Pokemon Satoshi Tajiri, OLM, TV Tokyo, and Nintendo.
"I love You" Barney Parody
All Rights Reserved.
-No More Annoying Prince of The Sea - Pokemon-
Agnes: Hello, This is me, Agnes. I'm going to sing The "I love You" Barney Parody" called "No More Annoying Prince of The Sea - Pokemon". So Enjoy!
*Song Begins*
I love you, You love me.
Let's get together and Kill Manaphy.
With Cure Peace's Thunder or Monster Shark JAWS!
No More Annoying Prince of The Sea.
*Song Ends*
Agnes: Hooray! So what do you think?
Your Answer May Vary.
-The End-
Fun Facts from TV TROPES:
Manaphy from Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea barely has any kid fans in the west, due to several western kid fans accussing its imprinting to May that causes a conflict to Jackie's mission or at least, make the whole movie worse.
Dawn's Piplup in Pokémon. For Japan, it was a cute, loveable penguin that became one of their mascots. In America, however, Piplup is wildly hated (if not by all, then at least by a very LOUD contingent of American fans). Not all Piplup, mind you, just this one in particular.
Ironically, when the successor series, Best Wishes, introduced Piplup's Expy Oshawott, Western fans weren't nearly as spiteful. Besides the fact that he doesn't become as much of a Creator's Pet despite having a similar personality to Piplup, a lot of fans feel that Oshawott's generally less annoying, has at least marginally better Character Development, he doesn't need to show off in Contest battling, and his cuteness isn't quite as force-fed to the audience as Piplup's was. This is kind of funny considering Oshawott the species was originally seen as The Scrappy in the early days.
A similarly sized contingent loathe Pikachu just as much, calling him "Godchu" and "Deus Ex Pikachu" and decrying his alleged plot-warping powers.
May's Skitty and Squirtle. The former for constantly winning battles by spamming Assist, which anybody who plays the game knows is a ludicrously bad tactic. The latter for being overpowered despite being a freshly-hatched baby and having moves that Squirtles aren't supposed to have.
The anime in general has become this in the West, in inverse proportion to the games (which are still massively popular). In Japan, the anime is still well-regarded, with tons of merchandise and regular films, and is enjoyed regularly by children and their parents. Elsewhere, the anime is viewed as a Franchise Zombie and is constantly accused of slavishly adhering to the Animation Age Ghetto.
But the Bright side, Manaphy still remains a Favorite among Japanese kids today, while Manaphy is no longer shown in the USA.
-Americans Hate Tingle-
A little more information on general trends that might cause Americans Hate Tingle. Please note that these are general trends, and are not absolute.
A good example of this in action is Japanese animation. Anime is, on the whole, a medium with a niche level of acceptance even in its native Japan (aside from family sitcoms like Sazae-san and blockbuster kids' shows like One Piece). But certain countries and regions have a tendency to reject some character types, genres, or even the medium itself, nearly completely.
Anime In General:
For instance, anime has a low acceptance level in the Netherlands, where it is often pejoratively referred to as "manga-movie" (this is a little ironic considering its proximity to Germany and France, places where anime tend to be extremely well-received). While international successes such as Spirited Away or kid-friendly shows such as Pokémon got more acceptance in that country over time, there exists still a sort of "animephobia" around the medium. Or rather, pure mindless fear towards anime in the way only a phobia would do. There's also a sexual angle to this, due to the fact that anime series there got perceived as series with only violence and sex in them in the 1990's. All of this happened in the middle of the popularity of Dutch live-action TV, which largely had an audience with people that wanted more mature stuff seen in a light-hearted way, similarly to anime, but in live-action. This made of anime an easy target for hate and controversy as the intended audience would prefer watching live-action, which as a bonus also adheres to the values of the country. Now that the majority of those live-action shows are gone though anime is starting to get a Dutch audience that tries to break that ideal. It is also a good explanation for why in Belgium Japanese media such as anime and manga only started getting popular in the 2000's and The New Tens, since most Belgians were never really able to watch anime before that period came along.
Ex-USSR countries have issues with anime, probably due to the huge technical & aesthetic differences from the animation they grew accustomed to under the former Soviet regime. While there have been anime booms (mostly of the Dragon Ball series), most anime that aired there was perceived as controversial and was quickly pulled by TV stations. Due to this, most of those networks refuse to air them and prefer to air Live-Action TV or Western Animation. That said, older children's shows, such as the anime adaptations of Maya the Bee, The Moomins and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (all based on European source material) are very popular, but they aren't regarded as anime by most people.
Character Types:
In Japan, dark and angsty young guys (especially pretty ones) tend to be well-liked by audiences, often per their perceived mysterious and deep characteristics. Elsewhere, especially in North America, such traits tend to be associated with the Emo trend, hence the backlash that characters like Sasuke cause in the States.
Male characters that look pretty instead of manly and have hair that makes them look even prettier tend to be extremely popular in Japan, but are usually loathed everywhere else due to the different cultural values over how a man should look. For example, Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 2 has long bleached hair and a somewhat feminine/boyish looking face while Kratos from the God of War series is hugely muscular and has a goatee. This is more pronounced among the male part of the fandom, especially when it comes to view point characters or characters you are meant to relate to and especially when it comes to characters you are meant to play as. The Raiden example mentioned above was intensely disliked by American fans that enjoyed playing as the older and less "pretty" Snake and who did not want to take the role of what they saw as a significantly less macho player character. These characters can still have an intense female fandom in the west, although there are subtle differences in how they are perceived. Compare Pretty Boy to Bishōnen for more information.
Cold, logical, by-the-book characters tend to fare much better in Japan then they do in America, Toshiro Hitsuguya of Bleach being a great example. This is probably due to Japan's culture (shared by most East Asian countries) of obedience to established authority versus America's tradition of being the exact opposite of that. This might be why Metroid: Other M is so controversial with the Western Metroid fanbase; Adam and Samus' relationship is nothing more than acknowledged obedience, authority, and order for Japanese players, but for Western players, they see it as dysfuctional, with Samus being weak willed, submissive, and/or has some deep sexual/parental issues with Adam. In contrast, a Cowboy Cop would be less liked in Japan.
Yamato Nadeshikos and other "traditional" moe character types are the Distaff Counterpart version of the above, being liked in Japan (though still not as much astsunderes) but not so much in the West; Westerners tend to find them boring and, in some cases, sexist for promoting women being submissive and obedient. TheMoe criticism from the West gets worse when the Token Mini-Moe trope is applied on females (due to pseudo-lolicon and pedophilia implications). Because of this,Moe anime or any anime with lolis are less likely to get dubs.
The Tsundere character type is highly criticized and not well liked in the West (American men prefer women to have a reason for snapping at a guy she secretly likes; otherwise, it looks as if the girl has a mental disorder, like bipolar or manic-depressive schizophrenia), although not as severe as the negative reaction to the Moearchetype.
Genre Issues:
The imouto (translation: "little sister") genre of anime/manga/light novels, etc. is well liked in Japan, but in the West it's seen as the low point of otaku pandering, and admitting you're a fan is considered among some segments of the fandom as equivalent to calling yourself a pedophile (or at least a creep).
Sports anime, which are popular in Japan and extremely popular in Latin America, have historically sold very poorly in North America; sports manga does only slightly better. There have been a number of reasons proposed for why this happens: First and foremost is that anime fans in North America carry the stereotype of being young nerds (no shock considering many of the early adopters and originators of the fandom started as fans of Science Fiction), which due to the highly stratified social ladder extant among youth of the region means that the two interests are often violently incompatible. Also, sports in North America (especially the United States) is much more organized and professionalized, even at the middle school level, than in Japan; as a result, the bar for even being accepted onto a team is much higher and thus the fewer North American kids can identify with the experience (plus the Japanese system comes off as hilariously quaint). Finally, the minority of anime fans who do enjoy sports have expressed a preference for watching the real thing. Every once in awhile, though, a sports show can make it out of the doldrums. The New Tens has seen titles like Free and Haikyuu achieve some degree of popularity, mostly due to its Cast Full of Pretty Boys appealing to the increasingly-important female segment of the fandom. Also, sports shows revolving around swords, like Bamboo Blade, are exempt from this trope because they have that "samurai" feel that North Americans tend to love.
Slice of Life anime, while popular in Japan, usually don't sell that well in the western anime fanbase (especially North America).note This is because most Slice of Lifeworks use the same Schoolgirl Series tropes and cliche over and over again with each of them using a different theme (for example, there isn't much difference between the two Manga Time Kirara titles Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka? and Kin-iro Mosaic when it comes to tropes being used). It also doesn't help to note that most Slice of Life anime also have a heavy use of moe and an occassional Token Mini-Moe when it comes to their female characters. That being said, some slice of life works, particularly ones made by Kyoto Animation such as Lucky Star, KOn, Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai!, Free, Tamako Market, and Kyoukai no Kanata, has gotten some degree of popularity in the west.
Adaptations:
Pretty much anything with a Dutch dub also tends to fare very poorly in Belgium. This can be partially be attributed to the fact that despite the fact that Dutch is spoken in both Flanders and the Netherlands, the dialects between the two are radically different. This has grown to such an extent that in media whose dubs are mainly handled in the Netherlands (such as Anime), English is by far the most preferred option by Belgians, to the point that they are repulsed by anyone that enjoys media in a different language than it (or the language the original was released in).
Also:
In general, an import will fare poorly if it's too similar to anything done domestically.
