Why International Anime Co-Productions Are So Rare

With anime growing ever more popular with a global audience, more and more international companies have become interested in working with Japanese companies on their latest projects. This isn't a new phenomenon; Ghost in the Shell was an international co-production all the way back in 1995 with the former Manga Entertainment, and even looking towards the early 2010s, projects like Space Dandy gave us a glimpse towards this future. Yet now, the interest from companies in such projects is greater than ever.

One barrier remains, however. The production committee system is a long-established reality of production in the Japanese entertainment industry. In this system, companies collectively invest shares in a project for influence and a profit share in the final product. Such a system is typically insular, with only a few international producers (typically streamers looking for new content, such as Crunchyroll) able to effectively integrate themselves into a system so otherwise opposed to what is expected of art production in other countries. Not only that, those companies willing to integrate are finding barriers such as industry and project knowledge preventing them from doing so.

Buried within the Niigata International Animation Film Festival's Forum section was an expert talk on two case studies for the mode of international co-production that other studios could follow, both of which couldn't be more different from one another. Dozens of North is an independent arthouse production directed by independent animator Koji Yamamura. It's a dialogue-less vignette of nightmarish landscapes inspired by 3.11, giving real-world tragedy mythical form. INU-OH is a big-budget production led by acclaimed director Masaaki Yuasa for Science SARU and a major festival and critical darling.

On the panel was a range of producers involved in animation production from various perspectives. Giving their views on the two featured case studies were Fumie Takeuchi, a producer from ASMIK Ace, and Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, founder of French production studio MIYU, who assisted on Dozens of North and has worked on numerous international co-productions with Japanese studios, including another film showing at Niigata, Nezumikozo Jirokuchi directed by Rintarō. Also on the panel was GENCO president Taro Maki, with producer Kenzō Horikoshi chairing the panel.

Starting the panel was Takeuchi, who touched on the debate within the team during the early days of INU-OH's production to reach out for international co-production and how this move helped the overall development of the film. In these early days, as the team was planning the film's budget for animators and scale, the greater reliance on domestic production and revenues compared to films from other countries was hurting the ability to raise a large budget for the film. Sure that there was potential for fans beyond domestic borders, the team looked to international co-production to help increase the film's budget and awareness.

However, this impacted other areas of the production the team was less used to handling, including awareness and promotion. "It's not necessarily understood when compared to Japanese productions, but when it comes to international co-productions, the initial announcement has to be made far sooner than normal when nothing is decided," explained Takeuchi. "In Japan, announcements for domestic anime productions are typically made just before release, but for these co-productions, it needs to be done so projects can be shown to partners and to get pre-sales [of international licenses]."

"Announcing a project sooner means meeting more people and having media materials that could be shown off at festivals," she continued. Such announcements helped to build anticipation and increase production budgets if pre-sales were successful due to guaranteed returns on the film. This divide in Japanese versus international announcement timeframes was cited as a significant barrier between the two regions, holding back such productions. "When Japanese productions want international support, they need to learn that international companies have a very different idea of how this works, and we need to learn from that."

Another note for INU-OH is the film's support from the government in terms of grants from the Ministry for Culture, one of two potential government funds offered to live-action and, more recently, anime productions to assist in their creation. This is similar to the funds offered by the likes of the BFI in the UK, which serve as grants that help fund the production of culturally important works. France is another country that offers a similar grant to French productions or films involving French companies through the Centre National du Cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC). As Raynal explained, this also serves as a barrier where the strict awarding and lack of flexibility of Japanese funding systems compared to other nations can be a roadblock to collaborative endeavors.

"In France, our fund considers what we call a 'cultural exception,' and that's different from commercial works," explained Raynal. "In cinemas, all tickets sold are taxed, and these funds will then be used to help fund culturally exceptional productions. A lot of the tickets sold in France still go to commercial films, but these funds are then given out to allow for a diversity of works that are not just commercial but are more rooted in culture or are more experimental." By comparison, others on the panel, including Takeuchi, envied the system since Japan's method looks at commerciality and restricts funding to not just a single application period per year within the Culture Ministry funding but to a financial year—all funds must be exhausted within one or two fiscal years and can't be spent outside of this.

"It was thanks to the culture agency in Japan that INU-OH was created," admitted Takeuchi. "Yet for our funding, we only had one year to use it. It usually takes three to four years to fund a film, maybe two, but without it, we needed more cash flow."

The ability of the French CNC fund to assist international co-productions in distribution or production if French studios are involved (as their site notes, some recent examples of funding received include Japanese live-action productions like Plan 75 and Love Life) is thanks to the fund's ultimate aim of improving diversity within French cinemas and for the medium more broadly. This ultimately brings a key advantage to including international studios on these committees to help with funding. The CNC and MIYU similarly funded a collection of shorts from New Deer, a studio founded by Nobuaki Doi that centers on independent animation.

MIYU has involved itself in many recent Japanese productions, including Nezumikozo Jirokichi and Yamamura's Dozens of North because of the studio's love for Japanese animation, yet it is the ‘collaboration of finances’ between Japanese and French cultural funds that have helped bring works like Yamamura's latest film into existence. Moderator Horikoshi admitted his involvement with the film came from his love of the manga. Though there was a chance of losing money, with funds from both countries, they were encouraged to support it despite the risk. Now, MIYU is working with Yamamura on a new short film.

Closing the talk were additional comments from fellow industry specialists, including one from the Japanese Culture Ministry who wished to respond to comments about the Japanese fund's limitations. "I feel it is difficult to compare the CNC to the Japanese funding systems due to there only being one fund in France while we here in Japan have multiple," they responded. "For both funds, we need a Japanese production company, but this does not stop those productions from applying for both domestic and international funds. However, we can't ignore the Japanese financial system for these funds, but we can spread the funding over two years even considering this."

This comment in particular refers to the funding of these grants from taxation, requiring they be used in the tax year they are distributed. Additionally, in France, the CNC controls all films in the country and is a huge organization. Any ticket supports them, which is different from the case in Japan. France also has to protect their own culture from other markets, which gives a more significant historical reason for protecting its industry. As such, these differences make it hard to draw a comparison.

A producer at the Korean equivalent to the CNC, KOFIC, noted similarly in advocating for greater collaborations in the realm of animation as seen within live-action and recent work conducted on the likes of Hirokazu Kore-eda's Broker, "I would like to say it is important that Japanese and Korean relationships continue to improve when it comes to anime and film production. We used to have such connections in the past, but recent political issues have seen this fall away in recent years. I hope the recent visit of [South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol] will help this situation."

The panel concluded here with a mostly positive outlook on the future potential of international co-production within Japanese animation. With international interest from studios like MIYU, a greater interest from Japanese studios to access funding opportunities, and a greater understanding of international markets from these works, all producers, whether involved in these case study productions or not, were interested in further involvement in such work in the future. While many noted barriers to similar domestic funds and within production committees that require reform on long-standing industry practices to increase flexibility and allow easier collaboration in the future, with numerous such productions at Niigata International Animation Film Festival and studios like MIYU looking to invest in Japanese creators, the future of such cross-country crossover seems bright.