Anime luminary Maruyama warns Japan's top spot at risk

I totally share the same opinion! Many animators who have starting to work before the wave of "kawaii" boring wave are tired of such lack of creativity. Veteran animators are still working because young generation is not able to create and/or to make a good animation.

Since almost 20 years, a large number of anime series are focused to " fan service" type but madhouse and few others studio are still producing great series.

Thank you M. Maruyama for your amazing and incredible work!

quote: If more freedom is unleashed, Japan will be overtaken in no time.

Well relax then. Xi isn't going to be unleashing any freedom on his people any time soon.

Anime is big in Japan - there is enough of any industry for some folk to chase profits, and enough profit to support idiosyncratic creative work.

I would have expected Japanese universities to have anime courses pulling in students from around the globe.

Nice to see 'In This Corner of the World' get a mention. A really wonderful movie.

Of course it’s only about big money, not art. Only art that doesn’t sell well is real art, the rest is only false art when including what the readers, viewers , listeners could probably want to have and buy most, instead of what the real artists have as original intentions if there wouldn’t be the need to sell it for a living.

In an industry the level of the content is strongly connected with the level of a consumer. If people don’t mind to consume fastfood, a few will make an effort to make something extraordinary.

China's pop-culture will not overtake Japan's anytime soon, unless they can catch up with the image of "cool" that Japan has been building for decades. Chinese pop-culture are either Fantasy Kung Fu that involve people fiying around, or super heroes who fought Japanese soldiers in WW2. Nothing else beyond that, even Hong Kong's creativity was blunted and dumbed down to produce propaganda movies.

It was partly a desire to keep Tezuka's works alive that convinced Maruyama to take on his current project "Pluto", adapted from a manga with an "Astro Boy" arc.

Really looking forward to the Pluto adaptation, it is like a dream team of a story (Original characters by Osamu Tezuka, story by Naoki Urasawa and now Maruyama taking it to the screen).

Things get diluted and cheapens when commercialized, and in a way it is impossible to avoid this completely, so I can completely understand Maruyama's worries, but as long as there is still support for people to make things of quality there will still be value in the genre.

So, in general, they are concerned that Chinese anime with kawaii characters is more popular than Japanese anime with unique, original style, kinda oldschoolish? Its a pity but theres nothing can be done about this since it reflects the tastes of a reader.

I don't think he's watching Chinese and his knowledge coming from anime youtuber which are getting paid to prompt Chinese anime and propaganda and i don't making false accusation because i consumes so much Chinese and Korean media as much as western i almost watched Chinese shows to keep concentrate on big season series like blind spot , money heist and or to divert my mind from porn .

Not just China, South Korea and Southeast Asia have already posed as serious competitors against Japan now. In general, Korean entertainment industry has dwarfed Japan so much.

Japan has globally lost almost all industrial capacity, agriculture and other fields in the real, physical economy. Japan’s major strength is only in the hospitality, tourism, entertainment and services. If Japan can’t hold together their best, major strength, then the country won’t survive economically.

Perhaps, this is why Japan is legalizing gambling industry and quietly promoting prostitution. This is probably the only solution to retain Japan’s edge in the services economy.