Anime Boston - State of the Industry Personal Observation

By Chris Beveridge     April 12, 2004

During the state of the industry panel, there was a lot of the usual kinds of questions and a number of good and amusing ones. Thankfully as times goes on and the mantra of how digisubs are affecting the industry is seeping in and the question isn't asked as often or it's at least phrased with a different angle to produce some new conversation. Typically I tend to just listen since most of what's being said is essentially the obvious things, such as how licensing works, what's up with this or that and other basics. I did sneak in one question of my own though since I was curious about the overall feel and then the participants personal feelings on something.

Essentially I asked what they all saw as the next big untapped genre that will be taking up space over the next few years and then what genre they themselves would like to see more of come over.

All three answered that shoujo is essentially the next big "it" that's coming out and it's definitely being helped by the amount of manga coming out as well since the two complement each other well.

David Williams of ADV Films said he hoped for more of the real space-opera style shows to come out as opposed to the usual science fiction/action-adventure pieces that are more common these days. Chad Kime of Geneon said he hoped to see more sports titles come out, at which point Jerry Chu of Bandai changed his answer (I don't recall his first answer) to sports as well.

The sports angle is one that came up a few times over the weekend. During the Geneon panel, Chad Kime talked about Hajime no Ippo and that there are currently around 10 volumes planned, to cover something like the first fifty episodes (though total volume plans are not finalized at this point, so don't take anything to mean they aren't finishing the series). Since the release of Princess Nine a few years back, there was no real surge or even a blip of sports anime to surface since then. This continues to be unfortunate in our eyes considering how many great titles there are out there. Hopefully people will try Hajime no Ippo. Hopefully Slam Dunk will finally get licensed and some other titles will start carving out that market and growing it along. The chances need to be taken on both the fans and studios side.