Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-2602:306:335F:200:90D9:BDC1:17D4:2D22-20171120080907/@comment-53539-20171120121329

Mostly the story of Vocaloid and how it took off is sadly tied with Miku...

In terms of overseas, there is something a little to talk about. we tend to like it because of the fact most start off as anime and manga fans and there is a stigma that Japanese animation/comics are superior when in reality their just different. This is what started off the trend towards the anime and manga industry, fueled by the incoming of Japanese games and stuff during the 80s and 90s. Anime in the 90s, however, wasn't as high quality as the fans were making them out to be.

A lot of the thing was, a lot of shows in places like America tended to be patriotic or samey and the 2000s occurred there after. The 2000s is when flash animation occurred and the ups and downs of it took off, the 00s are marked with a mixture of some of the best and sadly worst animation in western animation since the 60s and 70s. This meant that Japanese animation, had a chance to get in and offer what seemed like better shows at higher quality because the western animation front took a leap off a cliff.

Japan offered large numbers of stories and ideas on a grand scale that western animation was often too afraid or unable to explore because they weren't allowed.

I'll say from my own experience... I know I first saw animation from Japan in the 80s with Cities of Gold, for its era it wasn't too bad... But the shows that would appear in the 90s from Japan weren't anything to write home about. And in the early 2000s there was an influx Japanese animation, to the point for a while I stopped watching them and got into the Japanese stuff. It was new and exciting and I forgot what western animation had to offer because... Well... Even the Teen Titans couldn't resist throwing a "America is great" episode or two in which made me cringe.

But then... After a while I began to see much the same Medabots or example, had the same theme at times just less cringey and Japan was raising to the top again. And Beyblade was the same... And another show. Then it began to notice instead of the odd Christian thing slipped in it was Budism. It was the same thing, and the only difference was the shows tended to go for quantity over quality. Even my favourite shows began to buckle at the seams the more I looked at them with wiser eyes.

In my case, by the time I became a fan of Vocaloid, I wasn't a fan under the illusion everything from Japan is gloriously better. The grass on the other side of the river is the same as the side I'm on. But I understand why it happens. Especially when your young your easier to get into anything, you want to learn, find your place in the world and establish everything. It taints your world for both good and bad. I know I missed a few good shows like the Justice League, but I was luckily enough to be able to go back and still have time to watch them. I did, however, miss the fore runner Batman and Superman... Though I saw Batman Beyond.

For Vocaloid in the later 2000s, auto tune was already widely used and the well established Anime/manga following meant we just accepted it. There was so much music coming in that we wouldn't have thought nothing of it. I admit, had Miku been released in the early 2000s, I'd likely have followed her instead of reading about Vocaloid, buying Lola and then forgetting about Vocaloid for years because it wasn't that impressive back then. I can remember in the early 2000s people often quoted things like Japanese music wasn't about sex or parties and I remember going out of my way by the 2000s to prove its just the same. Only difference is western music is a little more blunt or honest and they don't dress it up.

I'm not putting Japan down, but culturally over the centuries this thing happened a lot. In the 1800s my country showed off India. There was showing off of Egyptian finds also when that became a thing... It can also work against a culture as originally Julius back in Roman times painting Great Britian as not worth looking at after investigating our lands. Or the painting of Africa as a primitive culture with nothing to write home about... :-/

Vocaloids interest in the west is mostly down, either way, to the path for it being painted a decade before it. I don't imagine if it had been released in the 80s it would have seen the same success for various different reasons I won't take time to list. The world wasn't ready for it, even if you ignore technology wasn't up to the snuff at the time.