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Answerman - How Do Anime Cross-Overs Work?

Well, Toriko's anime failed in several regards as to being a faithful adaptation (in censorship, in making a filler character recurring through the whole show, in changing the Cooking Festival Arc's ending, etc). Not even counting that Toei has not been doing particularly great animation for TV series in recent years. I love the unique foods, the setting, the characters, the fights, how it all comes together. But the anime had flaws, and I'm sorry if acknowledging them offends you.

They certainly wanted to get more competing series with the Big 3, probably for when they eventually ended (and two of the three have).

Toei did most of the animation for the series, besides some Jump Super Anime Tour Specials, so that's not really fair to say that a series by said people couldn't have done better.

Popularity doesn't equate quality in any case. Tons of series that are objectionably terrible find success in the world for one reason or another (be it movies, tv, music, comics, etc). Toriko's not popular (not anymore at the very least), but many aspects of it make it one of Jump's best from my experience of many Jump manga spanning from the 80s to modern series.

I always find it amazing just how much pull original content creators in Japan get over adaptations of their works. It's probably a better system overall than the Western model, where original creators often have absolutely no say and can wind up getting completely hosed by godawful cash-grabs, but I think there has to be a happy medium. What works in one media format doesn't necessarily work in another, and there have definitely been anime productions hamstrung by over-protective creators unwilling to let the people actually experienced in that medium take the lead. On the other hand sometimes you get cases like the author of Mushishi, who apparently liked what Artland was doing with her property enough to drop off homemade desserts for them.

Popularity doesn't equate quality in any case. Tons of series that are objectionably terrible find success in the world for one reason or another (be it movies, tv, music, comics, etc). Toriko's not popular (not anymore at the very least), but many aspects of it make it one of Jump's best from my experience of many Jump manga spanning from the 80s to modern series.

Unless it can be established that both franchises take place in the same universe, or that they've crossed into a parallel one, I don't generally like crossovers. They generally have to water down one or more of the parties in the crossover or do backflips to make it seem natural they take place in the same world.

From what I've heard, [Toriko] was not a strong seller. I have no idea what went on behind the scenes in regards to the One Piece cross-over episode (which WAS streamed on Crunchyroll), but we can take a few guesses.

Top Gun wrote:

I always find it amazing just how much pull original content creators in Japan get over adaptations of their works. It's probably a better system overall than the Western model, where original creators often have absolutely no say and can wind up getting completely hosed by godawful cash-grabs, but I think there has to be a happy medium. What works in one media format doesn't necessarily work in another, and there have definitely been anime productions hamstrung by over-protective creators unwilling to let the people actually experienced in that medium take the lead. On the other hand sometimes you get cases like the author of Mushishi, who apparently liked what Artland was doing with her property enough to drop off homemade desserts for them.

As I was reading the article, I was thinking of American comic book crossovers (before anyone tells me it's US-specific, I've seen Latin American comic books cross over too) and how they became so common that publishers just decided upon a shared universe with as many of them as possible, and then Marvel and DC would often cross over, and sometimes they'd even cross over with Image or a smaller publisher (like how Batman and Joker wound up in Wildstorm's Authority). The only major publishers that mostly keep to themselves are Archie and IDW, and even then, IDW has started combining their franchises into a shared universe (the Hasbro Cinematic Universe), albeit in a separate universe made specifically for massive crossovers. (They're not combining My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic with anything, at least.) And, of course, there's Archie Meets the Punisher, a crossover between Archie Comics and Image Comics.

And I figured the reason behind all these crossovers is twofold. The first is, of course, the diminished control comic book creators have in the west compared to those in Japan. But the second is that the western comic book market, and its audience, have become accustomed to crossovers and shared universes, so both the work culture and fan culture have adjusted to make crossovers as easy as possible. The manga and anime businesses don't do crossovers much, so their infrastructure doesn't allow them to happen so easily.

We should have more anime crossovers. They make things even more epic and interesting. Especially those anime crossover games.

More of the de-balling Lupin went through in those last few TV specials. It's a good thing he's got his groove back.

The problem with the lack of blood is that it shows a lack of progression. While the Big Three were noted at the time for their accessibility, now that their audience is a decade and a half older, they expect to have some sort of edge. Appealing to kids sometimes is fine, but constantly being all rosy without having adult plot points such as people getting impaled by gigantic flaming hands or a fourteen-year-old snapping necks, dismembering people, and tearing out organs (okay, not THAT violent, though that does happen in Naruto), people are going to get a little uninterested. Unlike the other studios you mentioned (most notably Madhouse, who went ahead and made both Death Note and even HxH a lot darker than they were as manga),

Toei seems to keep living in simpler times. And it's not just Toriko that suffered it; World Trigger also suffered from these problems.