Forum - View topicWhat Is Happening In the Anime Industry in 2020-2021? An Analysis of The Animation Industry Report 2
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2111 |
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This is like the second time in five years that the AJA report has needed a qualification to the effect of "these numbers don't look nearly as rosy when you take out that one megahit everyone and their grandpa has heard about", isn't it?
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 381 Location: PA / USA |
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I know financial and production stuff is surely changing over the last several years, but the shows and the subject matter have been too. There used to be a ton of eye-catching anime around back in the day, but I'm finding myself more interested and curious in older titles now.
Part of it is definitely my growing older - I'm more interested in the emotionally impactful stuff like Violet Evergarden than say, Demon Slayer and its dripping shonen angst. I know people gripe about Dragonball Super sometimes, but I am more often liking their showing all of the characters and their families' relationships than the endless fighting as time has gone on - I was totally eating up the Future Trunks arc like popcorn. But it's other things too, I cant help but feel that a level of texture and depth has been lost with all of the ways to digitally draw stuff now, and ever since around the time K-On and Haruhi showed up, it's hard to find things that look "cool" like Nausicaa, RE:Cutey Honey, and Attack on Titan. Isekai is everywhere, and it's not that I don't like it - Inuyasha is one after all - but rarely have they been primarily about curiosity and discovery than the cast running rampant with a powertrip fantasy/harem (a line Slime dangerously rides). Vampire Hunter D used to turn my stomach with its graphic cross sections, but now I long for those days of over-depiction and animation. Simoun was an odd and quiet show that didn't particularly resonate with me back in the day, but as time has gone on, my older self finds a lot more to enjoy in it. There wasn't much substance to the characters or plot as I remember it, but Noir's soundtrack is to this day one the THE most memorable soundtracks alongside .hack//SIGN..... All Routes Lead to Doom season 1 has been amazing fun recently, but outside of that, it's much rarer now that a new show catches my eye with its premise and art and I feel like my passion for the medium is slowly dying. I feel like I'd go out of my way to grab up every Gundam bluray from the 90's and earlier, but with every new release season that comes and goes, it feels like 9.8 out of 10 new shows just have zero "hooks" for me to even bother giving their first episode a shot. |
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Eriol_
Posts: 11 |
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My theory is that this also has to do with the overall economical status of the anime industry highlighted in the article. The biggest inflection point for me was the emergence of "Anime Committees" that highlighted a need for profits instead of creative expression. Anime used to be produced by animators getting cash from a big interested sponsor, making the thing they loved with those resources, and in the end it may have flopped or been a huge success. Nowadays the ACs streamline and diversify those risks into containers and "mixed media" projects. I'm sure Justin Sevakis left a legacy in his Answerman column answering the methodology behind these better than I can. Japanese companies also seem to me to be in the most part skittish to pioneering new things. Violet Evergarden is an example of a work that got greenlighted only after a vetoed contest closely linked to its animation studio-- it was the 2014 KyoAni Award for novels Grand Prize winner in 3 different categories -- their focus was very well planned out since a long time ago. It nurtured the talent for scenario writing from the very beginning. Put this in contrast to your average Anime Committee production, which is basically a glorified ad/OVA to sell consumers on products like figures, paraphenalia, collab cafes, BluRays, concerts, gacha games, you name it. Personally I think Demon Slayer's success has less to do with the manga's content and more about how ufotable handled its adaptation to the screens. The way a comparatively standard shounen work is posited in its animation is very unique. They're a very good example of a mix of new style work creation with 3D models, camera angles and 2D techniques that still has oomph in its animation, but not all studios are propped up by lotsa-dollar gacha FGO-fan money. It may had helped that Aniplex is also experienced in international distribution for its global presence. They've even reached Central American countries from personal experience, not just Europe and North America. In the end I think the short answer is money. It's hard to be a creator and not starve in the industry nowadays, it seems, and that brings creative drought with it. |
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omiya
 Posts: 1825 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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The music drew me into those titles, so I've seen Chiaki Ishikawa and Yuki Kajiura every chance that I could, and along the way collected the soundtracks. More recently, Evan Call and Kevin Penkin have been great new talents in soundtrack composition for anime, but I'd be interested to know of any newer composers for anime who are great at both vocal song composition/lyrics and soundtrack music like the earlier Yuki Kajiura work on titles like Noir and .hack//SIGN. EDIT - I see that Evan Call has a few song composition and lyrics credits, mainly for Violet Evergarden anime series, and Kevin Penkin for The Rising of the Shield Hero anime. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4420 |
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Reading through this article, I do worry that some unique circumstances are going to skew production strategies, at least in the near future. Demon Slayer had an outsized influence on the overall numbers, but the reality is that only a few players get the benefits of it. Ideally, it gets looked at as an outlier, and not so much a measuring stick to determine success. The other thing is the growth in global markets. That isn't inherently a problem, but it seems like it is being looked at as a reason to increase production even more, despite the labor conditions, general difficulty in retaining talent, and the fact that there is already more anime out there each season than a person can reasonably watch. Between workplaces and other entertainment opening up, there is a good chance that the same audience won't be there by the time those new productions hit broadcast.
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3444 Location: Finland |
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Food for thought;
Despite taking a slight beating in numbers, the merchandise sector accounted to slightly over half of the total earnings in Japan(assuming I interpreted the article correctly?). That should put to rest any doubts of how important that specific category is(remembering some past discussions here...). |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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IMO that is normal and healthy. Only in the good all times when a few select animes were subtitled by fansubbers and distributed in nth generation VHS copies you could claim to have seen "most of it". Yeah, there will one or two (at most) animes that basically no one will see *coff* Blue Reflection Ray *coff* but that is also normal. |
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earl.m
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Just a gripe: it ain't anime unless it is primarily written/produced in Japan and reflects a Japanese cultural mindset/worldview, even when it deals with foreign characters and subject matter like Baccano. Western works like Neo Yokio, Cannon Busters, Voltron: Legendary Defender and Onyx Equinox should be regarded as animesque. If others want to make actual anime, well Arthell Isom can go to Japan and created his own anime studio D'Art Shtajio for one example. As for China, here's REALLY hoping that they are able to come up with their own distinctive style.
The anime budgets ballooning is a real tragedy. Not long very ago a high profile fantasy series with a ton of special effects and fight scenes like Slayers was able to be almost entirely 2D relatively low frame rate cel animation. Now you can't even make a relatively low profile slice of life series like a middle school romcom or workplace gag comedy like that. It stinks because the result is less anime being produced and what we do get having lower quality. The budget for a 3-D series like Ex-Arm would have paid for like five 90s' style anime that were actually good. The budgets may be why we are getting fewer 50 and 26 episode shows and instead get 12-13 episodes and desperately hope for a second cour five years later. Would a 700 episode series like Naruto even be economically viable today? As for the worker shortage, the solution to that is the opposite of the provincialism that I expressed at the beginning: globalize. There are tons of talented animators and artists worldwide, and like 99% of them never get to work on a single commercial project despite their having the skill and talent to do so because that industry is nearly impossible to get into without either going to the right school, knowing someone who is already in the industry or just flat out getting lucky. So they just work other jobs and make little cartoons for YouTube in the hopes of getting ad revenue in their spare time. I read last year where it is now possible to do a lot of that work in the cloud. Their experiences producing anime during the lockdown can be adapted to create a model where a ton of the work can be done by anyone anywhere. That is a huge - and cheap - global labor pool that they could tap if they are willing to innovate. |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13550 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Wonder what the most practical ways to help increase the pay for those overworked and underpaid animators by a few thousand USD per year would be.
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Penrhos
Posts: 167 |
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if it's not on anidb - it's not Anime....
Most of the Netflix and Crunchyroll output has been horrendous so i hope that they can find someone who "Gets Anime" to commission stuff going forwards, even I could do a better job. The danger is that if more content is created in the "west" it'll become westernized and will lose the quirkiness that attracts people in the first place. And don't get me started on the politics, morals and Wokeness that western media outlets already impose of Anime - with altered subs, and re-worded dubs. Do we want that to become the norm? Will western media interference be the end of LOLI & ECCHI? On the plus side I read that D+ is putting one of the Visions episodes up for the oscars. |
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OceanwaveIII
Posts: 10 |
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It's unlikely they'll develop their own style since anime style and games are just as popular in china as they are in Japan . The most popular game is Genshin impact and you don't get much more anime than that . |
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BonusStage
 Posts: 307 |
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I don't think those shows are what the article means by Netflix and Crunchyroll productions. |
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nijuuni
Posts: 4 |
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Any pointers to titles the author is alluding to? |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9832 Location: Virginia |
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In spite of how large the anime industry has grown, it is still small enough that the presence of a single blockbuster title can affect the metrics for the entire industry for a year. As rosy a picture this may paint, it does nothing for all the companies not involved with the big franchise.
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tsog
Posts: 223 |
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I'd point to works by Chinese studios: https://myanimelist.net/anime/producer/1325/Haoliners_Animation_League Haoliners is the most prolific one so far AFAICT. https://myanimelist.net/anime/producer/2009/Yostar_Pictures Yostar Pictures is based in Tokyo but is owned by, well, Yostar. Newer studio but I'm sure they'll be involved in a lot of Chinese properties. https://myanimelist.net/anime/producer/1414/bilibili bilibili is the biggest streaming platform in China so it has a lot of Chinese anime listed. |
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