Mainstream Media: Anime, Movies, and Video Games

Okay, so I have this idea for something I want to talk about that involves the anime and manga series known as Berserk but, because I'm not the most familiar person in the world with that franchise and, because I've been dawdling on a lot of stuff both in terms of work and that particular research I have to do, that topic is going to need some more time to cook.

So in the meantime, I feel like talking about just the mainstream in general, more specifically mainstream entertainment as it relates to Movies, Anime, and Games.

"What brought this on?"

Well, this is going to sound mundane, because it is mundane but, I've been waiting for the Community version of Microsoft Visual Studio to download so that I can finish working on a mobile app that is almost complete but needs to be packaged and bug fixed. And, during this waiting process, I remembered some videos that I watched a while back by Gigguk and Ninouh about Anime in the Mainstream. Links are right here:

AZ Rant: Should Anime become Mainstream?

Anime Shouldn't be Mainstream

In these videos, Ninouh outright rejects the idea of Anime becoming mainstream, while Gigguk presents a much more balanced overview of potential pros and cons of such an event. However, both of them cite the gaming industry as reasons for rejection and concern respectively. And, as I thought about it, I considered that their uses of the gaming industry in its current state to justify anime staying niche were pretty myopic and, in Gigguk's case, unjustified, not because he's incredibly biased but rather because he has admitted several times that he's not really a gamer and therefore I don't really see him as a credible source for gaming information, and while Ninouh has stated in the past that he would've made his channel about gaming if it weren't for a snap judgment he made while designing his channel, I would argue that that same criticism could be applied to him.

Now, I'm not saying that the gaming industry in its current state is perfect or that being mainstream has not caused any problems for the medium as a whole. What I am saying is that, to look at what happened to video games and say that its problems are because it became mainstream demonstrates a lack of understanding of the whole issue. So I want to take some time to address that.

Here, I will attempt to cover my thoughts on video games and movies as a mainstream source of entertainment and how becoming mainstream could affect anime in some form, if it hasn't already.

Now, Movies are not what I specialize in and I don't claim to be an expert on them, so I won't be covering movies as a mainstream medium all that much but I do want to cite some external causes for movies' current set of content and how video games might fall under a similar umbrella.

Now, Movies have been around a lot longer than video games have but there are still some problems they suffer from in relation to being mainstream, I think they just surfaced a lot earlier. Now, many people like to cite a lot of classics from certain movie directors or that certain actors have starred in that became classics for several reasons, some of which are attributed to who I just stated.

For example, a lot of Kung Fu movie aficionados cite Bruce Lee movies as the epitome of the genre. Many fans of Sci-Fi Movies will cite the Original Star Wars Trilogy. And several directors, like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and others have won awards for their directing and their movies.

However, there's one thing I want to cite about that: every one of these directors or actors have had some movie that have not been all that good. George Lucas is infamous for this where, even though he made the Original Star Wars Trilogy, he made the Prequel Trilogy and that was such a critical flop on the whole that his plans for the Sequel Trilogy, which he was always open about making, were delayed until he sold Lucas Film to Disney because he didn't want to take that risk.

A lot of people cite the Prequel Trilogy's problems as, among other things, bad writing, alien species as racist representations of real life stereotypes, poor casting in the case of certain roles, and an over-reliance on special effects. That last one was especially angering for one friend of mine in particular because he cites George Lucas having stated at one point that you don't need special effects to make a good movie but the Prequels conflicted that so much that his respect for the man was gone almost instantly.

Considering these same sets of movies were directed by the same guy and featured radically different reception, what exactly changed? Well, not really all that much. In terms of casting, the only notable character from the Prequel Trilogy that had an objectively poor actor portraying him was Anakin Skywalker, and he wasn't even chosen until Attack of the Clones. A lot of the actors from the Prequel Trilogy did a pretty good job of portraying their characters, with special mention going to Ewan McGregor for being such a great Obi-Wan that the Prequel Movies were bad in spite of his performance, not really because of it in any way. Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu was brilliant and, while the lack of representation of black human characters is an interesting thing to note, in the Original Trilogy, the only black man that was ever given any focus was Lando Calrissian, so nothing there changed. And this doesn't seem to be changing any time soon based on Episode VII, so there you go.

As far as the characters that are stereotypes, while there were a number of stereotypes in alien species in The Phantom Menace, the only Aliens that got any real characterization in the original trilogy were Yoda and Jabba the Hut, and while Yoda seemed like a very good alien, Jabba was clearly a representation of a fat Mafia Don. No other alien is really notable in any way. Though Chubacca is present in the entire Trilogy, he doesn't have any speaking lines and any level of sentience is not really made clear until Star Wars becomes Multi-Media, so for all we know, he could very well have just been an animal at the time. You could easily be forgiven for thinking he was just a Sasquatch stereotype.

And in terms of actual writing, most of the problems I see with the writing are in the characterization rather than plot consistency. The plot as a whole doesn't really seem to have any holes in it, I think the focus on characterization was simply detrimental to the experience. And I think that's what it comes down to.

It's worth mentioning that before the release of the original movie, George Lucas was an independent film maker. And, for a lot of his career, that remained true. Naturally, when you're an independent, you have limited funding to work with, and while the success of the Star Wars movies largely mitigated that in terms of overall budget, it's worth noting that the Prequel Trilogy was published and distributed by 20th Century Fox.

Actually, that's a really good point, I'll come back to it later.

But what about video games? Well, video games are a somewhat different beast. Just like movies, video games were niche for a fairly long time and while plenty of games saw a lot of success in arcades, like Pac-Man, Street Fighter 2, and Double Dragon, video games didn't start seeing more success until the release of different home consoles, particularly the ones from Nintendo and SEGA.

Then, once the 64-Bit era hit, with the N64 and the Playstation in particular, several series that existed in relative obscurity started hitting widespread appeal. Games like Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Crash Bandicoot, and Metal Gear Solid, were titles that became famous practically over night even though, prior to that generation, those franchises or at least the developers who made them were making enough to get by but weren't really famous for their work.

A little known fact is that the codec radio signal on the back of the case for Metal Gear Solid was originally used in the lesser known title Metal Gear 2. Hideo Kojima was comfortable using this tactic again in MGS because he knew a lot of people playing that might have never even heard of Metal Gear before.

As time went on, game budgets got bigger and bigger to accommodate the rising sales of franchises that were hitting widespread appeal and catching on like wildfire. However, at some point, the budgets rose too high. The budgets for games that were being created ended up hitting a height so great that some companies were losing money, not because the games they sold were bad or even lacking in overall units sold but because the budgets were so high that a successful game with a PS2 budget may not qualify as successful on a PS3 budget. So publishers started getting desperate.

They needed some way to gain success so massive that they would make back all the money they made and significantly more. It was at this time that one series in particular started gaining such success that it would later become an easy thing to hate on every level. If you've been playing video games for the past while, you probably already know what series it is. It's Call of Duty.

Call of Duty became a money train in a small span of time. That's when light bulbs went off in a lot of businessmen's heads. They would replicate Call of Duty's success and, in turn, make money by doing what Call of Duty did. But there was a problem with this methodology. Well, several actually.

The first is that, the vast majority of people who have the idea "I'm going to claim the success of X series" often don't really understand why that series was successful to begin with. A prime example is South Park. South Park is known to outsiders as a crude cartoon with foul mouthed children and a lot of toilet humor. And, while that may be how it initially started, the reason it's still alive is because South Park is, to the astute viewer, a show that satirizes many trends going on in the world and wraps it up in this world that is so nonsensical that you can get wrapped up in the show's logic even though you see clear parallels to real life.

Now, for most cartoonists, this doesn't really work for two reasons: the first is the production process of animated series. Most animated cartoons go through a long development cycle and finish either the entire season or most of the season before it starts airing. South Park's episodes, however, are animated the week before they go up. The reason for this is its simple art style and animations that make it easy to produce nonstop. To my knowledge, the only other series with simple enough artstyles and animation that they can get away with this are Teen Titans Go!! and the Powerpuff Girls. Other series that are not around anymore or may still be around, are much more detailed and complex, which means they cannot do what South Park does because, by the time they finish an episode, the thing they're satirizing will already be dead and out of view.

The other thing is what I already cited, where a lot of cartoonists think South Park is just a bunch of shock humor, gross out, and swearing and, because of that, a lot of Adult Cartoons try to capitalize on that and it ends up not working. To my knowledge, the only successful Adult Cartoons that exist are successful because they attempt to do something original or of their own design, like Bojack Horseman and Rick & Morty.

This inevitably holds true for a lot of game developers who made first person shooters in the last generation. They attempted to do what Call of Duty did and failed or were successful within the genre because they weren't attempting to compete with Call of Duty. The only exception is the Battlefield series and, to be fair, that came out at around the same time so it would inevitably become a competitor.

Another problem with this methodology that is usually not taken into account is player income and competition. Specifically that people who buy games have a limited amount of money and, even if they find two or more competing games appealing enough to buy, they are most likely not going to have the money to buy all of them. As a result, good business sense would suggest that the game you release is inevitably going to be competing with other titles for the attention of the masses.

The only exception to this rule is if your game comes out at a time where there are not really any other new games coming out at the time. This was a large part of the success of InFamous. It was still a good game but if it had actual competition when it was released, it might not have done anywhere near as well.

So, for the most part, you want to assume that there are other games coming out at the same time as yours. And, naturally, if you're ripping off the success of another series, like Call of Duty, chances are your game is going to be in the same genre, in this case First Person Shooters. Meaning that, more than likely, your game is competing directly with Call of Duty. The difference though is that, in a lot of cases, Call of Duty has a larger fanbase that is more dedicated and will have more people who are going to buy it automatically no matter what. Yours, on the other hand, if it's established, will have varying results at best and, if it's brand new, it's going to have to do something that hooks the audience without ever needing a prior reputation, which is something that can make or break original IP's.

Another thing to consider that's related is knowing your target demographic. Focus testing is a big problem that gets in the way of a lot of developers making successful or good games. An example that I'm going to cite is Overstrike/Fuse, the Third Person Shooter created by Insomniac and Published by EA.

Insomniac had stated that Overstrike was intended for older teens to young adults, so the range would be between 16 and 23, I would guess. However, Insomniac had a focus group test that had a bunch of 12 year old kids tell them that they think the game would be better for their younger siblings. Now, ignoring the horribly ill-informed feedback they got, feedback about your game from people you're not aiming it at has questionable validity to begin with. Games that look like they're kid friendly can often times be dark and depressing to the point that a lot of underlying messages fly over their heads, and games that look like they're for adults can still be played by children, provided caution is taken. The only way to know if your game is going to appeal to your target demographic is to get someone from your target demographic to play it.

For example, if you're aiming your game at the Devil May Cry fanbase, it's not wise to take feedback from someone whose favorite action game is God of War. They're two wildly different series with very different strengths and weaknesses that cause them to appeal to and repulse different demographics.

That being said, Insomniac took the feedback and changed the whole game from Overstrike to Fuse and, you only have to take one glance at the two trailers side by side to see how much the game changed from concept to release.

However, the change they made alienated the ones who were interested so much that Fuse sold less than niche titles that need a lot less money to make a profit.

"What does any of this have to do with games being mainstream?"

Well, there are two goals that games have had to achieve, and the same goes for Movies in order to achieve certain ambitions. The first, for the creators, is to have their creation be taken seriously as a form of art. The second, for publishers or businessmen, is to make a profit. While these goals are not always at odds with each other, they have caused certain people to make certain decisions regarding their product in accordance with these goals. However, there is a distinct difference between Movies and Video Games that cause a lot of developer's problems with being taken seriously as a form of art.

Namely that, at the time of this writing, Video Games are legally a form of art in the United States but a good majority of people still go through the process of deciding what qualifies as art and what doesn't, while Movies have pretty much been accepted as art unconditionally for well over two decades.

This means that, if someone is making a movie, that movie will more than likely be seen as art no matter what it does, so all it has to worry about is being critically and commercially successful enough to make a profit, while someone who's making a video game has to balance the priorities of art versus profit.

This is one reason I think many developers release cinematic titles that I haven't covered in previous posts. Namely that, because games have to be selected as a form of art in terms of consensus, developers may have to do what they can to have their work be seen as art, while still maintaining easy marketing and low budget expenditures. Cinematic games can, therefore, be made as a way of gaining a movie's reputation as art and easy income from those who don't often play video games.

"So what does that mean for anime?"

Well, anime may or may not be mainstream at the time you read this but anime has its own reputation that it has to work past that could make becoming mainstream a problem, which Gigguk does cover a little bit but I'm going to talk briefly about it here.

Anime has a reputation for being weird. Most anime are not weird, at least not in the sense that a lot of people like to use it. Fate/Zero is weird but it's not really weird in the same way that Ouran High School Host Club is. Ouran High School Host Club is weird in a very "I don't get this" kind of way while Fate/Zero is weird in a "This is a creative premise" kind of way.

However, most people who look at anime as an outsider looking in, will often look at what they hear about most: fanservice, tentacle rape, high schools, and, more recently, incest.

Speaking as an anime fan, this stuff is not anywhere near the most common thing to be featured in anime. There are just as many genres and just as much content variety in anime as there is in video games, movies, TV shows, Western Cartoons, Comic Books, and even novels.

But, because anime has a reputation for being weird, becoming mainstream would require a certain amount of reputation alterations that would remove the stain.

But, would doing so be detrimental to anime as a medium? It's the question that both videos posit and both videos discuss that becoming mainstream might cause a reduction in some of the content that anime fans enjoy that is a little bit out there. I, however, disagree.

While it is true that changing anime's reputation would require a toning down of the more famous weird elements, this would only be temporary. Eventually, people will start to demand seeing more content that isn't getting as much light anymore.

How do I know? Well, the same thing happened to the game industry. Sure, it's true that many games that have had great qualities that no other medium provides have gone missing as of late, Kickstarter, Crowd Funding, and the Indie Scene has shown that some developers who just want to make experiences that they enjoy are giving people things that they don't get anymore because of the way the industry has evolved.

You want a sword fighting game like Zelda 2? Meet Rogue Legacy.

You want a fighting game that has an artstyle and appeal similar to arcade fighters? Skull Girls.

You want a Platformer in the vein of Banjo-Kazooie? Yooka-Laylee is coming fairly soon.

You want a Stealth Game that's basically Metal Gear with Ninjas? Mark of the Ninja.

As these games are left out of the AAA scene, more and more independents will want to make these games, both to have something they want to play and to give people what they want.

As a result, I'm fairly confident that, if anime were to become mainstream, it would still maintain a large number of qualities that it currently has, some of it would just have to be toned down temporarily.

That's all I have to say. To be honest, my thoughts on this turned out to be pretty biased and, because of that, you may want to take what I've said here with a grain of salt. Have a wonderful day.