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Answerman - Why Don't More Details About New Anime Leak To The Press?




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kenatsu



Joined: 25 Jun 2013
Posts: 30
Location: LA
PostPosted: Wed Jan 09, 2019 2:58 pm Reply with quote
Would it even be a good idea for the anime industry to pick up the type of marketing strategies that are used in Western marketing? Tbh though there are some anime projects i'd like to hear more teasers of before it comes out
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Zendervai



Joined: 06 Apr 2012
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 09, 2019 3:00 pm Reply with quote
It also helps that like, 90% of Hollywood "leaks" are photos of some sort. It's really easy to grab a shot of an actor in costume because you literally just need to be in the right place at the right time. (Well, relatively easy). And yeah, most Hollywood leaks nowadays are just publicity. A "leak", that's literally just an actor in costume isn't really that big a deal and you'll notice that it generally only happens with stuff that actually has distinct and recognizable costumes.

Anime doesn't really have any easy ways of leaking stuff like that because...what are you going to do, literally break into the animation studio and take a bunch of pictures? Everything's digital now too, so it's not like they'll have cels lying around or anything.
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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
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Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia
PostPosted: Wed Jan 09, 2019 6:50 pm Reply with quote
The Article wrote:
All of it is just part of the marketing plan, and it's pretty clear the anime industry at large hasn't adopted this particular strategy yet.

Except for all the times a publisher website "accidentally" posts an announcement of an anime adaptation then takes it down and disavows it. It doesn't happen super often, but it happens too often to be genuine mistakes.
zendervai wrote:
Anime doesn't really have any easy ways of leaking stuff like that because...what are you going to do, literally break into the animation studio and take a bunch of pictures? Everything's digital now too, so it's not like they'll have cels lying around or anything.

I wouldn't entirely discount the possibility; basically every animation cel in collector hands was procured to begin with by a cel thief waltzing into the studio during office hours and taking it. Of course generally by the point anyone cares enough (or knows enough) to successfully social engineer their way in, the project is a known quantity and any production materials gained would be a bit of memorabilia rather than a hot new detail.

The once instance of an actual leak before the title in question started screening that I remember was a voice actor mentioning some details of a sequel. His character wound up being the only one replaced by a suspiciously similar substitute with a different voice actor.

But I'm also reminded of the effort that went into preventing/counteracting leaks for Who Shot Mr Burns in The Simpsons. Amongst other things, they went as far as to fully animate cuts of every possible suspect shooting him, and even a full alternate reveal/confession scene. Naturally no anime production is ever going to go that far, between any given anime being way more niche than The Simpsons, and most productions barely being able to animate all the cuts that do go into the final product.
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nDroae



Joined: 26 May 2017
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 09, 2019 9:00 pm Reply with quote
zendervai wrote:
Everything's digital now too, so it's not like they'll have cels lying around or anything.

"Most animation is still drawn on paper" - https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2017/06/23/anime-craft-weekly-41-i-cant-believe-its-2017-and-i-have-to-write-that-anime-is-hand-drawn/

Of course, animation frames aren't likely to be newsworthy unless they show a spoiler like a character appearing to kill another, or a first kiss, that sort of thing.
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steelmirror



Joined: 22 Oct 2015
Posts: 342
PostPosted: Wed Jan 09, 2019 9:59 pm Reply with quote
It also seems reasonable to assume that part of it is just a sheer numbers thing. How many people are ddirectly involved in an average anime episode's creation, a few dozen? A hundred or so? Watch to the end of the credits in any major Hollywood film and you can imagine how many possible leakers are walking on and off the set or handling sensitive information behind the scenes.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 2:12 am Reply with quote
Anime TV eps are even harder to leak - typically they don't even finish those eps till not too long before it's scheduled to air! Production schedules too tight! Laughing

(Particularly compared to Western productions from my experience - was once staff of an animation news site where we got access to eps weeks in advance, so we can write our articles ahead of time but not release until after the show airs. And no we're not allowed to leak nuthin' or lose access Laughing )
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Kimiko_0



Joined: 31 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 2:34 am Reply with quote
One way you do get some leaks in anime land is through merchandise and magazine articles. Merchandise has to be designed and marketed to retailers months in advance, and magazines have to be printed and distributed days before the official street date. For popular anime there's always people willing to risk sharing a blurry photo of some merchandise, or if you're lucky even part of a catalog for retailers. Scans of magazine articles usually appear a few days beforehand.

For example, while this year's Precure leaks (names of characters, key art) have been fairly small and close to their official announcements anyway, last year several pages from a toy catalog were shared online in December, nearly two months before the new series would start, which allowed fans to figure out which characters and key items would appear in which episodes for the first two or three months. There's also the usual trademark registration around October which reveals the title and logo, and the annual stockholders meeting in June which confirms that there will be a new season next year. They're small bits of info, but there's always fans eager to share them.
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jdnation



Joined: 15 May 2007
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 3:34 pm Reply with quote
It's odd to even compare live action leaks to anime.

How much does Disney/Pixar/Illumination/Sony Pictures Animation 'leak'?

Practically nothing.

Granted the audience of children don't care nor read Entertainment Weekly...

But live action has a combination of outdoor shooting, and celebrity gossip that makes it attractive material.

Animation requires someone to break into a studio. And if the janitor steals something, who would care for it? Here's an untextured grey character off screen! Riveting!

Most leaks now come from tie in toy manufacturing, but even that isn't representative of much.

So animation just doesn't have much worth or easy to leak.
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Kicksville



Joined: 20 Nov 2010
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 11, 2019 3:59 am Reply with quote
One rare instance: An animator, I believe on Twitter, mentioned refusing an invitation to work on Super Robot Wars Original Generation: The Inspector because Masami Obari was directing it. This was before it was announced, so that was the first anyone had heard of it.

I forget who it was exactly and if their beef with Obari was ever stated - if it was just a distaste for his style or something more personal.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Fri Jan 11, 2019 9:32 pm Reply with quote
kenatsu wrote:
Would it even be a good idea for the anime industry to pick up the type of marketing strategies that are used in Western marketing? Tbh though there are some anime projects i'd like to hear more teasers of before it comes out


It all depends on how the fandom behaves. Leaks of Hollywood movies get people excited. If they didn't, the journalists wouldn't seek them out.

Sakagami Tomoyo wrote:
I wouldn't entirely discount the possibility; basically every animation cel in collector hands was procured to begin with by a cel thief waltzing into the studio during office hours and taking it. Of course generally by the point anyone cares enough (or knows enough) to successfully social engineer their way in, the project is a known quantity and any production materials gained would be a bit of memorabilia rather than a hot new detail.


Huh. Cels aren't allowed to be sold on the secondhand market for anime? Considering the cel trades here in North America, I thought they did, as the major studios here sell the cels directly to the collectors. (You can go to any Disney theme park, for instance, and they will have cels for sale. Some were made for the stores, but the fact remains that the studios are open about this.

I believe here, most cels are sold by the animators themselves, so I find it odd that anime cels for sale are taken by outsiders. I had the impression that they were being sold by the animators too, albeit under authorization from the rights holders.

jdnation wrote:
It's odd to even compare live action leaks to anime.

How much does Disney/Pixar/Illumination/Sony Pictures Animation 'leak'?

Practically nothing.

Granted the audience of children don't care nor read Entertainment Weekly...

But live action has a combination of outdoor shooting, and celebrity gossip that makes it attractive material.

Animation requires someone to break into a studio. And if the janitor steals something, who would care for it? Here's an untextured grey character off screen! Riveting!

Most leaks now come from tie in toy manufacturing, but even that isn't representative of much.

So animation just doesn't have much worth or easy to leak.


The story of leaks usually come from low-level employees/interns (as mentioned in the article), which is just as possible with animation as they are with live-action. You won't get many photos of actors and such, but it is possible to get some of directors, writers, producers, and executives, and what's leaked about animated films (and television) is story bits, not so much audiovisual stuff.

Sakagami Tomoyo's example with "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" demonstrates that point. It was very important to the writing staff that nobody but the writing staff knew who shot him (there was a contest with a cash prize for anyone who could figure out the answer and submit it to Fox), and the reason they fully animated alternate endings was so the animation team didn't know the answer, as they were the ones most likely to go tell someone the answer outside of work. The Simpsons had this happen later too: for the movie, they created at least six different premises and had scripts for them. They didn't fully animate them all, but the idea was the same, which is to create red herrings for people who might be trying to break spoilers to the public.

The same occurs with video games. There are some non-disclosure agreements that prohibit the people working on a project to even say they're working on something at all, let alone what it's about. Not very exciting to take pictures of programmers or people in board meetings, but the real hot thing is getting to play and show the game ahead of street date. This is a major thing on YouTube now (and Twitch to a lesser extent), and people are fully willing to take any punishment that would entail if it means they're the FIRST to show something. Sonic Mania is a good example of this, with the footage being poor quality and the player's skill level low. But the player was the first, and it got big viewership.
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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 1:45 am Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
Huh. Cels aren't allowed to be sold on the secondhand market for anime? Considering the cel trades here in North America, I thought they did, as the major studios here sell the cels directly to the collectors. (You can go to any Disney theme park, for instance, and they will have cels for sale. Some were made for the stores, but the fact remains that the studios are open about this.

I believe here, most cels are sold by the animators themselves, so I find it odd that anime cels for sale are taken by outsiders. I had the impression that they were being sold by the animators too, albeit under authorization from the rights holders.

Well, once a cel is out there, there's not really anything to stop anyone from selling it. It's just that as a matter of course, studios will recycle them; scrape the paint of the sheet of plastic and use it again. And possibly in a few cases cels made their way out of the studio courtesy of an animator either taking a souvenir or looking to make a little cash on the side from them - but really, that's still the cels being stolen, just by an insider rather than an outsider. Occasionally a studio might sell a small batch of cels as collector items, but they're reproductions or a new illustration made specifically for the purpose; if they ever just took a cel from actual production and officially sold it, it's news to me.

Recycling cels like that wasn't an attitude unique to Japanese animation studios either; it was standard practice for Warner Bros, etc back in the day to do the same thing. Maybe a handful did get officially sold here and there, and others made their way out by various other means, but for the most part once they've been shot they've got a date with a paint scraper.
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MiloTheFirst



Joined: 10 Dec 2014
Posts: 429
PostPosted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 10:04 am Reply with quote
zendervai wrote:

Anime doesn't really have any easy ways of leaking stuff like that because...what are you going to do, literally break into the animation studio and take a bunch of pictures? Everything's digital now too, so it's not like they'll have cels lying around or anything.


well, I mean, hacking is a thing that exist and I highly doubt Anime studios can afford cutting edge Cyber security. If you ask me, the lack of leaks is due simply to lack of interest from the public. things that might be surprises such as something being adapted tends to be announced by the companies involved even years before release so they are in that un-sweet spot where even if some people get exited it would become irrelevant in the wait to release date
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