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LOVE LIVE！may be the most popular anime in Asia today. However，it won the throne of Janpanese anime in China in just two months，even became a kind of religious of some ACG fans in a way.(look the picture)

Therefore i want to know how rapid the development of LOVE LIVE! is in other Continents.

Well, its popularity there rather suprizes me because I've never heard of it here. I'm in Seattle and we are one of the two major ports in the US that goods come in from China and Japan. That being said however   I'm not as in touch with anime as I used to be and I never really did follow any of the moe-blob kinds.

Idk, there may well be a pretty big genre divide between the moeblobs and the idolshit these days...

it is not and has not been prevalent here in the states. i keep up slightly with the anime community and the hot topic for the past year has been Attack on Titan. Idol series RARELY catch on in this country.

the only anime that's really popular here in the uk are shounen and ghibli films
don't know how brits would feel about kawaii aidoru school girls

Unfortunately, anime culture here in Hungary is kind of in a decline here nowadays, with the loss of our anime channel and not much to replace it (the channel which got in its slot is a rather lackluster mishmash of programmes from several other channels). Even when had the channel, it relied most on shounen shows, epsecially in its later periods.

On the other hand, I don't quite understand the appeal of idol-themed shows. Sure, the girls are cute and I guess the music can be catchy for people who like the genre (I am not one of those people, though), but there are several franchises in that style (Idolmaster, Love Live, Aikatsu and probably some more I am not even aware), but one of them feels like the other in a way, with the samey kinda characters over and over again. Of course that's only my own personal opinion.

@exa: wow, i had no idea you were from Hungary! :0
must kinda suck as an anime fan, though, since the pickings are slimmer than they are here (and they're already pretty slim here). ;^;

i sort of agree with your point about the idol shows; that's some peoples' thing, but not mine. if i ever got into an idol show it'd likely be Creamy Mami, which i have yet to watch but kinda want to. of course, that's mostly the vintage appeal there.

Idol Type Series of the Past 30 Years

Macross (12 Series/Movies; 1982 - 2011)
Creamy Mami (1983)
Glass Mask (sort of; 1984, 1998)
To-y (male idol; 1987)
Be-Boy Kidnapp'n Idol (male idol; 1989)
Zetsuai 1989 (male idol; 1992)
Idol Project (1995)
Kodocha (1996)
Boys Before Flowers (1997)
I''s (idol-ish; in various forms 1997-2006)
Fancy Lala (1998)
Cyber Idol Mink (manga, 00's)
Full Moon wo Sagashite (2002)
Interstella 5555 - The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (Daft Punk got an anime....?; 2003)
Lovely Idol (2006)
Kirarin Revolution (2006)
Lemon Angel Project (2006)
Skip Beat! (2008)
White Album (2009)
Hime Chen! Otogi Chikku Idol Lilpri (2010)
iDOLM@STER/The iDOLM@STER (2011)
AKB0048 (2012 - 2013)
Wanna be the Strongest in the World (2013)
Love Live! School Idol Project (2011; 2013)
Pretty Rhythm: Rainbow Live (2013)
Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai: Magical Star Kanon 100% (2013)
No-Rin (2014)
Soni-Ani: Super Sonico The Animation (2014)
Wake Up, Girls (2014)
Go! Go! 575 (2014)

@Kari: I vaguely remember seeing ads for Toonami airing Interstella 5555 as part of the Midnight Run block ages ago -w-;

Also, TBH I only know Love Live because of occasionally seeing fanart for it posted by a yuri blog I follow on Tumblr :\

Interstella was a movie, so it makes sense that it may have been aired.

as for Love Live, i only know about it because of fans like [insert osc person here] and hearing about the anime on one of the charts a few years ago.

@Chocofreak: Amusingly, out of your list of idol-related anime, Kirarin Revolution (partly) did show up on our former anime channel... rerun several times. I did watch a few episodes from it, but I found it kinda cheesy. I am not the targeted demography, after all. I admit I found one of the openings pretty catchy, heh~

haha, really? it looked pretty niche, i'm surprised it flew. i'd expect Macross more of the channel you described.

Quote from: Chocofreak13 on September 13, 2014, 10:39:03 AM
@exa: wow, i had no idea you were from Hungary! :0

Me either!

TBH Hungary is one of a few places in Europe I know next to nothing about.

I vaguely know what Hungarian cuisine is like because I went to a Hungarian restaurant with some family-friends when we visited NYC together. I thought the Hungarians and Finns shared common ancestry because their languages are related, but I recently found out that isn't the case...

Macross was more of a mecha show with an idol subplot.  I wouldn't really put it in with idol shows in general.

@Chocofreak: I assume they tried to get the younger female audience with it or something... which is a rather odd decision for a channel which was running during the evening and midnight hours (as the channel's timeslot was after the programmes of another, kid-friendly channel ended at 20:00). Or they just tried to spice up the layout somehow. As for Macross... as CaptBrenden said, it has higher emphasis on being a mecha show, and mecha was one of the genres the channel kinda lacked.

Quote from: sks963 on August 09, 2014, 01:29:11 PM
LOVE LIVE！may be the most popular anime in Asia today. However，it won the throne of Janpanese anime in China in just two months，even became a kind of religious of some ACG fans in a way.(look the picture)

Therefore i want to know how rapid the development of LOVE LIVE! is in other Continents.

hm didn't really see this thread. There is a sizable number of people who do like LL here in California, a fairly large number of LL cosplayers this past AX as well. I have a friend who even organized birthday parties for some of the characters up in the Bay Area. haha

So yeah, it really depends on the groups but I'd still say it's a niche thing here, but a pretty popular niche.

@capt, exa: i disagree, given the show seems to be described as half and half on some sites ("Music is integral part to almost every Macross title by having significances in a series' antagonists behavior towards it. Music idols also play a central role to various Macross stories. Often, the protagonist will be involved in a love triangle with a series' music idol; most notably, Lynn Minmay." - Wikipedia). given the mech nature and the age, i'm willing to bet that most people who remember the classic series are guys, who remember it for the robots. but the idols played a pretty big role too. (most of the material i've seen related to Macross has to do with the idols, actually. )

besides, as the first series to actually FEATURE an "idol".....

@sleepy: i figured it'd catch on more in cali, but do you think that has to do with a larger pool of anime being imported there, or a higher population of asian people? (why do i get the sinking feeling someone's going to call me racist for saying that)

Quote from: Chocofreak13 on September 15, 2014, 02:21:36 PM
@sleepy: i figured it'd catch on more in cali, but do you think that has to do with a larger pool of anime being imported there, or a higher population of asian people?

That's probably part of it, but when you say "import", you have to imagine not just importation of physical goods, but of information as well. (on a tangential note, lots of players of tanto cuore and weiss schwarz card games around here)  Many people I know have direct contacts with fans, creators, and expats in Japan (or are expats themselves).

As far as having more Asians here, that's probably a reasonable question to pose--it's more likely that an Asian person will have access to information and people that are more well-tuned to the goings-on of Japan than their western counterparts. These people then introduce stuff to friends and their friends and it spreads from there. When news of the Love Live English App broke, those who were already playing started spreading it to their other friends to get them into it, where the Japanese language barrier and app region locks were a big hindrance prior to it.

Still, everything above can be done with an internet connection and some language knowledge--that's not special to California.

What I think is an even bigger factor is the sheer numbers of fans here, regardless of their ethnicity. With such a high concentration of otaku-minded fans in the cities, it will pretty much ensure that you can easily find fans of nearly every niche anime/game/someotherotakuthing somewhere in this state. Consequences of that are there's enough people for Japanese and home-grown otaku-minded businesses to open locations here, enough for big impromptu meetups outside of a con/event, and even enough for decently sized cons of sub-interests of the otaku scene--Yaoicon was just this past weekend in the Bay Area, and Touhoucon will have its inaugural year this upcoming weekend in Anaheim.

I think things spread quickly with the internet, but it has more staying power if you can share these experiences, in meatspace, with your friends, whenever you like. You probably heard of Love Live at some point, but without other people you know who are into it, you'd probably just pass it over. I didn't get into it until a friend of mine told me to just install and try the game. And I knew enough people that liked LL that I could share my experiences with more than one person, so it was definitely worth a shot. Now I've watched the first season of LL and have put a fairly decent number of hours in the game. (I still suck at rhythm games though--I know so many people who just wreck the higher difficulties of these games so easily)

Also, I totally ship NicoMaki and NozoEri

that IS an excellent point; nerd fandoms tend to spread like wildfire due to word of mouth. everyone here's really into Attack on Titan (i'm not, but then, not many people here are into vintage stuff), and i think it mostly got that way because "____ is into it, i should get into it too!". it's kind of a juvenile mentality when i put it like that, but s'what seems to be the logic behind it (outside of the show having a decent concept and what looks to be nice animation. i've heard the character development sucks though, and the plot is lacking).