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Toy Sales Underneath a Shattered Blue Sky
My Bluesky App (Android) is having some major problems lately. Every few posts, it was saying "We ran out of new posts, but here's more from Discover!" and sometimes clicking into a post would cause every button to become unresponsive. While normally I'd be proactive about finding some fix for the problem (like migrating to a different front-end app or using the web version), I'm taking a short break from the app for now, mostly spurred on by having a new work computer to ruin set up how I like it.
Ah,, an M4 Macbook Pro…
During my six-month period of funemployment, I've been using computers that are between 8-10 years old, exclusively, so this is… so much computer for me right now. It's fast. It's responsive. Even the mouse moves a little bit more than I expect when I put my finger on the touch-pad. It's a monster of a machine. I haven't even checked the system specs to see how much RAM it has. Whatever's under the hood, it's more than enough for me.
(I got curious and checked. 48GB RAM!?!? Whatever will I use all of that for?? I'll have to become a video producer just to justify the specs on this laptop!!)
I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I am intimidated. Am I a bad enough dude to use this computer?? It's an intimidating machine! It's cool and it's cute, and it's gunmetal black. Even the charging cable is black. So sleek!
So, since I'm not using social media, what have I been doing (on this overspec'd, intimidating machine)?
I was feeling very dazed throughout my unemployment, thinking, "Did anything I do matter? Was anything I did worth it? Did I accomplish anything? Do I have anything to show for the nearly four decades I've been on this planet?" Just… really existential amounts of dread and despair.
Maybe we shouldn't measure our worth as human beings based on our employment history and how well we can fill out a resume… On the other hand, I want something tangible in front of me that shows that I did, in fact, do something with the eight-plus hours spent five days per week in service of my corporate overlords, so I've been playing around with LinkedIn.
Don't get me wrong. I have always thought that using LinkedIn was a Sisyphean torment — social media as prescribed by HR departments — and reading a bunch of AI-generated posts parroting the latest and greatest in "what we assume the job-creators of the world want to hear" is pretty soul-draining. But! I can put all my little certificates in one place. I can workshop an "about me" blurb while reading others' self-introductions. I can peer into the abyss of corporate America, seen through the lens of an online mandatory company luncheon amongst strangers. (Half of the strangers are robots wearing human faces.)
(I'm painfully under-educated about the Cthulhu Mythos, but I keep thinking that maybe one day I'll write something using "participating in the thing simply drives you mad" as the driving mechanic, set in modern day, dealing with computerized society.)
I'm trying to write a few posts, to see what the temperature of the place is. I'm not sure posting things is common. It might just be used by most people as a method of storing a cloud-based resume repository.
I have about a hundred "connections" from when I first made this account, and apparently had been trying to use it back in 2019 for some reason or another, but who can remember things from back then? We've been through a whole end-of-the-world since then, and we're going through another. It's just a Matryoshka doll full of unpleasant global events, and within each layer lies more forgotten memories.
This is getting depressing, so let's change the subject. (lol) Before I do, can I think of one good thing to say about LinkedIn?
I haven't found the character limit for posts yet.
Everyone on GundamSky, before my app broke, was talking about the Tsurumaki interview, mostly from the perspective of having greatly disliked GQX. As someone who didn't greatly dislike GQX, maybe I'm more willing to hear the guy out, but I still disagree with his fundamental premise that kids nowadays will have a harder time relating to the themes of robot shows.
I think he'd have more of a leg to stand on if he said that kids nowadays are less likely to beg their parents to spend large amounts of money on toy robots. At the end of the day, that's it, isn't it? When you, as a creator in a niche that's long been funded by toy robots, complain about video games, what you're complaining about is that kids are more likely to make big-dollar digital purchases, rather than big-dollar physical toy purchases, right?
Parents often seem to prefer giving their kids digital goods because they're left with fewer things littering the living room, and they don't notice as quickly that a child has grown bored with something expensive. After all, as long as they're glued to their computer or console, they have the appearance of "doing the same thing," even if they're playing different games, right?
Rather than talk about the fickleness of children, I think we can couch this conversation in terms of the purchasing habits of adults. I realized when I was a kid that I would never be able to convince my parents to let me get into collectable card games like my cousins, because it's a money-sink, and if I were to change my mind and grow bored of it, there would be a physical reminder of wasted investment clogging up one corner of the living room. (Adults even think of entertainment as "investment," at the end of the day.)
Considering where the money actually is, and who has the spending power here, I think Tsurumaki's question then becomes, "Can robot anime survive if robot toys don't?"
You can point out that Gunpla is selling well, but there seems to be an impression that a lot of what's selling is going to scalpers and adult collectors, rather than children. (I can't say to what extent that's true. I am, however, an adult who's lucky enough to live near a retail location with much lower prices than general resale in my country. I'm aware that it's a problem at some scale.)
GWitch intentionally went for a younger demographic without prior ties to Gundam as a franchise. GQX was a love-letter to the UC setting and the concept of doujinshi itself. Those are very different approaches, but both garnered a lot of interest from new fans. And as I understand it, the Gunpla is selling very well, both at retail and on resale. Presumably some of those new fans are going to be children.
I think a broader question we should ask is, "Can anime aimed at children survive if toys, generally don't?"
The reason I think this is a valid question to ask has to do with shoujo anime. Remember shoujo anime? If you're ancient like me, you probably do. I'm just speaking about my fellow Americans when I say this, but even someone who thinks of Gundam as "something similar to Transformers" has probably heard of Sailor Moon. And Latin America is more into Cardcaptor Sakura than I ever expected. (Check out this great Latin American Spanish cover of "Groovy!")
Those shows, along with basically all of my favorites from the 90s, were toy ads. The same way Gundam is selling toy robots, Sailor Moon was selling transformation lockets, light-up weapons, and a whole range of physical products targeting little girls. The same was true for anything made by CLAMP at the time. (Magic Knight Rayearth is a funny example here, as a shoujo property that was focused on video game sales in addition to toy sales.) In fact, if you look at even non-magical girl shoujo series like Kodomo no Omocha, Gokinjo Monogatari, or Hana Yori Dango, all of them have incredibly prominent product placement for electronic gadgets aimed at their target audience of schoolkids.
A couple of paragraphs up, I asked "remember shoujo anime?" and I asked it for a reason. We don't see much of it anymore. People can list all sorts of reasons ("there are plenty of drama adaptations of shoujo manga!" "shounen manga has had a high level of crossover appeal with women fans!") but at the end of the day, I think one of the things we don't talk about much is the existence of smartphones.
Every shoujo anime back in the day introduced a communication device. Whether it was for calling up your magical girl squad or for passing notes in invisible ink to your classmates (in secret so that they won't get bullied alongside you), much of the toy lines marketed to girls and young women were focused on "communication." But in the era of LINE and social media, is that really such a great sell to a modern teen girl?
When Tsurumaki asks whether robot shows can stay relevant in the face of stories that are more adaptable to becoming video games, I get the feeling it's the same question as whether shoujo anime has a place in a world with smartphones. And I want to say "yes" to both.
Either way, Bandai won't exactly give up on Gundam. I don't think any of us have to worry on that front. Here's hoping that the Rayearth animation project announced last year can help revive interest in producing shoujo anime. If Japan doesn't figure things out, Netflix has proven that they can collab with Korean artists to get girl-focused works done. KPop Demon Hunters is a bop. It was fun enough that my starved-for-josei-muke heart wasn't even put off by the 3DCG look of the thing.