East vs. West

Let's see if you've heard this one before: An anime series does extremely well in Japan. Fansub sites are overwhelmed with demand. It gets licensed in America to great anticipation. It's released in the U.S. and...performs poorly. And there's much surprise and passionate blogging about it. Why? It's not that complicated, to me:

Japanese fans value different things than American fans do.

Now, first off, we need to define "fan." That's a bit harder in America, as we have quite a few distinct battalions of fans: the Naruto/Bleach market, the old-school market, the yaoi fangirls, mecha fandom; all these have very specific tastes. While Japan certainly has its subdivisions, Japanese fandom is a bit more unified (as you'd expect from that sort of culture); there's more a sense of Core Works that everybody watches/reads. In Japan, every fan watched The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya when it came out.

|250x360px|Kannagi GirlsBut it's more than that. The American market is dominated by casual fandom. Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Naruto, and Bleach combined represent a huge percentage of American anime fandom (not necessarily a majority, but a very large percentage), judging by the New York Times Manga Bestseller lists. Heck, those franchises are arguably the reason for the New York Times Manga Bestseller List.

Kannagi or Haruhi are not going to appeal to the average 14-year-old Naruto fan. This is nothing against Naruto fans; it's just that Haruhi is not the kind of show they're typically interested in, and it requires a knowledge of anime tropes that the average casual fan simply doesn't have. Haruhi references moe, Instrumentality, and the Japanese economic bubble before the end of episode three. Kyon's eye-rolling at the stereotypical characters isn't funny if you don't know the stereotypes.

So, a few pieces of advice for the industry insiders who definitely don't read this blog yet:

Firstly, it's not easy to predict what'll be popular. American companies are going to bring out stuff that flops over here. That's okay. But!

Look at the show's target audience. Kannagi is clearly aimed at otaku. I'm sure it can be enjoyed by non-otaku, but one of the running gags is about the protagonist miming a cliched magical girl, for Pete's sake.

Of course, this doesn't mean the show can't be released in America. I'd just like to see these shows released in an otaku-oriented way. Post streams very shortly after the show is released in Japan--ideally preceded by an announcement that you're going to do this, so honest folks know not to pirate it--and release discs in a way that most closely mirrors the Japanese release. Same artwork, same extras (as much as possible), just with subs. Heck, for many of these otaku-oriented shows, don't bother to dub it. It's okay! We don't need to dub everything!