America’s Top 30 Anime Classics, According to the Japanese
- Categories: Anime, News
- Date: Sep 5, 2012 10:07 JST
- Tags: Evangelion, Mononoke hime, Nausicaa, Pokemon, Rankings, Studio Ghibli, USA
As if it were not already plain enough how much the tastes of American anime fans differ to those of the Japanese, a survey of what the Japanese think of the USA’s “Top 30 Anime Classics” confirms it in no uncertain terms, with Ghost in the Shell and Akira yet again losing out to such genre classics as Pokemon, although it seems virtually everyone can agree on the greatness of Ghibli.
The ranking, with the original American ranking positions in brackets:
1. Neon Genesis Evangelion (2nd)
2. Pokemon (17th)
3. Spirited Away (10th)
4. Princess Mononoke (6th)
5. My Neighbour Totoro (14th)
6. Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind (5th)
7. Howl’s Moving Castle (21st)
8. Gundam (15th)
9. One Piece (12th)
10. Grave Of The Fireflies (25th)
11. The Castle of Cagliostro (24th)
12. Ghost In The Shell (1st)
13. Naruto (3rd)
14. Dragon Ball Z (7th)
15. Rurouni Kenshin (16th)
16. Millennium Actress (27th)
17. Bleach (29th)
18. The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (30th)
19. Akira (4th)
20. D.Gray-man (26)
21. Soul Eater (28)
22. Patlabor (19)
23. Tekkon Kinkreet (18th)
24. Ninja Scroll (8th)
25. The Vision of Escaflowne (11th)
26. Tokyo Godfathers (13th)
27. Memories (20th)
28. Sword of the Stranger (9th)
29. Street Fighter 2 (22nd)
30. Dead Leaves (23rd)
Americans may of course doubt the validity of any ranking which fails to include Cowboy Bebop…
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Here, in Brazil, Rurouni Kenshin will be the firt one.
doubt it. Probably some "tv machete" classic or db/dbz
I believe the ranking in Brazil would be something like:
1 - Saint Seiya
2 - Dragon Ball
3 - Pokemon
4 - Rurouni Kenshin
5 - Sakura Card Captors
6 - Digimon
7 - Sailor Moon
8 - Evangelion
9 - Cowboy Bebop
10 - Rayearth
That's what you get for only polling mainstreamers z_z
What exactly is the point of this? What's next? American's list of top 10 favorite food for Japanese?
More like top 2:
1. Whale
2. Dolphin
+1
I dunno About you But Classic would Include Kimagure orange road, Maison Ikkoku,And code geass for me. the SOL animes i like are from the 80s the current ones are so fucking awful k-on for example i would like to burn every copy of every disc and manga in the world to save us from how horrible it is.
Get real... That's weird food even in Japan. I guess that's the image you get when all you know about Japan comes from South Park?
Krazy Dolphins! **** you dollfins, **** you whaluus!
And yet a number of news reports involving Japanese cuisine are about dolphin meat being "mislabeled" and sold as tuna.
There are also a number of reports of gunmen going nuts in the US and going on killing sprees, but just because something happens doesn't mean everyone does it. Sure, there's a market for dolphin and whale in Japan, but it's still a strange thing for most people to eat.
I doubt we Americans even know which food is actually Japanese other than Pocky...
You're confusing weeaboos for Americans... Americans don't even know what Pocky is.
Most Americans don't care to know what Pocky is. Don't be a weeaboo, but it is nice to be informed.
As an American I can tell you most Americans will just read off of a Panda Express menu.
And they never realise it is Chinese.
Pseudo-Chinese created by the Americans but being prepared by mostly Mexican food handlers. [At least where I am from, CA]
Ramen
Rice
Sushi
Thats atleast 3 of the top 5. ;D
Most of which started in China...
pretty decent list actually
Are they just not aware of how popular Cowboy Bebop is in America?
Whether you acknowledge it or not, Shows like Pokemon and Naruto are way more popular than Cowboy Bebop in the US.
This is a rank of classics, not popularity.
What do you think any open-population web-based poll is going to be?
Exactly. If this were a list of actual "classics" then Astro Boy and Speed Racer would be on this list.
And star Blazers (AKA) Battleship Yamato, Ah My Goddess is a classic Paprika and Prince planet
The first episode of Pokemon aird in 1997.
The first episode of Cowboy Beebop aird in 1998.
Fist of the North Star should be there too. Who the hell didn't like atatatatatatatatat?
I never said that Pokemon or Naruto weren't more popular. This list consists of 30 anime series. and Bebop didn't even make the list at all. That's what is bizarre about it. I never expected it to be number 1. Just to, at the very least, make the list.
Not really series, they had a lot of Movies on here that could've just been condensed to "Ghibli"
That's mainly because Bebop was late night and isn't airing anymore.
every sunday morning at 1:00 cowboy bebop on cartoon network
If you think that's a disparity... hardly ANYONE in Japan cares about Outlaw Star, yet people over here (including me) love it and pretty much everyone has seen it, many before it was even on Cartoon Network.
Surprised Tenchi Muyo didn't make it on there either.
Yes thank you both of those shows are, and still are my all time favorites. Like Cowboy Bebop but Tenchi Muyo, and Outlaw Star will always be top in my list.
Pretty much anything by Watanabe didn't do nearly as well in Japan. Beebop, Champloo, etc.
I'm not much of a fan of Beebop or Outlaw Star, but HOW THE HELL does Champloo fail? What's not to like?
The Japanese aren't a fan of renegades or portraying their past as a lawless, honor-less, slaughter fest.
That is their past. That is everyone’s past.
And what about Afro Samurai and Akira?
This list is more like a sketch of European's classics.
Damn, edit mode doesn't work.:/
I wanted to put Gurren Lagann, not Akira...
gurren lagann fanboy...
i thought afro samurai was stupid....
there are 3 shows i never seen so i call bs on this top list
No Baccano? No Durarara? =...........= Naruto? Fuck Naruto. . .
And the reason is that Watanabe is absolutely infatuated with western culture - which is pretty obvious if you look at pretty much all his work. I do like it a lot, but I can see why it doesn't appeal to the japanese audience as much.
Cowboy Bebop? An anime about americans in space with a bunch of cowboy flavour tossed in and jazz music. Awesome to a westerner - odd and niche to a japanese person.
Samurai Shamploo? A very unusual way of presenting samurais, at times parodizing classic samurai stories and all of this flavoured with hip hop.
To an american; refreshing and less high-contextual than other samurai stories out there.
To a japanese; just... weird. Like, what?
Something like that.
Japanese don't like Champloo OR bebop? DAMN do they hate Trigun as well?
I don't like Champloo and I don't like Bebop. I also hate Trigun, but I'm no japanese, but german o/
Akira, too, is something I don't like. Whatever. There's also plenty of stuff I like,.. Type-Moon stuff for example. Except Canaan. Canaan suckz.
You could probably be the worst person ever.
Trigun, good, the others, not my type. Also really don't like crayon shin-chan. Everything else is good in my book...except the obscure names most americans had to google to find the romanized version... D. Gray-man should be way higher on the list...but then again the anime stopped right before the awakening/created exorcists arcs.
I've been wondering about Bebop. Maybe in Japanese it isn't as good but works incredibly well in English? The dialog is really good in the English version. An example of reverse translation betterment where the translated version is better than the original?
Also missed on that list:
Trigun
Fooly Cooly
Inuyasha
Champloo
Eureka seveN
That's why Japanese anime will eventually loose market, misconception of foreigners taste...
Lately they seem to only mass produce moe, harem, ecchi and a little bit of hentai...
lose what market?
1) its a market built on foreigners liking what comes out of Japan.
if an American wants "American flavored" cartoons he/she wouldn't be watching anime.
that's like arguing Japanese food should be made to suit the palette of American eaters. a flawed notion because an American fan of Japanese cuisine has a palette that likes Japanese food. that's kind of the whole point.
2) what market?
the anime/manga markets outside of Japan are a long way from their heyday.
they've largely collapsed and the companies that were making all their money localizing Japanese otaku culture have slimmed down significantly or shutdown.
what's left isn't a primary concern of anime studios. and given a choice between pandering to fans in Japan or overseas fans, they'll pander to their Japanese fans. there's at least a chance of some money in that.
Not exactly a good analogy.
American TV/movies show exactly what American flavored is. The proper analogy is cooking american food with japanese cookware.
We want cartoons with the same content you can find any day of the week from many writers who have nothing to do with Japan.
lol anime is not made & marketed for foreigners, stupid. It's Japan first, then the rest of the world gets the scraps.
Japan DOES do too much Harem/Moe/Eechi though. It's generic as fuck and is formulaic.
Seriously, they gave K-On a second season instead of Lucky Star. What the fuck man.
Lucky Star has so much source material that could be used. But maybe it's because they fear they will be ragged on for them not being in high school anymore, who knows the Japanese otaku are NUTS.
That's another thing, HIGH SCHOOL, SERIOUSLY it's TROPE.
And they wonder why we like stuff like Champloo and Bebop? Because it's UNIQUE
I'm no expert, but the Japanese cast was pretty good (it had Kouichi Yamadera as Spike, Megumi Hayashibara as Faye, and Norio Wakamoto as Vicious, FFS), and the show won awards in Japan. I think it's more that it got a fucked-up TV airing (TV Tokyo only ran episodes 2, 3, 7-15, and 18), due to concerns about the violence level. It did eventually get a full run on WOWOW, and later on Animax, but the damage was done.
Makes sense...
Trigun is probably my favorite anime.
Where is KITE?
That's more of a Niche show. The American version had uncensored porn in it remember?
As crazy as it sounds, half the japanese have never even heard of cowboy bebop. No idea why.
seriously, I loved Cowboy Bebop. Though this is according to the Japanese apparently. I would have liked to see Gungrave on there or TRIGUN sheeeyiiiiitttt Tyrone. I know plenty of people that oogle and oggle over Trigun, especially myself.
i don't think cowboy bebop was that great, it was only ok...