It can very easily turn into this, especially with anime production budgets much lower now than they were in the more creatively fertile 70’s and 80’s. But even back then… oh lord, I’m trying to watch all the major Super Robot shows of the 70’s for a blog project I’m working on in my spare time and some of that stuff is just so blatant it hurts.
Cultural relativism only goes so far when it comes to covering for a dearth of imagination. :-) And it’s not as though Japan has a lock on that; Hollywood and Top 40 Radio keep cranking out the same formulaic crap year after year.
No, but generally Westerners acknowledge that sort of thing is bad or at least not anything to be proud of. Japanese are sometimes outright proud of the role that production committees and sponsors play in dictating the outcome of a story, as they feel it results in superior product.
Generally the Japanese fans only object to reliance on formula when properties either start being incoherent due to editorial interference or are copying past formulas with nothing new to add whatsoever. Even then it’s mostly the superfans and die-hards who will ever object at all-- most other folks just get bored and move on to other entertainments.
I would point out that most of the popular anime shows which end up getting repeatedly ripped off were ground-breaking in their day;
Sometimes, sometimes not. Some shows that built up huge mainstream popularity just did so by being in effect the right thing at the right time, or by presenting a not-quite-new idea in a way that was novel in terms of visual or production style.
Evangelion married “A Boy & His Robot” with intellectual pretension in a way which spawned countless imitators, etc.
Evangelion is a classic case of the right show at the right time. When it was produced, pretty much all GAINAX’s competitors producing mecha shows were at creative nadirs. The psychologically-written mecha show was regarded as a relic of the early 80’s and the ones that survived were shallow toy-selling engines.
Evangelion roared in with a completely original design aesthetic for the machines, very high-quality fight choreography, and many completely original character archetypes to supplement its subversive use of the classics. The plot wouldn’t have been seen as original, so much, most of it directly parallels material from its predecessors, but the it was executed was inarguably compelling and fresh at the time.
I suppose you could argue those shows belong to well-established genres - Gundam & Eva are still mecha shows, after all - which makes them less than ground-breaking; but I’d still say it’s the way they reinvented old cliches which made them popular, not their adherence to them.
I can give you Evangelion there-- while classed as a mecha show, it’s also a pointed deconstruction of classic Ultraman in some respects and that warps certain aspects of its story structure in interesting ways. Gundam, though, was pretty pedestrian material for '79. I mean, it did manage to get canceled the first time through!
Most of the themes and plot beats were already covered by a highly-regarded predecessor called Voltes V that just had the misfortune to opt for a conventional Super Robot aesthetic. What Gundam really brought to the party was a new visual sense for mecha shows, the one that Macross and especially VOTOMS later refined. So Gundam didn’t get really hot until the compilation movies in the early 80’s, when there was merchandise on shelves for older fans.
