An Incoming Decline

The Problems With Fanservice

Will be there be the next "Naruto"?

Continuining from my prior essays on both anime and superheroes, there are still anime that appeal to the masses but then again finding the new Naruto would be harder than previously thought. There are anime that air on kiddie programming blocks on local network channels here in the Philippines though the newer ones are One Piece, Fairy Tail, Bleach, Naruto and Kuroko no Basket in addition to older ones such as HunterxHunter, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, any anime series Hayao Miyazaki and friends used to work on, Yu Yu Hakusho and Pokemon. Either that I'm not watching enough contemporary anime or that some of the newest anime to catch fire are often discovered online. Anime like Attack on Titan, Kill la Kill, Free and maligned ones like Aku no Hana might have been popular or infamous back in Japan but they spread like wildfire online even to those who can't access through moonspeak webpages.

With the possible exception of Attack on Titan, growing numbers of animu either ramp up the fanservice (Kill la Kill, Free and Fairy Tail to some extent) or try to add spice to existing school based plots (Aku no Hana, Free again and Naruto to a degree). Other anime are eeriely a lot like other anime before. Kuroko no Basket is our generation's Slam Dunk because both of them involve high school basketball teams. HunterxHunter is kin to Yu Yu Hakusho while Naruto is based on both of them since there are two fox characters named Kurama. Other anime franchises are getting reboots and spinoffs. Evangelion, Gundam, Macross, Sailor Moon, Jojo's Bizarre Adventures, Devilman, Pokemon and Fist of the North Star has seen several spinoffs and reboots over the years. HunterxHunter has been through a reboot and rumour has it that Yu Yu Hakusho will get the same treatment.

There are still old-fashioned anime that appeal to everybody else such as Doraemon, Crayon Shin-Chan and the popular-in-Japan only Sazae-San. But between them, Naruto, Fist of the North Star and Gundam as well as Wolf Children and Golden Eggs, there are anime that increasingly don't appeal to anybody but a niche audience. You've got growing scores of anime that spice up a high-school setting plot such as Toradora, K-On, Haruhi Suzumiya, Free, Kill la Kill, Ikki Tousen and the recent Kantai Collection anime. Fanservice based anime have been around for a long time though they're not as common and explicit as some recent titles are. In fact, some fanservice anime are including odd taboos such as incest if the likes of Oreimo are any indication. Others are anthropomorphising inanimate objects such as Arpeggio of Blue Steel, Kantai Collection again, Strike Witches and possibly several more. Two of them even have a girl character who's based on the Hiei Battleship (no relation to Yu Yu Hakusho's Hiei though). The Japanese animation industry is even more depressing since the animators aren't paid well, not of a lot of contemporary anime are sponspored by more mainstream companies with the intent of selling merchandise to youngsters and that growing numbers of anime are aired late at night where kids are supposed to go straight to sleep.

The same problem can also be found in superhero comics though it seems different as well. With superhero adaptations especially when it comes to DC, almost every adaptation recycles the same characters all over again while most superhero comics continually churn out never-ending, differing iterations of the same character and reboots of the same titles, sometimes even the entire imprint. There aren't enough original superheroes to counter this trend and depressingly enough even the new original superheroes themselves are based on pre-existing DC and Marvel characters. For every Danny Phantom and Invincible as well as your Timothy Hunter, Watchmen and Preacher, there's always the latest version of X-Men, Flash, Superman and Batman lurking in the background. The comics themselves increasingly don't appeal to anybody else and are pretty expensive and largely inaccessible. Even with the Internet, not everybody has the time to download Flash comics from p2p sites like Rapidshare, Mediafire and KickassTorrents as well as Mangafox. And those who read comics online are more likely to enjoy Order of the Stick, Penny Arcade and 8Bit Theatre.