Topic: Japanese entertainment (games, anime, movies, music)

[tendoboy1984]

Japanese games like Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Tekken, Sonic, Pac-Man, etc. have achieved widespread appeal and helped rejuvinate the video game industry. But it seems other forms of Japanese entertainment (music, movies, books, cartoons) haven't achieved the same mainstream success. Sure plenty of people enjoy anime, but it hasn't garnered the same widespread acceptance as Japanese video games.

Do you think those other forms of Japanese entertainment (anime, music, movies) will eventually become as popular as Japanese video games?

[nickmitch]

Anime is pretty popular. I would think anime shows are as popular as any American cartoons. Yu-Gi-Oh! had its heyday, Pokemon is still pretty popular, Toonami has its Saturday Anime night, etc.

As for music and movies, I'm sure it works the same as other foreign films/music. There's a nice audience that follows the stuff, and the language barrier acts as a filter for the rest of us so that only the best comes to main stream attention.

[BeautifulShy]

Yeah anime is pretty popular over here and it has been since the mid 80's.

While not the wide spread success that anime has Manga is pretty well known as well with stories that branch off or precedes from anime that it comes from.

As far as music goes there is breakout hits that crosses over here and into our collective conscience. While not real vocaloid is pretty popular over there and it does have crossover appeal

[TrueNerd]

No. One, if other Japanese mediums were going to use the popularity of Japanese video games as an entry point into worldwide success, that window has either already closed or it's on its way to closing. The time to strike would have been the 90s. Two, you can't simply replicate the success that Japanese games had in the 80s and 90s. They were at the forefront of the medium. Not only were they making some of the best games ever made, they were making important games that advanced the medium as a whole. A lot of that was simply experimenting with what a video game can be as technology allowed, but they were the ones doing it. For Japanese films, books, music, etc. to be as popular and accepted as Japanese video games, they would have to be revolutionary, important, and able to transcend cultural barriers. And there would have be quite a bit of them. Being merely "good" wouldn't be enough.