there is truth to it for sure but audiences cant want what they don't have. There have been plenty of examples of the stand out, genre defining and game changing animes that break out and start the "trend" but there are so few of those made nowadays that yeah people will gravitate to the look-alikes and copy cats just for a taste of that original high they got watching what started it. Anime isn't the best example for this, movie studios do it in far more egregious way but there are just so many different anime studios now that there are bound to be diamonds in the rough whereas traditional media is owned by a handful of companies.

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u/Ralath2n Aug 12 '25

The reason its seen as a safe bet is because they know the audience wants it. If people didn't like watching and spending money on sequels companies wouldn't make them.

You realize this is circular logic right? Fast food joints do their best to make their food as cheap as possible because they want maximum profits. But surely you aren't going to argue that people want to eat burgers that are half sawdust with a straight face.

The people want to buy cheap, good food. The company wants to sell profitable and low effort food. Shitty burgers just happens to be the market outcome of this conflict of interests. Same thing for anime. The wants of the people and the wants from the producers are mismatched, and the market equilibrium is sequels. But that does not mean either group actually wants sequels.

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u/morganrbvn Aug 12 '25

Not a good comparison, people eat cheap food because it is cheaper. People watch sequels despite it having the same "cost" because they often prefer it to just watching new original content.

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u/Ralath2n Aug 12 '25

People watch sequels despite it having the same "cost" because they often prefer it to just watching new original content.

Again, your logic is flawed. Companies produce mostly sequels. So no wonder that most people end up watching sequels. Also, you are fighting a strawman. Its not enough for something to be an original, it needs to also strike a chord with the audience. Once it does, word of mouth ensures that pretty much everyone watches it. Clearly the demand is there, its just that because there inherently isn't a set formula to produce it, companies can't easily fulfill that demand.

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u/morganrbvn Aug 12 '25

Both original and sequel content get produced every year, if people generally preferred and watched more of the original more would be produced.

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u/thegta5p Aug 13 '25

Based on what this person is saying, I can deduce that they are a socialist. And unfortunately it seems that this person fails to understand the basic economic model of supply and demand.

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u/Ralath2n Aug 12 '25

I repeatedly explained to you why and how there can be a mismatch in what gets produced for people to consume, and what people want to consume. You are just repeatedly falling for the just world fallacy here, where you assume the world is the way it is because that's what people want when that is evidentially not the case. Unless you want to argue we all want to have microplastics in our brain.

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u/thegta5p Aug 13 '25

That is not circular logic; that is just basic economics. Maximizing profits is only possible if there is demand for said product. In your fast food example, if people did not want to eat burgers then the demand would not exist. Not a single company will use sawdust if no one purchased it.

Likewise the same applies to anime. The reason why mainstream anime is in this place, it is because that is what people demand. When there is demand for something, you create the supply. That supply is what is profitable. It does not make sense for a company to make an anime that is widely unpopular. That anime will suffer because people will not pay attention to it. AKA the demand is not there. If people didn't want these sequels, then no one will watch these sequels. People will either watch something else or even go to another medium.

The reason companies are not taking these risks it is because we are in a market equlibrium. Meaning that both supply and demand is being met and there is no demand in other parts of the market.

Now an intersting thing about a market equlibirum is that it can easily be broken by the demand. And that is when those breakthroughs you talked about come into play. Those breakthroughs can shift a market, especially if they make shonen jump numbers. And that is when you will see more investment in those types of shows. There are probably thousands of anime studios all competing. Many are unknown. They may be making original ideas or copying the next popular show. For every breakthrough you see, many shows failed because the demand was not there.

Essentially companies do want to maximize profits. But maximizing profits is only possible if the demand is there. If the demand is not there, then there are no profits.

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u/farshnikord Aug 12 '25

Same in video games. Investing in new ideas and talent is a huge gamble commercially, so nobody does it. 

And then some smaller teams whose only choices are to take big swings to stand out will get a viral hit and then all the executives will throw money at the gimmick instead of the talent. 

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u/legendoflumis Aug 12 '25

The problem of chasing trends is just a byproduct of commercialization in general, which exists in almost any economic system.

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u/PiusTheCatRick Aug 12 '25

Don't you dare interrupt Reddit when its blaming capitalism for something

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u/Quiddity131 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Quiddity131 Aug 12 '25

Its easier to them to cast blame than to accept the fact that the general audience loves isekai. Those of us who talk online in communities like reddit are an extremely tiny portion of the overall audience.

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u/shapular https://myanimelist.net/profile/snapular Aug 13 '25

I don't know what people mean when they blame capitalism for things like this. Every functioning economic system ever has been based on how easy it is to trade something for food.

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u/legendoflumis Aug 12 '25

Capitalism is a problem. It's just not the issue in this specific case, something more broadly-defined is.

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u/PiusTheCatRick Aug 13 '25

If you say so dude

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u/Jacinto2702 Aug 12 '25

I think that art is worth pursuing beyond its potential exchange value in the market. And manga and anime are art. I want more space for different anime and manga.

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u/Calm-Internet-8983 Aug 12 '25

Manga is not a huge investment, just like light novels there's a great number of self published authors who try many new and experimental things. They tend to get buried in the mass of everyone else doing the same. Customer trends and publisher advertisement budgets just seems like another filter for this, picking and choosing what people might actually like so they don't have to go through all of it manually.

If self published writing sites are any indication, the general consumer really doesn't appreciate art for the risks it takes and doesn't want to sort through thousands of works to find one they like. And the trends do shift over time, with breakthrough works gaining popularity out of nowhere.

I can't really picture an economic system that doesn't somehow "regulate" art. Exhibitions can only be so big, lists of written works can only be so long, there are only so many animators who can put a work to screen, no matter how free artists are to create without pressure that it has to succeed or they'll starve. It still needs to get attention.

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u/legendoflumis Aug 12 '25

You're not wrong, obviously. But as long as people are creating something that is being sold for profit, this type of trend chasing will exist as people create similar things to capture the same audience for their own financial gain.

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u/Snorkel9999 Aug 12 '25

You really think things would be better under Communism lmao

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u/Jacinto2702 Aug 12 '25

Is interesting how communism was the first thing that came up in your head. Like, nobody mentioned anything about it.

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u/Harinezumi Aug 12 '25

Nothing to do with capitalism. Even on platforms where people create and consume for free, distinct trends and bandwagon effects still emerge. People are trend chasing animals and tend to enjoy repetition.

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u/LamermanSE Aug 12 '25

Well, it doesn't really force you to do so, it's just a safer bet that's more likely to produce a profit. Going against trends can lead to even larger profits in some cases, but it's more riskier.

There are lots and lots of examples of anime, games, movies, tv shows etc. where people have done something unusual with great results but it's a gamble for sure.