(no subject)
You know something that kinda bothered me in this fandom? The way most Americans seem to dismiss it as something "only popular with Mexicans" (yeah, thanks for erasing me and every other Brazilian who was a child during the mid nineties). TV Tropes is exceptionally bad with that.
It's definitely not what I see. I'm an avid lurker at the Japanese fandom, and let me tell you, these guys are pretty damn active. Not Hetalia level, but still pretty active for an old school fandom. I mean, every week a new fansite pops at the fandom's search engines -- there are two main ones: Gold Saint Navigator and Saint Seiya Search Planet; Gold Navi is the oldest one, and thus lists 780 sites against the 437 SSSP has --, people make character or pairing-centric festivals all the fucking time, and at this moment everyone is getting ready to Paradise Ginga X, AKA the tenth edition of the Saint Seiya only event. Which means -- that's right. Tons of new doujinshi.
Hell, let's not even talk about the chinese and thai fandoms, ok? These ones also have Seiya-only events, and they sell fucking fan artbooks. The famous Sacred Saga that the whole France shits itself over and cosplays from it like if it were official? It's one of them. (I hate the little French attention-whores cosplaying as that artbook's Aphrodite -- the goddess -- and listing it as official, but that's beside the point. It's pretty nice to see them stand out like a gangrened thumb on Curecos.)
Here at Brazil it's... so so. We're better at getting official stuff and celebrity guests (such as Tooru Furuya and Hironobu Kageyama) before everyone else, and our meta analyses are kind of awesome, but our fanworks are kind of... spread out. I think we have like three decent fanartists (Diego Maryo, Washu and Tanko). We could do so much more if we were as organized as the japanese. Hell, Gilberto Baroli is a huge celebrity around here, because of his epic dubbing of Saga. XD
And yet, Americans keep dismissing all of this, saying Saint Seiya is simply "not as influential". Excuse-me? Saint Seiya may not have the overall popularity of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, or even Dragon Ball (over 17000 and 9000 [LULZ] arts on Pixiv, respectively), but you cannot deny it's one of the four pillars of shounen anime, the fourth being gramps Hokuto no Ken, obviously. It has debuted many tropes that are found in later shounen, including the popularizing of the ever-hated protagonist. With more than 5000 arts on its Pixiv tag (bear with me, I'm trying to use consistent statistics!), it is even more popular than the cult classic Sailor Moon, which has 4600 and some. LOL, you could even argue that Saint Seiya is kinda like Sailor Moon with dudes, only they wear tights under their metal miniskirts and are more likely to punch each other.
Now, I know of that whole story that Saint Seiya was pretty much butchered when it got to America, but most of the time I get the impression that they just don't want to admit they got out of the loop for once. Which is pretty sad -- I can think of a few ways the whole western anime community would have changed had Saint Seiya gotten a solid fanbase in America when it first aired. For starters, the whole yaoi boom would have come much earlier, not with Heero/Duo, but with Milo/Camus (or even Hyouga/Shun -- hello, Libra Temple). I know that Milo/Camus is pretty much THE quintessential yaoi fan pairing over the world. The fannish BL fandom (did that make sense?) could be much more mature than it is right now.
The Saint Seiya fandom would also be vastly different. The Hades Saga could have been animated in the nineties, instead of 2003, which would mean a much better animation quality (and we'd get protagonist!Mu still with Shiozawa's voice! ;^;), and we'd probably get a sequel much better planned than Next Dimension/Galaxy Myth.
And let's not even mention the fan merchandise... Doujin would be so much easier to purchase. We could even have had doujin scanlations! And can you imagine the cosplay scene?!
I don't know, I'm just bitter. :| I just wanted to rant a bit.
It's definitely not what I see. I'm an avid lurker at the Japanese fandom, and let me tell you, these guys are pretty damn active. Not Hetalia level, but still pretty active for an old school fandom. I mean, every week a new fansite pops at the fandom's search engines -- there are two main ones: Gold Saint Navigator and Saint Seiya Search Planet; Gold Navi is the oldest one, and thus lists 780 sites against the 437 SSSP has --, people make character or pairing-centric festivals all the fucking time, and at this moment everyone is getting ready to Paradise Ginga X, AKA the tenth edition of the Saint Seiya only event. Which means -- that's right. Tons of new doujinshi.
Hell, let's not even talk about the chinese and thai fandoms, ok? These ones also have Seiya-only events, and they sell fucking fan artbooks. The famous Sacred Saga that the whole France shits itself over and cosplays from it like if it were official? It's one of them. (I hate the little French attention-whores cosplaying as that artbook's Aphrodite -- the goddess -- and listing it as official, but that's beside the point. It's pretty nice to see them stand out like a gangrened thumb on Curecos.)
Here at Brazil it's... so so. We're better at getting official stuff and celebrity guests (such as Tooru Furuya and Hironobu Kageyama) before everyone else, and our meta analyses are kind of awesome, but our fanworks are kind of... spread out. I think we have like three decent fanartists (Diego Maryo, Washu and Tanko). We could do so much more if we were as organized as the japanese. Hell, Gilberto Baroli is a huge celebrity around here, because of his epic dubbing of Saga. XD
And yet, Americans keep dismissing all of this, saying Saint Seiya is simply "not as influential". Excuse-me? Saint Seiya may not have the overall popularity of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, or even Dragon Ball (over 17000 and 9000 [LULZ] arts on Pixiv, respectively), but you cannot deny it's one of the four pillars of shounen anime, the fourth being gramps Hokuto no Ken, obviously. It has debuted many tropes that are found in later shounen, including the popularizing of the ever-hated protagonist. With more than 5000 arts on its Pixiv tag (bear with me, I'm trying to use consistent statistics!), it is even more popular than the cult classic Sailor Moon, which has 4600 and some. LOL, you could even argue that Saint Seiya is kinda like Sailor Moon with dudes, only they wear tights under their metal miniskirts and are more likely to punch each other.
Now, I know of that whole story that Saint Seiya was pretty much butchered when it got to America, but most of the time I get the impression that they just don't want to admit they got out of the loop for once. Which is pretty sad -- I can think of a few ways the whole western anime community would have changed had Saint Seiya gotten a solid fanbase in America when it first aired. For starters, the whole yaoi boom would have come much earlier, not with Heero/Duo, but with Milo/Camus (or even Hyouga/Shun -- hello, Libra Temple). I know that Milo/Camus is pretty much THE quintessential yaoi fan pairing over the world. The fannish BL fandom (did that make sense?) could be much more mature than it is right now.
The Saint Seiya fandom would also be vastly different. The Hades Saga could have been animated in the nineties, instead of 2003, which would mean a much better animation quality (and we'd get protagonist!Mu still with Shiozawa's voice! ;^;), and we'd probably get a sequel much better planned than Next Dimension/Galaxy Myth.
And let's not even mention the fan merchandise... Doujin would be so much easier to purchase. We could even have had doujin scanlations! And can you imagine the cosplay scene?!
I don't know, I'm just bitter. :| I just wanted to rant a bit.