Why more SM/DBZ/YYH fanfics than Ranma or, Slayers?

[Anchoku]

Pick your favorite speculation or, post your own!
(They don't have to make sense, either!)

[mondu_the_fat]

The more popular the series, the ore fanfiction.
I've never even seen slayers, and only heard of it a couple of years ago.

[Screwball]

I voted for the age difference option, but only because I think that makes a big difference in which shows are shown on TV. Ranma, Slayers and similar were released in North America, the largest Western anime market, I believe, at a time when relatively few people even knew about anime. There might have been specialist channels that showed them, but no mainstream channnels did. Less exposure, fewer people to write fics.
When anime did become popular enough to be shown on things like Cartoon Network those series were a) old and b) not targeted at the audience those channels appealed to. Cartoon Network and Fox Kids are aimed towards children. Shows like BGC and Slayers not so much. So newer shows were liscenced, which did appeal to kids more.
Then there's the 'cartoons are for kids' mindset, which influenced the decision to show more things like DBZ than BGC. There's also the number of people that are, for example, SM fans, but not anime fans. They just like the one show, and write fics about that. Again, probably due to what shows are shown on TV.
OVer here, we have never gotten some of the older shows. We have the Slayers OVA's, but I had to import the TV series from the US. We're only now getting Ranma, and only the first movie so far. Newer series get released though. This is because the older series are old, and I'd imagine that the people who make decisions equate old with not profitable. No one buys Blakes 7 DVDs, unless they were already a fan, for instance. Much easier to just spare themselves the trouble and the risk.
We do get things like DBZ, however. In fact, that's just about the only anime they show on TV, apart from Pokemon and Yugioh. Those succeed because they are aimed at kids. Kids watch cartoons. Thus, there is less risk in marketing a cartoon aimed at that age group, and more people come into contact with these anime and go on to write fics. Things like BGC, Akira or Ghost in the Shell are obviously not for kids, but no one is willing to show them on TV because they don't think that adults will watch them.

[TerraEpon]

I think a part of it, is because before FF.net, you either had to host your fics yourself, find a friend to host it, or find an archive devoted to the series....well or post it to usenet.
So series that were more propular with the "geek" would get written about more. Then with FF.net, it opened up a new "doorway" to people, especially /younger/ people who will only be going off what's on TV.
-Joshua

[Dragonboy]

I would definitely have to pick the 'older' choice. The Ranma anime ended some time around 1996, Slayers was some time around there as well. All of these new fics are getting so many because they're either still playing in America or have just recently ended and are still really popular. And speaking of fic quantities, Naruto fics blows every other category away. And don't forget that a lot of the older Ranma and Slayers fics aren't stored on ff.net, either.
Bu if you, like me, were to look for quality fics over the sheer number of them, then I'd say that Ranma fics still reign supreme. There are so many amazing long-chaptered epic Ranma fics out there that I can't even list them all.

[TerraEpon]

The Ranma anime ended some time around 1996,

Well not in the US. The last volume was released around July 2003 (even went to the little party they threw for it, and am on the extra video on the Season 7 DVD set....)
-Joshua

[camk4evr]

I'd say it's a combination of age and what's on TV right now/more recently.

[Cyber_Skaarj]

I, like Screwball, am from the British Isles, and have to agree with him on the stupidity of British Broadcasting's mindset. They seem to think that only the most popular anime will be good enough to show here.
To date, about the only good anime I recall seeing on mainstream TV are Cowboy Bebop, Tenchi Muyo (which was heavily editted) and Outlaw Star. I do not count DBZ, Naruto or Gundam Wing as good, the first two are over-hyped and Wing just sucks (compared to the original MS Gundam universe series' anyway... 08th MS Team was great ). Even the stuff on the non-mainstream TV isn't exactly much.
I think it boils down to the newer - and overhyped - crap that's being constantly shown gets a huge audience that then starts writing fics, whereas the older - and better - anime only has a following from the people who have heard of it through word-of-mouth, like me. If it wasn't for word-of-mouth, I would never have known the likes of Slayers, Angelic Layer, Ranma 1/2, Magic Knight Rayearth, .hack//SIGN, Trigun or Vandread (to name but a few).

[Randa_The_Kitsune]

I blame CN. Why do you think i'm being orginal and doing a cross over no one has done before o.0

[Atlan]

yeah man, age!
The sad thing is, most anime is just as good (or bad) when watched 10 years after it was made. Unlike CSI type shows, its still just as relevent (or irelevnt) to what we acept as normal.
But tv stations dont see that. They see "oh look, here's on thats a year old, here's one 10 years old, everyone will have seen the old one, lets put on the new one", when 10 years ago people were saying "oh god, thats not suitable for children, but its a cartoon so adults wont watch it"
And that still holds. In New Zealand, my country, we are lucky to even get DBZ, and usually have to put up with hamtaro!

[Anime_Freak317]

I blame CN. Why do you think i'm being orginal and doing a cross over no one has done before o.0

I have to agree with you there. But not just CN, also WB and some ABC.
Keep in mind, the Censor's of America don't like the fact that some Tits may fly in the early episodes of Ranma, nor the jiggle factor and constaint reminder of bust sizes in slayers.

[camk4evr]

YTV, on the other hand, will air Stand Alone Complex uncut (addmittedly it's on at midnight). I think our moral system is slightly screwed up.

[Cyber_Skaarj]

Keep in mind, the Censor's of America don't like the fact that some Tits may fly in the early episodes of Ranma, nor the jiggle factor and constaint reminder of bust sizes in slayers.

You gotta wonder, if the Japanese can handle a little bit of nudity - and quite tame nudity at that - why on earth do the people who bring anime to the west think the rest of us can't?

[Nekomata-sensei]

I have a problem with Cartoon Network (and some of the other stations) and blame the super edited, whitewashed, mixed up, poorly dubbed anime we get over here in America that they've dumbed down enough to be popular with the stupid people and young children who are the sorts that write fanfiction that is highly lacking in proper grammar and spelling. The good shows they allways take off the air way too soon, but they keep showing re-runs of the terrible ones, like DBZ, Pokemon, Sailor Moon (Dubbed anime specifically for these three), the horrid stuff that is only liked by genera otaku like Gundam Wing, (only mecha obsessed people seem to like it) and then they have the overly hyped Inu Yasha and YuYuHakushou, and they stop showing right away good stuff like Outlaw Star, Big O, Zoids, and the different Tenchi series.
Really, it tends to be the popular recent ones that are readily availible, for instance we have Shonen Jump now in the US, so stuff in that has become more popular, and in then stuff like DBZ, Sailor Moon, and Pokemon are ridiculously popular with a horrifyingly low average fan IQ because they were some of the first ones actually translated put on TV which were actually popular.
You tend to find better fanfiction for stuff like Ranma that has a large fan base, but most of it is people finding out by hearsay and getting the manga or anime.
I think one of the main failures of the fanfiction community is the shippers, there _is_ good shipping out there, but the majority of bad fanfiction I find is awkward shipping attempts with no actual attempts at writing in a readable manner or even having a plot, even most of the mary sue type stuff and the super powered DBZish stuff (in non DBZ settings that aren't supposed to be that powerful and it doesn't really work out well) tends to be better than the bad shipping because at least there is a plot, rather than the characters going 'hi' 'hi' 'I love you' 'WTF!! OMG!! I love you too' *kiss* (author breaks fourth wall and self inserts and cheers for their favoritie ship). These ones get even more confusing when they are shippers pretending to write second generation fics, where nothing really happens except stupid characatures of their shipped couplles and their children all being super powered fusions of their parents. And there is _so much_ bad shipping out there it's ridiculous. An overwhelming amount of it seems to be ill concieved yaoi pairings between obviously straight male characters who don't like each other but have lots of angst that the author tries to use as an excuse for a pairing since they both feel pain or something silly like that. (*shakes head dissaprovingly*)
What the anime/manga community needs is a well established group dedicated to making uncut subtitled anime and a cable channel dedicated to showing uncut, subtitled anime, old and new, all generas and age targets, and for there to be more things like Shonen Jump to help introduce people to different series. It's the poorly translated, overedited, and over-hyped crap that fills the community up with the stupider chatroom generation wannabe otaku. (Differentiated from true otaku who actually care enough about different series to get their facts straight, make sense of the plot, and have really seen/read the whole series or at least up to a point)

[Atlan]

Agreement on that score. I make it a point not to write about anything that I havnt seen the entire series of. A point is though, that on DVD, most times the translation is pretty accurate. Thats why i only buy Anime or download it, never tape it off tv.
Sometimes the differences in translation change the whole perspective of the plot. Fullmetal Alchemist is the perfect example. I first saw it, episode 1-3, on TV. Then i bought the first DVD, watching it first in english, then in Jap with subtitles. Man, the jap version was so much more serious. I ended up downlaoding the eps 1-32. I loved them all. Later, i saw ep 19 on tv. I was almost in tears as i watched dark, religous, brooding scar turn into a loud, almost normal American!
Thank god that the subtites are almost always perfect.