/a/ - Animu & Mango

Edit: Sorry about the bad grammar and lack of proper header; I'm on pain meds and am half asleep. Polite sage.

>>808631

Ancient mummy curse.

Overexposure, I think. The mainstream audience got sick of it after a while, so different settings got more popular and took the spotlight.

>>808631

Choose this day.

Pick one, /a/.

>>808631

Mecha ultimately lacks mass appeal to today's audiences. Normalfags get weirded out by it, children have no interest in it, and more dedicated fans won't eat shit so there is little room for cheap cash ins. Compounding this is the general bleak outlook of the future and everyday life. No one wants to look ahead and instead prefer escapism. This last reason is also why isekai and similar are so popular nowadays.

Trends are cyclical, i think we'll see a mech resurgence at some point in the future, I just don't know when. Could be years, could be decades.

>>808631

i think that its not that popular today because of how saturated the genre is with cgi (some good but most shitty). as a result, most people dont feel a real impact when mechs are destroyed.

on top of that there were many studios during the 80'/90's that took alot of pride in how detailed their animation was, meaning they thought it more of an art then form of monetary story telling.

now a days, much of animation is seen as a way to make money with a decent story (or fanservice) that caters to a previously established manga fanbase. meaning, its better to make more decent anime based on alot of manga because you will have people consume that content and therefore make more money for the studio.

now to circle back to mecha, this trend has not treated that genre well because of the level of detail needed to really hit home the "these are humans in mechs. yea its cool but damn is it a cruel life," isnt able to be used through animation like it used to be due to high cost.

example: seeing a mech rip the cockpit from another mech and crushing it, which allows us to see the mix of blood and circuitry to remind us that people are dieing in these battles.

this is a really detailed form of animation that used to be done quite a bit (not the exact example but similarly done) during the late 80's and early 90's, but when cgi hit the scene it made it so that details of this level were too costly. then the anime that tried to shove cgi into alot of hand drawn stuff during those periods looked really really bad. so, the studios had to adapt or die and as a result alot of the mecha genre suffered because the details just werent there anymore.

to conclude this is not an anti cgi rant, its just a reasoning as to why mecha doesnt do too well anymore. infact, knights of sidonia (although the ending was kinda derpy) was a good example of how making almost everything cgi can be a good thing. that being said, i personally enjoy older mecha alot more because i really enjoy the level of detail.

hope this helps

>>808631

God, seeing this pic makes me wish the mechs in Franxx didn't look so shitty

>>808631

Mecha started as a genre aimed at teenagers and children.

When the children grew up, they still loved mecha.

Which lead to the 80/90 young adult/adult mecha and sci-fi anime boom.

But mecha started to lose it's dominant role, especially in the teenager and children demographic.

Rumiko anime, DB, HnK, Slayers, the big things that young adult and teenagers watched in the late 80s to the early 90s.

Many of fans of these works turned later into otaku, which lead to late night anime continuing in this vein.

The switch to late night TV anime started in 1996, which is a time period where mecha as a genre wasn't even close to it's 70's and 80's popularity.

There were some standout hits (NGE), but it wasn't nearly enough.

Mecha as a whole was extremely late in the switch to the late night TV model. This cemented the slow death of the mecha genre.

Heck, the first big late night mecha hits are Code Geass R1 and Macross Frontier which both aired ~10 years after the switch to late night TV started.

And Code Geass R1 only aired in a late night slot because of bad planing.

R2 was moved to an afternoon slot, forcing Taniguchi to give up on his original vision for the series.

Also the anime industry started to collapse around 2007, which was particularly bad for the mecha genre.

>>808718

I can't say what the situation in Japan is but in North America mecha gained the reputation of a children's genre. Aside from Transformers as an import during the 80s, mecha never really got a good foothold in the west. No 80s kids really get nostalgic over Robotech (which was a very childish adaptation with kiddy sounding voice acting and soundtrack), most Toonami fans have forgotten Wing and G Gundam, SEED failed on Cartoon Network because it's shit, and of course you have especially childish adaptations of super sentai material and Voltron. That basically leaves us with Transformers, which mostly sold because of the toy lines. Something like Patlabor would never stand a chance in the west if it's closest contemporaries are target at 7 year olds.

I remember one of the last attempts to distribute Gundam in the west before Bandai shut down their North American office was Gundam 00 on the Scyfi channel. I don't remember the exact time but I think it was fairly late at night on a Monday or Tuesday. Needless to say it flopped.

Nowadays the only new western fans picking up interest in mecha are reddit faggots who watch Evangelion because it's deep has good porn. Aside from that you get shit-tier Hollywood movies like bayformers and Pacific Rim.

In retrospect this might be a good thing because it guarantees that most mecha creators won't pander to normalfags. The only drawback is that most mecha games don't get PC releases.

>>808640

>>808698

Explanation of the mummy curse?

>>808701

It's okay, we don't get to see them anyway