Animax India’s Sunder Aaron, speaks about the Anime craze created by the channel
Animax, an international anime channel owned by Sony Pictures Television arrived to India around two years ago. And since then, it has truly been a challenge for the channel to carve a niche for itself in a land that probably relates more to daily soaps and prefers shedding bucketful of tears on the saas-bahi sagas. Animax as a channel basically dealt with airing animes. Keeping the nerve of the youth in mind, Animax India repositioned itself in June 2006, to establish itself as a channel that does not merely offer animes, but offers animes which ‘make sense’. With an intention of extending its reach to young kids and to the Indian youth of upto 20 years of age, Animax aires animes that have serious content, sensible plot-lines and basically transcribe themselves as mature dramatic series rather than the typical cartoonish stuff.
TechShout.com had an exclusive interview with Mr. Sunder Aaron, Country Head of Animax, where he spoke about the why Animax may NEVER adopt hindi for its programs, what the company’s future plans are and much more. Read on, to know more.
A common perplexity is the thin, or perhaps the major difference between animes and cartoons. Speaking about this, Aaron stated that firstly it’s best to refer to anime as animation, since animation is a term people relate to quite well. Coming to the difference between the two, anime consists of visual characteristics with which everybody can identify with very quickly. The story lines are more sensible and the themes are more mature. Animes have real dramatic conflicts as against cartoons, which often have people jumping off the building and bouncing and displaying antics to that context. However in anime, it’s all about the story. That is the profound difference between anime and cartoon.
The audience- grippers according to Mr. Aaron are Fullmetal Alchemist, Inu Yasha, Ghost Block are the animes doing extremely well on the channel. Even the movie block called ‘Aniflix’ is performing superbly.
Mr. Aaron told us that the next big anime series to hit Animax is ‘Initial D’ – a racing animation series, pretty much on the lines of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006). It basically revolves around Illegal Mountain driving.
Reruns, reruns and more reruns on Animax. We couldn’t help but ask Mr. Aaron, the reason for the same. Commenting on this, Mr. Aaron said, “We surely are in the moves of getting fresh programming, which we want to save for the night primetimes. For instance, one anime series that’s been on Animax for quite sometime is ‘Flame of Recca,’ ‘Monkey Typhoon’ which have several episodes, re-running in the afternoon.” He added, repetition is pretty typical, and with respect to programming in animation channels it is one of the most conventional ways. Re-runs or repetition of shows is surely something that interests Animax’s early teenage audience. Infact, very often the ratings too tend to rise with re-runs airing on the channel. But the channel is surely focusing on getting some brand new exciting stuff soon on the channel.
When asked if Animax India too plans to go the Cartoon Network way, and dub its shows in Hindi, Mr. Aaron stated that at one point of time a part of the channel was broadcasted in the Hindi language, which somewhere ended up confusing the viewers and ended up squeezing off the charm from the show. After speaking to several Animax fans, through the channel’s websites and forums, it was easy to decipher that they were largely not keen on watching the Hindi dubbed shows. With response to all this, the channel’s current focus would be the metros of India, which are extremely comfortable and relate well to shows in English. And as the channel continues to develop, Animax will take a stand on whether it plans to dub its shows in Hindi and offer a feed in the language for the rest of India.
Anime and animation per se has come a long way in India. At one point of time, India didn’t go beyond the limitations of just rendering the art work and its sorts for an animation series. However today, not only has India excelled in the general know-how of the animation spectrum but has also extended its grips to the various technologies and technicalities involves in the development of animations. We asked Mr. Aaron about where Asian countries, particularly India stands in the animation foray and what according to him is the future of anime in India.3. First and foremost Mr. Aaron was quick to point out that the interest is surely growing. Mr. Aaron added that the growing craze for Animax is a perfect example of how audiences have begun to get glued to these kinds of shows. He further continued that there are anime shows such as Dragon Ball Z on Cartoon Network and various other animation shows on several other channels are doing extremely well too.
And it doesn’t end here. We further spoke to Mr. Aaron about the Animax Grand Gaming Challenge 2007, too. Stay glued on to know what he had to say about the contest, about gaming in India, and much more, coming on TechShout.com soon.
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April 1st, 2007 at 11:17 am
please please…………(infinity) don’t dub the shows in hindi or any other language i love to watch it in english pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease……… my friends & i &most of the people in india love to watch animax and we don’t know hindi so we request you not to dub(i am begging you). please take my request into consideration.AND MOST OF ALL I LIKE ALL OF UR SHOWS& I NEVER MISS ANY OF EM.ONCE AGAIN PLEASER DONOT DUB
-FROM AN ANIMAX LOVER-SENTARO
April 11th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Ya !!! No dubbing in Hindi please !!!
April 13th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
real anime fans will _never_ ever watch english releases of original japanese shows
original japanese versions are the best !
And as far as animax is concerned, they are probably not releasing the shows in Hindi, because of lack of resources.
No channel is going to survive in India, without releasing shows in Hindi. It’s a well know fact
And as far animes are conrned, Hungama channel is doing pretty damn good job of releasing japanese shows in Hindi. And to top it all, they have pretty good voice talents…
anyways, who’s concerned about animax anymore..those who are serious about anime can always download the latest torrents
I am currently hooked to “oh my goddess” ….
April 15th, 2007 at 8:08 am
Only ranma 1/2 in hindi and all else in english that’ll do
and bring back samurai x and when r the samurai x movies
plz reply
April 21st, 2007 at 3:43 pm
pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease do not dub in hindi.we south indians would be like deaf dudes watching megacool animation.
May 14th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Look…people who don’t understand English in India probably won’t get the shows either…and the people who do love anime here (and don’t know Japanese…I’m looking at YOU gautum.madeshia…;) ) HATE to see it in Hindi, alright? Don’t even BEGIN to consider it…just keep it as it is..coz it rocks that way.
P.S I am a little biased. I’ve watched in horror as all my favourite english channels were turned into Hindi. I do NOT want to be subjected to that with animax..it’ll force me away from that too.
P.P.S How the hell do we make requests for shows on Animax India???
July 18th, 2007 at 8:39 am
Your english dubs suck.Add an option to change to the original japanese audio
track on animax.Add subtitles also if you can.Naruto and bleach which your planning to air sucks in english!!!I use tatasky so please make this possible Mr.Sunder Aaron.
August 20th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz STAR AIRING DRAGONBALLZ ON ANIMAX DBZ ON CARTOONETWORK IS USELESS IT KEEPS REPEATING AND THATS SERIOUSLY BUGGING U FEEL LIKE BREAKING EVERY1S HEAD IN CARTOONNETWORK PLZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ DU SOMETHING IF THERE R SOME OTHER SHOWS OR ANIME SIMILAR TO DRAGONBALLZ PLZZZZZZZ LEMME KNOW THANKS AND PLZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
June 15th, 2008 at 8:17 am
It’s great that Animax(one of the most popular anime channels) has been broadcasted here! it’s awesome! you guys rock!awesomely superb! all these 3 yrs! up-untill now has improved my english allot! you do not have think about dubbing it in Hindi. A request I would really like to put forward is that some of the animes has been broadcasted in “live action” in Japan.I really want to watch them e.g Honey & Clover, Jikogku shoujo & etc.Can you produce another channel for it? or can it me shown in Animax??
Same goes with me, please put some other awesome animes like Sailor Moon, Full moon wo sagashite & etc (whichever you think is better)
And another one is that, can you put those old animes series again like Princess comet & Princess tut stuffs?? It’s been yrs since we haven’t watched
Plus, Why Mangas are not available in stores???
Last but not the least! this channel has given us loads of inspirations plus now my main goal of my own future is to be an animator sometime!thank you very much! Arigatou gazaimasu!
June 15th, 2008 at 8:18 am
you rock always! rock on!
August 7th, 2008 at 4:46 am
animax Should dubb in Hindi And as for south Indian, they can change Languege in their DTH (tata sky or Dish TV) remotes from hindi to English and the south Indians who do not have DTH con talk to their cable operater to change Languege
I,am a Animax fan I want animax to be the No. 1 chennal and also Hindi is very Improtant as its allow the rest of India to Injoy.
So I reguest to Mr. Sunder Aaron to dub the Shows in Hindi Languege and I also resquest to all the animax fan to send letters to Animax to also dubb in Hindi.