Hello everyone,
Today we'll talk about a slightly different topic that came up to my mind when, today, I read the news of the upcoming Bleach final manga chapter that would put end to a 10+ years mainstream series, one of the most successful of all time. (In terms of sales at least)
This news will probably give some level of shock to the manga market, being Bleach (together with Naruto and One Piece) one of the biggest share of income for them. At the same time, we will see some transition moment in which the new Big One must be decided by the fans worldwide.
Yes, let's talk about the two different and well separated anime world. The mainstream one (airing generally in a afternoon/evening slot) populated with millions of people worldwide compared to the niche one (airing generally late-night) with a lot smaller audience both in Japan and the rest of the world.
If I have to say a reason for which I first got into anime, when I was a child many years ago, I would say clearly and without doubts "Dragon Ball!". It was the first anime I watched in a consistent manner (I was like 7-8 years old) and one of the major mainstream anime of all times!
It was only many years later (around 2002-2003) that I started to switch to more niche anime like Love Hina or Chobits (still in my own language or English in the worst case). This was the middle step before switching to Japanese voiced one in one of the best anime season of my memory with Mahoraba/Inukami/etc... (Around 2005/2006).
Since then, I tried very hard every season to skip watching any kind of mainstream series. Age may have been a factor in this change, but I think that their incredibly long size was the main reason. A size for which I really had no time anymore.
When we talk about mainstream anime/manga series, the mind get us back to the classic stereotype of the young boy (less than high school level in most cases) setting up for a journey in order to grow up and become a man. During this journey the boy will make new friends, will fight enemies and will experience many interesting events.
This is what we are used to expect, giving the big predominance of this stereotype around the world. I heard a lot of times phrases similar to "Anime is all about fighting after all" or "Japanese are fixated with battles!" from my friends during these years.
Unfortunately is not that easy to understand how a mainstream series is generated. The point is that at the same time of Bleach, Naruto and One Piece, we have many other "niche" series with similar concepts/storylines lingering around the manga/anime world. The question now is "What is that make a series mainstream?!"
I think that luck is the most important feature needed for a particular series to go mainstream together with an original concept (that is going to be repeated to death). As we know people grow easily attached to characters, as soon as the series managed to capture the heart of the reader it will be extremely hard to sway them from following it.
Try to think about what happened with Bleach in these last two-three years, this series was continuously resetting/dragging along every major arc and even then people were like "I've come this far, I may as well continue watching/reading till the end".
Fortunately for us, following this kind of pattern of reset->restart can't last forever! So that eventually (yes, even One Piece) everything will come to an end, giving space to new talented writers to showcase their own work.
The problem is, what will take the place of these important series as soon as they completed their run? There are plenty of candidates in the current manga world (but still there is no real successor in terms of popularity), but pretty much none in the anime one.
This situation is from one side worrying, as it may make people go away from watching anime completely. From the other side it is interesting, as it may introduce to people the other great anime available every single season in the niche world.
I'll be watching the developments of this situation very closely during the end of the 2012 and the beginning of 2013 and we may return to talk about this as soon as the situation stabilize!
And you? Do you watch mainstream series regularly? How do you think a normal series become mainstream? What is your prediction for the next "Big One"?
See you soon,
feal87