Comments on: After All the Kadokawa Bullcrap, At Least She’s Still the Same Suzumiya Haruhi

By: Kaioshin Sama

Kaioshin Sama — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:37:04 +0000

@Shadowmage: Oh they already are for sure, no doubt about it.

@ghostlightning: Actually some people really are fans of a given studio. Morseo in recent years though.

@Sorrow-Kun: As far as Kyoani’s influence, it depends on how much influence one figures moe otaku on 2ch have on the industry itself as a whole. I think you are underestimating the likes of Sunrise, Satelight and Bones influence though. Just a quick look at DVD sales reveals that Gundam 00 and Code Geass (which may or may not eclipse Haruhi’s popularity depending on who you talk to) have been outselling other DVD’s pretty handidly the past couple of years, and Macross Frontier is a record breaker for Bluray sales as well. Now the degree to which Kyoani’s fans portray a certain rabid fanboyism unique to the studios shows and the company itself can be debated endlessly of course. If you ask me though no other studio has what they have in that department.

Also if you ask me again there’s no extra or added genius in any of what Kyoani does (I mean how hard is it to figure out that 2ch otaku respond overwhelming to cutesy girls doing cutesy things?), they just do what they know will be popular with their fans and pander to those desires like no other studio in the business. It’s the same approach Capcom has with video games, find what works by lucking into a hit, and then keep on replicating it until it gets old. If the longevity of Megaman despite little innovation in it’s formula over the years is any indication of otakudom’s unflinching tastes and Kyoani really is the Capcom of the anime industry then we could potentially be in for a long sequence of K-On and Lucky Star types series from them, but there will always be variety in the grand scheme of the anime industry. If that hasn’t changed since Haruhi then I doubt it ever will.

@Ascaloth: ^_-

By: Sorrow-kun

Sorrow-kun — Thu, 28 May 2009 02:50:59 +0000

@Asc
Yeah, I guess there are a lot of parallels between Haruhi and NGE but I think some of the finer details are different. It’s not a huge exaggeration to say that Gainax dominated anime talk/hype in the late 90s, not dissimilar to the way KyoAni does now. I think the difference is the approach that the two studios have taken towards their fans. Gainax tried to keep their distance, EoE is often cited as a dejected protest by Anno to the fans’ responses to the final eps of NGE. KyoAni are really in tune with what fans want to a level that’s unprecedented, I think. It’s scary because it gives them so much influence. I’m not sure I like just one company having that much power over what happens within anime fandom. If it were shared more evenly between three or four companies, that wouldn’t be as bad.

@ghostlightning
Yeah, but I think that underestimates just how important hype is in getting people interested in a series. Kadokawa have shown their mastery of hype, but they’ve also shown what I see as a lack of principles. It’s an uglier aspect of how the anime machine works, a necessary evil. My concern is, if more companies cotton on to this type of marketing, what will it do for anime’s variety.

@SM
I’m not sure. A Haruhi sequel was probably always in the works. Their timing was probably very deliberately planned, though. But you’re probably right, given how anime evolves, patterns like this probably always come and go. Moe won’t be the big thing forever. I wonder what the next big thing will be, and I wonder if it, too, will be drawn out and exploited to barely tolerable levels.

By: Shadowmage

Shadowmage — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:08:36 +0000

I’m of the opinion that the only reason the new season of Haruhi was released was because her merchandise stopped selling, and this second season is a booster shot for the fans. Ascaloth mentioned that this article reminded him of Eva; personally, I was reminded of what Sunrise has done with Gundam. Kadokawa and more specifically Kyoani have essentially become the standard for the moe phenomenon, and their flagship is Haruhi. Wait a few years and Kyoani will be to moe as Sunrise is to mecha (if it already isn’t).

By: ghostlightning

ghostlightning — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:52:12 +0000

I’m no prophet, but I do think that SHNY is good for the industry in that it can be a ‘gateway’ show though it really doesn’t serve the purpose well content-wise, the same way NGE was a gateway show for a generation of otaku (and it’s content really isn’t aligned to hook new fans with all its subversion of existing tropes).

The not so good effect is the copying of formulaic elements, which is not really news. That’s really how influence works.

Kudos to Kadokawa for knowing exactly what its core market wants. In the end otaku are fans of the show, not the studio. If the show is pleasing to them, it doesn’t really matter who distributes it.

By: Ascaloth

Ascaloth — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:33:51 +0000

Somehow, I can’t help having the feeling that an article somewhat like this, covering much the same themes in somewhat different form, have been written slightly less than a decade ago somewhere, about an old and somewhat forgotten anime which was titled Neon Genesis Evangelion….