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INTEREST: April 2019 Season Sees 36% Drop in Late Night Anime Premieres


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Shay Guy



Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 2092
PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:41 pm Reply with quote
It'll be interesting to see if next year's AJA report indicates a drop in total TV anime minutes this year compared to 2018.
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Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:25 pm Reply with quote
So they're taking the route of reducing the number of anime each season, while it's only the beginning (it's not exactly halving the number of anime each season), but, it could mean a quality boost for anime the do air in Spring and less strain on animators.
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BlackPoint.



Joined: 23 Oct 2015
Posts: 708
PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:37 pm Reply with quote
While on one hand less anime would mean better quality, while on other side iam one of thoose people that watches tons of anime seasonaly aound 30ish and even then i sometimes feel it aint enough . Though ye every season there are only a few rly good ones worth the watch, majority just average and good enough to kill time and if ya get lucky u stumble upon 1 or 2 hidden gems ^^
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Morry



Joined: 26 Jun 2016
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:40 pm Reply with quote
Considering the complaints of way too many series being produced the last few years, 36% sounds pretty reasonable. Nothing good came from working the studios to death, and even some of the better studios had some uncharacteristic quality issues.
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Koda89



Joined: 10 Jul 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:54 pm Reply with quote
On one hand fewer shows per season was one thing many people wanted, especially if in exchange it meant the quality of the remaining shows went up across the board.

On the other hand, in the field of legal anime licensing this is probably the worst time for the amount of shows to be reduced, just as FUNi and CR are about to truly renew their war with one another. Hell this season itself already painted a picture of what things could look like going forward. Before Sentai’s acquisitions were put onto CR, Sentai owned a nice solid chunk of the season’s shows, and that made me realize that once FUNi starts carving out their own chunk of exclusives again, the division of the shows will get even worse, and we’ll have to really hope Sentai keeps rolling their shows onto CR for the foreseeable future.
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Takizawa-Shinzou



Joined: 28 Jul 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 5:37 pm Reply with quote
Koda89 wrote:
we’ll have to really hope Sentai keeps


No thanks. Sentai and their 1-2 Mbps 1080p videos can disappear into the void. They're just insulting the people that work hard on anime by reducing the quality so much. They think they're using AV1 or something when they (and all anime companies) are still using h264 which requires a MINIMUM of 8Mbps for DECENT quality and 20-30Mbps for good quality. 1-2 Mbps isn't even good enough for 720p.
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kotomikun



Joined: 06 May 2013
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 6:03 pm Reply with quote
Quality over quantity is good. I'm not sure whether that's a likely result of this, though, given that a studio usually makes no more than one anime per season (but may be involved with others for in-betweens or whatever). If we really wanted as many "good anime," however we define that, as possible, it might be better to only have two or three seasons a year, so they aren't constantly rushing to get each episode done at the last minute and often having to go back and fix stuff later for the physical release.

Haste-over-quality seems to be the main issue these days. I'm guessing the concept of cutting entire seasons (besides continuations for 24-episode ones) would be too big of a change for the industry to consider, though, in addition to freaking out the "must watch and rate literally every anime that comes out" chunk of the fanbase.
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
Posts: 3767
PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 6:56 pm Reply with quote
I do think this could ease the burden on the staff making the anime (not just the animators) and that could lead to better quality control in terms of the animation - provided this coming season isn't just a fluke. However, I'm skeptical that it will lead to better quality in a broader sense. While a healthier schedule could potentially give them additional episode or so to work with to better split the content into episode - or at least limit the chances that they lose one due to production issues -, I don't think it will have much of an effect for most shows, especially in a single cours format.

While some would like to think that less anime per season will lead to less anime they don't like per season, the popular bete noire genres/source mediums will probably not be the ones that get passed up. Less anime being produced means less potential sources of income for the production committees and studios, which means that they will have to be more confident that the shows that they do make will make them money, instead of hedging their bets with a number of shows. The genres/source mediums that some love to hate but include some of the most popular shows of the season aren't the ones that won't make the cut. It's the shows that few watch and buy (be it though disks or other sources), and while that will include a few stinkers, it will probably be the smaller niche shows that will bear the brunt of that. I won't claim to know precisely where that axe will land, but we will find out in the coming seasons.

Even in animation quality, I think we may need to curb our expectations a bit. While healthier schedules could give the animators on some productions more time to produce high quality work, I think for most shows, the change there will be more consistently acceptable animation rather than more high quality animation per se. Having a healthier schedule will not give a production that has few connections to top level animation talent those connections, and it won't make the director suddenly more skilled at direction.

Reducing the burden on those making anime and giving them time to improve quality control are undoubtedly good things, but it may not have as dramatic an effect on the overall quality as we would like it to have.
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TheAncientOne



Joined: 06 Oct 2010
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 7:02 pm Reply with quote
Koda89 wrote:

On the other hand, in the field of legal anime licensing this is probably the worst time for the amount of shows to be reduced, just as FUNi and CR are about to truly renew their war with one another.

I was thinking the same thing when I read the title to this article. There are going to be a lot of people that don't keep up on anime news that are going to be complaining and essentially yelling, "What the (expletive) happened!?".

Looking at the total count, the total number of anime titles I count for the spring season stands at 50, compared to 74 for spring 2018 (a bit over a 32% drop).


Takizawa-Shinzou wrote:
...h264 which requires a MINIMUM of 8Mbps for DECENT quality and 20-30Mbps for good quality. 1-2 Mbps isn't even good enough for 720p.

Apparently you set quite the high bar for "decent quality". Suggesting 8 Mbps as a minimum for 1080p streaming video is frankly ridiculous. That is about 44% of the maximum data rate (which few channels use) for OTA broadcasts, which are stuck with older MPEG-2 compression. It is also higher than the apparent default bitrate of a program like MakeMKV, which is meant for ripping Blu-rays for local playback. The 20-30Mbps you suggest even more ridiculous for 1080p streaming, as that is on par with local playback from a Blu-ray disc.
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Alan45
Village Elder



Joined: 25 Aug 2010
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 7:15 pm Reply with quote
This change will likely have no effect on the quality of the shows produced.

36% fewer shows most likely means 36% fewer production committees and about that much less money committed to producing anime. Until you start seeing news that studios are given significantly more time to produce a season and significantly more money to pay salaries for the extended period and hire more or better qualified personnel nothing will change. What we will get is a few superior shows, a few horrible shows and most of them somewhere in the middle, just like now.

If the reduced number of shows continues you will see some studios go out of business and others let go excess personnel. Some studios will likely take contract work for China and other countries to stay in business. The people hurt most will be the newest and slowest.
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Finny-chan



Joined: 18 Dec 2008
Posts: 447
Location: West Virginia, U.S.A
PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 7:31 pm Reply with quote
Most seasonal shows are the same garbage every single time just with different titles and characters although some might just be watchable enough depending on the execution. Only like 5-10 out of the whole list on anichart's seasonal lists are watchable for the most part for me the rest are hard passes.
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Chrono1000





PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 8:58 pm Reply with quote
The twitter list is missing new shows shows such as Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san and returning shows such as GeGeGe no Kitaro. The number of full length shows for the upcoming spring season will probably get above 30. I do think that last spring went a bit high given the financial size of the anime market but whether a show is memorable mostly depends on the person and what type of show they prefer.

Koda89 wrote:
On one hand fewer shows per season was one thing many people wanted, especially if in exchange it meant the quality of the remaining shows went up across the board.
I think that is optimistic since the amount of money the production committee raises for a specific show isn't necessarily affected by how many others shows are made that season. Also given the nature of the anime labor pool when there are less shows in a season than there are fewer jobs for animators in Japan.
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sirdano1



Joined: 06 Jul 2011
Posts: 291
PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 11:33 pm Reply with quote
The ratio of good shows to bad shows will remain the same so there'll still be fewer good shows next season.
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marshmallowpie



Joined: 22 Sep 2009
Posts: 300
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada
PostPosted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 3:41 am Reply with quote
There's potential for it to be good, but also a good chance that it won't. The thing that's interesting to me is that despite this, April has seven or eight shows I'm interested in, whereas January really only had one. But that's just me.
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TheAncientOne



Joined: 06 Oct 2010
Posts: 1868
Location: USA (mid-south)
PostPosted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 6:50 am Reply with quote
Chrono1000 wrote:
The twitter list is missing new shows shows such as Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san and returning shows such as GeGeGe no Kitaro.

The article notes the former (along with 7 other shows), and the latter isn't a spring premiere, since it is a returning series, and it isn't a late night anime, since it airs at 9:00 am on Sundays.
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