Happy New Year!
I have always been a huge fan of the website random curiosity. Below is a link to their Winter 2012 preview:
http://randomc.net/2011/12/26/winter-2012-preview/
Last season had a lot of strong anime and it seems that the winter season will also have a good line-up. A lot of these anime look like they will do well in the US.
As I wrote before, anime that does well in the US must be easily translated and understood by US culture. Also, Funimation is doing a good job of helping bringing anime directly from Japan to the US online.
Since I have had a break from work due to the holiday season, I watched some older anime that did not receive good reviews or are on my list of anime to watch.
One anime that stood out because of the horrible reviews and formulaic plot was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linebarrels_of_Iron. Linebarrels of Iron was interesting in that it was created by Gonzo, Published by Funimation in the US, and still had manga series. As a Mech anime by Gonzo, it had a lot of potential, but most people reviewed it based on the first few episodes and those reviews were just for the first few episodes. The anime started off with the main character being extremely egotistical and not someone a typical person would like as a hero. Because of this, most people gave the first few episodes horrible reviews. In most US Media, the main character is designed to be liked or if he is disliked originally has potential to be liked and has a catharsis early in the series which sets him to the right path. In this case, Hayate, the main character, was a horrible person throughout the beginning of the series which led many people to stop watching the anime. Something as simple as this should be factored into cultural differences when selling the anime in the US. Of coarse, this anime was not for TV because it was it would have done very poorly.
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