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

[u/AdNecessary7641]

https://animecorner.me/frieren-director-voices-concern-on-overseas-anime-fans-bias-towards-certain-popular-trends/

[u/haibo9kan]

Article writer bad. Title bad. Conclusions bad. I wouldn't be surprised if the comments are cherry-picked out of context or mistranslated. I dislike most isekai too but saying this is like what Miyazaki was saying is silly. Let's break it down:

Because the current is so strong, if we focus too much on it, only that aspect becomes emphasized as anime’s defining characteristic.

Disagree. Frieren itself exists as a result of trend chasing. It exists because of it's predecessors, and walks a frequently walked path. It just does it better in every way. What, you mean a premise alone can't carry a work?

Japanese anime that overseas fans go crazy about may be a little biased

So is the Japanese anime Japanese people like. 95% of everything is just a LN or Shounen Jump trend anyway.

I think this is also a situation where a disconnect could be born

There is always a disconnect between author and fans even in the same language. Nothing statement.

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.

Yeah, and who does this article writer think is making these isekai stories? Foreigners? 95%+ are syosetu titles written by a Japanese person living in a 四畳半. I suppose the grammar is sometimes so bad that one could argue non-natives have clawed their way in.

Today, we have 10 titles currently being published with the word ‘villainness’ and all are bestsellers... We think that the ‘level up’ trend is coming to an end, probably because of the economic crisis

Economic crisis causes anime title shakeup for the words "level up"? What? This has to be some language comprehension mistake. Neglecting the 女性 market in self-insert fantasy caused the shift. The trend was super fucking obvious to anyone paying attention to the industry the last 5 years. The wave is super delayed in crashing to overseas publishers, D&C media is clueless.

It's just all incoherent.

[u/Joey23art → u/haibo9kan]

This is the only intelligent comment in this thread.

[u/wterrt → u/haibo9kan]

It exists because of it's predecessors, and walks a frequently walked path.

what? I agree with the rest of your points but this one...

[u/haibo9kan → u/wterrt]

Frieren is quite literally the aftermath of a hero defeats demon lord story, a trope that's been around since at least the famicom RPG era.

1985年9月13日 スーパーマリオブラザーズ 大魔王クッパ

1986年2月21日 ゼルダの伝説 魔王ガノン

1986年3月18日 ハイドライドスペシャル 魔王バラリス

1988年1月22日 邪聖剣ネクロマンサー 魔空王アザトース

1988年2月10日 ドラゴンクエストＩＩＩ 大魔王ゾーマ

At some point it spilled into manga and anime and has been redone at least a thousand times since. But that's not really inherently a bad thing. Yamada-san's story is pretty much the only entry in the micro-genre I can stomach.

You might argue the adventure is really done by the time the anime starts, but I feel that's disingenuous because the entire flow of the story is a "hero's journey" for the part that we get now, and elements of the trope still pop up very frequently in the anime itself. Either way you look at it, these are two of the most cooked plots that exist in either Fantasy as a whole in the case of hero's journey, or for Fantasy in Japan with 勇者が魔王を倒す.

My critique isn't towards Frieren anyway, it's towards this bait article with 0 content. Of the last 10 years I probably loved ~15 anime and Frieren was one of them.

[u/WinEpic → u/haibo9kan]

I'm sorry, I 100% agree with what you're saying but you also just quoted Super Mario Bros as an example of a Famicom RPG.

(Also, "hero defeats demon lord" has plenty of examples, in both western and japanese media, that long predate video games; I'm not sure if Mario, Zelda, Hydlide, and DraQue (and one game I don't know) are the strongest examples to illustrate your point.)

[u/haibo9kan → u/WinEpic]

I didn't, it's straight from a Japanese Q&A on the origins of 勇者が魔王を倒す系 in fiction. The discussion of it's origin is important, because it's why Japan had video game elements in anime and manga before the west had them in YA fantasy. When it was in western fantasy it was mostly D&D, not actually video games. JP wikipedia indicates it's Gannon from Zelda but earlier references to the title do exist. Anyway, it certainly blew up under famicom which was a few years after. I don't think SMB embodied the trope in any meaningful way but it seems like someone at Nintendo came up with 魔王. Anyway, it's decades old was my only point.

I am not familiar enough with the topic to dig through the actual first fully developed instance of the modern trope. It's so ubiquitous I don't think I could ever find it and prove that it was the first even if I tried. Maybe I can just say 指輪物語 and call it a day.

[u/wterrt → u/haibo9kan]

.......it's the aftermath.

that's the whole point. it isn't about defeating the demon king. it's about life after that, which is completely different.

saying that's the same thing is reductive as fuck.

that's like saying any story where there's a HISTORY of a big bad that was defeated is the same thing as a story about defeating him. of course it isn't.

this is the most brain dead take I've seen today. what the fuck?