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INTEREST: Anime Industry Member Discusses Production Committee System

While the others may do that, OLM still does not belong there. Correct me if I am wrong, but they only have two anime series currently, Pokémon Sun & Moon and Yo-Kai Watch.

Interesting. Thanks for that. And looking at the list of their works, I also see all Future Card Buddyfight series, including the current one, though on that one, it seems, they are cooperating with XEBEC. Still, interesting for me, since I wasn't aware of that, or probably didn't realise it.

bigivel wrote:

You have a significant number of studios already doing that. You have Toei Animation, TMS Entertainment, Studio Pierrot, Sunrise, OLM, Shin-Ei Animation, ...

While the others may do that, OLM still does not belong there. Correct me if I am wrong, but they only have two anime series currently, Pokémon Sun & Moon and Yo-Kai Watch. And both of them are still financed by committee of the game publisher (Pokémon Company and LEVEL-5 respectively), Manga Publisher (Shogakukan in both cases) as well as TV broadcaster (TV Tokyo in both cases), with OLM only handling the animation production. So, I am afraid OLM does not belong on your list, unless I missed something.

Problem is you can only self produce everything is you've got the means to, which means you need a string of successes. Kyoani had to dominate the market with hit after hit after hit.

Also I've glad some people are defending Production Committees. While an imperfect system, we would never have anime taking off in Japan, nor the world, if they had not formed in order to get things done. Nice to see a little defense.

relyat08 wrote:

I expect to see more companies, at least the ones that are financially capable of doing so, start to follow the CyGames model of trying to self-produce everything internally. They still technically have a production committee, but in exchange for taking a significantly higher amount of the risk, they are able to maintain much greater control over their projects creatively and financially. Most studios aren't capable of handling all of the production tasks that are required in order to do that, but many seem to be intentionally moving in that direction. KyoAni, Production IG, and Bones being three of the prominent ones.

You have a significant number of studios already doing that. You have Toei Animation, TMS Entertainment, Studio Pierrot, Sunrise, OLM, Shin-Ei Animation, ...
Most of them are the Big size Animation studios of the industry! The ones you're talking about are the Middle size Animation studios, and while normally they keep the practices of the small size animation studios, they also try new things from time to time, things that possible will improve their situation. Examples( Parternships, Production I.G x Madhouse for Ace of Diamond. A-1 Pictures x Satelight/Bridge for Fairy Tail. Satelight x 4 to 5 other studios(included Madhouse) for Hellsing Ultimate).

CyGames has stated they are more intent on animating, producing, releasing, etc everything by themselves, without the need for any other companies involved. Other than a broadcaster and international publishers, I suppose.

relyat08 wrote:

CyGames has stated they are more intent on animating, producing, releasing, etc everything by themselves, without the need for any other companies involved. Other than a broadcaster and international publishers, I suppose.

Perhaps. But the Shingeki no Bahamut Genesis series has another deep-pocketed investor, NBCUniversalEntertainment, a subsidiary of the giant American media company Comcast. cygames certainly has a lot of money, but so does Comcast. MAPPA's work on the series suggests they had a pretty big budget to spend.

H. Guderian wrote:

Problem is you can only self produce everything is you've got the means to, which means you need a string of successes. Kyoani had to dominate the market with hit after hit after hit. Also I've glad some people are defending Production Committees. While an imperfect system, we would never have anime taking off in Japan, nor the world, if they had not formed in order to get things done. Nice to see a little defense.

I think anime's popularity took off before the production committee system was all that prevalent, frankly. Or was at least much more reasonable. Cowboy Bebop was just Sunrise and Bandai, for example.
Also, outside of the KyoAni example, if you are a big company with the ability to navigate multiple income streams, you don't need every show to be a massive success in every area, you just need to be able to monetize as much as possible internally, like CyGames plans to do. Yeah, still difficult, but not as impossible as people seem to think, in my opinion.

bigivel wrote:

relyat08 wrote: I expect to see more companies, at least the ones that are financially capable of doing so, start to follow the CyGames model of trying to self-produce everything internally. They still technically have a production committee, but in exchange for taking a significantly higher amount of the risk, they are able to maintain much greater control over their projects creatively and financially. Most studios aren't capable of handling all of the production tasks that are required in order to do that, but many seem to be intentionally moving in that direction. KyoAni, Production IG, and Bones being three of the prominent ones. You have a significant number of studios already doing that. You have Toei Animation, TMS Entertainment, Studio Pierrot, Sunrise, OLM, Shin-Ei Animation, ... Most of them are the Big size Animation studios of the industry! The ones you're talking about are the Middle size Animation studios, and while normally they keep the practices of the small size animation studios, they also try new things from time to time, things that possible will improve their situation. Examples( Parternships, Production I.G x Madhouse for Ace of Diamond. A-1 Pictures x Satelight/Bridge for Fairy Tail. Satelight x 4 to 5 other studios(included Madhouse) for Hellsing Ultimate).

That's not quite the level of self-production I'm talking about. All of those studios still utilize a production committee to get everything done in some way, if I'm reading these credits right. And still do a lot of contractual work outside of their own projects. As many of the comments in this thread have sort of expressed.
CyGames has stated they are more intent on animating, producing, releasing, etc everything by themselves, without the need for any other companies involved. Other than a broadcaster and international publishers, I suppose.

I've been following these kind of reports for awhile and feel that the entry level animators are getting screwed over and over, will continue to be taken advantage of until the day comes that they finally snap and quit.

Look yes the production committee takes a big risk but if the people on the bottom don't have the means to survive much less a incentive to work harder why should they stick with a dead end job?

I work in a small industry that if you keep cutting our pay down and reaping all the benefits without caring about your employees that do the specialized hard to find labor that earns you all that profit, their always comes a breaking point.

H. Guderian wrote:

Problem is you can only self produce everything is you've got the means to, which means you need a string of successes. Kyoani had to dominate the market with hit after hit after hit. Also I've glad some people are defending Production Committees. While an imperfect system, we would never have anime taking off in Japan, nor the world, if they had not formed in order to get things done. Nice to see a little defense.

I think anime's popularity took off before the production committee system was all that prevalent, frankly. Or was at least much more reasonable. Cowboy Bebop was just Sunrise and Bandai, for example.
Also, outside of the KyoAni example, if you are a big company with the ability to navigate multiple income streams, you don't need every show to be a massive success in every area, you just need to be able to monetize as much as possible internally, like CyGames plans to do. Yeah, still difficult, but not as impossible as people seem to think, in my opinion.

"Publishers"? I'm certain that you didn't meant to say Publisher, but Producers, right?

By Publisher you're talking of the original right-holder of the product right(manga/novel publisher, right?)

bigivel wrote:

"Publishers"? I'm certain that you didn't meant to say Publisher, but Producers, right? By Publisher you're talking of the original right-holder of the product right(manga/novel publisher, right?)

Yes, im talking about Publishers. They are the ones that are putting all this late night anime Production Committees together to make this manga/LN promotion anime.
They have anime departments that have a big annual budget where their only job is to produce anime to promote the Publishers manga and LNs.

Publishers are not the ones been approached to let others use their products.

They are the ones that approach DVD's/BD's makers and merchandise makers so that don't have to spend too much money in the anime. They are important partners to keep the costs down.
Publishers are also the ones that will have the last word on chose the studios that will make the anime.
And they are the ones that take the most risk of the anime be a flop. But even if they lose money with the anime, is still cheaper than daytime TV publicity.
This system is a very intelligent way of promotion without spending too much money, and if the anime is a success and sell many DVD's/BD's and merchandise, they will also made money from it. Is a win/win situation for the Publishers.

Original anime is different because is a studio product.
Also mainstream is different because TV channels are involved.
But Late Night anime adaptations of manga and LN are anime made for Publishers.

From where did it came this strong conviction about the Publishers? Last time I heard people that look at the production committee, publishers most time aren't even in the committee and when in the committte they aren't even the biggest investors.

Who decides to make a show? Usually it's a producer at a company that already has a production office. Most of the bigger manga publishers have one of these, as do several specialty companies like Bandai Visual or Media Factory. And usually the idea isn't necessarily to make a great, stand-alone TV series, it's more about building a marketing opportunity.

And the ways a producer can build opportunities like this can be myriad. The vast majority of anime is not an original story, but is based off of another art form: manga, PC games, or light novels. With an anime on TV, even in a late-night time slot, the increased visibility can really give sales of those original works a boost.

....

So let's say a manga publisher is trying to get their hottest series animated. Maybe they can get a DVD publisher to chip in. Maybe a video game company could throw in a few bucks, or an ad agency who could sell product placement in the show, or a record label that wants to promote a new artist in the opening and ending. After a lot of meetings and a whole lot of Powerpoint presentations, eventually four or five companies sign up as investors, and the production is a go. This is actually very similar to how independent films get made.

And so every couple of weeks, the Production Committee, featuring representatives of each company, gets together and reports on how things are going. They discuss release plans, audience, important plot points, and where the story might deviate from the original. They discuss the marketing, plans for release overseas, and every other detail you could possibly imagine.

bigivel wrote:

From where did it came this strong conviction about the Publishers? Last time I heard people that look at the production committee, publishers most time aren't even in the committee and when in the committte they aren't even the biggest investors.

You can find information right were in ANN
From the article
The Anime Economy - Part 1: Let's Make An Anime!
by Justin Sevakis, Mar 5th 2012
animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2012-03-05

Quote:

Who decides to make a show? Usually it's a producer at a company that already has a production office. Most of the bigger manga publishers have one of these, as do several specialty companies like Bandai Visual or Media Factory. And usually the idea isn't necessarily to make a great, stand-alone TV series, it's more about building a marketing opportunity. And the ways a producer can build opportunities like this can be myriad. The vast majority of anime is not an original story, but is based off of another art form: manga, PC games, or light novels. With an anime on TV, even in a late-night time slot, the increased visibility can really give sales of those original works a boost. .... So let's say a manga publisher is trying to get their hottest series animated. Maybe they can get a DVD publisher to chip in. Maybe a video game company could throw in a few bucks, or an ad agency who could sell product placement in the show, or a record label that wants to promote a new artist in the opening and ending. After a lot of meetings and a whole lot of Powerpoint presentations, eventually four or five companies sign up as investors, and the production is a go. This is actually very similar to how independent films get made. And so every couple of weeks, the Production Committee, featuring representatives of each company, gets together and reports on how things are going. They discuss release plans, audience, important plot points, and where the story might deviate from the original. They discuss the marketing, plans for release overseas, and every other detail you could possibly imagine.

There are other sources but ANN is the best, i think. In the case of manga/LN late night anime promotions the Producer is the Publisher.

What you're talking of is just a possible example and the fact of the visibility boost of the source. Like I said things go both ways. The publisher looks for people to adapt their works, but others also look for titles for them to support. Is not a one way street.
The extra visibility boom is a fact that happens, and is not really directly related with the involvement of the publisher. In fact the publisher not getting involvement and still reap the advantages of the product(both the royalties and the increase sales of the source) is a better deal.

Take the example of One Piece, is the best sold manga and one of the franchises with better merchandise sales in the anime field. Shueisha/Weekly Shonen Jump, not only receives royalties from anything done related to the anime, but it also receives increased volume sales, and One Piece already had 3 sales booms in its lifetime: Start of the anime, an increase of around 700k copies more per volume, Alabasta-Skypiea around 1M copies more per volume, and Marineford-FishmenIsland with around 1.5M copies more per volume.
Do you know what is the involvement of Shueisha/Weekly Shonen Jump in the production of the anime and everything related to that? Basically zero. They just manage One Piece copyright as the copyright holders, but they didn't put any money nor have "official" decision role into it.

In the end is just a business decision, and has to do with the demand suplly. Does the series is highly popular and is being looked by a lot of producers? Is the series not that popular and the publisher is hoping to get an increase of sales with the extra visibility? There is many factors that make one or the other way to happen.

Saying that all of the night anime works like that example seems a huge exageration of how things work. And like I said before in a previous post. The publisher or isn't involved financially nor in production, and doesn't "safe" the Production Committee loses(Why would the publisher in this case safe them? They are different companies, and the publisher is getting more money for the extra visibility and royalties, what is the reason for spending money in the committee?) or the publisher is part of the production Committee and the loss of the procution Committee is also a loss for the publisher.
There is no such thing as the Production Committee flopping and being saved by the publisher! Or the publisher isn't involved or it is and fails together with them.

When they say that 9 in 10 series go in the red for the production committee, if we believe them, it means that by the end of the endeavor they came with less money and that includes every people involved(Though this is a very narrow way to look at things, because producers profit is not the same, even inside the same production committee, and so you can have ones that are in the red and others that are in the green).

And usually the idea isn't necessarily to make a great, stand-alone TV series, it's more about building a marketing opportunity.

And the ways a producer can build opportunities like this can be myriad. The vast majority of anime is not an original story, but is based off of another art form: manga, PC games, or light novels. With an anime on TV, even in a late-night time slot, the increased visibility can really give sales of those original works a boost.