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INTEREST: Hideaki Anno Voices His Concerns About the Anime Industry

(there is some risk aversion in the Gundam universe for producing original content because Gunpla's are big conservative regions in Asia)

Says the guy who keeps making the same one story over and over again, with diminishing returns.

They certainly do try new things. Those things just bomb horribly and can either send a studio into debt if not shut it down outright, or they'll make the studio reconsider what they should be working on.

I don't think (as others have rightly pointed out) that Anno,...take issue with the commercial exploitation of their creations. What they're objecting to is the limits/restraints on their creative freedom that they feel in the production process as a result from having to bend to input of the diverse and risk-averse committee members.

I think this is just a case of rose tinted glasses. I mean this whole 'anime was so much better in the 90s' thing, is that really true? I've been watching anime since gundam W first aired on toonami, and I can't even think of a couple dozen from the 90s that I think are amazing... If I actually sat there and counted from everything I've seen, I'd probably pull a comparable or larger number from 04-13 as I would from 90-99.

There has to be some middle ground. I can understand concerns about strictly going for profit margin, but I also don't think you can get away with 100% unrestricted creative freedom. At the end of the day, we're talking about commercial art, and the good works tend to satisfy both halves of that term.

The problems in anime are:

Bad pay for animators

Terrible schedules to produce their shows

Terrible screenwriters

Homogeneous art design

Annoying western fans

Annoying and pretentious directors

Mamoru Hosoda is the only one doing the things right as a director and Kyoani is the best managing the schedule in a show. it's sad that nobody has found the solution for the screenwriters yet.

The issue really isn't about whether it's good or not, it's more about having creative freedom. Obviously, the fans/viewers will decide the quality after it comes out. The big difference for me was the OVA market from that time. OVAs were the one area where creators had a little more freedom. In fact, I doubt many of the OVAs from the 80's/90's would ever get made today because most of them wouldn't fit current trends. Since everything is either TV or movie now, production committees have more control than ever. It's really too bad that OVAs nowadays are basically just bonus episodes for the TV show.

This seem to applied to anime, so a production with people with no film school or art school experience is never good IMO, because they don't know how to express creativity or think like an artist, it hampers creativity and development in anime.

I think that's what he's talking about. Basically under this model only 4-5 large companies primarily with commercial rather than artistic considerations in mind dictate pretty much all the content that gets made with them being the only ones really in a position and willing to fund it. Bandai Namco Holdings, Aniplex/Sony Music Entertainment, Kadokawa Shoten, TV Tokyo and Funimation are typically the regulars. You don't get a hit anime franchise/adaptation or for the most part even an anime at all without going through at least one of these companies first and likely giving them the right to take the biggest cut anymore. It brings up the image of the robber barons of the early 1910's when monopolies were totally an okay and transparent thing before anti-trust law temporarily put a stop to them.

It's too bad the world will never see your anime masterpiece.

But thats not really the case. As said in the answerman column, japanese producers don't usually interfere so they aren't all that likely to limit the creative freedom of their staff.

Media in general is someone pitching an idea to some one else that has the ability to fund it (granted sometimes people fund their own stuff). Unless you can think of some magical way that some one with an idea can fund their own anime, it will always come down to selling the pitch to the guy with the funds. It isn't a problem of production committees actively doing things. It is a problem of the guys with the ideas usually don't have the money too so they have to convince some one to give it to them.

Name your favorite anime and I guarantee it would not have been made under the proposal you are suggesting. No doubt foreign committees would consider it too violent, too sexual, too esoteric, or if nothing else "too Japanese".