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/m/ - Mecha & Tokusatsu

The blessed machine

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File: 1462488851462.jpg (999.82 KB,1024x768,4:3,metal-wolf-chaos.jpg)

 No.13974

/m/, how the hell is mecha not popular in the west?

The genre in general has got all the makings of a successful property over here in the states

>tons of things to sell as merch, and is in fact sold out the ass, in japan at least

>Typically young MCs that get to pilot giant robot war machines, easy to self-insert for the kiddes

>Enough iterations to keep in syndication for years

So why is it largely unsuccessful and ignored in the west, by prospective distributors and consumers alike?

____________________________
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 No.13995

I got a report this thread is glitched and doesn't work, so I'm trying to post to see what happens.

nah guess it works (as well as anything around here lol)

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Post last edited at

 No.13996

File: 1462749394527.jpg (359.78 KB,640x640,1:1,Zaku thumbs up.JPG)

>>13995

Ay, you fixed it.

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 No.13997

>>13996

nah, that's just whatever magic innards that run the site, nothing I do

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 No.13999

>>13997

This stuff happens on /v/ a lot, it can only be fixed by a mod/BO responding to the thread.

Nobody really knows why it happens or why a mod response fixes it.

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 No.14001

Mecha is not popular in the East either. It's seen as old men's thing, children are into different things now.

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 No.14004

>>13974

The short answer is: Because speedrace was too violent and evil.

The long asnwer:

The mecha genre didn't have a good start in the West. All popular shows from back then either ended up as licensing nightmares that still make Western releases impossible(poster child: Macross)forever tainted due to retarded localization(Example: Captain Harlock and the Queen Millenia) . This bullshit happened during the first Mecha wave in Japan.Also take into account much stricter expectations and rules by the American audience and TV station managers for TV series. The reason why the nightmare named Robotech was made is because Macross alone didn't have the requiered numbers of Episodes to be considered a full season back then. Hefty editing was also a must for cable wasn't that widespread and any group of bored house wifes could cause a shit storm at the TV station.This is all what I know about the Situation in Burgerland and I think other Americans can explain that much better than me.

I am more knowledgable for Germany though. Here the genre had a better shot with Saber Rider and the Starsherrifs, a americanized version of a show called Sei Jūshi Bisumaruku. It went very swell for Japanese SciFi over the early years of commercial television here with the West's only faithful translation of Queen Millenia aired on TV and Akira coming out on VHS. The interest for it in Germany kinda slept in, because slice of life shows and every show that was Part of Nippon Animation's World Masterpiece theatre was more Successful. First with Heidi that was the only game in Town during its release on the only cartoon block here and then with everything that Tele 5 and RTL 2 have scrooged together and aired. Ohayu Spank, Attack No* 1, Captain Tsubasa and anime of old children's novels were more popular than Robots and shit here. We even got fucking Miyuki on TV that has a cult following. The manga wave didn't promise more success either. The designated big dogs were stricly Shounen and Shoujo manga and sometimes the one or other Seinen manga but nothing specifically mecha. The taste of the audience didn't allow for such huge wave of it. Its not all grim dark here. They may charge 30 fucking euro per 4 Episode DVD here or 50 for a entire season, but manga still cost effectively the same they did back in 2000 and sometimes you get a some Mecha. Most of the readership still reads Seinen, Shoujo or the Shoujo with the same specific set themes.

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 No.14013

YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.

>>14004

Harlock, Queen Millenia and the like weren't the first wave of mecha in either Japan or America. That'd be the likes of Tetsujin-28 and Mazinger Z in Japan, and America had Johnny Sokko and his Flying robot and Gigantor. Probably something earlier and a lot more shows too, but that's another topic really. Macross was the third or fourth "wave" in mecha in Japan, depending how you want to count the generations. Localising didn't kill these shows, just the opposite. These shows got a lot more exposure because they were dubbed and localised. Hell, you have a precedent with Godzilla and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Godzilla did come to the US before it's localised version, and it did bad. After it was localised, it found much larger audience and became a huge cultural phenomena. Taking a work and altering it to be larger success takes money and time, and while it has become a negative term to certain groups on the Internet, the fact still is that without localisation we would not enjoy anime or anything else from other cultures the way we do nowadays.

The exact same goes for Robotech. Yes, it was mashed with two other shows, and yet it was ground breaking at the time. It's easy to point and laugh at Robotech thirty years later as a purist, yet everybody forgets that Harmony Gold wanted to keep the level of sophistication found in Macross with their localisation, which they did in most cases, despite the alterations. There was a very small cult following for japanimation at the time, and Robotech kicked the fandom to high gear.

And no, Macross, Mospeada and Southern Cross didn't become a generational story in Robotech because of lack of episodes needed for a season. They became that because Harmony Gold didn't want to go the home release way and opted for syndication, and there is a needed amount of episodes needed for a show to be syndicated, which has nothing to do with episode count in a season if the show is not running in syndication.

Just like with Voltron that came year before Robotech, localised changes like this, especially at the time, were made out of appreciation for the original work and intention to have it the largest possible audience out there. Now you just have dubs and it's very rare to see anyone to actually localise works. Games are less localised in the same sense as Gigantor, Voltron and Robotech were, and are more censored with tweaks done to them.

As a fellow Eurofag, I can straight up tell you to shove your shit transliteration of Bismarck and call it with its official rominization. Saying that Germany got a better start with mecha than US is just laughable, you got a different start. Bismarck is a footnote at best in mecha history alongside the rest of dime in the dozen 1980's mecha shows like Dorvack, but at least you didn't start with the likes of Balatack and Starzinger, like the Sweden and Finland did.

But as said, mecha is mostly unpopular now because tastes change with time. We don't live in a technological age of marvels anymore, and even the highest piece of tech is mundane. Nobody bats an eye at the latest smartphone despite it being an insane achievement in tech in many ways. We don't reach to the stars anymore, instead we're more about the Internet and how we miniaturise things. Terminator is a good example of this, how Skynet changed with Genisys. Mecha has become part of adults' childhood, and as children want to stand apart from their parents, things like Youkai Watch have become immensely popular in Japan to the point of trumping over Pokémon. Japanese kids absolutely love Youkai Watch, and think that mecha are for old men. This is reflected with only a handful of mecha shows being targeted for kids, like Super Sentai, and vast majority are being aimed at adults.

Three decades of pumping out of mecha has made Japan tired, and the exact same goes for the west. It's simple as that, really. Giant robots had their fad, hit the cultural scene and were replaced with something new when it grew old and tired. Mecha isn't the best genre out there for mass consumption, as most shows are either toy commercials, war stories or something else generic as hell. We haven't seen any innovative mecha game, anime, movie or anything like that since Evangelion, and even that is debated. Nevertheless, Evangelion's popularity and how it's overall seen as the one that stands out of everything else really tells you a lot. Gundams, Valkyries, Braves or Transformers, those the same gray shit to the general public, but an EVA stands out. When people remember either Optimus Prime, some weird purple robot with green stripes or whatever the latest blockbuster movie has, it tells that the genre itself doesn't have a lasting effect and will remain a niche until the overall cultural surroundings begin to support technology and mechanical developments further, which is not happening anytime in the near future.

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 No.14022

>>14013

>Harlock, Queen Millenia and the like weren't the first wave of mecha in either Japan or America.

Yep. I would say it all started with Astroboy and then Mazinger Z and Tetsujin-28 as you stated and after that Gundam.

>They became that because Harmony Gold didn't want to go the home release way and opted for syndication, and there is a needed amount of episodes needed for a show to be syndicated, which has nothing to do with episode count in a season if the show is not running in syndication.

This only a more exact version of what I have said and weebrags used to print.

>As a fellow Eurofag, I can straight up tell you to shove your shit transliteration of Bismarck and call it with its official rominization. Saying that Germany got a better start with mecha than US is just laughable, you got a different start. Bismarck is a footnote at best in mecha history alongside the rest of dime in the dozen 1980's mecha shows like Dorvack, but at least you didn't start with the likes of Balatack and Starzinger, like the Sweden and Finland did.

Mecha got a better shot. Did Germany had better Mecha shows? Hell no! Keep in mind that I am talking about the period were commercial TV has just started and Tele 5 was like the only channel airing mecha anything. What you have said about Bismarck , i.e. that it was footnote at best and very bitter one I might add for the Show wasn't that popular in Japan to begin with, could play a big role into World Master Piece Theatre curbstomping the genre here. Not only was everything from that line available for cheap but also much better. I forgot to mention that the I was talking about the Shit sabanized version of Bismarck Anime house had to correct and redub for their DVD release.

>Three decades of pumping out of mecha has made Japan tired, and the exact same goes for the west. It's simple as that, really. Giant robots had their fad, hit the cultural scene and were replaced with something new when it grew old and tired. Mecha isn't the best genre out there for mass consumption, as most shows are either toy commercials, war stories or something else generic as hell. We haven't seen any innovative mecha game, anime, movie or anything like that since Evangelion, and even that is debated. Nevertheless, Evangelion's popularity and how it's overall seen as the one that stands out of everything else really tells you a lot. Gundams, Valkyries, Braves or Transformers, those the same gray shit to the general public, but an EVA stands out. When people remember either Optimus Prime, some weird purple robot with green stripes or whatever the latest blockbuster movie has, it tells that the genre itself doesn't have a lasting effect and will remain a niche until the overall cultural surroundings begin to support technology and mechanical developments further, which is not happening anytime in the near future.

Absolutely this, I think. Your post together with what I have written should be a appropriate enough answer to OPs question. By the way, I didn't bother with Voltron, because first it was aired much, much later than anywere else and number 2 I kinda forgot that RTL 2 even had that.

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