Why is space opera only in the USA a thing?

Why is space opera only in the USA a thing?

What most of scifi is at a new world order.

Actuallly to the point of being pretty stupid, because if you talk about new world order pretty much everyone will say to you go back to /pol/, tinfoil hat and etc....
YET almost all scifi settings have them, like if they were the obvious future

Probably because that's the only place you looked

The USA is one of the few countries with the spare money in its entertainment industry to pull them off really well in visual form, and has had that spare money for decades.

Britain probably does as well, but Britain seems to prefer to go in for post-apocalypse where sci-fi is concerned.

Japan actually has tons of space operas, too, helped along by the fact that the Animation Age Ghetto (i.e., the perception that "comics/cartoons are for little children") never really occurred there.

America is filled with people that don't like to science a lot, and so Space Opera lets them enjoy sci-fi without understanding the maths.

Asia isn't interested in Space Opera unless it has giant mechs.

Europeans don't like anything if the U.S likes it because the entire continent is filled with pretentious hipsters that will inflict harm on themselves

Africa is too busy not starving to care.

No one cares about Australia.

You don't read books then?

>Asia isn't interested in Space Opera unless it has giant mechs.

Crest/Banner of the Stars doesn't have a single mech in it, and it lasted like three seasons. Though it does have space elves, so maybe that makes up for things.

(They're not actually elves - the series doesn't have aliens in it at all, the Abh are just humans who got into genetic modification and decided to make themselves blue-haired and pointy-eared)

Because the US has the largest space program, the country that invested the most into founding and legitimizing the United Nations, and more importantly is the main consumer of sci-fi products, whether tabletop games or literature.
Also Star Trek kind of firmly inbedded an idea of what a sci-fi humanity "should" be.
That's more due to writers wanting to focus on their aliens than on a fragmented humanity, despite the fact that the only way we'd ever get motivated enough to waste the kind of money needed to establish actual space infrastructure would be through competition.

Also, aliens are all defined by a single culture, so humans need a singular culture too. Even if it's a culture of not having a single defined culture. And no, that doesn't make sense, but most writers are either deliberately ignoring it's flaws so they can focus on the story, or spend so much time focusing on the worldbuilding that they forget to tell a story.

>despite the fact that the only way we'd ever get motivated enough to waste the kind of money needed to establish actual space infrastructure would be through competition.

In most space opera stuff, there was competition but it all happened in the backstory. In Star Trek, for example, Earth made contact with the Vulcans in 2063, but United Earth didn't form until the later parts of the 21st century, and didn't include every nation-state on Earth until some time in the early 2100s. The Post-Atomic Horrors (that's the actual in-universe term for the era) in the aftermath of World War 3 continued until the very early 22nd century as well.

Fanon has it that Australia was the last nation to join United Earth, but that comes from a specific interpretation of a line from TNG (the crew is discussing why the Federation waits for a planet to unify before admitting it as a member world, and I think Dr. Crusher says "it would be like if Australia never joined United Earth". It was probably meant as a throwaway example, not a statement that Australia was the last to join).

And look at what we get today
>A fafillion iterations of Gundams
>A half dozen ripoffs spinoffs of Gundam that are totally not Gundams for real guys but they just do all the stuff Gundamns do

The amount of ignorance in this (short) thread is staggering. No wonder we don't get shit done anymore, if most of Veeky Forums doesn't possess basic knowledge of their favourite genres.
Most of you should stop browsing Veeky Forums for a while and go read some books instead.

I assume you're talking about in TV and movies, since that's not even remotely true of novels. But even in visual media there are non-American examples of space opera. Farscape for instance is Australian.

I DON'T KNOW

Star Wars or Game of Thrones style settings would be perfect.

Americans are required for space opera. But America isn't.

Space Opera likes to have one government per alien race for simplicity's sake. And it makes humans look bad if we're the only spacefaring species who couldn't get our act together and unite.

Because that's what Star Trek did. Although it's kind of funny because the idea in Star Trek was Gene Rodenberry taking the social advances made during the Civil Rights era and extrapolated them further into the future. So in the 60's having culturally distinct versions of humans all working on the same ship was the idea of a unified humanity.

The French have some space opera

Wew. Any more dank memes to offer? Maybe the Americans are too fat to enjoy sleek scifi, for instance?

Legacy in media and real life, capital in entertainment industry, broad avenues of entrenched media that can portray it, the people who enjoyed it growing up and wanting to emulate.

It's not an ONLY U.S thing, but the U.S has the best setup for it.

>who is Iain Banks
>who is Alastair Reynolds
>who is Peter F. Hamilton
>who is Ken MacLeod
>who is Hannu Rajaniemi
>who is M. John Harrison
>who is Neal Asher

If the US makes a sci-fi movie based on a Japanese manga, or a French comic, is it only a thing it the US?

If you mean films/TV, it's a cost thing. US productions have the most money and, somehow, the best value-per-dollar return.

If you mean literature, eh, space opera tends to be presented through the lens of the culture of the writer, or that the writer is exploring. That necessarily limits the appeal of the space opera to the cultures that are similar to the author's own.

The largest lingual group in the world is English-speakers, and the largest cultural group in the world is Anglos. Meaning Anglo-English space opera tends to reach the broadest audiences.

t. guy who writes space opera

>The largest lingual group in the world is English-speakers, and the largest cultural group in the world is Anglos.

Not Chinese?

The Metabarons is the most space operiest of operas. And it's ZE FRENCH.

...

Correct.

~400 million native English speakers, 1.1 billion are considered fluent. Mandarin is a billion, I believe.

Besides, English is the language of aviation, of trade, of science. Those are fairly insurmountable advantages.

...

British have Blake 7

Do Doctor Who and Red Dwarf not count?

SWERVE PEASANTS :
Best Sci-fi and Space Opera manga coming through.

>space opera only in the USA
>Perry Rhodan

Stay stupid, OP, stay stupid.

They're sci-fi, but not really space opera.

What about Blake's Seven?

Why argue with OP when he is obviously trolling? I think at some point (and times) you have to wonder if we like being the Trollee.

I just figured out today that /pol/ didn't mean "Politics". Was it ever not "Politically InCorrect"? Feels so retarded to be me. Maybe this guy should go there anyway?

wasn't jodorowsky from Chile?

He may have been living there at the time.
Especially since Incal, the comic that Metabarons sprung from, was a co-production between him and Moebius.
Speaking of which...seriously, people, not one fucking mention of him?

You do realize that some of the most influential works of space opera were made by Czechs, Japanese and English, right?
Ever heard of Ikaria?
Galaxy Express 999?
Uchū Senkan Yamato?
Legend of Galactic Heroes?
Crest/Battleflag of Stars?

Just because you know fuck all about the genre and it's history does not mean that it's exclusively american thing.

I feel like that's Transhuman/Cyberpunk/Kung-Fu/Planetary romance. The space parts are limited to the solar system and most of the technology is an excuse for Martian Cyborg Fighting styles with the occasional "What does it mean to be human... and also a total fucking badass" quandry.

"Nanomachines?"
"Yeah, they can be used to make a shape shifting cyborg body that can regenerate any wound, and also blades with a mono-molecular edge and an unbreakable crystalline structure."
"But couldn't they also be used to end world hunger?"
"I don't wanna end world hunger, I have all the Flan I could ever eat. I want a shape shifting cyborg body that can regenerate any wound, and also blades with a mono-molecular edge and an unbreakable crystalline structure."

>Why is space opera only in the USA a thing?
It isn't. Trying reading sometime.

Objectively better than more Star Wars or whatever you roundeyes like.

>because that's the only place you looked

Criminally underrated post

Correct answer

well yeah of course they are too fat that goes without saying. eyes closed shut from the fat

he said space opera not cartoons

Space opera is a genre and cartoons are a medium. It's a space opera cartoon.

That's just Startrek from a civilian perspective.

Sheeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiit negro, I thought I imagined Galaxy Express 999. I haven't seen that in over 20 fucking years. I'm going to go watch it in the morning, you've made this random user very happy.

Britan has some pseudo-American space opera and Japan has their own unique space opera. I'm pretty sure other countries do as well but nobody cares. There was this one French space opera comic that Star Wars heavily borrowed its themes and aesthetics from, but nobody cares because it's French.

>Europeans don't like anything if the U.S likes it because the entire continent is filled with pretentious hipsters that will inflict harm on themselves
If only. Europe is actively abandoning its own culture in favor of the "cool" things America puts out. The closest to the 'hipster' countries you imagine are France and England, both having a rule about how a certain percentage of movies and programs on tv and cinemas need to be domestic. But that only results in studios shitting out cheap and shitty products nobody really wants to watch for a quick buck. The same rule exists in America. Just look at all the shitty, horribad "American" cartoons: 9/10 times they're Canadian. Johnny Test, that shitty Donkey Kong CGI series, you name it.

*the same rule exists in Canada
Not that anyone can tell the difference between the two.

/thread

But on semi-related note:
Why should I, a Pole, bother with fucking space opera, when I have Lem and due to reasons all books by Strugatsky brothers were also translated and published here? That would be like throwing away a brand new car, only to replace it with a 1:18 plastic toy.

>Donkey Kong CGI
Hey man, that show was amazing in a horrible way.

Not OP and I literally never heard any of those names.

Not even one?

Nigga you are like some desert wandering pile of shit who's only ever tasted water by sucking on a cactus. Pull the needles out of your gums and go get a drink.

user, here's a deal: I'm not an English native. That means I literally don't care about English authors, since how the fuck I could even know they exist? The last "big" name in English-written fiction I recall is Charles Stross. Just because his "Missile Gap" was published by a sci-fi monthly in my country and got me interested in what else the guy have written.

Just because you are an uncultured swine doesn't mean you should be proud of it.

You are like a North Korean who genuinely believes their country is the best and has no need to get to know other cultures.

So let me get this straight - I'm uncultured swine, because I never heard about people who's books were never published in my country, not counting few exceptions done in early 90s by small-ass publishing houses doing basically semi-legal translations due to fuzzy copyright laws of that period, printed on pulp paper and sold for pocket change?
That's what you are saying?

And still doesn't change the fact I had to google every single one of them. Turns out they are bunch of people writing space opera, a thing that doesn't even interest me in the slightest.
Could you please explain us how being interested in the most shallow form of "science" fiction is about being deeply cultured?

literally return to reddit jesus christ

It's a piece of art, not a cartoon you plebeian

>Makes fun of NK
>Pretends there is anything to know about Anglo culture
Different user, but last thing anyone needs in their life is more Anglosaxon presence. I'm sick and tired of this cultural colonisation on every fucking step, even more so when it's presented as something good.
My country had no output by itself, since it wasn't even a country for that long, but that meant import from everyone and their dog. Now it's just American, and by extension, English-speaking/written media, as if everyone else disappeared.
Kinda like that NK example, only pulled on global scale, if you think about it.

t. insignificant Latvian.

>Asia isn't interested in Space Opera unless it has giant mechs.
And this somehow disqualifies something as Space Opera?

George Lucas tried, and succeded.
So did Star Trek.
But beyond that? Most attempts are failures.
For non USA, its mostly a matter of lack of production value, except for Nips, which can do fantastic space operas.

So? It's just meant to establish how retarded OP is

>Space Opera is only visual
>Visual space Opera starts at Star Wars

hooooooooooooooooooooly fuck

>Space opera doesn't even interest me in the slightest.

What are you doing in this thread then?

Because it's semi-interesting to read this thread even if I'm not interested in space opera? You know, learning why people can/do like it and if it's really an American thing (which is my assumption regardless of OP's statement).
Also, because I'm baking entire tranche of cookies today, so all I can to is reading random threads to kill time between next batch of cookies. Would treat you with one only if I could.

It didn't, but Star Wars is the only Sci Fi that is even remotely ambitious.
And if you don't know what that means, you are fucked in the head.

Or, at the least it is, even if there exists a lot of Asimov books.