For the first time in a long while I’ve been able to use Hulu, and naturally the first thing I do is go watch some cartoons. While watching anime on Hulu, I got an ad for…anime on Hulu. That’s nice, why not advertise your services? People might not know, and I assume that these ads aren’t just preaching to the choir and appear on other shows.
As I watched the 30-60 second ad (I don’t quite remember how long it was exactly), I came to an odd realization that the ad was not making me want to watch anime. If you haven’t seen it, it basically features various clips from anime titles on Hulu (Naruto, Soul Eater, School Rumble, etc.) to the tune of an instrumental version of the first Soul Eater opening. Something about it doesn’t sit right with me, and I think it has to do with how similar it is in spirit to ADV’s old anime advertisements which emphasize thie idea anime is action, giant robots, magical girls, comedy, straight from Japan, not kids’ stuff, etc. I even like a good amount of the shows used in the ad, but it’s like they took the most spastic and anime-ey scenes they could find and called it a day’s work.
I don’t have a solution to offer myself, for an advertising wizard I am not, but I can easily think of one example that I feel inspires people to watch anime. Back in the early-mid 2000s, Toonami would run ads for their shows, usually grouped together by a theme. They made anime feel grand and special in a way that wasn’t just drawing on kids’ desires to see something different (though obviously that was still a factor).
(It also doesn’t hurt that the narrator is Optimus Prime.)
The above video indeed feels like it’s promoting a lot of the things that the old ADV commercials and the Hulu one do, but so much more weight is given to themes that are explored through anime than to the flesh and spectacle of techno-oriental exoticism. If the Hulu ends up working out for Hulu and they get tons of new viewers, then more power to them, but I still think the ad could be something more substantial.
OGIUE MANIAX 
Ah, i have many fond memories of Toonami. And that is a good promo, a tad long, but good nevertheless.
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I watch a lot of my anime on Hulu, and at first I was happy to see the ad (“Oh good, they’re finally acknowledging that there are some good anime shows on their site”) but as it went on I got really confused (“Why is everything so spastic? Do they think that no one will be interested in watching anime if they’re not assured that every character will be running around like little kids?”). I appreciate the attempt, but it could be a lot better.
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I think the reason anime advertising in America has taken such a huge deterring dive-bomb is because the companies are desperately trying to increase the audience base instead of appealing to the existing one to buy more. Seasoned anime fans will already watch anime and buy DVDs, but the number of DVD’s bought amongst that group will not get any higher (in fact, it’s getting dismally low) because of online streaming culture. Anime companies are now betting more on being able to become more mainstream and appealing, and therefore marketable and profitable on the advertising side of things.
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You’re looking at the first generation of a new medium: As the medium improves you’ll see ads that are actually of more interest to you. Also advertisers will make better (and shorter) ads to stop people from turning away. Give digital anime a chance — the physical media market is dead, and that means an ad model is the only thing that will work. In fact if you love anime I’d strongly urge you to click on those ads so Hulu can get more anime, not to mention supporting the folks who make the stuff in Japan.
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Man, Toonami had some incredible style back in the day. Remember those ads that didn’t even seem like ads? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aBDbeK1igc
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A little OT, but bear with me; I watch some anime on Netflix streaming; the title selections have improved greatly over the past year or so. Sadly, their holdings of older titles have dropped off…if the last copy of a DVD in a series gets broken, they don’t replace it and you’re left with a frustrating gap you have to fill by other means (such as driving your interlibrary loan librarian crazy, or up and buying the boxed set if the gap is bigger than one).
I bought the Bleach Box Set 8 & Set 9 because Netflix rental is still stuck at the end of Box 7 and don’t seem to be adding any new disc rental anytime soon, nor providing any streaming. A friend said “hey, you do know that Hulu has at least through Season 9, right?”; I went and checked it out and yeah, they have a lot, but as I quickly discovered, it’s ONLY in Japanese. I’m a dub person, so I’m feeling alright with my Box set purchase now.
The one drawback to Netflix streaming over physical DVDs is that even though I watch the dubs 99.9% of the time, I always also turn on all subtitles, especially for signage translations but also to note the subtle differences between the English script and the more faithful English translation of the original Japanese dialogue…you can do that with a physical DVD, but for streaming, the dub versions don’t give you subtitles of any kind, which can be frustrating in shows that have long sequences of textual information.
I don’t know if Hulu offers any streaming of the dubbed versions but until they do, I’m not really interested in investing the time. I’ve got too many good dubs to get through first on streaming and on DVD. Have sometimes considered looking into rentanime.com or other sources beyond Netflix…Blockbuster’s anime holdings are a joke, at least as far as the few remaining stores in this area go–haven’t bothered looking at their online offerings but I don’t hold very high hopes….Hastings Books & Records in Denton, TX (when I lived up there) had a respectably large anime section, but after about a year I’d worked my way through all the good titles that piqued my interest, and they added new ones VERY slowly, if at all.
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I have to agree completely. There’s a certain amount of thematic sense that was employed in the old Toonami adverts that spoke to the audience that saw them for the first time. Specifically, the very best adverts created narratives from clips that were related to each other that gave one a sense that they weren’t actually watching a promo or advert, but a short film with a rising and falling action and a moral at the end. My all time favorite that spoke to the young me on a very visceral level was Broken Promise.
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