Why are mecha shows such a hard sell these days?

>>14006828
Japanese kids see them as old-fashioned, American kids don't think about it a lot and the public at large can't suspend their disbelief long enough to enjoy it at all.

Outside of the US and Japan I dunno how it is, and these are sweeping generalizations anyway.

>>14006828
They either concentrate on being high art/drama or don't even try. Bring back monsters of the week and good things will happen.

Lack of ideas.

Most mecha shows are overglorified toy commercials.

Everything is inevitably (usually unfavorably) compared to Gundam/Eva/Gurren Lagann depending on the show's general look and tone.

Western audiences for some reason just can't suspend their disbelief for mecha of all things. To them, mecha are silly and unrealistic. Also there's an added unfavorable comparison to Transformers or Power Rangers.

>>14006828

It's just not in style at the moment. Trends come and go, so it's to be expected, really.

>>14006838

I don't think the public are indifferent. I think of Yahtzee for instance, who played 25 hours of Xenoblade X just to get the giant robot and isn't any kind of mech head (that we know of). People like and want mechs, they just need the right incentive and reward.

>>14006828
no kids to make the good ones for

>>14006851
>one e-celeb and his posse memeing off and one video game = public wants /m/
Not to be insulting but I don't think that's at all a good comparison. That's a really small audience amounting to a personality cult.

>>14006847
>Most mecha shows are overglorified toy commercials.
IMO this shouldn't make any difference in quality of the show itself.

>>14006872

I'm not using him as indication of the public opinion though, only an example. Lots of people liked Pacific Rim though. Kirby has a giant robot and no-one cares. And so on.

>>14006828
Very bad perception by the current generation.
People write it all off as kiddie trash doing the same thing over and over again, and if they find an instance of mecha they like it's because they perceive it to go against the grain of what they consider mecha anime to normally be.

>>14006877
>Lots of people liked Pacific Rim though
This is what I was mentioning with the US vs the world in the first post; PR technically bombed within the US but was made successful by its performance worldwide.

>>14006880
Probably one of the better explanations here.

I think a lot of it is that they really aren't making mecha for kids like they used to. How many of the modern mecha shows are late night compared to just being for kids? How many shows try to sell themselves on decades old nostalgia, fanservice, melodrama or shipping? They're not bringing new blood into the genre.

>>14006886

Pacific Rim failed because more yanks didn't see it due to marketing (and business) reasons, not because the ones who saw it didn't like it.

>>14006828
>>14006847
Most media in general today (not everything, of course) seems to go against suspend of disbelief so the audience get most emotional "high" depending on what happens to a certain element they care about, in most cases a character.

In other words, the modern audience seems to take things too serious.

Also, nice montage, but question time:

Who is mister :-( face above Guren Mk-II and below Valvrave Hito?

And purple eyes right to Gundam Unicorn, can't remember who either.

What the fuck is this chart?

>>14007103
General Frankie from One Piece

It's all gundam and out of touch stuff kept going by out of touch oldsters now.
Yes some of it is fun but in that I'm older and I appreciate this kind of thing now kind of way.

Mecha simply needs to be re-evaluated for what it is and repackaged in a way that appeals to the youth and casuals.
Not just the idea but how it works.

The three most popular gundam series in terms of sales and love of the anime in the last few years were Seed, 00 and GBF.

In my opinion, mecha as an extension of the character and with some importance to the plot is the key. Second is the mecha being rebuilt up into something terrifying and dangerous.
It's not that they are unwilling to suspsend their disbelief, its' just that they are so sotted that it's mere existence no longer has the same appeal.

>>14007103
All of that and toy maker companies have no idea what they're supposed to be doing anymore (seriously, serious action cartoons in America are basically dead because of the latter).

>>14006828
People either take it too seriously or not seriously enough, with no in-between. Then there's the gallons of internet blood shed over real robot vs super robot debates.

>>14006828
Sneaky Guyver pretending to be a robot.

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Personally I think Mecha COULD be popular in the west. I don't think there is any strong stigma against it, as far as kids go at least. Aside from maybe Power Rangers. Which still manages to be very successful.

>>14007178
I agree with this. A lot of it comes down to the toys being shitty. Series can live or die by their merchandising, and usually it seems to be the latter.

That's why Transformers is still around after all. Yeah a lot of their toys are shit, but the good ones sell to older fans, and the flotsam sells to the 8 year olds who just want a fun robot that is also a car.

If someone could make a good like of mecha toys with wider appeal, aka fun to play with but ALSO good looking, then they would already have their foot in the door.

>>14006828

99% of the people in this thread dont know what the fuck they're talking about. The reason /m/ is so tired is because its stale as fuck with certain tropes rehashed over and over

>>14007286

Fitting then that 99% of 19 (unique replies) includes yourself.

>>14006872
>IMO this shouldn't make any difference in quality of the show itself.
You'd think it shouldn't but when you are a studio tasked to shit out a turd of an episode to meet deadlines, the quality suffers.

>>14006828
CG looks fucking ugly

>>14007320
In reality they will look even uglier.

>>14006902
I really didn't like Pacific Rim, and I was super hyped. Saw it opening night, and as a film, it was a sloppy mess.

>>14007056
>implying kids know what old is

it's new to them

>>14007320

The Guren isn't a great design, but I don't know if I'd call it ugly.

>>14007339
If dad talks about it, it's old.

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>>14007295

>>14007376

Not like he's wrong.

>>14006828
Coherent, easy-2-understand plot, less autism and it is good to go.

>>14006880
>>14006847
It's incredibly weird how this seems to case considering among the most popular and celebrated anime of all time are mecha anime. Hell when Gurren Lagann came out it was a huge success that was loved by damn near everyone and it ended with two giant robots throwing universes at one another. In a way I kinda blame the popularity of SEED given the generalization of what all mecha anime are about.

>>14007596
Found the retard

>>14006828
What was the philosophy behind this collection of mecha faces and Guyver and Bellcross? You've got really recent shit next to semi old shit next to the only thing mecha in that entire series. Who made this?

>>14006891
>I think a lot of it is that they really aren't making mecha for kids like they used to.
This

Which ties into the other problem of kids just not being into mecha anymore

>>14007923

It's not really the problem it seems. Kids aren't in to superheroes anymore either. The adults who liked them as kids, and plenty of other adults besides sure are though. And films and tv market to that. Successfully. Comics themselves are doing shit numbers though, for somewhat related reasons more than likely. Of course, that's not in Japan where adults don't appear to have time for fun.

>>14007939
Comics are doing terrible, but kids love superheroes still. Just in TV or Movies, and toys.

>>14007056
Japan needs lower birth rates

>>14007939
>Kids aren't in to superheroes anymore either
Superheroes are more popular than they have ever been its just that comic sales are down and have been since the industry crashed in the 90's.

>>14007953

Live action movies and tv shows with superheroes for adults (or family, including adults) are more the norm now than cartoons exclusively for kids. Kids do like them, but not nearly as much as adults.

>>14007967

>Surely making the potential market even smaller would solve the problem of not having enough mecha anime!

Spot the naive fool besides the fact that their birth rates are already low as is

>>14007295
bitch, I am the 1%. don't talk to me or my son ever again

>>14007980

It might be more accurate to say that comic consumption saw a temporary spike when a bunch of non-fan investor types decided they wanted to buy in on special issues assuming that they'd balloon in value like the old 60s stuff, never once stopping to consider that the volume produced would all but guarantee the price values would stay low. Once they got out the levels returned to normal. Any further drop in consumption would have to be attributed to other factors like competing forms of entertainment.

>>14006828
>Why are mecha shows such a hard sell these days?

They aren't. Just because mecha is dominating the entire market like it did in the 70s, 80s and 90s doesn't really mean shit. It just means those booms are over. We still get a steady stream of successful mecha anime and even manga.

Nuke this thread. It is built on fallacies.

>Fafner did good
>A/Z did good
>G-Reco did good
>Gargantia did good
>Valvrave, CrossAnge and MJP did decently
>UC Gundam keeps on getting absurd sales
Are you a newfag or everything has to sell like SEED, 00 and Frontier?

>>14007239
>If someone could make a good like of mecha toys with wider appeal, aka fun to play with but ALSO good looking, then they would already have their foot in the door.

There seriously needs to be one of those games that does the action figure gaming that's gotten popular in recent years, with giant robots.

>>14007363
dadcore lol

>>14007785
probably a anon who likes those shows

>>14006828
Because they're written by shit writers that uses anime cliches to gain attention from menchildren.

Another reason is that they're just ads for selling toys.

>>14011035
Being a toy ad doesn't mean it has to be bad, but the anime cliche' filled thing?
Yeah, I can understand that.

>>14008195

Stan Lee confirmed they used to sell 60k comics on average during his dinner with Kevin Smith, Mark Hamill, J J Abrams and...someone else. That was in the 60s or 70s. Comics are lucky to sell 15k nowadays.

>>14011080
>Being a toy ad doesn't mean it has to be bad
I think anon's point was the "just".

It's okay to be a toy commercial, it's not okay to be JUST a toy commercial. When all that the creators are doing is selling toys rather than telling stories, you get a bad show.

>>14011096

Comics used to sell for 10 cents so 60k is actually a low estimate. These days it's about $5 and not a lot of people are willing to spend that much for a floppy.

>>14011130

10c used to be worth a lot more given inflation.

>>14007967
>>14007995

I'm pretty sure he was making a joke seeing as their birthrates are below replacement.

>>14011145

Birthrates are below replacement level (2.1 births per woman) for most of the developed world.

>>14011100
Well yeah.
GBF and GBFTry are two examples of toy commercials.
The first is a pure toy commercial but it manages to be really well written nice fun and it has something for every part of the audience.
The latter is a souless fuckup filled with cliches and toy shilling.

>>14011136
Run 10c through a conversion calculator. 10 cents in 1960 would be about 80 cents today. I'm going to run some figures out of my collection to give you an idea.

Action Comics 1975 - 30 cents = 1.36
Charlton Comics 1978 - 35 cents = 1.33
Shazam 100 pages 1974 - 60 cents = 3.07
Swamp Thing 3-in-1 1979 = 3.49
Action Comics 80pg 50th anniversary 1988 - 2.50 = 5.12
Giant Batman Annual 80 pages 1962- 25 cents = 1.97

>>14011252
As you can see, what we pay for a single issue nowadays is about what we'd pay for a compilation of stories back them. Just for fun, I ran Edge of the Spiderverse backwards. For it to equal today's prices, we'd be paying $3.63 in 1975, $2.04 in 1962 and that's before taxes.

So yeah, it's not a matter of 10 cents being a lot more back then.

>>14010416
If I remember correctly, there hasn't been a single /m/ TV anime that did over 10k average in like over 7 years or something

>>14006872
>IMO this shouldn't make any difference in quality of the show itself.

Yeah, you'd think it wouldn't

I find it strange that young people wouldn't be interested in mecha. Little kids love giant robots right? I know I did. It's the reason I started watching anime in the first place. And I'm only 18; I'm not exactly old.

>>14011157

>It has something for every part of the audience.

I like S1 as much as everyone else here (despite its flaws), but I wouldn't call it "newcomer and children friendly" since it is basically written by Gunotas for Gunotas and to shill Gunpla which ironically shilled even more Gunpla a few years down the road since the some of the base Gunplas used for the GBF customs were hopelessly out of date

>>14013277

Trends and preferences can change over time

>>14013277

They're not realistic and "mature" like COD or Assasins Creed is. They're what your little brother likes.

>>14011130

Also, the market disappeared up its own ass with limited speciality stores and tons of variant covers.

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>>14006828
I can get why not everyone would be interested in the genre. What I don't get is how there's weird anomalies like TTGL that gain a fucking massive fanbase that never saw mecha anime before and then said fanbase despite loving the show to death refuses to check out any other mecha shows afterward. If I saw a show in a genre I originally dismissed that I loved I'd be in a hurry trying to watch anything else to see what I've been missing my whole life.

>>14013348
Funny enough, my edgy "realism" phase is probably what really got me into mecha anime in the first place.

Yes, I know how dumb that is. At least I grew out of it.

>>14013478
Studiofags are literally the worst. Gainax, Trigger and Shaft create the most miserable piles of plebs you've ever had the displeasure of reading posts by.

>>14007939
Comic movies do well because they aren't as intimidating for someone who likes the idea of superheroes to get into. Most people when they wanna get into something wanna start from the start and that's gonna be a real hassle when it's something running longer than most fans have even been alive like Batman. Hell it's barely been over ten years since a lot of long running comics finally started getting volumes that actually gather the older comics to make life easier for new fans.