Chowder's Greenblatt on the industry

CH Greenblatt, creator of Chowder (is that his real name?), sent a letter to ANN’s Answerman about his previous column discussing some differences in the animation industries in the US and Japan. The letter has some interesting insights.

I think you’ve actually oversimplified the problem in blaming it all on the executives.… Chowder was an extremely hard sell to the network. They thought it looked too young. They didn’t like the use of patterns. They didn’t like the stop motion.… Very few shows are actually dictated by the executives. They tend to kill good things more often than make them happen. It’s a lot easier to say “No” than “Yes.”…

We do a lot of things well that the Japanese don’t do. They don’t do cartoony. A lot of their storytelling is vague, incoherent, and pretends to be deep (which is probably why it plays well with teens. Ahh, youth.) Each side has its strengths.