Niche vs Popularity

People often ask why a certain title isn’t more popular and how it deserves more attention. Most of the times, the answer is because it was never meant to be more popular. It was made for a niche audience and is thus reserved for a very specific taste. Just because you happen to like it, doesn’t mean most others share your very peculiar taste.

Other times, people ask why is a title as popular as it is, when their tastes are fairly mainstream and yet they don’t see the appeal. The answer is usually because they bumped onto a niche community that happens to be hyping it at the moment. The anime community is not that big and finding a lot of praise about a certain mediocrity while it’s new, is not that hard.

Most shows are a niche to begin with. Their appeal can be zipped down to a couple of ideas; see past those ideas and there is probably nothing special about them. If a series fails to sell you its selling point, because it was never part of the things you like, you were obviously never meant to like it. If fact, chances are, you are going to react in a pretty cringy way.

Keep in mind that most of what is popular began as a niche that gradually grew bigger through several years of constant praising by its fanbase as well as proper marketing. People get used to hearing about it and by the time it gets to them, they are already sold into the idea of it being good because it’s popular.

There are lots of shows which are made for a mainstream audience right away, something which is usually achieved by having a bit of everything. The problem with such series is that they do not try to excel in something so they can attract all demographics evenly, and come off very bland and stupid once you strip away the variety provided from done to death stereotypes.

So the next time you are wondering why something is or is not as popular as you want it to be, don’t look on the stage, look for the reasons behind the scenes. It’s probably going to be something you were better of not knowing about.