How popular are western cartoons in Japan?
I know that Tom and Jerry is HUGE in there
How popular are western cartoons in Japan? I know that Tom and Jerry is HUGE in there
How popular are western cartoons in Japan?
I know that Tom and Jerry is HUGE in there
1. Anything Disney
2. Tom and Jerry
These two things are massive. Some stuff like Snoopy is massive in merch only but if you're not Disney then your cartoon is insanely niche following at best
Speaking of which
Oh god. Do Japanese mouseshills have no shame?
Pickle and Peanut was popular over there because Japanese people assumed that it was a distillation of actual American humor.
I want that to sink in for you.
The Japanese honestly believed that Pickle and Peanut is what WE consider good comedy.
Wew.
Kingdom Hearts appearance when?
>this apparently got a better response in Japan
>a couple transactions later, it's now owned by Disney
>it doesn't look like Japan has noticed yet
I also know that Popeye became really popular during the 80s
What recent cartoons have gotten popular in Japan?
I don't know, but i think Adventure Time had a ton of merch in there
Adventure time
This is said a lot but I've seen an Adventure Time display in a small corner of a department store in Shinjuku once and that's really it. I don't think even 1 in 10 random japs in the street would be able to identify Finn and Jake. Maybe one in 50.
Do you think 1 in 10 Americans could identify Finn and Jake? I think that's being pretty generous.
We Bear Bears has a lot of merchs in Japan.
It just depends on the cartoon anon, I mean 87 TMNT got dubbed by 3 different countries but most cartoons get Japanese dubs even stuff like Home Movies which there's Youtube channel for and most the comments are just people complaining they didn't dub season 4.
https://www.youtube.com/@homemoviesjapaneselanguage9826/videos but I say they're about as popular as any other anime thing since they don't see it as different like we which makes me kinda wish the term anime didn't exist in the US.
Companies in Japan* no countries.
The following for cartoons in japan isn't enough for there to be fansubs of undubbed shit im assuming?
I'm guessing there's very little demand for it, as most Japs who are into cartoons probably know English
A little off topic but is English required to learn in Jap schools, highly recommend to learn like Spanish in the states or just a niche thing to learn?
Depends on how close to live to the southern states, kind of like up in Canada where you only really need French for the east
It's required for all high school students. But they suck at it because it's never usually needed in their daily lives and because they pass the exams by mostly showing they understand grammatical rules rather than getting any kind of communication experience
Disney Cinematic
POWER GAP.
Any DC or Marvel character that was in a good video game and featured in a live action movie.
Random classic choices, eg Betty Boop, Snoopy, Popeye, Tom and Jerry
Barbie
Certain kids shows on CN or Disney.. Paw Patrol. Maisy, Loomins, Pingu, Shawn the Sheep/Wallace and Grommit
"weird" by japanese standards shit like King of the Hill, GI joe. Beavis and Butthead.
SUPER weird, as in fansub territory, or super niche. Hellboy. Morel Orel. Boondocks. Aqua teen hunger force.
English is mandatory, but they're bad at it.
They teach it, but it's the boring way with little actual interacting in English with peers or native speakers, thus the reason why Eigo fluency remains very low unless someone chooses to pursue it in higher education or reaches out to foreigners. I've played with actual Japanese people in video games and very few could speak English, but some of them appeared to understand what I was writing at times when I didn't know how to say it in Japanese.
I saw fansubs of Morel Orel on Youtube and I seen doujinshi of cartoons all the time but also
most can watch them over there.
It's not that there isn't support for it, it's that Japan will frick you in the ass if you try to download shit like you normally would here in the states. Who knew a country with a massive anime industry would enforce laws preventing illegal distribution/alteration of animated works?
It's funny most JP vtubers talk more about western shit than JP shit.
KOTH maybe
?si=kHdXSyKVcpNKBHb-
Aw they didn't translate what got changed for Japanese
When people talk about Japanese dub of KOTH there only source is always from season 1 and nothing else. How much of the show got dubbed? Because I never saw anything other than season 1 dubbed.
They dubbed season 1 and then for some reason they made it subbed for the rest
Was it not like the simpsons where it was only on fox sports so it wasn’t very popular because the channel mostly showed soccer?
Yeah
Original joke: Ladybird looks like Fran Fresher
Jap joke: Ladybird looks like this
Pingu is also ridiculously huge in Nippon
Beavis and Butthead+King Of the Hill have somewhat of a small following there.
The only one to really break through in like two decades has been PAW Patrol
Thomas & Friends, ScoobyDoo, SpongeBob, South Park, Simpsons, Clone Wars, PowerPuffGirls, Batman TAS, and a good number of Dreamworks films too. Kunga Fu Panda is beloved over there. There was even a parody of it in an animea few years back
I really want to read japs talk about scooby doo. It must be so weird to them.
interesting considering a jap designed the og scooby doo characters.
imagine if there was an equivalent, it would be like if a burger had designed dragon ball.
Dog designer legend
I live in Japan
If I go to the mall I'll see Tom and Jerry toys in the crane games, cute snoopy merch in Plaza and a Disney store in pretty much every mall.
But I will see PAW Patrol in the supermarkets, in the hobby stores, in plushie speciality toy stores with no other western stuff, in every arcade with crane games, in pop up shops, and right now in McDonald's and cinemas too.
Got any more pics of western merchandise in glorious nippon? Bonus points if it the product was made there.
The Paw Patrol threads are always full of that
moomin cafe.
i'd kill for that ancestor plush
Just commission it? Not hard
>Texas malt liquor
Sir this is a Buc-ce’s
Japanese news explaining rick and morty driving mcdonalds nugget sauce sales.
You know, next time I go visit my relatives I should absolutely get some buckees merch. They lost their shit over the in and out t-shirts I got.
He's an unstoppable autismo machine, but is he wrong?
I wouldn't say they hate them. If you intend to visit japan as a tourist, I can't imagine you having problems. If you intend to LIVE in japan, the standards are completely riddiculous: BUT the're also batshit insane for everyone born there.
Yeah. You don't want to live in Japan.
Peanuts is everywhere, not just Tokyo and Osaka Universal has a Peanuts land section. Paw Patrol is the biggest western cartoon in Japan though by far, went to Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka and saw that shit EVERYWHERE
If you have a longstanding chain of stores arounds japanese cities, then youve made your mark (Disney, peanuts, moomin, miffy)
Is it really popular or just in the Tokyo area?
Not just Tokyo. That photo was in Mie prefecture
Yeah I live in Tokyo too, Paw Patrol, Peanuts and Tom & Jerry all have constant cross-promotion stuff in all the 7-11 stores
There’s a store near my office with a load of Tom & Jerry pop art stuff in their windows too, I think they’re a dentist?
Moomin is another one worth mentioning
トムGET!!
Nothing's matching the cultural penetration of Paw Patrol right now. Even Disney is only in "character goods" sections, not right there in the groceries
curry mix, is there a reason paw patrol in specific is appealing to the japanese?
>Cute
>Transforming cars
>Color coordinated squad with specific roles
>Shouting out catchphrases
>Shippable little boys for fujos
>Pro-authoritarian and in-group harmony
It's huge with little kids everywhere but it's also highly compatible with Japanese entertainment anyway
The Powerpuff Girls, Lilo & Stitch (well just Stitch really), most Disney stuff and, Paw Patrol, and SpongeBob are the ones I know for sure
Also isn't Rick & Morty somewhat popular over there too?
>Pikeru Rikku!
My Japanese bandmate loves South Park
Specifically he thinks Towelly is the funniest thing ever...
Anno likes Tex Avery and Tom & Jerry shorts but doesn't like Disney at all according to this interview
>Ikuhara:Anno-san said a weird thing. He was impressed by Usagi's transformation in front of Mamoru in ep34.
>Hideaki Anno:Weird?!
>Ikuhara:The reason is super weird. Usagi blushes before the signature phrase. He said she was prepared to show her naked body. That impressed Anno-san.
>Sato:Wow, that's exact what I tried to do.
>Ikuhara:What? Really? That's why she blushed? I didn't expect that.
>Sato:When I helped the storyboard of the scene, I added the blush.
>Anno:He was looking at her body! (laugh) I knew it!!
>Sato:That's right.
>Anno:For the first time, I was moved to tears by Sailor Moon.
>Ikuhara:You cried?!
>Anno:Yeah, the bokeh in the track-up is nice. Plus, the soundtrack and sound effect go on. It cleverly suggests that the transformation is occuring in front of Mamoru,the blush suggests that she was prepared to show her body.
>Magic girl transforming comes from Wonder Woman.
You talking about the 1977 TV show? Cutie Honey did it in 1973, but I won't say either created it
>>Anno:For the first time, I was moved to tears by Sailor Moon.
Usagi ENF moved Anno to tears. That man is so fricking based, god bless him
Messing up Naoka Takeuchis work by making it pervy.
*Improving
Naoka Takeuchi would never make something pervy...
As of 1996 anyway
>"Most anime creators are basically autistic
ROFLMAO
The number of quotes where Anno is just a complete fricking spitfire is hilarious in general. He literally once said that anime was proof America bombed Japan into a nation of manchildren
It's Anno's fricking fault he inspired Takashi Murakami into coining that "superflat" movement and getting a bunch of weebs their college degrees and a frickton of thesises on bullshit. And I was one of them!
Based Anno
Based Anus
The love Tom N Jerry and Peanuts, and also Powerpuff Girls. That's it.
Wacky Races was apparently hugely influential over there, like if an anime that's otherwise not normally about racing does an episode or special about racing odds are good they're riffing on the Wacky Races formula, for example here's an 80's SD Gundam short film that is very obviously using the Wacky Races format;
The wacky races episode of Space Dandy was one of the best they had and also a clear homage.
Redline The Movie also comes to mind.
I always found it funny two car racing shows ended being classics in the opposite counties, Speed Racer threated like an classic cartoon while Japan couldn't give a frick about it and Wacky Races is other way around.
Both from the 60's too.
Apparently HTF was popular enough there at some point, enough to warrant a surplus of exclusive merch not sold in any other country.
I miss 2000s Japan
That store (Village Vanguard) still looks pretty much exactly like that though
In fact Japan in general has moved on very little since 2000ish
That's why it's so based. I wish I could move there. Too bad they hate gaijin, even though they're extremely polite to our faces.
Japs aren't a monolith. Lots hate foreigners, some worship and fetishize them, others are neutral
It's true, but the majority of them hate us or are indifferent. I don't want to be fetishized either. I could live a decent enough life in Tokyo, but would always be a stranger in a strange land.
The overwhelming majority of Japanese people feel no malice towards foreigners but there's few factors that can cause some misunderstandings and difficulties.
Japanese people think their English sucks (and they're right) and that's why some of them aren't comfortable dealing with Westerners.
Social harmony has a similar status in Japanese culture as freedom in America. So it's a bit of a headache for Japanese people when foreigners are like bulls in a china shop trying to navigate the mega autistic Japanese social etiquette.
Japan is the most culturally self-sufficient country in the world after America. They don't really care about the world outside Japan that much, mostly travel within Japan and also mostly consume their own media. This is also why Japanese people never bother to learn English and why their idea of the rest of the world can be pretty black and white.
Japanese people love to stereotype and exoticize everything in a way that can feel absurdly outdated to Westerners sometimes, but they also apply that way of thinking to themselves.
Just don’t act like a moron like jonny somali and speak their language well and most will treat you with respect
>Japan in general has moved on very little since 2000ish
I wouldn't really say that
Yeah there's much more glorious PAW Patrol now
Like, some billboards have 3D effects and they generally use email slightly more than fax machines now?
>muh fax machines
you're 10 years too late, only germans use fax machines as their primary mode of communication now
Tell me you're not familiar with Japan in 2023 without telling me
There's a nostalgia growing for pre-millennial culture over there if I recall. Just like Americans lamenting the bulldozing of an old building to be replaced with a brutalist slab, the replacing of their old architecture for more modern ones gives the same feeling of grief. The arcades are still closing down over too.
Still baffles me how Yahoo is far and away the biggest search engine to this day in Japan
That's only because they got a chokehold on them economically, like KFC. You rush into that foreign market fast enough, and soon enough you're all they know.
Japan loves fried chicken. Everyone told me japanese KFC was amazing but when I went, it tasted exactly like the slop in American versions. Also, their McDonald's food somehow tastes even WORSE than the American version. Everyone hates it but for me, it's Mos burger.
They do, but they don't know any other restaurant from America other than KFC because of how aggressively they forced themselves into their economy in the 80s. I'm pretty sure they're still celebrating "Christmas" with buckets of chicken these days, even though you could fresh deliver a turkey to Syria with the supply chains we have nowadays.
>even though you could fresh deliver a turkey to Syria with the supply chains we have nowadays
What? Very few people worldwide eat turkey for Christmas, anon.
The point is that you "could", genius. The corporation has managed to worm itself in as tradition, and it's just accepted.
Japs have plenty of options and have the internet as well. They understand KFC is a Christmas thing because of highly effective marketing in the 70s. Now they just enjoy taking part in the silly tradition on Christmas, which is after all a regular working day. There's no desire to change it to an accurate western style Christmas dinner
Went to tokyo recently and their mcdonalds wasn't all that great
But why was i even in mcdonalds instead of the 100s of ramen/soba/udon $ konbini stands
Kind of wild how clearly that's the exact same place
It's two branches of the same nationwide store. The junk store home made aesthetic is a deliberate corporate branding choice. It's fake
>[thing] is HUGE in Japan
I hear this so often that I start to seriously doubt it. Once saw a post claiming that Halo was huge in Japan.
90% of what's mentioned in this thread is virtually unknown. Maybe had an event in a store once or twice. Kind of like saying , I dunno, Yotsubato! is huge in America because look, this whole website is themed after it
Disney, the big comic book superheroes, Tom and Jerry, Moomins, Pingu, Peanuts (Snoopy specifically), Powerpuff Girls and Paw Patrol are the only ones I'd expect a majority of nips to recognize. I guess if you want your cartoon to be big in Japan start it with a P
you could probably add Thomas to that list at the very least
obviously a lot depends on what you consider "big in Japan" - there aren't a lot of anime that I'd expect a random person off the street in the West to recognise
Fair, yeah, Thomas should be there
paw patrol is pretty big these days, that's for sure. but that's about it except disney movie stuff
the things is, getting merch of western cartoons that are pretty obscure in Japan has been a thing mainly among women in Japan for decades, just like some sort of fashion item
so even if it's pretty unknown in Japan, they often still manage to sell merch like this
something like ''a high school girl puts a tiny plush of a western cartoon character on her bag but she actually never watched the show'' is pretty normal in Japan
the artist of parappa the rapper was also successful in that way in the 90s Japan even before the game came out pretty much just because Japanese thought his art was cute and cool
Little fact the artist of Parappa The Rapper did artwork for Puffy Ami Yumi.
>something like ''a high school girl puts a tiny plush of a western cartoon character on her bag but she actually never watched the show''
Kind of like people who are Jamie Hewlett fans through Gorillaz. Not to say that's a bad thing since his art outside of Gorillaz is also great
Halo is big...by import game fans in Japan, which is pretty much everyone who has an xbox.
As a proxy of relative power, if your shit does not exist in Gachapon form, you aren't shit.
>I guess if you want your cartoon to be big in Japan start it with a P
'pa-man is proof.
cartoons had obvious influence on one piece. I mean, here is jerry's cousin using gear 3.
Does your cartoon show up in Japanese variety shows?
That's because it's the channel that owns broadcast rights to paw patrol.
And? Do Jap networks have carte blanche to use any media property they don't have the rights to?
Look at that bawd.
Rude
happy tree friends has a huge following in Japan
I saw this at a huge toy store at ueno tokyo
had stuff like curious george too
You left your face in the bottom of the picture
Lookit dis mystery meat boi lol
That is ALSO Village Vanguard
Interesting that pretty much 100% of these Western cartoon displays are done by one store
They also do the Paw Patrol pop ups
Guess they're fueling the westaboos
Does this count?
Dang and Ronpa
>Huh huh, japenis huhuh
I remember hearing that jap women are super wet for Disney's Frollo
they fricking love stitch
I find it funny how the most unapologetic western or bizarre cartoons manage to make a splash in Japan in terms of popularity meanwhile wannabe anime like Steven Universe and OK.KO don't even make a ripple despite wanting desperately to be lived there, at best I know Witch Hat Atelier author enjoyed Owl House
Of course they want something different and novel instead of what they already have too much of, only uglier and worse
The japs like Rick and Morty. Anime coming soon.
It’s so fricking over
I just want big balloons is that so much to ask
>How popular are western cartoons in Japan?
Nowhere near as popular as anime in the west. There's your answer.
Anything French or Belgium stuff like Asterix, Tintin, or Spirou?
Nope
I've seen Smurfs once or twice in Japan but they're by no means well known
What about Yoko Tsuno?
Thomas and friends is massive in Japan, even bigger than it's second biggest fans in the USA and its home country of the UK.
Japanese people just love trains.
weirdest shit i saw at yamashiroya was Skibidi Toilet, Poppy playtime and undwrtale merch
Dexter
A big question is... How Asterix was a Failure in Japan? They even released an arcade videogame in Japanese language...
They accidentally killed Hirohito instead of Caesar
They have big noses and Japan likes small noses.
Tell that to anime in the 70's.
>Mario entered the chat
Honestly I wished french created stuff got more popular, they have pretty cool comics and cartoons
Many BD's are fun and entertaining, it's just bc they're not mainstream, have pretty colors and doesn't include mainstream stuff, countries like Japan doesn't want to invert.
one anon storytimed a BD where some brown jungle girl was on some alien planet, forgot the name but it was really lovely. Les sisters is also pretty nice.
Navis/Sillage/Wake
Asterix is popular in South Korea, China, but not Japan. Why?
Horse Show got pretty popular over there too. Only thing I've ever seen fansubbed by the japs, before official translations came out
>Horse Show got pretty popular over there too
really? I heard it was a flop but I could be wrong
Wow it turns out other countrys constantly consume each others media and dont have a exclusive diet of exclusively local shit.
>Snowy
Why did they use the english name and not the original french name for Milou?
No idea. Snowy is an english word most japanese would know. Mirou is kind of a weird name in japanese, but I think they could have just gone with Miru. But then that's an actual japanese name.
Captain haddock says some weird shit in the translation.
I’m kind of shocked Bluey hasn’t taken off in Japan
I'm not. It's not their thing at all. Unfamiliar home settings, different parenting philosophy from the ones popular there, and designs that artsy redditors like but is very outlandish to people who see Hello Kitty and Pikachu every day. They also already have plenty of kid shows where adults communicate like adults (Shin-chan, Sazae-san, Jarinko Chie etc) instead of like morons so the main gimmick has little impact
It IS out there, it's just not making much of a splash.
Their posters are kino
It's interesting how big anime is here while Western animated shows are hardly acknowledged there
>PPPA4
It's not that interesting.
western cartoons are hardly acknowledged here anyways
man, Tom Waits is such a weird musician.
Crossover time
you don't even know half of it.
I want advice from any jap anons, friend of mine is trying to develop a mecha series, any tips on how we can make it popular in japan despite being made by Canadians
First. Recognize you cannnot be japanese. Japan doesn't need bad copies of Japanese works. Even the gaikokujin who came closest, still didn't just blindly copy Japan.
Second. There's never 100 percent predicting well what appeals to Japan. Expect to try and fail lots of times.
Do you want Japanese people to like it or Japanese mech fans?
Japanese mech fans are a fan of mechs period, make cool robots and you win.
Japanese people just want something Japanese.
You doing super robot or real robot?
What is animu?
Here are the Christmas items at my supermarket. Represented - Paw Patrol, Disney and one popular one you all forgot, Minions
Foxes and bunnies