Why is Gundam unpoular in the US?

[cmd598]

If you want to properly market Gundam in America you need to remember one thing: America likes war. Pretending that there are still Nazis to shoot is like one of it's favorite pass times. War being good or at least not bad is a theme that's present in pretty much all American media even it's kid's shows like Transformers (Apparently eternal war between two transforming robot factions). This of course runs counter to basically every Gundam plot however...

[Brave Fencer Kirby]

What? One of the reoccuring themes in Gundam is that was is a necessary evil. It's not a good thing, per se, but it's better to fight against evil than it is to do nothing. This is seen all throughout Gundam, when civilians take up the fight if the military won't step up, or the military fights even against orders.

Gundam has never said "war is bad, you shouldn't do it". It's always been closer to "war is bad, but it's better than the alternative".

[J-Lead]

If you want to properly market Gundam in America you need to remember one thing: America likes war. Pretending that there are still Nazis to shoot is like one of it's favorite pass times. War being good or at least not bad is a theme that's present in pretty much all American media even it's kid's shows like Transformers (Apparently eternal war between two transforming robot factions). This of course runs counter to basically every Gundam plot however...

I don't think Americans in general prefer "war is good, lets go kill nazis" as a theme. It would be a bit more appropriate to call it "war is inevitable and someone has to fight it, because the nazisn people aren't gonna kill themselves, tough shit." Incidentally War in Gundam is portrayed as an inevitability that has to be fought, and those that refuse to fight often end up acomplishing nothing at all, or even dead. Even in Wing and Seed, what people tend to see as the two preachiest series out there, it's shown that you have to be willing to fight and sometimes kill for peace if you want to obtain it.

So no, it's not the theme of Gundam that turns the general American public off to it (although it could do without peacetard incidents such as "CAGALLI IS CRYING!" Seriously...)

Although we tend to think of America when we refer to Gundam's popularity in the west; it did fair poorly in europe as well.

[ShadowCell]

At the same time, many Gundam shows (Victory, Zeta, 0080, to name a few) spare no opportunity to show you how horrible war is (although that apparently doesn't mean you'll remember it), even if that war is ultimately being waged against genocidal dictators and lunatics. So if anything, the recurring theme in Gundam is that war is a necessary evil, emphasis on evil, with the occasional tantalizing possibility that the show's gimmicks might make war no longer necessary (ex. the Twin Drive System).

Either way, though, the deeper problem is that for Gundam to be successful in the United States, you have to bring merchandise. Since it's animated, you're probably going to have to aim for a younger audience, because you're not about to change societal attitudes towards animation with a Japanese giant robot cartoon. Since it's aimed at a younger audience, there's only so mature you can go thematically before you either make it inappropriate for that audience or freak out the parents. Since it's aimed at a younger audience, gunpla are probably not the best choice to market to them, as they require patience, care, and some skill to assemble and paint, and can't be played with when you're done. Since you can't really rely on gunpla as the US cash cow, you have to turn to other forms of merchandise--but the gunpla are the cash cow in Japan.

Sooooo...you're kinda screwed.

[cmd598]

I wasn't done, just pressed for time. War themes are only part of much deeper issues in comparison with it's competition but I didn't have time to write all that. There's no use pretending that the pacifism angle was annoyingly overt at times in the franchise though because it has been noted as being a turn off for a lot of people.

To fully examine the situation we need to decide who or what you're going to try and sell it to. Are you aiming for children or the general scifi demographic of mid/late teenage and up males? Are you selling a game or a TV show? Then, in the latter's case, are you selling a 30 min toy commercial or a serious business show? A large portion of the Gundam franchise can't seem to decide whether it wants to be a commercial or an actual show in my opinion which leads to serious story detracting gimmicks that are often used as valid excuses not to watch it by the western scifi/mech group.

Another sticking point is the characters. Most Western mech fans will turn their nose up at the average Gundam protagonist and not look back, this is perhaps because most of us grew up watching 80s action movie heroes and Optimus Prime be gritty hairy chested bad asses who stoically go to town on the enemy perhaps emitting an amusing one liner along the way, to say nothing of characters/actors further back in America's media. This is of course rather conflicting with the average Gundam protagonist being a girlish whiney crybaby and/or obvious tool for half the show. 0080s apparently popularity is likely related as the protagonist team save Bernie were all grizzled veteran badasses and Bernie was not a whiney annoying REMOVED and on a related note 0083's Kou Uraki is often cited to be one of the worst protagonists ever explicitly because he was a whiney annoying REMOVED.

Now onto aesthetics, the V fin and Zaku spikes, etc is generally a point of mockery. "Why are these sophisticated pieces of military hardware the brightest thing on my screen?" is a common question. Aesthetics also ties into other things like weaponry like the gundam hammer and mechanics such as the gimmicky silliness of combining and transforming robots or "backpacks" the size of the mech it's attached to. Western SF is pretty gimmick free...the day Battletech mechs start sprouting wings will likely be the day most of it's fanbase walks away. Also the West is by no means ignorant of what an actual military looks like and may have certain expectations thanks to the popularity of things like Generation Kill or Call of Duty.

Now, where I started, [war] themes. Gundam, and most mecha anime to be honest, contains a higher than average anti-war theme. In UC it's often no more obvious than in any war movie however in some of the AUs it pretty much ruins whatever they had going the same way someone jumping up and shouting "EVERYONE STOP FIGHTING!" during another D-Day invasion scenario is going to ruin the whole thing and everyone watching for the great combat scenario is probably trying to punch him through the screen or hoping he suddenly gets shot and everything resumes. It's also counter to any western mech heavy competition which contains some heavy war themes (This is presumably because they are wargames) like Battletech's space feudalism or Warhammer's grimdark war everywhere all the time between everything forever.

In conclusion, I think that the best way to actually make Gundam popular in the West would be to concoct a Westernized version of it as it isn't going to get very far outside of American Otaku circles in it's current form.

[foxpaws]

To say that fans want Gundam to be popular in N. America, is to say that people in Hell want ice water. (Hint: they aren't getting ice water.)

Bandai is too accustomed to deriving 70% of its Gundam revenue from merchandise to attempt a Gundam show with international appeal. Doing so would risk losing its lucrative audience in Japan, without any guarantee that the international broadcast would result in enough sales of the merchandise to compensate.*

Most of the profit comes from pla-models: cheap to mass produce, easy to sell at a fat margin. Unfortunately, Bandai America found out that N. American kids neither have the interest nor patience to build their own kits.**

Turns out, kids these days would rather sit in front of a TV playing on Xbox LIVE. But if Bandai is terrible at making a show with good appeal to N. American audiences, they're even worse at making a Gundam game that doesn't suck.

The franchise is too set in its ways to change willingly, and its continued success in its native market will make the stakeholders all the more resistant to take a risk on something different for the sake of a market they don't even understand... unless the negative population growth in Japan - and thus a reduction of the key merchandise demographic - becomes so dire that they have no choice. They can only milk the aging Gundam otaku fanbase for so long; most of these guys won't be building pla-model when they're 50 or 60.

I predict it'll take another decade or so before Bandai finally feels the need to budge. Don't hold your breath in the meantime.

-- Keith

* Though anecdotal, I'd note that most Japanese Gundam fans I met or spoke with in person were also staunchly anti-American, something that the franchise was all too eager to seize upon with thinly-veiled references in its recent shows. Good luck trying to sell an American-friendly Gundam show to Japanese Gundam fans. I'll eat my sneakers if that happens.

** Bandai America then changed the name from "model kit" to "action figure model kit" thinking that it'd help sales. It didn't.

[ShadowCell]

I predict it'll take another decade or so before Bandai finally feels the need to budge. Don't hold your breath in the meantime.

And I'd be surprised if the North American Gundam fandom is even as big by then as it is now.

[AmuroNT1]

Turns out, kids these days would rather sit in front of a TV playing on Xbox LIVE. But if Bandai is terrible at making a show with good appeal to N. American audiences, they're even worse at making a Gundam game that doesn't suck.

I think this is something endemic to all anime, rather than just Gundam. Since a truly depressing number of poor-quality games turn a profit simply by having a famous brand name attached, there's no incentive to make good games. The exceptions (things like Super Robot Wars) seem to be borne out of an honest love for the source material rather than a focus on the profits.

Then again, it's not like crappy licensed games are a wholly Japanese product...

[Dendrobium Stamen]

And I'd be surprised if the North American Gundam fandom is even as big by then as it is now.

It's not the size; it's how you use it

Granted, the Gundam fandom on your side of the Atlantic and mine is almost certain to decline in the next decade, but as long as there's some core base in 2019 (even if it's mostly comprised of replicants ) for new fans to find, the fandom can rebuild, a digital phoenix from HTML flames, to be poetic about it. Let's face it, the Gundam fandom Stateside was big enough in 1991 for there to be complaints over the romanisation of various names in Tomino's original novels, and grew from there until 2000 when Wing exploded the fandom.

Most of us here are spoilt, with most of the "elders" of forums like MAHQ having arrived in that era of huge fandom and widely-available merchandise, and perceive the fortunes of Gundam on US shores as a steady decline ever since. In reality, Wing was a bubble, which was in retrospect unsustainable due to the merchandising and liscencing strategies dictated by the headquarters in Japan. Still, the fandom has persisted and even thrived at times, with new blood appearing during the TV runs of G, SEED, and latest of all 00.

Considering the nature of the internet, and the nature of fandom, I'm quite sure that there'll still be the critical mass of fans around the Web to support any Stateside relaunch - the newbies of today could well be the seasoned veterans in a decade's time, just as the people who've persisted with their love of Gundam since the days of Gundamwatch, Gundam.com, and so forth have kept the torch going for the past decade!

[UC fan]

Oh my gosh, I think you just boosted my morale!

[ShadowCell]

So ten years from now we'll still be getting disappointed!

=D

[foxpaws]

I'm sure we'll see a flurry of activity when Gundam UC starts.

-- Keith

[vindKtiv]

Considering the nature of the internet, and the nature of fandom, I'm quite sure that there'll still be the critical mass of fans around the Web to support any Stateside relaunch - the newbies of today could well be the seasoned veterans in a decade's time, just as the people who've persisted with their love of Gundam since the days of Gundamwatch, Gundam.com, and so forth have kept the torch going for the past decade!

IF we get a Stateside relaunch that works.

So ten years from now we'll still be getting disappointed!

=D

You can't be disappointed if you see it coming. I definitely agree that the Gundam Wing thing was a bubble. I really doubt something like that is going to happen again with Gundam and the United States with Bandai's current state of affairs.

[foxpaws]

If you need proof that Japanese entertainment companies tend to lack a good understanding of the N. American market, just look at Bandai Visual. They set up Bandai Visual USA with the attitude of "you guys can't market anime for $#!+ - we're going to show you how it's done! We're going to show you how to sell anime in N. America at Japanese market prices and make fat profit!"

A couple of years later: "So, uh, we're gonna 'merge' our operations with BEI, under the BEI name." If they truly knew better, you'd think it would have been BEi being merged into BVUSA, not the other way around.

Seriously, stop holding out hope for a franchise relaunch. It's really not worth it. If you must, pinch your pennies to save up for overpriced Japanese releases and imported merchandise. It's really the only legally viable option left.

-- Keith

PS: if it's justification or street cred you're looking for among other N. American fandom circles, and/or you want to feel snobby, just tell people you're into Transformers comics and hate the movies. Unlike Gundam, the Transformers brand actually still means something here.

PPS: one reason why the Super Robot Wars series does well is because development costs for keeping the game engine and assets up to date don't even come close to the astronomical budgets demanded by fully-realized 3D worlds and physics models in the PS3/Xbox 360 console generation. Banpresto - who, by the way, successfully resisted being integrated into Namco Bandai Games and maintained its independence - can keep tweaking the existing code base and game play formula, avoiding the need to sink millions into creating a new and unproven 3D engine. That, and Banpresto is totally not interested in pandering to an overseas market to begin with.

(Namco Bandai honestly would've been better off licensing an established game/physics engine from overseas, or at least given the job to Capcom, though I do understand that they'd rather give their in-house teams something to do instead of laying them off in Japan's current economy.)

[Kuruni]

Actually, Banpresto try to bring SRW to 3D few times, they're medicore at best (GC and Neo) and flop at worst (both Scranble Commander). Then again, all of these 3D games are highly experiment (GC has parts breaking system, Neo use non-grid tactical map and SCs are RTS) so I guess they weren't too surprise...

[blind_dead_mcjones]

You can't be disappointed if you see it coming. I definitely agree that the Gundam Wing thing was a bubble. I really doubt something like that is going to happen again with Gundam and the United States with Bandai's current state of affairs.

it ain't gonna happen again for anime in general, the 90's were its golden era in the west

[draconins]

PPS: one reason why the Super Robot Wars series does well is because development costs for keeping the game engine and assets up to date don't even come close to the astronomical budgets demanded by fully-realized 3D worlds and physics models in the PS3/Xbox 360 console generation. Banpresto - who, by the way, successfully resisted being integrated into Namco Bandai Games and maintained its independence - can keep tweaking the existing code base and game play formula, avoiding the need to sink millions into creating a new and unproven 3D engine.

Actually, Banpresto try to bring SRW to 3D few times, they're medicore at best (GC and Neo) and flop at worst (both Scranble Commander). Then again, all of these 3D games are highly experiment (GC has parts breaking system, Neo use non-grid tactical map and SCs are RTS) so I guess they weren't too surprise...

Forgetting Super Robot Wars Alpha Dreamcast Version? The battle is 3D, in my opinion it is very much not a mediocre one.

Nevertheless had the Super Robot Wars (not the Banpresto Originals one) be brought into US, I don't believe it had big chance to become popular for probably some similar reason with Gundam's unpopularity.

[foxpaws]

When I wrote fully-realized 3D worlds, I was talking about the wide-open environments one might see in Armored Core or Modern Warfare, not smaller combat rings and stages that happen to be in 3D. *grin*

As others have pointed out, Banpresto's line of strategy and tactics games likely wouldn't do well stateside, but a well-crafted Gundam FPS might. I really enjoyed the Blue Destiny series on Sega Saturn for its fast and crisp action, and would like to see something like that with current graphics and environments.

Unfortunately, Bandai's internal teams aren't capable of creating the kind of 3D engines and environments one might see in Modern Warfare 2. I'm not even asking for a Crysis-level effort - if From Software (a Japanese company) can craft a decent 3D engine and environment for its Armored Core series of games, why can't Bandai?

-- Keith

[JEFFPIATT]

Nevertheless had the Super Robot Wars (not the Banpresto Originals one) be brought into US, I don't believe it had big chance to become popular for probably some similar reason with Gundam's unpopularity.

We got the orginal gen titles dut to the massive clusterf**k the copyrights would be to get in NA. Robotech is owned by 4 rights holders alone NGE is split between many parties also. it was cheaper to get the titles with one copyright line instead of one with a very long list of rights holders.

[AmuroNT1]

Unfortunately, Bandai's internal teams aren't capable of creating the kind of 3D engines and environments one might see in Modern Warfare 2. I'm not even asking for a Crysis-level effort - if From Software (a Japanese company) can craft a decent 3D engine and environment for its Armored Core series of games, why can't Bandai?

That's one thing that I find extremely galling - Bandai is perfectly willing to recycle poor games (like taking the mediocre Seed PS2 game to make Battle Assault 3), but they aren't willing to use the resources they have. The ACE engine would be perfect for a Gundam game, and yet...