Temporal Paralysis

While in Malaysia, I got the opportunity to watch several anime shows dubbed in Bahasa Malaysia. Not many people appreciate this, but I find the voice actresses in some of the characters very much likeable, not unlike the monotonous – and sometimes very similar – English voice actresses I heard on Animax. Clearly 77 Star Pte. Ltd. has groomed these voice actors/actresses well to ensure their liveability in a Malay language-majority market.

However, the intention of this post is not about the quality of voice actors and actresses in the region. My intent of this post is to highlight the rise and fall of anime franchises.

Not all anime franchises met a peaceful death.

It was through no surprise that I watched Mahou Sensei Negima and School Rumble on ntv7. As I watched the two series, the question arose in my consciousness: “Will anyone really remember both series long after the brouhaha died?”

Like the characters in Negima, there are endless possibilities of how an anime franchise remain in the mind-share of the audience.

Prologue

Recently, I got the opportunity to listen to Japanator AM Podcast, where a “bunch of jaded a**h*les talked about anime,” to quote from their in-house advertisement. (Advertisement in my podcast, who would’ve thunk it?) In their third podcast, on the topic of harem anime series, the name Love Hina is mentioned a lot of times.

Love Hina – the one series that sets the pace for all future harem anime shows/franchises.

Not many people would recognize that series, but Love Hina was the trend-setter of many harem anime series that all of us have become accustomed to. The show was produced in 2000: not many are willing to watch a dated series that has spawned many episodes and OVAs. (Obviously, though, it sets the trend for the over-crassiness of many modern harem anime shows that I probably hazard to guess.) Yet, that show became one of the many shows that left a mark on the mind-share of the anime fan community.

How a series lives on or not, depends on which aspect of longevity is being questioned: economic marketability or mind-share.

Some series, though has long since run out of either print, publication or broadcast, managed to elicit fan thought or garnered enough fan attention to outlast its useful business opportunity. Like a vintage show that never dies down, several anime shows are important enough or (un)deservedly well-received to make its presence known, so when a new fan delves into the anime fan community, he or she will be treated to these shows as most important to watch for. Shows like the romantic Macross series, the ubiquitous Gundam franchise, the grim Akira or the pseudo-futuristic Ghost in The Shell became a staple of shows highly recommended to new fans by older fans.

Some series lived on simply because they are very marketable to the audience. Names include Lucky Star, the Suzumiya Haruhi series, Ikkitousen (and its decadent followers) and, lastly, Neon Genesis Evangelion. If you take a look at the figurine releases in the market, some are really, really pointless to make, but because of the tropes that some of the characters in these series supposed to represent, are “adorable” in the audience’s minds, the series, inadvertently, lived on, through the endless releases of remixed takes on the characters. This contributes to mind-share within the audience.

Y'know, I grew tired of all these new releases of Evangelion. I last heard that they're making a {link:http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-01-24/new-evangelion-manga-2-other-titles-to-launch-in-asuka}"detective story"{link} out of Shinji Ikari.

The Birth of A Franchise

A typical franchise (in contrast to calling a show, a show) starts out as either a light novel, manga, a game (erotic or otherwise) or an original anime series. It will be introduced to the market to gauge its popularity to the target market audience. For a creative content to become a franchise, it requires the following:

1. Popularity in terms of fan endearment towards the creative content pieces,
2. Potential to market or branch out to other areas of media (from games to anime shows, or anime shows to manga releases),
3. Popularity of certain anime characters in terms of tropes and cliche (which is why terms like “tsunderes,” “delicious flat chests” and “meganekko” became the buzzwords in the audience), and
4. Reiterations of products that can be remixed later in the shelf life of the creative content.

It does not have to fulfill all of the above requirements; some franchises are meant to be short-lived, and are therefore marketed as such.

Once there is enough mind-share for the audience to demand certain things to be animated or made as a figurine (for example, Highschool of the Dead, has already released three figurines, and is recently confirmed to be animated as a TV series), the creative content becomes a franchise: merchandizing, music releases, games adaptations and so on, will add on to the control of mind-share within the audience.

I'd take Busoujima Saeko. I know: I am weak for strong-willed, yet civilized, ladies.

Some series do not cross over to popular media forms. Games like BlazBlue, King of Fighters and Tekken do not have either a published format or an anime production, yet people understood and recognized these franchises because of their nature. Fighting games, in contrast to visual novel (erotic) games, requires constant evolution, as per advances in gaming technology, so while one may not delve deep into a game, because it has been on the “scene” for some time, there is a constant mind-share among fans. One may come across a fan who are into these games, and these fans will spread through word-of-mouth, the hype of these games, hence they get recognized by people who don’t play them.

(Interestingly, the biggest of the games franchise of them all, the Final Fantasy franchise, has already seeped itself into other forms of media, and took one step further by delving into concerts, as we have seen in Distant Worlds and Video Games Live.)

Maintaining the Franchise

To maintain the interest of a franchise, the creative content developers and marketing experts devise ways to ensure its continued mind-share with the audience.

• Music OSTs and character singles
• Figurines and merchandizes
• Original video animation or DVD boxset releases
• Venturing into other forms of media (e.g. movies, games etc.)

With Web 2.0 presence and fan-created media (Youtube, 2chan and 4chan, blogs etc.), some series remain in the mind-share of the general anime viewing audience for some time.

The general interest of the audience usually depends on how the series will be made: it is unavoidable that some franchises are purposely made to allow for future sequels. Examples of such series are Hayate the Combat Butler, Negima and so on. There are other series that also fit into this category, but I leave that to readers to think of other series that are purposely made to allow for future sequels.

OK, I just post up Kämpfer because it is related to the topic at hand... and I can allow readers "to extrapolate deeper into the subject matter at hand."

As readers can extrapolate from this point on, modern anime shows are configured to extend their mind-share among its audience, and by building up suspense, fans are forced to watch the next sequel in order to continue following on the story development of a creative content. This provides some breathing space and a business opportunity for content creators and owners to cash in on the hype surrounding their content, while at the same time allow for the development of the next sequel. This is how general interest is maintained within the audience mind-share.

Maintaining franchise mind-share requires some adventure between both content creators and their fans, for it takes two to tango, and the line between a living franchise and a dead one is a thin one.

Death of A Franchise

Sometimes, a franchise will continue to live on with the mind-share of the fans and audience alike, but generally speaking, a franchise will die with the following conditions:

• The franchise dies a fading death, whereby less and less people remembers the franchise as time progresses,
• The franchise has develop a distance with its fans, causing a stark discontinuation for the franchise, and subsequently is removed from the mind-share of the audience.

It is a normal condition that franchises do not live long and its economic usefulness has been used up: this is how newer shows are being introduced, by killing off older franchises. After the so-called “marriage” that happens in Love Hina, the franchise finally dies down, and newer shows are being introduced to the audience, so that they are able to capture their mind-share. This is the natural life-cycle of a franchise’s economic viability.

As was Hollywood, some shows just defy that expectations: Neon Genesis Evangelion has been the most oft-mentioned franchise with this generation, and while its recent films capture back the audience that had been its fans previously (as well as entrancing newer fans to the franchise), its popularity is maintained by an unexpected mix of tropes/stereotypes and the fan reaction to its existence. Call it a love-hate relationship, but as long as people demand a Rei x Asuka or whatever that is related to the franchise, it will live on. (I understand that Ayanami Rei, one of the main co-protagonists in the series, epitomize what anime fans/otaku envisions of a perfect girl.)

There was one series that I believed, in general, did not die a peaceful death: School Rumble.

It started off as a school, spice-of-life comedy in which its main catch is the misunderstood love triangles that each characters in the story has on one another. Initially the franchise got popular with the audience, with the fan-supporters of each camps rooting for a particular character. As the franchise moved on to the second season, the interest began to wane, but some support is still present for it. However, when that also did not conclude with any resolution on the characters’ love triangle (a.k.a. “purgatory limbo,” “no character development” and so on), people lost interest in it. By the third season, practically not many people talked about it, and the show – and the franchise in general – died as quickly as it was forgotten – removed from the mind-share of the audience.

And then, there are franchises that still lived on despite the audience having removed it from their mind-share. Any worthy anime fan would not touch on Ikkitousen (and if I daresay, Koihime Musou), yet the franchise keeps producing OVAs upon figurines upon reiterations of essentially a portrayal of removing a girl’s garments, forced or otherwise, to reveal a fanservice that isn’t adding any substantial value. I’m sure there are still a latent interest in seeing girls in fanservice mode, but considering the technological mobility of the current generation of anime fans, I’m sure they can easily get that off an erotic show or game with ease.

I don't know: much as I hated these types of series – where mindless fanservice abound – they helped generate interest and indirectly income to the creative content makers.

The Quest for Immortality

Franchises that maintain mind-share longevity can be best described as having the right mix of fan hype, subjective quality and impact upon the audience or the anime fan community. There isn’t a right or wrong answer whether a franchise must live on. It is all about observing how the content industry interacts with the audience to provide them the entertainment or information that deserves attention. Franchises that lived on for more than one generation (equivalent of twenty years) deserved to be highly regarded as a living franchise, even if the audience may object to some aspects of it. (I shall gave Gundam as an example, and many fans will tell you of their hatred towards a particular series under the name; still all of them are collectively under Gundam.)

Given this context, it is possible to quantify how successful an anime franchise is. The manner of the show being presented, as well as its content, will determine how successful the franchise will be. Unresolved plots will tire the audience, and kills off whatever interest the audience have on the franchise. Being too obnoxious with the audience, and they will be put off by the show. As I mentioned before, it takes two to tango, and while ultimately the fans may have the last say on objectifying what makes a good show, content creators are also responsible in developing the franchise as holistically as possible, if they want to achieve a kind of “immortality” within the audience.

Content creators and fans alike are both in a constant battle for mind-share, and the scene looks like it will not die down very soon. Readers outside the anime fan community can easily resonate well with this post, as it also applies to Western-based entertainment scene. If you have feedback or comments on this post, feel free to make your voices heard.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Anime, OP/ED. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.