Attention Spans

In this new found age of the internet, text messaging and Twitter, it is harder and harder to keep the attention of an American audience. If stars aren't constantly in the spotlight, they slowly fade away. And they know this, that is why they pull stunt after zany stunt in their personal lives to capture the attention, good or bad, of Americans everywhere.

Well, surprise, things are a little different here in Japan. It is easy for music and movie stars to stay in the spotlight without needing bad publicity in order to do so because, unlike in America, the attention span of the average Japanese citizen is more than a few seconds. (Which is why I keep most of these posts short, coincidentally.)

For instance if you ask the average American who Goku from Dragon Ball Z is, you might get a blank stare more often than not (which isn't a bad thing considering that horrible live-action movie Hollywood put out in 2009) but here in Japan, everyone knows multiple characters from Dragon Ball even though it's manga series ended in 1995, almost 20 years ago!

Comics or manga is also another great example of how bigger the attention span in Japan is. In America, the average plot line in a Superman comic book will last, maybe, 3 to 5 issues before moving on to the next villain's story, but in Japanese manga series like Naruto, a single story line can last hundreds of issues! In America, there probably isn't a person alive that would follow a single Superman storyline faithfully for hundreds of issues, but in Japan, Naruto is the #1 manga series, so obviously that isn't a problem here.

Japan is even having a surge of past anime series being re-made into live-action movies like "Space Cruiser Yamato" (Star Blazers in the US) and "Gatchaman" (Battle of the Planets or G-Force in the US) and both of these series were popular way back in the 1970's!

It's not to say that there aren't die-hard fans of American culture long after it's faded from the public spotlight, just take a look at Andre from Black Nerd Comedy on his You Tube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/BlackNerdComedy, he loves him some Power Rangers, but on a whole if it's not constantly in your face in America, it's yesterday's news. It's why when you go see any Marvel movie, after the credits they show a sneak preview for the next Marvel movie because they know that if they don't, people will forget all about them.

Don't miss our next shocking installment where I'll talk about... (I'll have to come back and fill this in when I do my next post. You don't actually think that I plan out what I am going to write ahead of time, do you?)