Anime Icons/Episode 2 transcript

Prologue
.Narrator: "In less than a year, it went from a golden age..

Dan Green: "It's a part of nerd culture, it's about as mainstream as American comics nowadays."

Narrator: "To its darkest hour."

Jason Griffith: "Well let's put it this way, a lot of people didn't like One Piece. One Piece became one of the culprits of the crash."

Gen Fukunaga: "It was the demise of the business in the US; and unfortunately, we didn't see it coming.

Christopher McDonald: "The original dub of One Piece was awful, and otherwise lacking in any redeeming values."

Jason DiMarco: "A lot of bad anime - both subbed and dubbed - got out there. I'd say the bad anime gets out there still, but some REALLY bad anime got out there in the mid-to-late 2000s."

Narrator: "This is the story of the birth and near death of the American anime market."

Part I
Narrator: "The story begins in the middle of the decade with flip phones, American Idol, and big dreams. The anime industry is in the middle of a boom, having gone from a niche industry to near-mainstream acceptance thanks in part to a franchise called Pokémon. And more anime sees itself on American store shelves and airwaves."

Ken Sasaki - Viz Media: "We at Viz wouldn't have seen success had it not been for Pokémon or, to a larger extent, Ranma 1/2 on home video. From that point on, we saw successes like Naruto. The profit margins were extraordinary. We were just... making more money than we could put in the bank."

Narrator: "And a generation of kids is hooked on anime."

Dan Green - Voice Actor, Yu-Gi-Oh!: "It's a part of nerd culture, it's about as mainstream as American comics nowadays."

Narrator: "Anime isles are in stores like Best Buy and FYE, and both kids and adults are drawn by the unique art form. dropping big bucks on the latest Japanese fad."

Eric Stuart - Voice Actor: "The anime crowd back in the old days was really interesting, because you had kids who liked Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Dragon Ball Z, and then you had high school students and college students liking Cowboy Bebop and Gundam, then it was really weird because you also had businessmen liking Cowboy Bebop also. it was weird, because it really was an all across the board phenomenon."