Global Anime Fans Want Stronger Female Leads & Adult Protagonists, New Research Finds

"citation needed" moment. Other countries throwing money at japanese studios to make shows is obviously better than japanese studios slowly starving their animation sector to death by outsourcing to China, the previous trend.

They provide the statistic that "over half of respondents aware of Crunchyroll (54%) strongly agreeing that it's an essential part of the anime ecosystem, well ahead of other major streaming services," and reinterpret it as "Crunchyroll isn’t just viewed as a distributor, but as a trusted pillar of the anime community."

"citation needed" moment. Other countries throwing money at japanese studios to make shows is obviously better than japanese studios slowly starving their animation sector to death by outsourcing to China, the previous trend.

@Deathko
Previous trend? They still do it when under foreign investment. Just read the credits. The reason they get overworked to begin with is because foreign influence constantly demanding a higher frame rate and more shows every season. Way too much is being made every season and a lot of focus is being placed on just playing a numbers game where get a lot of incomplete adaptations, things that arent good or popular being adapted just because they fit a niche, and half baked originals.

@Deathko
Previous trend? They still do it when under foreign investment. Just read the credits. The reason they get overworked to begin with is because foreign influence constantly demanding a higher frame rate and more shows every season. Way too much is being made every season and a lot of focus is being placed on just playing a numbers game where get a lot of incomplete adaptations, things that arent good or popular being adapted just because they fit a niche, and half baked originals.

@traed no matter how you look at it, using foreign money to fiance your ow economy is better than using your own money to do it. Blaming animators being overworked on western investors is a precarious stance given that it's been going on for way longer than Crunchy/Netflix have been producing anime. Regarding the amount of anime produced, it's been going on all over the entertainment industry, regardless of the presence of foreign investors. French comics are completely overproducing too, no one outside of France reads them.

Holy cow, is this yet another absurdly stupid "research" where usa = whole world?

@Deathko I think for a lot of posters, on here that would be preferable to them. They want their stagnant industry, or nothing at all. They are fine with the industry stagnating and slowing dying to China, in order to avoid any outside influence (which the medium has tons of) because they are worried about the "woke". Most of these people barely actually interact with anything but anime, and don't know anything about "Western media' beyond big Hollywood blockbusters.

Anyway to respond to the thread, is really any of this actually a problem? Why do people immediately assume always bad faith when people propose or want these kinds of things? I will say "indigenous" is kinda a weird thing to want within anime, without any context. I mean if fans want more Golden Kamuy, not going to go against that but whatever.

Still what's wrong with more shows that feature adult protags? While I don't think it would guarantee more non YA writing, the fact the industry is so YA has been putting a damper on my interest of late. Do people really want less fun female MCs, that don't stand in the background? Queer rep in this industry, isn't a new thing as Death pointed out. Why does it matter?

At the end of the day, these works have to sell, anime studios run too thin on margins to have failures. You need financial success, and therefore acceptance from fans, for any of this stuff to take off anyway.


On average, female character writing is better in a lot of Western SF/F I read....Mao Mao gets a lot of praise, however, on the aggregate, female characters aren't usually the draw for a lot of anime, outside of waifu war stuff. It helps that Diaries is from the seinen demographic which tends to be better about female writing, and also seemed to be also targeted to women. While, I do think Shonen manga/anime has had many recent successes with female character writing, that demographic was long overdue for actual well written female characters. If you take a similar work, aimed at YA men, like Misborn, a character like Vin is much better written than any character you are going to find in shonen battle shonen or slice of life work.

If we actually saw more varied adaptions, and less focus on isekai (though otome isekai are changing things), battle shonen, and shonen romcoms/SOL works, we probably would get better writing however, every female character isn't a Holo or Motoko Kusanagi. Even when it comes to female targeted fiction, the amount of female characters, that draw me as much as say a Yona or Oscar aren't common. In shojo romances, it often is the male leads who are the more interesting characters.

....Literally why does it matter? Is it wrong for fans to want different settings, even characters that look like them? Where is the mandate here, it's just asking fans hey what would be cool to see. Like I haven't seen enough pre digital anime, however from my experiance anime used to be more diverse, than they are now, due to the sci fi focus of the medium. This isn't out of order.

How many LGBT characters do you see outside of BL/GL? How many of those shows do you even get in the first place? It's not very common, and you do have a wealth of works to adapt. I say this as someone who largely doesn't care about BL/GL outside of the hentai scene (which also gets literally almost nothing).

Literally how does this interfere with escapism lol.

Yeah a 25 year old women is an old hag lol....Some of the best shows in this medium, feature older MCs. Most of the hottest women are not your boring moe characters that never age. Your loss.

@traed isnt thats just the flaw of capitalism? and if there is more demand then obviously there will be more supply? i mean anime might be in another economic bubble right now and also chinese anime is starting to become good like "to be hero x"

the old higher up managements of the anime industry do not want any improvements anyway and they do not want to lower their output for sure

@deg
Capitalism dictates that supply will be made to match demand. traed is saying that current supply is exceeding demand.

@Deathko eh, i like yuri, yaoi, genderbend series, crossdressing, and other stuff all in good fun etc but i would never associate with that.
There are a very few series that try to push a serious message and even when they do the perception is still different from the west and less negative/evil imo, since it isn't designed to force you to capitulate and get crushed under their boots.



Mod Edit: Removed baiting.

@Deathko I think for a lot of posters, on here that would be preferable to them. They want their stagnant industry, or nothing at all. They are fine with the industry stagnating and slowing dying to China, in order to avoid any outside influence (which the medium has tons of) because they are worried about the "woke". Most of these people barely actually interact with anything but anime, and don't know anything about "Western media' beyond big Hollywood blockbusters.

Anyway to respond to the thread, is really any of this actually a problem? Why do people immediately assume always bad faith when people propose or want these kinds of things? I will say "indigenous" is kinda a weird thing to want within anime, without any context. I mean if fans want more Golden Kamuy, not going to go against that but whatever.

Still what's wrong with more shows that feature adult protags? While I don't think it would guarantee more non YA writing, the fact the industry is so YA has been putting a damper on my interest of late. Do people really want less fun female MCs, that don't stand in the background? Queer rep in this industry, isn't a new thing as Death pointed out. Why does it matter?

At the end of the day, these works have to sell, anime studios run too thin on margins to have failures. You need financial success, and therefore acceptance from fans, for any of this stuff to take off anyway.


On average, female character writing is better in a lot of Western SF/F I read....Mao Mao gets a lot of praise, however, on the aggregate, female characters aren't usually the draw for a lot of anime, outside of waifu war stuff. It helps that Diaries is from the seinen demographic which tends to be better about female writing, and also seemed to be also targeted to women. While, I do think Shonen manga/anime has had many recent successes with female character writing, that demographic was long overdue for actual well written female characters. If you take a similar work, aimed at YA men, like Misborn, a character like Vin is much better written than any character you are going to find in shonen battle shonen or slice of life work.

If we actually saw more varied adaptions, and less focus on isekai (though otome isekai are changing things), battle shonen, and shonen romcoms/SOL works, we probably would get better writing however, every female character isn't a Holo or Motoko Kusanagi. Even when it comes to female targeted fiction, the amount of female characters, that draw me as much as say a Yona or Oscar aren't common. In shojo romances, it often is the male leads who are the more interesting characters.

....Literally why does it matter? Is it wrong for fans to want different settings, even characters that look like them? Where is the mandate here, it's just asking fans hey what would be cool to see. Like I haven't seen enough pre digital anime, however from my experiance anime used to be more diverse, than they are now, due to the sci fi focus of the medium. This isn't out of order.

How many LGBT characters do you see outside of BL/GL? How many of those shows do you even get in the first place? It's not very common, and you do have a wealth of works to adapt. I say this as someone who largely doesn't care about BL/GL outside of the hentai scene (which also gets literally almost nothing).

Literally how does this interfere with escapism lol.

Yeah a 25 year old women is an old hag lol....Some of the best shows in this medium, feature older MCs. Most of the hottest women are not your boring moe characters that never age. Your loss.

Makes sense that the National Research Corporation would report such data. Their major shareholders include BlackRock Advisors LLC, Vanguard Fiduciary Trust Co and Eaton Vance Managemen (a donor to Chatham House). Though, regarding the ever-impressionable youth of the USA—the foremost testing site for social engineering in the west—said data might not be entirely inaccurate.

It is poignant though, because Japan has paid considerable investment to the apparent whims of the "global audience" (i.e., the American market) in recent years, however fickle they may be. Recent seasonal anime have already become much more brazen in displaying flagrant social commentary through a predominantly politically correct lens, without the usual degree of interpretive abstraction of sociopolitics that anime has historically been praised for.

Fully expect anime's fundamental appeal to be comprehensively buried within the next two decades, once its industry practices have been fully assimilated into the same globohomo zeitgeist of standards that have so thoroughly corroded the Anglosphere.

Ah, gotta love the "6 in 10" thing with people wanting more "diversity". Why the fuck does race always have to be an issue for people? "Oh a Japanese thing, it needs more Non-Japanese people!" Of course it's CR though so the whole thing is stupid.

Gen Z male fans are more right-wing or anti-left and we're the majority in the Anime fandom so I have no idea of what you're talking about.

Sure I'm down with that.
Honestly, anything that pushes away bigots from the things I spend time with is a win.

Right back at you why does it matter I am not white either I am closer to black than white. But I won't scream we need brown representation blah blah. It doesn't fucking matter. It's written by white japs for japs you gonna whine then whine. And in turn blackwash actual white characters. Nice hypocrisy...

About equivalent ratio to number of LGBT people in Asian continent. There just isn't that many gay folks out there in other places except west(mainly Murican). And these is good supply of Yuri/Yaoi

People like youth more than than their boring adulthood.......

Never said that I meant hag as hag like over 50. Grown up doens't mean 18-25/30 range. It more like 18-80.
Yeah people have their taste. Moe>>>

@pigdestroyer I hate to break it to you, but if you want some localizer company ran entirely by white guys out in Texas and nary a single creative bone in their body deciding what an entire Japanese originated East Asian form of artistic expression is to do at their whims merely by words and subterfuge, go right ahead. It's not like they're trying to make an entire country and its industry bend at the knee for exaggerated corporate information used to manipulate the economy because of money. They're surely doing it for the progressiveness and openmindedness of race, gender, and representation. I'm also very sure that years of racial stigmas brought on by colonialism and "us versus them" othering of those of East Asian descent will totally be undone by this. I'm also very sure that at the very bottom of this, isn't a form of cultural appropriation by complete lack of trying and racism brought on by complacent nationalistic selfish entitlement horseshit.

(congratulations, you made me say the magic words)

look im not pure socialist or communist i believe that major economic systems today is about transitioning based on the automation technology level like ever heard the saying "fully automated luxury communism?" so thats why right now im in favor of accelerationism of capitalism with some universal basic income to soften its disrupted impact but once automation goes 50% or more then the economy will change to full socialism and when automation levels hit 90-99% then thats like fully automated luxury communism already

im more of a futurist than a pure socialist or communist like i said again

@deg That's pure utopian, and unlikely to happen in our life times, and if we can weather all the horrible shit approaching us in the next few decades.

@HokutoMumyoZan what kind of nonsense are you going on about? People like you make me want to put my head in the freezer at night

@ToumaTachibana Maybe Gen Z males are too busy brainwashing themselves with Joe Rogan's shitty podcast to actually watch anime? Maybe it's not all about what males want?

@Briekimchi Do you really believe Japan, 120 millions inhabitants, is a bigger market than the rest of the world? Genuinely curious.

@ToumaTachibana Maybe Gen Z males are too busy brainwashing themselves with Joe Rogan's shitty podcast to actually watch anime? Maybe it's not all about what males want?

When people say Anime is right-wing or conservative, leans conservative or apolitical, they are not inventing things. Japan itself is a conservative/"I don't care" society, I don't care if someone say its not the same as conservatism in the West, its still mostly similar. A right-wing/conservative media is not the same as being anti-women, anti-LGBT or white supremacist. And something being apolitical don't mean they are right-wing/left-wing. "All art is political" is just insane.

Over my life, I've found a lot of racist, sexist (towards both sexes), anti-LGBT from both sides of political spectrum. None is safe, none is a saint, no matter if they claim they are not doing it, what it only matters are their actions.

These "global" Anime "fans" are tourists, they either don't watch Anime since A LOT of Anime already has a lot of strong female leads AND/OR they just want men characters with wigs like we're seen in modern Western Animation which it made it a dead media by this point since its unpopular. Anime is neither pro/anti-LGBT. Anime is one of the few places where diversity can be done without it feeling forced. No one is against diversity in the first place, people are against forced diversity considering forced diversity is sexist and racist, we just want a good story/characters without caring about the character race/sexual orientation every time, these are not characters, they are just walking propaganda. We've seen a lot in Western media already, we won't let them do the same with Anime. We already know how it affected gaming, we're not going to do the same mistake.

We're going to gatekeep anyone (from any political spectrum) if they harm Anime by supporting censorship and/or anti-Japanese sentiment. They are not welcome here. We only welcome people who just want to enjoy Anime and let others and the medium itself in peace.

If you're a true Anime fan, you must put Anime over your political beliefs, if you can't do such thing, Anime isn't for you.

@Deathko This right here lol. I just love seeing how quickly some of these guys feel "threatened" just because there's a bit of a growing female demographic. It's not as if stuff that's more attuned to their tastes is gonna disappear overnight...