by Sabrblade » Sun Sep 27, 2015 10:07 pm
- Motto: "Can't do a job halfway. What's worth doing is worth doing well, I say."
- Weapon: Saber Blade
I get what Ryan's saying but, a lot of the other robot lines that are much bigger in Japan have more appeal to older audiences for all of them involving non-living, human-operated robots, while living robots like the Transformers are viewed as being more for younger audiences. It isn't so much a problem with Takara not being that invested in the Transformers (but that is a problem, yes) as it is the mentality of Japan's interest in robot lines.
It certainly doesn't help that just about every time a North American Transformers cartoon gets dubbed into Japanese it gets dumbed down for younger viewers with lots of adblibbing and over-the-top humor being added into it. The only times this didn't happen were when the G1 cartoon was dubbed into Japanese (since the trend began with Beast Wars, but the G1 cartoon's dub did get a lot more dialogue for the narrator to explain even the most obvious of things to the viewers) and when Animated was dubbed into Japanese (since the original English version was already light-hearted and comedic enough, but the newly-added episode previews at the beginning and ending of each episode did get some jokey dialogue in them).
Plus, accompanying the "nonliving robots = older viewers, living robots = younger viewers" mentality is an additional mentality of "It's cool to build model kits, it's uncool to play with toys". This was once brought up in one of the Twincast Podcast episodes in regards to how Transformers get only a small page count of advertisement in the Japanese magazines compared to the other robot lines like Gundam that get a HUGE page count of advertisement. And whereas the Transformers are advertising toys, the other lines that get all the other pages are advertising model kits. So there's a greater appeal of model kits over toys when it comes to robot lines in Japan, especially between younger and older viewers.
Now, yes, there are some exceptional cases to all this like the collector-based action figure merchandise (for Transformers, this would be the Masterpieces, and for other lines this would be things like SHFigurarts or Soul of Chogokin and such), but these are deemed less as actual "toys" than they are "display pieces" since they are less expected to be actually played with and more expected to be displayed on a shelf or desk for decorative purposes.
And there's another factor in all this as well that hasn't been covered yet. A lot of the other robot lines that are bigger than Transformers in Japan got started way ahead of Transformers; some by a few years, some by several years, some even by a whole decade. These ones were popular and successful before Transformers was even conceived, so Transformers already some big competition to go up against when it first came to Japan. And no matter how popular and successful it ever became in Japan, several of the earlier robot lines would continue to outclass it with their own undying success and popularity. Not to mention that many of them used model kits as their primary medium of merchandise, as opposed to the Transformers's use of toys (though, yes, several of the other lines like Super Sentai did choose toys over models for their products as well, but an example like Super Sentai is also aimed at younger audiences too).
So while Takara's own interest in the Transformers does need to change, so too (arguably even moreso) does Japan's overall mentality of "living vs. nonliving robots" and "toys vs. model kits". I myself have always been more interested in both living machines and toys than nonliving machines and model kits. Even as a preschool child when playing with Hot Wheels and/or Matchbox cars did I pretend that the cars were alive with voices and personalities of their own, and any Power Rangers Megazord I had was also played with as though both it and its individual Zord components were alive. I think I even played with Star Wars vehicles as though they were alive (though, that may in part have been due to my lack of owning any of the human characters besides Boba Fett). While one could argue that this kind of thing is what kids do and only adds to Japan's treating living robots as kiddy stuff, I as an adult collector still maintain my own mentality of preferring my robots and vehicles to be alive rather than not. But until the day comes when Japan chooses to think this way as well, we're stuck with Transformers being a constantly-struggling success over in the Land of the Rising Sun, even if Takara were to put even more stock into it than they already are.
"When there's gold feathers, punch behind you!!"Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
