What in the bloody smucks happened?

[EvaFan]

I'm sure it partially has to do with the fact that most of the anime coming from japan these days is recycled/regurgitated crap that just plays off every episode with a new event. When was the last time a great show along the lines of bebop, eva, trigun, ghost in the shell, you know things that westerners are alot more likely to enjoy because of their uniqueness to story and episodes that rely on having actually watched preceding episodes to understand whats going on? I can't honestly say I've been watching much stuff recently other than steinsgate thats about the only thing that comes to mind for recently enjoyed shows.

TL;DR: Good anime's are in decline, not just the hobby.

[Nya-chan Production]

And surely more people are making AMVs now then ever before, right?

I don't know if that's really true. My guess is probably not. I mean, from the perspective of the number of people simply on the internet, having access to the tech, etc., you would think that that would be true. But I think it probably has a lot to do with the current state of the anime industry, which you can't argue has been in a big decline since 2005-6 era (at least in the United States. I can't speak much to Japan). I know that there's still a ton of people watching fansubs, watching stuff on Netflix/Hulu/Crunchy Roll/etc., but on the whole, it SEEMS like anime fandom was much higher during that era. Again, this is all based on speculation of somebody who hasn't really been into anime since that time, but all I ever seem to hear about the actual industry here is how it's doing worse and worse each year, as opposed to it thriving (relatively) back then. Could be a correlation there.

I keep hearing sentiments that boil down to the idea that anime fandom in general is dying, and I wonder how it is that just about every large convention seems to pull in record numbers year after year despite this.

Yep, that's a pretty valid point. Every year I read how this year's season (usually winter one) was the worst in years, anime is out of ideas, pirates undermine the business, etc, etc, etc...

... to come to that one con and find out it has increased attendance again. Even though you have seen many people saying on the internet the last year that they won't come the next year... because anime genre is dying or they are bored.

[Knowname]

Not to say that they DIDN't increase attendence but that's kinda what they have to say. That's how they get sponsors.

[Shin-AMV]

I dunno, anime fandom in general seems way higher now. When I was in highschool there was only a very small group of people who even liked/knew about anime. When I went to Anime Expo in 2002 when I was going around touring colleges the summer before senior year, there was a lot of people but it was pretty much a huge sausage fest. Recently I was at Acen and at AWA and the ratio seems to be much more 50/50 then it was before, and both cons seemed to be fairly sizeable, especially ACen. So I don't think its really dying, its more mainstream so it blends in a lot more. I've seen the reports that the anime industry in the U.S. is struggling but I think thats due to other factors, like licensing dumb series that few people would buy in the first place, and online accessibility.

To me it seems to generally be the same for AMVs, a lot more people seem to be making them, just not on this site (i.e. they're on youtube) but a lot of them aren't really worth watching so they're easily missed and overlooked too.

[Nya-chan Production]

Oh no. They don't only "say" that. It's visible, at least here :>

Or they pay people to visit their con D:

Where's the line to get paid? ^^

And back to AMVs - I think the most people just make AMVs as a hit-or-miss kind of thing these days. Most of them try to send it in some local competition and see what happens. Or they share it on YT with their fanclub...

What might have happened is the shift of AMV makers to one other thing. The ratio of male/female visitors has changed in the recent years here and my guess is that something similar happened in US around the years 2004/5. Don't want to say that it's bad, but there was this inevitable shift of most of the (creative) visitors to cosplay competitions (if you have 70% male attendance there is a reasonable chance more of them will be editors than cosplayers, IMO - a vice versa), which, of course, doesn't really bring in more new editors to the job >.>

[Castor Troy]

Here's the old saying:

"90% of anime is crap. We only get what was good in Japan and 90% of that is crap"

[seasons]

Amount of videos cataloged each year:

2003: 16467
2004: 29896
2005: 38042
2006: 30343
2007: 16483
2008: 10225
2009: 8013
2010: 5617
2011: 4455

How in the world did people in the early years get anyone to watch their videos? The sheer amount of stuff being released every day must have made it really hard to get noticed.

[Knowname]

Before the org got hosting? Basically Kazaa/ Morpheas/ Napster. A few actually had money for their own server and some shared amongst their studio (see?? back than STUDIOS actually HAD a function other than penis measuring competitions!!) but many of us were on the p2p. you basically had to have it on all day and you never knew who you were sharing with :/. Most video pages on the org didn't have any d/l links, your best chance would be to catch the editor on the forum and ask directly for it. It was horrible and the org having FREE hosting was a GODSEND. Hosting typically was like 15 bucks a month for 100megs. I'm not too sure, but something like that (I never really even looked into it...)

[Pwolf]

Yea, the concept for free hosting didn't really exists back then. Our only options were to use someone else's paid hosting or buy your own, even then we had to deal with copyright/piracy rules. I went through several hosts myself and had my accounts shut down. Most of the problems were really due to using too much bandwidth and someone then saying "hey this looks illegal, GOOD BYE!". I've had my videos hosted on other people's sites and I've hosted other editors as well. I used to get e-mails from people every now and then telling me that they found my stuff on Kazaa also.

Before the org had hosting, there was the AMV FTP. It was more or less, IIRC, an invite only FTP site... at least I was never given access to it until the very end. I never really asked for access though Even with those options, a lot of us would swap cds/dvds of our videos at cons. I remember going to AX and during the AMV dinner, we would all just give each other cds/dvds. I still have a few of those disks laying around.

Between the org and youtube, all you youngins have it easy

[Knowname]

lol some of my first videos were (PURPOSELY) HORRIBLY encoded TINY AS A BUTTON videos JUST so it could fit in that 100mb limit and it wouldn't max bandwidth...

But yeah, now that I think of it Seasons isn't asking about the PRE-hosting days, he/ she is asking about 2003/ 4 and so on, the days of 20k+ videos. those days were nice, mostly because of the feeling you get after doing something that's INCREDIBLY hard to do ie the stuff we referred to before. after that, the org got hosting and everybody just had a STRONG feeling of relief to FINALLY have a stable hosting service, PLUS WE DIDN'T HAVE TO PAY FOR IT!! (lol though many of us donated... at least...) so basically we just made amvs for the heck of it.

Plus pre- Youtube lots of ppl posted up their "LinkinballZ" type amvs they cooked up in 10 minutes. Now most of those go to Youtube, but before the org was the only player!

PLUS in the early days older videos had to be uploaded too... since the org didn't HAVE hosting back before the days of Euphoria.