 McDonald's and Toyota are both launching their very own anime series showing that anime has pretty much gone mainstream because they're trying to sell more products. I have been waiting for this time for anime to become mainstream in America. We got to talk about it Andrew. First off, let's just run the clips. To the future. Gaze upon Synth Corp's ultimate design, the standard synth. Our machine-driven synth vehicles are simply superior to human drivers in every way. The future is Synthed. The future is mine and nobody can stop me. Which one did you prefer? Which one looked better? Based off the teaser, I gotta actually say the McDonald's one, man. We both worked with Toyota and McDonald's before, but I'm just saying this anime series, I think McDonald's edges it out. The McDonald's series is all about the search for the secret McNugget sauce, but they call it McDonald's because that's what they've been calling McDonald's in animes for a long time to avoid the copyright. Right, so McDonald's kind of just rolled with it and was like, ah, even though we could give them the right to call it McDonald's, let's just roll with the anime McDonald's. Right, so anyway, make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications. Also Andrew, you know what's also burning hot like and anime? Anime almost as popular, but not quite as popular. Smala sauce sold out right now, but check back in very soon. Is it interesting that finally American divisions, by the way, obviously Toyota is from Japan. They have launched multiple anime series in Japan for Toyota, but this is the first time they're giving a big budget for America. McDonald's has done anime things in Japan and around Asia before. This is the first time investing millions in it in America. If you go to McDonald's right now, the bag is a manga. Yeah, yeah. And then actually on the soda cup, which I just ate McDonald's at the airport the other day, there's Japanese writing on the side. McDonald's now though. McDonald's now though, I don't know, maybe, yeah. Anyway, in Asia, they've had like Snickers attack on Titan ads, run that clip right now, five, four, three, two, one. They've been doing it for a very long time, but now America's doing it. What's changing? Why is it the last five years American companies are investing heavy amounts of money in these campaigns? Well, let me tell you this, David. You know, just as we've covered the proliferation of Boba, Dunkin' Donuts, a lot of these American chains want to make their own bubble tea, because bubble tea is a $3 billion market and rising. Well, guess what, David? A lot of people are thinking about marketing K-pop because K-pop is set to rise up to a $20 billion market size by 2031, but guess what's dominating? Anime is projected to be a $30 billion market by 2023. Oh, I'm sorry, $60 billion. So currently, it's almost a $30 billion market. So anime, anime, and I think that includes manga as well, probably. Because one is just the written version and one's the animated version. It's a gigantic market. And not only that, it's like at the end of the day, if you're McDonald's and Toyota and you're thinking of ways to kind of reinvent yourself or refresh yourself or like, you know, these are two companies that are trying to figure out ways to get new young customers because they've just, they've been around so long, you know what I mean? So yeah. I think it goes to show you that there's been a gigantic shift in Western culture away from like Ronald McDonald, away from a Hamburglar, away from these like Western icons. Because for the longest time McDonald's was using like Western cartoons, right? Now it feels like for this generation that's under 30, Eastern cartoons have supplanted Western cartoons for sure now. Do you know what I'm saying? Like it's officially swapped. I think their market share was like always growing. It reminds me of when rap took over rock music in the early 2000s. I knew it was crazy when my, even my white teachers at school were like bling bling, bling bling buddy, I like your bling bling. You know what I mean? With no limit soldiers. No, there's been a cultural shift. And I think that so many people around the age of 26 and below have consumed not just the geeks, but just almost everybody has consumed some Asian cartoon, at least Pokemon or Dragon Ball Z. You know what I mean? Not, not everybody, but a lot of people have. At least even though- Naruto. No, even though sorority white chicks over in Tennessee, you don't think they've heard of. At least Pokemon. They know what Pokemon and they've probably heard of what Dragon Ball Z is, even though they're not fans. You know what, I gotta go back to the hip hop analogy because it reminds me, you know, in 2005, the NBA All-Star Game was in Denver, Colorado, and they had this guy named Cowboy Troy Perform who was like a black rapping cowboy. And that was at a time, Andrew, where true real rap from the inner city was still considered taboo and too edgy. And I'm saying over the years, you saw a transition to now the Super Bowl, a halftime show, is always a rap show. Right. Because rap has become the predominant music genre in America. And I'm saying that anime sort of has this similar arc. And we're at the reaching that transition point. I mean, I do think anime is basically a staple of culture now. Of a certain age group. But even specifically younger, wouldn't you say? Yeah, of the younger group, it is definitely part of culture. For sure, maybe not, it's not top five, but it's like, it's up there. Me and you are not the biggest anime fans, especially for being Asian-American. I know there's a ton of people who are like way more into it than we are, but we do know a thing or two, Andrew. This is what I think. I think that anime is popular because there's a way bigger range. American animation is very limited in theme, stylistically. And they don't really have big story arcs. Like, even when we were watching the Batman cartoon growing up, it was almost like every episode was self-contained. It had nothing to do with another episode. It was almost like sitcom-ish. Right, where like, there's no real connection. Whereas like, animes are like, Andrew, some of them are like 500 episodes deep and it all connects logically all the way back to episode one. Do you think it has to do with either the amount of effort that the writers are putting in and also the assumed attention span of the audience? Because think about it, Asians got good attention spans. They're watching these dramas that go 10 episodes deep just to see one thing happen. But in America, maybe there's a sense like each episode, they want it to be a banger and have a whole story arc within just one episode. Right, you're saying it has to be a self-contained almost like movie. Yeah. Like movies create a world for you and break down the world. Because they're like, well, you know, if my kid misses an episode, I still want him to enjoy the next one. Right. But obviously for a lot of like dramas from Asia and animes, if you miss one, you're like, yo, what, they had a conversation the whole last episode? I missed. Well, that's right. They have to have those recap things in the beginning, right? Right, right, right. Also, there's like Shojo versus Shonen. Shojo is for like girls. Shonen is for boys. But even within that, there's different tiers and age ranges with different themes, different levels of adultness. You know what I mean? Violence, sexual themes, right? Also in Japanese cartoons, but really all across Asia, but specifically I want to talk about Japanese animes. There's a lot of morally gray questions. There's big boobs. There's a lot of crazy violence. There's cool supervillains that you're designed to think are cool. There's a lot of things that American media and the America is based off like kind of Christian Abrahamic rules. They would just not allow for those things to happen. Yeah, the overly gigantic bubis on these anime girls, obviously, is somewhat of a draw, man. I mean, it's kind of makes it nice to look at. They said Japanese or Asian studios are getting things done for like a quarter of the price. Like they work longer hours. They probably get paid less. The workflow operations are more efficient, which allows more frames and allows the animation to look smoother. Yeah. I mean, again, I mean, I think that you could maybe argue that the anime creators take more pride in what they're doing because it's also like Japanese culture. So it's like, man, if we're making an anime, like we have to do it perfectly and we have to go by the craft. Right. And not only that, I mean, compare the animation style of like a lot of animes to like Rick and Morty. Rick and Morty looks like it was like sketched on a napkin, even though that's sort of some of the appeal of it, right? A lot of people are saying the closest things to an America are superhero cartoons, but the superhero cartoons, it's just like it's still just not there. But that that's the closest comparison, right? Like people into Spider-Man, Batman, Superman. Yeah. You know what a lot of animes? I mean, I'm not an anime expert. I feel like a lot of the drama comes from like, that's my dad. It's almost like a whole Jedi Star Wars level drama. But like, every single one. Yeah. That person turns out to be your sister. Oh, this person's this. That's actually related to that. Oh, my mother died. He called my father. It's like pretty dramatic. Right. More like a K-Drama. Yeah. Also, I really think like the visuals, animes are more drawn to look like real people. I know that they don't look realistic. But they look like gorgeous hapas actually. Yeah. I mean, gorgeous half Asians with BBLs and implants, essentially. And then the guys look like with the V-Line and everything like that. But Michael Phelps- What I mean is that they're facially, they're supposed to be recognizable as like humans. While I think in a lot of like American cartoons, they don't draw them like Homer Simpson or something like that. Homer Simpson is like, yeah, that's like, what type of humans are they? Some people do look like Homer though, but they're not considered the best look at people. Somebody said it's a community online and it's really welcoming. The fandom is welcoming to people who are socially nervous or nerdy, possibly neuro divergent. Basically much more accepting, for example, of an online community than like the online sports community. Right. Right. Right. And some people have some theories. They were saying the anime characters themselves, they're either written as more neurotic or detached themselves. It could either be due to culturally, Japan is so different from the West, or also they just tend to lead into more extreme characters and people may find some of themselves in the anime characters and then that contributes all to the fandom in a triangulation. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really interesting. Fantasy, relatability all rolled into one. Dude. It's hitting on like every cylinder, I always tell people, man, a lot of things in life, it's like a checklist of 10 things and when something checks off all 10, ain't no stopping it. Yeah. A lot of people were saying, you know, like, you know, especially some of the nerdy or pro athletes, Andrew Jamal Williams, Zion Williamson, they have come out and said that they're big anime fans. But obviously people like Marchand Lynch, John Morant, I would find it hard to believe that they're big anime fans. Yeah. I don't know what I'm saying for sure. I'm just saying. Someone's got to ask them. Ultimately, Andrew, what do you think? It's coming into America now. It's becoming the predominant illustration and animation in a market for a long time that was like, no, man, that stuff's weird. Maybe only for the hentai. I would enjoy it, but not all my McDonald's. I guess it's cool to see, man. I'm really happy because even though I'm not personally the biggest anime fan or geek, I have been to anime con and I've been to Comic Con, but anime con was obviously based in anime. And that was just to see how many people love it and even talking to people that we work with who are younger that really love anime. It's like, man, I just hope that the anime is keep getting better and people are able to draw more from it. But I think it's cool, man, because I don't know that McDonald's anime looks kind of cool. Is this the future of branded content? Would there ever be a K-pop group? Like a McDonald's K-pop group? Like McDonald's names them? M-pop, McDonald's pop. Y'all could have that idea. Or B-pop, Burger Pop. That's crazy. Oh, no, no, you have, all right. You assemble just for one album, The McNuggets, and that's a pop group. Like, you know how like California Raisins? Yeah, they could do that. Like, somebody could fund that. I don't know if it's worth it, but they could do it. Um, I saw the Demon Slayer movie recently. I thought that was really tight. I saw the Attack on Titan movie. You know, I've obviously seen a lot of clips and a few episodes here or there, but you know what growing up always impacted me deeply? There was an anime, anime, Slam Dunk. Slam Dunk, still to this day, is the coolest looking Asian hoopers in history. There's actually low key a lot of Japanese basketball enemies, and I want to say there's more basketball cartoon and animes than there are American basketball cartoons. Yeah, for sure. That's a good point. It's crazy. I think that the whole view of the East about animation and illustration is completely different than the West too. Right. And I think coupled on top of that, the economics of scale, like we said, the ability, the cost, the sheer economics of creating illustration and animation. I think the equation is completely different over there. And the CGI rates in Taiwan, it might be like like an eighth or like a tenth of what it costs in America. Basically, guys, what do you think about this? Asian style entertainment, particularly anime, is taking over the cartoon game. It's taking over the animation game. I'm not saying everything's going to look like an anime, but the anime market is gigantic. It's huge. And once Marvel as a brand kind of loses some hotness, anime is just... But it might not be all Japanese made animes. Maybe other people make animes that are just as good. You let me know in the comments down below. I know that there's Chinese animes, Korean animes. There's probably animes from other countries too from America as well. So let me know. Yo, what if Times Square starts looking like San Francisco from Big Hero 6? That was people's image. I'm saying somebody I got it on a vision board somewhere. Make my eyes really big. Big. You look like an anime. All right, you guys, let us know what you think in the comments section below. Toyota McDonald's, who else needs it? I think I thought of the next one. Pizza Hut needs to bring some Japanese pizzas and do a Pizza Hut anime. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. An anime series based around Italian pizza makers, but in Japan. Or like, you know, they depict it as Italian, but in Japanese. That'd be hilarious. Yashoku. All right, you guys, let us know what you think in the comments section below. Is anime here to stay? Is it just a passing trend? Or is it going to supplant Western animation and illustration? All right, everybody, until next time, we out. Peace.