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Comment by s_m_t | Hacker News Reader

You shouldn't think of the anime in isolation. They are multimedia franchises. The anime is there to sell the manga, the figures, the light novel, etc.

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It's probably widely why Pokémon is so successful. It's not about the show, it's about selling all the other products. The show is one big advertisement. And it's good, too.

Or at least it was, when I was a kid watching it on a CRT. I have no idea what it's like now.

Still there.

Also Gundam. The whole franchise was initially a way to promote model kit :D

Gundam has some really amazing animation though. So many beautifully animated battles! I do spot some reuse here and there when I rewatch but still. It never struck me as a mere advertisement for merchandise.

That reminds me of how excited I got when I got a pokedex and workable pokeballs from Santa. It's been a long time since there were only 150 Pokemon. I wonder if they're even still using pokedexes in the series.

I also got a couple of digivices from Digimon, from the second and fourth(?) season. I remember they had story modes and contacts at the top for multiplayer gameplay, as well as a walking sensor for story advancement which you could cheat by just shaking the device for hours. My friend with whom I battled it out never had a chance because he actually tried walking the distance. That's until he noticed the gap between our digimon was getting too big despite all the walking he did, and I ended up telling him the trick. Quite a facepalm moment right there. Those were neat little devices for our ages back then.

> I wonder if they're even still using pokedexes in the series.

The pokedex itself is a pokemon now. It hosts a Rotom.

My friend was the one with the working pokedex and boy was I jealous. Lots of Pokemon nostalgia thinking about all the gizmos and toys I bought, trading cards, video games, marbles, action figures, you name it.

Fun time to be nostalgic since tomorrow is the 25th anniversary too.

Very true pointing out the multi in multimedia. Just like musicians, they make a big chunk of their earnings off of merchandise and concerts and not just record sales and royalties.

Actually, the wast majority of musicians make nothing at all. Even fairly popular bands don’t.

“That you’d better be in it for the music, because you sure as hell aren’t going to make any money from being in a metal band, certainly in this day and age.”

https://www.loudersound.com/features/peripherys-spencer-sote...

The most recognizables ones are, but I'd wager most anime has no such ambitions.

you’d be wrong, as far as i’m aware. almost all anime in the current system is an adaptation of a manga or LN - the anime comes at the end of the multimedia expansion project.

Or an adaptation of a game; the ones with multiple endings even sometimes receive multiple anime projects to show off aspects of the different paths and different endings.

Adapted from a manga? Sure I guess. And most movies are adapted from books. I'm not sure that qualifies as a multimedia economic model. Is the anime really there to increase sales of the manga? Or is it supposed to be profitable on its own?

I would, perhaps naively, Assume the latter.

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