what killed the anime boom in the united states?

wonderfly

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...Kind of? I still don't think we ever hit lolicon or Papuwa levels before that. The first anime officially released in the US on home video, according to Anime News Network's encyclopedia, was Robotech on VHS in 1987. It took till 1993 until we started to get non-giant robot/non-Family Entertainment released anime, but Legend of the Overfiend was indeed among the first of them. But we got Akira at almost the exact same time.

Anime on VHS started being pumped out sporadically in 1989/1990, and really started taking off in 1991. In the Fall of 1993, the Sci-Fi Channel had their first Anime film festival (awkwardly titled "Adventures in Japanese Animation") and that's when the presence of anime started to be noticed on American television. And then Sailor Moon premiered on American TV in 1995, and by that point, anime started to grow in popularity. I still maintain that the moment anime became a full blown American phenomenon (aka the start of the "Anime Bubble") was in November, 1999, with the launch of Pokemon the Movie in theaters.

Which brings me to this thread. I was researching "When did the Anime Bubble burst?" (aka "when did the 'Anime as a phenomenon on TV' end?") and I found this thread. I was trying to pin down the crash of anime on TV to a single month/year. An initial starting thought would be "When Toonami ended in October, 2008", but as others here said, it seems the market had already crashed before then.

I think the signs of the collapse where there starting in 2004 and 2005, but there was still some popular anime bursts (Naruto in 2005/2006 perhaps being the main one). However, "Anime Unleashed" ended on the G4 TV channel in March, 2006. That may have been the moment. But Naruto was still going strong...

Others here referenced the collapse of the "Anime on DVD" market in 2007 (which is tied in with the larger collapse of the DVD market in the later half of the 00's). But I'm looking more for when anime collapsed on TV, not on DVD. And right now, I'm split between two dates:

In September, 2006, Kids WB lost the rights to Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh (this was tied in with the month when "The WB" ended and it became "The CW", thus eventually ending "Kids WB").

In March, 2007, Cartoon Network rebranded the Toonami block with a new version of TOM and a new line-up (which was bad). After that, even Naruto went on the decline in popularity.

Someone above in this thread pointed to "Death Note" (which first aired in October, 2007) as the last anime series to obtain American pop culture acclaim, but...I want to say that was a return to anime being a cool niche sub-culture (for people who were like "Death Note's only for the cool people who know it airs late at night")...similar to when anime aired on the niche "Saturday Anime" program on the Sci-Fi Channel back in the 90's. Speaking of the Sci-Fi Channel, "Ani-Mondays" started airing late at night in June, 2007, but that also was a pretty niche/obscure anime programming block.

So yeah. I'm leaning towards September, 2006 or March, 2007 as the point where anime stopped being a mainstream pop culture "thing".
 
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Red Arrow

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In Belgium and the Netherlands, the biggest issue was the existence of English manga. True manga fans bought their manga in English (or French) because they didn't want to wait. As a result, manga never really had the chance to become 'mainstream'. We had two big manga publishers but they both stopped publishing around 2012.

The thing is... American TV shows that are not on Netlfix are now facing the same fate. No one wants to wait till the series finally gets released on TV / DVD. New DVDs are getting super expensive because only die-hard fans buy them nowadays. It's sad.
 

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I’d say the internet killed it. America used to have to wait for a hot new anime in Japan to come to the states. When the internet started getting big, no longer did you have to wait as long to hop on the bandwagon of the hottest anime and they wouldn’t be censored either.

I feel like if the anime industry in Japan cared about the international audience a bit more back then, and didn’t let some properties stay Japan-exclusive the anime boom could’ve lasted longer. A property like Yokai Watch could’ve definitely outshined Pokemon if it was a worldwide release kind of thing.


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Light Lucario

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I feel like if the anime industry in Japan cared about the international audience a bit more back then, and didn’t let some properties stay Japan-exclusive the anime boom could’ve lasted longer. A property like Yokai Watch could’ve definitely outshined Pokemon if it was a worldwide release kind of thing.


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I don't know if giving Yokai Watch a worldwide release would have necessarily improved its success outside of Japan. It might have helped, but I don't think that alone would have made it outshine Pokemon. I can't really see Yokai Watch getting the same kind of popularity that Pokemon did during its hey day for multiple reasons.
 

Takao

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A property like Yokai Watch could’ve definitely outshined Pokemon if it was a worldwide release kind of thing.

Yo-Kai Watch is a kids anime. Can you explain how a quicker localization would've helped it become more of a success? It's not like the show came out 15 years later when it would've looked dated.
 

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The anime boom died down rather quickly. Even the original Pokemon fad didn't last very long, it more or less died down around 2001-2002 while the series was in the mid-Johto years. The third movie completely bombed in the U.S. box office, hence why the 4th and 5th Johto movies only got limited releases by Miramax.

While Pokemon still got incredibly high ratings on KidsWb, the Hoenn seasons usually tied with Yu-gi-oh for being their highest rated shows at the time, you can still tell the anime impact was ending. Then of course came the 4kids dub change in 2006 and Pokemon moved to Cartoon Network, so that took a serious impact on the animes popularity in the U.S. Although Pokemon still aired for more than 10 years after in the dub, so who knows, obviously there are still millions of kids watching the dub to keep it on the air.

It's in the same manner some people probably don't realize how short-lived kids fads are. Same thing happened with Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers prior, even if they have new incarnations constantly. Even in the pokemon anime the "original trio" was really only used for less than 5 years, and Misty was in fact a fairly short-lived character in the anime. It's pretty funny that when people think of Pokemon in the height of its popularity, it really didn't last very long. Kanto only aired for about a year and a half, and then the show was already waning in popularity by the time we got into Johto. I think a lot of people also don't actually realize how short-lived Misty's character was in the show, only lasting 5 years out of a 20 year series. And yet that's what people think of for it's height of it's popularity.
 

Rhaynebow

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Yeesh, looks like I kicked a hornet’s nest with the Yokai Watch comment. I was just saying Yokai Watch was the first time I saw a Japanese IP really show signs of potentially dethroning Pokémon as the gotta catch’em all darling. Perhaps if the games and anime had a simultaneous release in Japan and around the world like Funimation has been doing with some anime, the franchise could have done a lot better. It could’ve been hyped up and gotten an audience instead of being “a trendy thing in Japan” that today’s tech-savvy audience could have access to way before it gets localized. It was brought to today’s Western audience with the Anime Boom methods.


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Takao

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Yeesh, looks like I kicked a hornet’s nest with the Yokai Watch comment. I was just saying Yokai Watch was the first time I saw a Japanese IP really show signs of potentially dethroning Pokémon as the gotta catch’em all darling. Perhaps if the games and anime had a simultaneous release in Japan and around the world like Funimation has been doing with some anime, the franchise could have done a lot better. It could’ve been hyped up and gotten an audience instead of being “a trendy thing in Japan” that today’s tech-savvy audience could have access to way before it gets localized. It was brought to today’s Western audience with the Anime Boom methods.

Yo-Kai Watch is a kids property through and through. Even in Japan. It's not a franchise like Beyblade or Yu-Gi-Oh!, where ideally you wouldn't have huge gaps in releases that would make international competitions difficult to standardize. It's more about collecting than competing. It doesn't even have a large nostalgia base to pull from since it's a young franchise. I don't see how a closer release schedule would've really benefited it. Like I said, it's not as though they pulled a Saint Seiya or something and brought the show over when it looked old. The video games weren't launched on a platform that had already fallen out of public favor. The show isn't really filled with time sensitive pop culture references (well, at least ones western audiences would catch).

Yo-Kai Watch's troubles in the English world (it has found success in some European and Latin American countries) is likely to do more with the property itself than the way it was released. Tonally, it's not like Pokemon, or really any of the kids anime that hit it big in the west. Bakugan, Beyblade, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! are all stories with journeys and big stakes (save the world/be the best in the world).* Yo-Kai Watch's core concept is that everyday annoyances can be blamed on invisible monsters. It's more in line with Doraemon than those other shows. Yo-Kai Watch also pulls a lot from Japanese society. Most of the monsters are local folklore. The idol culture Jibanyan is a part of, isn't really something mainstream western audiences know of.

Non-kids anime typically gets simulcasts and simuldubs as a way to starve off piracy. In the old days, when western anime roll outs were far more staggered, fans would subtitle and distribute shows themselves. Kids shows are impervious to that. Few kids will sit and read subtitles and few contemporary kids shows get fansubbed.

If Funimation got Yo-Kai Watch, it would've done significantly worse than it did. Their target demographics are teenagers and young adults. Kids don't use their service, as the complete obscurity of Puzzle & Dragons X and Monster Hunter Stories has shown. The older audiences Funimation does attract by and large couldn't have cared less about either of those shows. The simuldubs for both ended prematurely and there was no real fan outcry. In fact, more people have whined about Yo-Kai Watch's dub cast getting replaced.

*That's not to say an anime series with different themes couldn't blow up in the English world. After all, the kids that made those shows a success aren't the ones newer shows are being aimed it. It's just that precedence isn't in their favour.
 

wonderfly

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The anime boom died down rather quickly. Even the original Pokemon fad didn't last very long, it more or less died down around 2001-2002 while the series was in the mid-Johto years. The third movie completely bombed in the U.S. box office, hence why the 4th and 5th Johto movies only got limited releases by Miramax.

I would say the anime boom moved beyond Pokemon, that's all, not that it "died down quickly". A side effect of the over-saturation of material available. Kids moved from Pokemon, over to Digimon, and then on to Dragon Ball Z, and then on to Yu-Gi-Oh, and then "Adult Swim Action" and "Anime Unleashed" provided material for older teens and adults into anime. Naruto came along and provided one last gasp of pop culture phenomenon, and THEN at some point, it all died.

While Pokemon still got incredibly high ratings on KidsWb, the Hoenn seasons usually tied with Yu-gi-oh for being their highest rated shows at the time, you can still tell the anime impact was ending. Then of course came the 4kids dub change in 2006 and Pokemon moved to Cartoon Network, so that took a serious impact on the animes popularity in the U.S. Although Pokemon still aired for more than 10 years after in the dub, so who knows, obviously there are still millions of kids watching the dub to keep it on the air.

So (going back to my post above) you would say the end date where it appears anime died on TV is September, 2006, when Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh left Kids WB?
 

Light Lucario

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The anime boom died down rather quickly. Even the original Pokemon fad didn't last very long, it more or less died down around 2001-2002 while the series was in the mid-Johto years. The third movie completely bombed in the U.S. box office, hence why the 4th and 5th Johto movies only got limited releases by Miramax.

Considering that Pokemon started airing in U.S. in 1998, the fad lasting until 2001-2002 is pretty good. I wouldn't say that it didn't last that long at the very least. That's a pretty good length of a popularity, especially when the franchise has stood the test of time to show that it wasn't just a fad. The anime has never achieved that same level of popularity as it did when it first started, but attempting to brush off its popularity by saying it only lasted for a few years is kind of strange to me.

CyberCubed said:
While Pokemon still got incredibly high ratings on KidsWb, the Hoenn seasons usually tied with Yu-gi-oh for being their highest rated shows at the time, you can still tell the anime impact was ending. Then of course came the 4kids dub change in 2006 and Pokemon moved to Cartoon Network, so that took a serious impact on the animes popularity in the U.S. Although Pokemon still aired for more than 10 years after in the dub, so who knows, obviously there are still millions of kids watching the dub to keep it on the air.

I don't think that Pokemon moving to Cartoon Network had a serious impact on the anime's popularity. Fewer people could watch it on Cartoon Network compared to Kids' WB, but like you pointed out, it aired on the channel for over ten years. That doesn't sound like moving to Cartoon Network drastically hurt the anime. Not to mention it seems to be doing well on Disney XD. They've been promoting the series, giving it marathons and promoting the fact that they have all of the currently dubbed seasons on their app. That doesn't sound like the show is drastically unpopular. It doesn't have the same height of popularity that it once had, but for a show that has been basically on the air for nearly twenty years, it's doing pretty good all things considered.

CyberCubed said:
It's in the same manner some people probably don't realize how short-lived kids fads are. Same thing happened with Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers prior, even if they have new incarnations constantly. Even in the pokemon anime the "original trio" was really only used for less than 5 years, and Misty was in fact a fairly short-lived character in the anime. It's pretty funny that when people think of Pokemon in the height of its popularity, it really didn't last very long. Kanto only aired for about a year and a half, and then the show was already waning in popularity by the time we got into Johto. I think a lot of people also don't actually realize how short-lived Misty's character was in the show, only lasting 5 years out of a 20 year series. And yet that's what people think of for it's height of it's popularity.

I still say that a fad lasting for around three or four years is not really that short, especially for a kid's show/property. I'm not sure why you felt the need to bring up Misty again and how she didn't last that long. She currently lasted longer than any of the other female companion. Every other female lead has lasted for only three to four years. The only way she could be considered a short lived character is by looking at how long the show has continued on since her departure. It just seems like a weird way to bring up Misty and then proceed to act like she wasn't around for that long.

Yeesh, looks like I kicked a hornet’s nest with the Yokai Watch comment. I was just saying Yokai Watch was the first time I saw a Japanese IP really show signs of potentially dethroning Pokémon as the gotta catch’em all darling. Perhaps if the games and anime had a simultaneous release in Japan and around the world like Funimation has been doing with some anime, the franchise could have done a lot better. It could’ve been hyped up and gotten an audience instead of being “a trendy thing in Japan” that today’s tech-savvy audience could have access to way before it gets localized. It was brought to today’s Western audience with the Anime Boom methods.


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I don't think a simultaneous release would have drastically improved Yokai Watch's success in the U.S. I seriously doubt that a large number of kids watched the series prior to it being localized and thus resulted in a lost of interest in the property. Most kid anime titles don't really have a lot of popularity going for them to warrant a simultaneous release. Both Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh! are the only exceptions I can think of in terms of kids anime having legal subs available. That's mainly due to how neither property seems to be particularly well received among their target audience and there was a large enough demand from older fans to provide legal subs.

I know that Yokai Watch is really popular in Japan, but that success wouldn't have necessarily transferred over to the U.S. just by having a simultaneous release. I'm not even sure if Yokai Watch was an instant success or not in Japan. There were probably other bigger factors that prevented Yokai Watch from being more popular here, such as how a lot of the monsters are more tied into Japanese culture/folklore and it wasn't uncommon to consider it a Pokemon clone at first. Not to mention I think it's hard for any new toyetic anime to make a break through in the U.S. due to other properties like Pokemon that have stood the test of time to be successful.

ISo (going back to my post above) you would say the end date where it appears anime died on TV is September, 2006, when Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh left Kids WB?

I don't know if I'd say that anime died on TV at that point, but that did pretty much seal the fate of Kids' WB. I believe that the block ended just two years after losing both Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!. There were other factors that led to the end of the block, but I do think that losing both shows was one of the bigger factors.
 

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I would say definitely around 2006 is where the anime craze was pretty much dead. Also remember the Dragonball Z dub on Cartoon Network was done around this time. All of DBZ, Dragonball, and GT dubbed had finished airing on CN. The FUNI redubs of Seasons 1-2 came out in 2005. Once FUNimation had no new Dragonball series to dub back then, and CN gradually stopped airing the show, it definitely took a hit. I think some people easily forget the huge impact Dragonball Z made on Cartoon Network at the time, its height was 1999-2003 or so.

I don't think that Pokemon moving to Cartoon Network had a serious impact on the anime's popularity. Fewer people could watch it on Cartoon Network compared to Kids' WB, but like you pointed out, it aired on the channel for over ten years. That doesn't sound like moving to Cartoon Network drastically hurt the anime. Not to mention it seems to be doing well on Disney XD. They've been promoting the series, giving it marathons and promoting the fact that they have all of the currently dubbed seasons on their app. That doesn't sound like the show is drastically unpopular. It doesn't have the same height of popularity that it once had, but for a show that has been basically on the air for nearly twenty years, it's doing pretty good all things considered.

Still far less people got Cartoon Network than KidsWB. And then a lot of original fans either couldn't get used to the new voices, or tolerated them for a little bit into DP, and then dropped the dub altogether and went Japanese only. Or some people stopped watching Pokemon altogether.

I still say that a fad lasting for around three or four years is not really that short, especially for a kid's show/property. I'm not sure why you felt the need to bring up Misty again and how she didn't last that long. She currently lasted longer than any of the other female companion. Every other female lead has lasted for only three to four years. The only way she could be considered a short lived character is by looking at how long the show has continued on since her departure. It just seems like a weird way to bring up Misty and then proceed to act like she wasn't around for that long.

I say that because the fad of pokemon is associated with the original 151 pokemon and the original trio. But by the time we got into Johto it was mostly fading. As for Misty, she definitely comes across as short-lived now due to how long the series has gone on after she left. Now that the anime has gone on 15 years, and somewhere around 800+ eps since the end of the original series, it does make that portion of the show seem a lot more short-lived than it used to. And since Misty was the shortest lived Kanto character, since Brock outlasted her by two more gens and Ash/TR are still around to this day, it does make her seem short lived overall, doesn't really matter if she's in more eps than the other girls. Most of her extra time in the show was just Johto fillers where she didn't do anything anyway.

I mean sometimes it's easy to forget over these last 15 years millions of new kids got into the anime with any of the later gens and didn't grow up with the original seasons. Even if they watch them later, it's pretty funny when you realize even the kids who grew up with Hoenn or DP are now teenagers or in their early 20's. Anyone who was 10 when Hoenn started in 2002/2003 is now a 25 year old. Time passing is a funny thing, it makes you realize how short lived things were that seemed longer only because you were a kid yourself when it was going on.
 

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I would say definitely around 2006 is where the anime craze was pretty much dead. Also remember the Dragonball Z dub on Cartoon Network was done around this time. All of DBZ, Dragonball, and GT dubbed had finished airing on CN. The FUNI redubs of Seasons 1-2 came out in 2005. Once FUNimation had no new Dragonball series to dub back then, and CN gradually stopped airing the show, it definitely took a hit. I think some people easily forget the huge impact Dragonball Z made on Cartoon Network at the time, its height was 1999-2003 or so.

That's true, "Dragon Ball GT" stopped airing new episodes in the Winter/Spring of 2005. Going even farther back, the final episodes of "Dragon Ball Z" finished up in the Spring of 2003. There was definitely an "Uh-oh, where do we go from here?" for Cartoon Network following the end of those series.

Thankfully, Cartoon Network finally found a way to carry on, starting in the Summer of 2005.

With Naruto (and to a much lesser extent, One Piece and IGPX), I would argue the "anime boom" endured for a tiny bit longer.

But yeah, in early 2005, with Dragon Ball GT ending, it did feel like the end of an era...
 
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It's kind of funny now that Dragonball Super exists, imagine if it came out a decade ago rather than in 2015? The Dragonball hype train would have continued a lot longer. Back then everyone thought Dragonball was done forever especially since GT ended in Japan way back in 1996. Nobody could have possibly predicted Dragonball would get revived with a new series in 2015. It's in the same manner nobody believed there would be new Star Wars movies after the prequels ended, or how we didn't expect there to be new TMNT cartoons or so forth.

Kind of ironic almost all the predictions many of us made in the early 2000's all turned out rather wrong or different during the next 15 years. The sheer mass of old show revivals in both animation and live-action just over the last few years has been staggering. Nobody would have thought this even 10 years ago.
 

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It's kind of funny now that Dragonball Super exists, imagine if it came out a decade ago rather than in 2015? The Dragonball hype train would have continued a lot longer. Back then everyone thought Dragonball was done forever especially since GT ended in Japan way back in 1996. Nobody could have possibly predicted Dragonball would get revived with a new series in 2015. It's in the same manner nobody believed there would be new Star Wars movies after the prequels ended, or how we didn't expect there to be new TMNT cartoons or so forth.

Kind of ironic almost all the predictions many of us made in the early 2000's all turned out rather wrong or different during the next 15 years. The sheer mass of old show revivals in both animation and live-action just over the last few years has been staggering. Nobody would have thought this even 10 years ago.
Really? They have always revived popular old shows. This is not something new. I wasn't surprised at all when DB Super was announced. I don't know anyone who was. Way more surprised at the Houshin Engi revival.

I wonder if people from the 80s were surprised when TMNT and He-Men "finally" got revived around 2003.

Perhaps people are only surprised at revivals when it's something from their generation.
 

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Everyone in the Dragonball fandom was surprised when Super was announced. Dragonball had been over for 18 years besides brief specials, one off movies, or Kai (which is just cut together DBZ episodes), and to get a brand new series for the first time in two decades was shocking.

And as a TMNT fan, yes we were also shocked TMNT was coming back with a new cartoon.
 

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Well, kind of getting sidetracked now, but...

It's kind of funny now that Dragonball Super exists, imagine if it came out a decade ago rather than in 2015? The Dragonball hype train would have continued a lot longer. Back then everyone thought Dragonball was done forever especially since GT ended in Japan way back in 1996.

If Dragon Ball had carried on past "DBZ" immediately with "Super", instead of with "GT", it would have resulted in stagnation, like what happened with Pokemon's popularity here in the states. "Super" has no end in sight, it could carry on as long as One Piece, for all we know. The Majin Buu saga and the "GT" series were helped by the fact that Cartoon Network could promote them as "THE FINAL EPISODES" of the Dragon Ball saga. A sense of closure to the saga really helped those final 20 episodes of "DBZ", and those final 20 episodes of Dragon Ball GT (yes, the "GT" saga got a lot of flack for not being as good as DBZ, but those last few weeks did have the feel of "it's the end of an era!", which helped immensely).

"DB Super" was profoundly helped by nostalgia - with roughly 12 years having passed since "new" Dragon Ball material had aired (not including "Dragon Ball Z Kai" in this analysis), it just wouldn't have been the same if "Super" had come out in 1997 in Japan (or in 2005 in the U.S.A.). America needed to make the transition to the "Naruto" phenomenon in the Fall of 2005, along with "Adult Swim Action" material like "Ghost in the Shell" and "Full Metal Alchemist". I think it happened the way it was meant to happen.
 

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dudley said:
I think it was because the DVDs are ridiculously expensive. The prices may work in Japan, but not in the States. As a result, fans resorted to piracy.
Americanized dubs, and dealing with networks BS&P is also a factor to resorting to piracy.
Basically, piracy is to blame. If they had set up set things like streaming shows soon after after they air in Japan early on, things would be different.
Because we all know that American pricing standards for foreign cartoons will help keep a Japanese industry sustainable towards the foreseeable future. We all know that our entitlement to such cartoons through piracy will help change business mindsets from the industries making them towards its own demographic on the other side of the pond. This doesn't sound spoiled and juvenile at all.
 

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Still far less people got Cartoon Network than KidsWB. And then a lot of original fans either couldn't get used to the new voices, or tolerated them for a little bit into DP, and then dropped the dub altogether and went Japanese only. Or some people stopped watching Pokemon altogether.

Fans of the original series were well outside of the target demographic by the time 4Kids lost the rights to the dub and the series moved to Cartoon Network though. It's true that there was quite a bit of backlash for the TPCI dub and some fans either stuck to the Japanese version or dropped the show altogether, but that doesn't mean every fan felt that way or that kids, the actual target demographic of the series, felt that way. Even if the majority of older fans felt that way regarding the change in the dub, it wouldn't really matter when the show was always aimed at kids, not the people who started watching it from the original series. Less people could watch the series on Cartoon Network compared to the Kids' WB block, but the point on how older fans reacted to the voice actor change is pretty moot, especially when they've continued with the current cast for over a decade and thus plenty of children have grown up with this dub cast instead of the original 4Kids cast.

CyberCubed said:
I say that because the fad of pokemon is associated with the original 151 pokemon and the original trio. But by the time we got into Johto it was mostly fading.

That's because the anime was at its peak of popularity during the Kanto and to a lesser degree the Orange Island portions of the original series. Not to mention the original Red/Blue games were massively successful. There was Pokemon merchandise everywhere back then. It was huge, so of course the fad period of Pokemon would be associated with the first 151 Pokemon and to a lesser degree the original trio. That's when the franchise was in its hey day and thus most people would remember things/characters associated from that time. A fad lasting for three to four years still isn't really short. A fad can last for much less time, so I'd say that Pokemon's height of popularity was pretty reasonable sized, especially when Pokemon has proven on multiple times that it wasn't just a passing trend. The show still successful and the games sell like hotcakes.

CyberCubed said:
As for Misty, she definitely comes across as short-lived now due to how long the series has gone on after she left. Now that the anime has gone on 15 years, and somewhere around 800+ eps since the end of the original series, it does make that portion of the show seem a lot more short-lived than it used to. And since Misty was the shortest lived Kanto character, since Brock outlasted her by two more gens and Ash/TR are still around to this day, it does make her seem short lived overall, doesn't really matter if she's in more eps than the other girls. Most of her extra time in the show was just Johto fillers where she didn't do anything anyway.

So because Misty's extra time was in Johto fillers, it doesn't matter that she has lasted longer than any other female lead thus far? I don't understand this logic. Regardless of how you feel about Johto, she was still around for a good year or two longer than other female leads. You could argue over how well she was handled during those years, but she was around longer and trying to brush it aside with random Johto complaining again doesn't change that fact. I don't even like Misty and frequently bringing her up like this to complain about her, her fans or Johto bothers me. There wasn't any need to bring Misty up at all when talking about the popularity of the series.

I also still wouldn't say that the original series felt short lived just because the anime has continued to keep going without her. That's rather backward logic. The anime has continued with other series after the original one, but I don't think anyone would consider a five year series short lived, even knowing that it keeps going fifteen years after the fact. It's especially strange knowing that the Pokemon anime isn't just one long series. It's treated as such in the U.S., but it's more like a group of different series under the same brand with the same lead character. They're all pretty stand alone instead of part of one long on-going story.

CyberCubed said:
I mean sometimes it's easy to forget over these last 15 years millions of new kids got into the anime with any of the later gens and didn't grow up with the original seasons. Even if they watch them later, it's pretty funny when you realize even the kids who grew up with Hoenn or DP are now teenagers or in their early 20's. Anyone who was 10 when Hoenn started in 2002/2003 is now a 25 year old. Time passing is a funny thing, it makes you realize how short lived things were that seemed longer only because you were a kid yourself when it was going on.

It's really not hard to remember that. Kids would be more exposed to whatever new series is airing on TV more so than the original series. Whether you're a kid or an adult, five years is a long time and certainly wouldn't be considered short lived. Considering how often most anime series last nowadays, the idea of a five years series being labeled as short lived is ridiculous.

If Dragon Ball had carried on past "DBZ" immediately with "Super", instead of with "GT", it would have resulted in stagnation, like what happened with Pokemon's popularity here in the states. "Super" has no end in sight, it could carry on as long as One Piece, for all we know. The Majin Buu saga and the "GT" series were helped by the fact that Cartoon Network could promote them as "THE FINAL EPISODES" of the Dragon Ball saga. A sense of closure to the saga really helped those final 20 episodes of "DBZ", and those final 20 episodes of Dragon Ball GT (yes, the "GT" saga got a lot of flack for not being as good as DBZ, but those last few weeks did have the feel of "it's the end of an era!", which helped immensely).

"DB Super" was profoundly helped by nostalgia - with roughly 12 years having passed since "new" Dragon Ball material had aired (not including "Dragon Ball Z Kai" in this analysis), it just wouldn't have been the same if "Super" had come out in 1997 in Japan (or in 2005 in the U.S.A.). America needed to make the transition to the "Naruto" phenomenon in the Fall of 2005, along with "Adult Swim Action" material like "Ghost in the Shell" and "Full Metal Alchemist". I think it happened the way it was meant to happen.

That does make me wonder about how they went straight into Boruto right after Shippuden ended. I'm not familiar with the series, but I've heard mixed feelings regarding most of Shippuden. Despite that, Naruto still remains pretty popular and the went straight for a sequel manga/anime right after it ended. It seems to be doing pretty well from what I can tell. Super probably would have had a good amount of success if it did come right after DBZ instead of GT, but I'm sure that the nostalgia factor helps with its success. I just wonder if it would have been better to do the same with Boruto, although it does seem like the general audience still wants Naruto content.
 

wonderfly

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That does make me wonder about how they went straight into Boruto right after Shippuden ended. I'm not familiar with the series, but I've heard mixed feelings regarding most of Shippuden. Despite that, Naruto still remains pretty popular and the went straight for a sequel manga/anime right after it ended. It seems to be doing pretty well from what I can tell. Super probably would have had a good amount of success if it did come right after DBZ instead of GT, but I'm sure that the nostalgia factor helps with its success. I just wonder if it would have been better to do the same with Boruto, although it does seem like the general audience still wants Naruto content.

Well...I think Naruto saga fans (especially American fans) can separate "Naruto" from "Shippuden" in their minds well enough to give "Boruto" a nostalgia bump. People could see it as a return to the Naruto craze of the late 00's, whereas Shippuden is simply "that thing that was misplaced on Disney XD and which exists in obscurity late at night on Toonami".

If Boruto does come to Toonami in the next year or two (they can't afford to wait too much longer)...I suspect it'd be very popular. Not "Dragon Ball Super" or "Samurai Jack Season 5" popular, but better than "JoJo", I'd say...
 

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Going back to my original comments in this thread, if I wanted to point to a moment where the "Anime Boom" possibly ended on a high note, I could maybe point to the "Naruto Hundo" marathon, a celebration of Cartoon Network reaching 100 episodes of Naruto (the marathon aired in August, 2007).

I did some research, and Geneon announced it was closing in September, 2007, and (as was mentioned on page 1 of this thread) that kicked off the wave of American anime distribution companies closing (from Central Park Media to Bandai Entertainment, etc.). Plus, September 2007 is when Cartoon Network rebooted with the "Fall 2007" era (because "Fall is just something that grown-ups invented", apparently), and that's widely regarded as a turning point for the network (and the end of an era).

...but I think it went downhill for Naruto after that milestone. And the Geneon announcement was a pretty good sign that the anime bubble had burst. So yes, I can see the end of the "Anime Boom" being tied in with the "Fall" of Cartoon Network in 2007...
 

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