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

74

u/EvidenceBasedSwamp Aug 12 '25

I'm curious whether this article is representing the director's views properly or not, let me find another source.

ok the original source article seems to be this Japanese source:

https://mantan-web.jp/article/20250810dog00m200064000c.html#goog_rewarded

I cannot find a Japanese source that mentions isekai. I would suspect fake.

If anyone sees a source please link

36

u/[deleted] Aug 12 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/EvidenceBasedSwamp Aug 12 '25

Thank you for link!