In 2000, we see that hit bottom. It's going to be War Against the Sponsors Year. At some point they have to either open their tight little hands and let some money flow down or the anime industry will unionize and force production to a standstill. Either that or foreign investors will discover that they can get quality work done for a song in Japan and start investing directly.
		Tell those investors to give me a call! I'm more than ready for that!
		Rather than go to you, U.S. investors waste their money on trying to do anime style shows in the U.S. and Korea. The result looks like anime to them but they find that the audience they wanted sees it as knockoff trash.
		And let me guess—we could have done it faster and cheaper. (I KNOW we could have done it much better.)
		Yes. They thought that they could do something superior to 'that anime crap' (as producers have called it) but they came up with much, much worse. Then they refused to accept that it was their myopia which caused it. I suppose that's what they get for going to a subcontractor whose unwritten mission statement is 'if there is some movement happening on the screen and it's in color then our job is done'.
		Aaaaagh!
		Hahaha! Check it out! Fever Time, you burn old man!
		OK, time to change to another game. You've gotten too good at this one. [grumbles]
		Hey, man, why don't you have a Dreamcast?
		I don't have the extra money to blow on another games platform.
		Won't matter anyway, the PlayStation 2 will consume the entire market. Wait and buy one of those.
		Uh... Sure, Dr. Leary...
		Western manga sales increase and the coming of a new magazine brings a new level of quality to the industry.
		That's great to hear.
		Unfortunately low quality faux 'Manga style' titles come out in great numbers. Only 2 of the artists' work could really be considered manga style, the rest are poor copies of Japanese books and American superhero comics with a different mask.
		The games market grows dramatically from the middle of the year on to the point where more is spent on games development than on all the live action film production in Japan.
		That's not saying much. I'm surprised it isn't there already.
		PlayStation 2 raises the level of quality to the point where you need to ante up $2 million to even enter the title development industry...
		Wow!
		The direct neural interface that comes out in 2002 for the PlayStation 3 is the most important thing though.
		Hey, we're only predicting for 2000 now!
		The amount of 3D elements used in anime increases dramatically. Sometimes people wonder if there are any shows which don't have 3D in them.
		I hope it isn't all really terrible looking.
		Some of it—OK a good 2/3 of it—is pretty weak but something comes out in the last quarter of the year that knocks everybody out. It changes things dramatically.
		And what is that?
		You'll find out in March.
		Tell me now!
		Whiner!
		Some good you idiots are! Hey, I just remembered that the last prediction you made was that all non-anime fans would be turned into weird Heidi people with wooden shoes and red paint on their faces at the stroke of midnight on January 1st. I'm betting that one is not going to happen either.
		To recap; At the stroke of midnight January 1, 2000 the world as we know it will end. We'll discover that anime has been like a training session for the next millennium when the anime superior beings reveal themselves and take control. The superior beings will be yellow and have round heads with little black eyes that are the same size as their nose, wings and lion tails. In other words they'll be magnificent and awesome. Anime contains their laws, which will then be the laws everywhere. (This includes the laws of physics.) Those who don't watch anime will be forced to either catch up or have to dress like Heidi. (This is for both sexes.) The Heidi people will become the new untouchable caste throughout the world and they will be assigned all the menial jobs that robots don't cover. They'll live in big cages and be under surveillance 24 hours a day. Their wooden shoes will contain transponders so the anime people can keep track of them. They'll be constantly begging for anime goods and discs so they can try to get back in society but their dislike for anime and inability to come to grips with it will mark them more than the permanent red circular tattoos on their cheeks (which approximate those pink blushy cheek things you see in the shows). Everyone will worship the elegant and beautiful superior beings and know that they're the coolest.
		Yeah, that's the one. No way. It's not going to happen.
		Oh you just wait! We're putting you in a Heidi dress for not believing it!
		Oh, yeah? Well, if that happens then I'm gonna like wearing that Heidi dress! It would be better than having a mutant round yellow head!
		Oh, you'll get yours! We're going to... Oh, I forgot. Haha! Never mind.
		What?
		You'll get a lot worse than that. Just wait.
		They all faded out, laughing, as I shouted at them to tell me what was going to happen. I guess all I can do is wait. The worst thing of all is that I have completely forgotten what it is I was going to write about the Unified Theory of Anime.

Good luck in 2000!