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Should Nintendo be making cartoons/anime to help promote their games?

D

DNAbro

Member
Having an anime/cartoon could prove incredibly helpful to advertise their games as shown with Yokai Watch in Japan. The game didn't start selling really well until the anime showed up and now the sequel has completely blown up with over 2 million( or somewhere close that) sales.

The new Sonic game currently has a new cartoon in production to help promote the game and the brand. Why haven't we heard anything about a Mario cartoon, or a Zelda anime? Hell start making shows for a majority of the IPs that Nintendo has. They need to recapture a younger audience and having TV shows could be incredibly helpful. With their Amiibo toy line coming out soon, why haven't we seen this happening?

This seems like incredibly obvious thing but it hasn't been done yet. Thoughts?
 
They need to get a few shows down the pipeline so that they can get the exposure Pokemon and Level-5 games do.

Frumix said:
Smash anime by Shaft.
Yes please
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Nintendo would probably want something long running and Shaft probably wouldn't be able to do their normal style.
 
Anime is more expensive to produce than you probably think. 250,000 per episode is not a cheap marketing campaign.
 
tumblr_n6z1gydxM01s8ouhxo1_400.gif
 
Well apart from the 80's/90's Stuff I am not sure why they didn't keep up with doing them. I mean there was that Kirby series.... but man did it get screwed up over here.


I own this =3
51J9F5NS1HL._SY300_.jpg
 
Perhaps the poor history of Nintendo-brand cartoons other than Kirby prevents them from doing so. Meanwhile SEGA has three successful animated series of Sonic and an OVA under their belt.

I'd like a Mario cartoon with the same humor/direction as the Mario & Luigi games, and Zelda being revolved around Wind-Waker for an animated series.
 
The Kid Icarus anime stuff that was on that 3DS video channel thing wasn't actually too bad. They just need to make more games have stories and characters like Kid Icarus in order to do so.
 
Yes, not sure why they stopped trying. Things like Amiibo and maybe a Movie/TV series could help raise brand awareness and increase sales of their software. They have the biggest IPs in gaming, leveraging them well could be new source of income they've been looking for.
Recent examples such as Yokai Watch and their own pokemon franchises have shown that it works.
Also, not sure if using the SMB movie or the cartoon series as an example really makes sense. A lot of 1980s cartoons were pretty bad and wasnt the SMB movie like the first video game movie?
a super smash movie/TV series would be amazing
 
I'm not going to say whether doing it would be a smart decision or not. What I would say is that I'd love to see an actual TV Kid Icarus Uprising anime
 
SocksForWoks said:
I would like that.

They already have the Pokemon anime btw
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I forgot the mention that in the OP. Pokemon is arguably Nintendo's biggest IP besides Mario and that in part is definitely because of the anime, cards, branding, toys, etc that kids are always bombarded with. On top of being a really good game of course.

BocoDragon said:
We had that. It was called the 1980s.
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and they had total domination during that time period. Not saying it was because of the shows but can't doubt it was great marketing.
 
I'd love to see a KI:U anime, but also CG cartoons for other seires. For Smash Bros., maybe? I mean, look at how good the CG trailers for the game are, like the latest one for Shulk. Do we know who's handling them?
 
The Animal Crossing movie was adorable but never got outside of Japan unfortunately. I think it would do well on DVD here.

Kid Icarus got a number of animated shorts by various studios as buildup to the game's release. I think those proved that it could work really well as an ongoing series.

Mario and Zelda had cartoons before and it worked pretty well, but Nintendo wants much more direct control over those properties now so it's harder for a studio to want to make that kind of stuff when they don't have a lot of room to be creative with it. Especially with Mario- being restricted on a property like Mario makes it difficult to do a good cartoon series, since it's such a surreal concept for a setting to begin with.

Pokemon is still going strong as a media giant, though. Toys and cartoons and manga and movies and everything.

I think there's room for more Nintendo properties as other forms of media. Archie Comics proposed Mario and Kirby comic books a while back but Nintendo turned them down. It's not clear why. Nintendo should be pursuing that kind of thing aggressively.
 
Kirby needs another TV run. the Kirby anime, even with 4Kids dub is still very good. Even a fully 3D Kirby would be an awesome CGI series.

I really wonder how Sonic Boom will do on Cartoon Network when it's already a station filled with amazing shows (Adventure Time, Regular Show, Clarence, Steven Universe)

--

It's super shitty that Nintendo wants direct control over their properties. That Archie Kirby comic could have been amazing.
 
I think they mentioned earlier this generation that it was part of their future plans to use their IPs in media other than games. With amiibo they released their own figurines. I wouldn't be surprised to see new animations/movies from Nintendo in the future as well.
 
In the January Corporate Management Policy Briefing, I talked about our policy of actively utilizing character IP. Since then, even more people than before with license and other associated business proposals using Nintendo character IP have contacted us.
We are not at a stage where we can share the specifics with you today, but we are seeing possibilities in licensing character IP in areas Nintendo has never worked before. I expect to be able to discuss some of the details before the end of this calendar year.
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http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/140508/03.html

Only a matter of time.
 
Animal Crossing slice of life anime? Count me in, day zero. Also a Star Fox by someone who usually makes Gundam/space animes, don't know much about them, I would watch too. A good vs evil Kid Icarus anime, with inverted tropes, would be cool also. And to finish, an over the top action anime with Captain Falcon.

Mario, Link, Zelda, etc I just don't have any ideas.
 
Well... having a tv show isn't the same as having a popular one.

F-Zero had a show... that didn't prevent it's current status.
 
KelpPlankton said:
The Animal Crossing movie was adorable but never got outside of Japan unfortunately. I think it would do well on DVD here.

Kid Icarus got a number of animated shorts by various studios as buildup to the game's release. I think those proved that it could work really well as an ongoing series.

Mario and Zelda had cartoons before and it worked pretty well, but Nintendo wants much more direct control over those properties now so it's harder for a studio to want to make that kind of stuff when they don't have a lot of room to be creative with it. Especially with Mario- being restricted on a property like Mario makes it difficult to do a good cartoon series, since it's such a surreal concept for a setting to begin with.

Pokemon is still going strong as a media giant, though. Toys and cartoons and manga and movies and everything.

I think there's room for more Nintendo properties as other forms of media. Archie Comics proposed Mario and Kirby comic books a while back but Nintendo turned them down. It's not clear why. Nintendo should be pursuing that kind of thing aggressively.
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There also was the Kirby anime and the Prof. Layton movie (even tho Layton isn't officially a Nintendo serie).
 
AlexMeloche said:
There also was the Kirby anime and the Prof. Layton movie (even tho Layton isn't officially a Nintendo serie).
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I don't know how I forgot about the Kirby anime. It was pretty well done, though I'm not a fan of how 4kids handles bringing shows over to the US generally (their VA stable is way too small among other things)
 
I would absolutely love if Nintendo licensed cartoons. The last time I watched Nintendo cartoons regularly was back when the Kirby and F-Zero anime were on FoxBox. They weren't bad but they weren't great either.

It would be extremely interesting if they didn't go with anime by default.

If I were to propose one series, it would be a Zelda cartoon where they continued storylines from old games. It aids the series in two ways: 1) introduces people to the canon without overwhelming them, and 2) the games can create new stories. Maybe a certain time-traveling character could resolve a few timeline "inconsistencies". :)
 
GFYRSmw.jpg
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They already have amazing looking models that could be used for a show. They could adapt the 3D World engine to create a Source Filmmaker-esque program for creating the show in and do it all in-house. Syndicate it on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon, let kids watch the new episodes the day after they air on the Wii U, and have special behind the scenes exclusives for if you watch on the console. It's not rocket science.
 
Sure.

Make an anime called "Mario High School". Mario can experience all the standard anime tropes in a spoof of high school animes and just anime in general.
 
Rhazer Fusion said:
What? Anime costs that much to produce??????
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I know Afro Samurai was around 1 mil per episode and other shows with ridiculous frame counts like Gurren Lagann and Dennou Coil are probably up there too.

That's probably about it, though. Most anime is cheap as hell to produce, what with all those underpaid animators and whatnot.
 
Silky said:
Kirby needs another TV run. the Kirby anime, even with 4Kids dub is still very good. Even a fully 3D Kirby would be an awesome CGI series.
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The 3DS had a special episode of Kirby's series in full 3D on the video channel! It's quite charming. It's on Youtube but the quality isn't the best. It was designed to be viewed in 3D so it loses some of that.

The Kid Icarus shorts they showed in the 3DS video channel were quite nice as well.
 
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