These production committees probably harm the employees who work in the industry and impact the content of anime, which is undoubtedly negative--creativity is stifled by committees. But to play devil's advocate, the way it appears the industry funds projects might make it more resilient long term. Production costs in the West ballooned over the last decade, much of it financed by debt; now companies have a lot of debt on their balance sheets so they are cancelling projects, not renewing shows, etc (e.g. Netflix). Demand is a fickle thing, so keeping costs down is prudent.
The issue with this is that it seems to come at the cost of the employees. Capped investments while contunally increasing production quality leads to flagrant breaches of healthy working conditions, which the Japanese social systems seem ill equipped to confront.
I'm honestly not too surprised by this topic. I talked to an anime director over twitter before related to committees. It was on the topic of censorship in anime, and he had stated how if a TV station has high control in the committee, an anime will be more censored, but if the animation studio had a lot of power in the committee, the anime would have more freedom. He emphasized how having a proper balance of power was key, because if the station had majority control, an anime would be more harshly censored. I can't really speak to the other issues within committees, but since censorship is something I do a lot of research into, I can say this fully adds up. Different anime have different levels of censorship, and there never seems to be any logic to it. If you look deeper though, yyou will usually see that the ones with more freedom were anime where the studio had power in the committee, vs the ones that are more censored, where the TV station has full control. An easy example i could point to since its a manga I love would be Edens Zero. Its anime was very censored compared to its manga. The committee was only the TV station and the manga publisher. The studio had zero control in it, so it got very censored. Meanwhile that same TV station aired shows and movies that could get away with much more stuff, and those were even aired earlier in the day than Edens Zero. In those shows and movies cases however, the studios actually had power in those committees. Many other ones I could point to, but this is just one. It was bad enough knowing the lack of balance in the committees caused censorship. Even more sad to now know that these caps are set in these committees.
We already know that making Anime is expensive, yet the production of most Anime is mostly aimed to advertise for the Manga that the series is based on. The Industry Practices of having Investors that don't care about the Manga or even the Anime Adaptation of the Manga's story that only makes the situation worse.
Yep I heard that these people who work on projects for anime Is not making a lot Now I know it the producers and the investors that either control how much many each anime project gets No wonder some anime has very bad animation Is not don't want to It's because money is running out for the project due control of funds of each project
The anime industry has many, many issues, all of them stemming from the production committee system. Whether its selection of which manga or light novels to adapt in the first place, through to the low wages paid to the artisans who bring movement, colour and life to the characters and worlds we love, all of it boils down to, originates with the committee system. Budgets are kept so tight that there is little left for animator pay, and you'll also find animators working on projects they find less than interesting. I would LOVE to see animators able to pick and choose what they will work on, based on their preferences. I know for a fact that as artisans, every one of them will have styles and approaches, and preferences as to whether they want to work on action based titles, or whether they prefer the slice of life stuff, for example. This animator might be besotted with drawing mecha, that animator might be in love with the process of animating the flowing grace of supernatural creatures... I'd love to see the industry reimagined so that animators, and animation studios, choose their projects, rather than being commissioned to produce them, and get the biggest slice of the total revenue, rather than having useless committees full of untalented, unskilled suits, reaping the rewards. In my view, the best way to do this would be for studios to have control over the distribution of the anime they make, and rather than offer exclusive broadcast rights to single platforms, instead offer general licenses to every platform in the distribution market. This would mean titles being picked up by multiple platforms, which would give more eyeballs access to the product, generating greater secondary and tertiary monetisation opportunities (merch, events, and so on) for the anime, induce more people globally to purchase translated copies of the source material (manga/light novels), AND be a bigger initial financial success for the studio, than offering exclusive licenses to single platforms. Why sell an exclusive distribution license to, say, Crunchyroll or Netflix, when there are thousands and thousands of networks, both streaming platforms and regular cable networks, all over the world, that would be happy to carry the content? Why sell a single license for an admittedly large sum, when you could sell thousands of non-exclusive licenses and reap a greater financial reward just from those licenses, AND increase the post release monetisation opportunities, the global reach of the product, and awareness of its existence by orders of magnitude? Its a bad deal to sell distribution rights to a single platform. It limits the budget for each title, starves creators, animators and studios themselves, keeps the pace of industry growth too low for any of that stuff to be corrected. The industry is being run by organisations which deliberately hobble the products ability to be broadly enjoyed and perform well financially, these are actions deleterious to the industry itself, the people working in it, and the intellectual properties that the industry creates. If a CEO of a major global company behaved this way, and did this kind of damage to an individual company, its shareholders and investors would see him removed from his post, post haste. There is no good reason that the same ought not be true for the anime industry.
A very interesting suggestion. I could see this working in a much more freer legal envrionment where IP laws are relaxed and better streamlined for the Modern age, but that would take a paradigm shift in how both business and creators operate in creative works.
Ironically, Gainax studio is bankcrupt yrs before so he has a point but one thing to mention that some studios are being on-oldhouse except for Kyoto Animation being allowed their animators having a good amount of pay and a break that's what KyoAni stands for. For Bandai Namco on Sunrise yeah I remember that Sunrise almost getting bankrupt on their anime way before in the 1979 their first anime Mobile Suit Gundam almost got nothing in their pocket but when Sunrise decided to make a 3 part movie of the original Mobile Suit Gundam they somewhat earn on the merch and the vinyl disc consist of soundtracks of the OG Gundam and somewhat being saved from bankruption and then Sunrise still the one of the studio that doesn't bankrupt because they rely on Gunpla sales thru Bandai Namco and now Bandai Namco invested in idol series like Idolm@ster franchise, Idolish7, and Sunrise' own idol show Love Live! because they are relying on BD/DVD that's why BD/DVD matters to Japanese markets and studio
It should be obvious japanese companies will always be very wary if a foreign company wants to get on "their" turf. That is why the big producers want the majority ownership. Don't give this japanese thing, anime, into dirty gaijin hands, right? So all we can do is say: "Dear big japanese investor, please cut your profits and invest more money so you get less short-term but probably more long-term, if all your competitors also do this."
It really does seem like they are trying to push the industry as far as I can go (or stretching it as far as it can). It’s very short term thinking, rather than long term for sure.
I've been thinking about this for a long time. There is enough money going into the industry; though I, personally , went even mind paying a bit more for my monthly subscription if it would help the situation. But with money being split between so many projects, It becomes a case of quantity over quality. Even projects with good source material get mediocre adaptations. And there's only so much good source material to go around; eventually you have to take the mediocre source material and give that a… mediocre adaptation. Mediocrity times mediocrity is only ever going to be mediocre. Thanks for the explanation as to why it's getting divided between projects... that's interesting. It's a shame, and I don't think the problem is going to be solved any time soon. There's so much storytelling and directing and animating talent... I wish it would all get its chance to shine and Its chance to get properly compensated.
I think that there are some good reasons for the committee to exist for such a long time. The one thing I can think is that massive investment and prevent competitiveness (imagine a random small under the radar having massive foreign investment, and suddenly there is a right or wrong answer to what studio to work for)
Poetic, how the one to expose the practices of the industry would be a former president of Gainax Studios, a workplace once founded by Hideaki Anno, who suffered depression while making Evangelion, and received so much harsh backlash from his viewers he nearly committed suicide. It is often said a man reaps what he sows. It would seem now that these overindulgent ingrates have brought ruin upon themselves by asking too much.
You maybe should consider switching the end of the title with the beginning. I don’t know but it would seem to make the video stand out and represent itself as being as informative as it really is.
That's why modern anime is so shit. The 80s were a big part of the Japanese economic boom period so anime was good then and then the 90s was the depressed anti-modern era of cyberpunk and anti-escapism and it also produced good anime into the mid-2000s before everything became pure escapism with no substance.
We need the "HBO Max" of anime. Effectively, we need a premium streaming platform that expects a higher grade of animation. Right now the bar is set too low for the majority of anime. It's so bad that some budget anime are little better than and handful of frames used over and over again. The industry needs to also better tie together the relationship between anime and the source manga and light novels. Japan should be owning those profits rather than ceding them to Amazon and such. When you watch an anime it should be clear how to obtain the source.
Wasn't Chainsawman 100% funded and published by MAPPA? Does that mean they didn't have to go through these production committees and could instead just use the money to reinvest into the next season? Could CSM success set a new president?
Well, there are a lot of projects with single producers. But it hopefully is a big win for them in the end. People are quick to claim it didnt sell well in blu-rays but those stats do not account for MAPPA's store, nor licensing dollars made from oversees distribution which is huge.
These production committees probably harm the employees who work in the industry and impact the content of anime, which is undoubtedly negative--creativity is stifled by committees. But to play devil's advocate, the way it appears the industry funds projects might make it more resilient long term. Production costs in the West ballooned over the last decade, much of it financed by debt; now companies have a lot of debt on their balance sheets so they are cancelling projects, not renewing shows, etc (e.g. Netflix). Demand is a fickle thing, so keeping costs down is prudent.
Very good idea for counter argument. It makes sense if only it at least accounted for inflation.
That actually makes sense, albeit still awful even then.
The issue with this is that it seems to come at the cost of the employees. Capped investments while contunally increasing production quality leads to flagrant breaches of healthy working conditions, which the Japanese social systems seem ill equipped to confront.
I'm honestly not too surprised by this topic. I talked to an anime director over twitter before related to committees. It was on the topic of censorship in anime, and he had stated how if a TV station has high control in the committee, an anime will be more censored, but if the animation studio had a lot of power in the committee, the anime would have more freedom. He emphasized how having a proper balance of power was key, because if the station had majority control, an anime would be more harshly censored.
I can't really speak to the other issues within committees, but since censorship is something I do a lot of research into, I can say this fully adds up. Different anime have different levels of censorship, and there never seems to be any logic to it. If you look deeper though, yyou will usually see that the ones with more freedom were anime where the studio had power in the committee, vs the ones that are more censored, where the TV station has full control.
An easy example i could point to since its a manga I love would be Edens Zero. Its anime was very censored compared to its manga. The committee was only the TV station and the manga publisher. The studio had zero control in it, so it got very censored. Meanwhile that same TV station aired shows and movies that could get away with much more stuff, and those were even aired earlier in the day than Edens Zero. In those shows and movies cases however, the studios actually had power in those committees. Many other ones I could point to, but this is just one.
It was bad enough knowing the lack of balance in the committees caused censorship. Even more sad to now know that these caps are set in these committees.
We already know that making Anime is expensive, yet the production of most Anime is mostly aimed to advertise for the Manga that the series is based on.
The Industry Practices of having Investors that don't care about the Manga or even the Anime Adaptation of the Manga's story that only makes the situation worse.
Well that explains why there's so much seasonal anime. I just hope the quality doesn't drop and the studios don't go bankrupt.
Yep
I heard that these people who work on projects for anime
Is not making a lot
Now I know it the producers and the investors that either control how much many each anime project gets
No wonder some anime has very bad animation
Is not don't want to
It's because money is running out for the project due control of funds of each project
It dropped decades ago. Look at the 90s/early 2000s at latest compared to anywhere near today.
The anime industry has many, many issues, all of them stemming from the production committee system. Whether its selection of which manga or light novels to adapt in the first place, through to the low wages paid to the artisans who bring movement, colour and life to the characters and worlds we love, all of it boils down to, originates with the committee system. Budgets are kept so tight that there is little left for animator pay, and you'll also find animators working on projects they find less than interesting. I would LOVE to see animators able to pick and choose what they will work on, based on their preferences. I know for a fact that as artisans, every one of them will have styles and approaches, and preferences as to whether they want to work on action based titles, or whether they prefer the slice of life stuff, for example. This animator might be besotted with drawing mecha, that animator might be in love with the process of animating the flowing grace of supernatural creatures... I'd love to see the industry reimagined so that animators, and animation studios, choose their projects, rather than being commissioned to produce them, and get the biggest slice of the total revenue, rather than having useless committees full of untalented, unskilled suits, reaping the rewards. In my view, the best way to do this would be for studios to have control over the distribution of the anime they make, and rather than offer exclusive broadcast rights to single platforms, instead offer general licenses to every platform in the distribution market. This would mean titles being picked up by multiple platforms, which would give more eyeballs access to the product, generating greater secondary and tertiary monetisation opportunities (merch, events, and so on) for the anime, induce more people globally to purchase translated copies of the source material (manga/light novels), AND be a bigger initial financial success for the studio, than offering exclusive licenses to single platforms. Why sell an exclusive distribution license to, say, Crunchyroll or Netflix, when there are thousands and thousands of networks, both streaming platforms and regular cable networks, all over the world, that would be happy to carry the content? Why sell a single license for an admittedly large sum, when you could sell thousands of non-exclusive licenses and reap a greater financial reward just from those licenses, AND increase the post release monetisation opportunities, the global reach of the product, and awareness of its existence by orders of magnitude? Its a bad deal to sell distribution rights to a single platform. It limits the budget for each title, starves creators, animators and studios themselves, keeps the pace of industry growth too low for any of that stuff to be corrected. The industry is being run by organisations which deliberately hobble the products ability to be broadly enjoyed and perform well financially, these are actions deleterious to the industry itself, the people working in it, and the intellectual properties that the industry creates. If a CEO of a major global company behaved this way, and did this kind of damage to an individual company, its shareholders and investors would see him removed from his post, post haste. There is no good reason that the same ought not be true for the anime industry.
A very interesting suggestion. I could see this working in a much more freer legal envrionment where IP laws are relaxed and better streamlined for the Modern age, but that would take a paradigm shift in how both business and creators operate in creative works.
This is a great idea.
some production committee are USA media company subsidiary and a really big tech industry, advertising, railways and tv network
Ironically, Gainax studio is bankcrupt yrs before so he has a point but one thing to mention that some studios are being on-oldhouse except for Kyoto Animation being allowed their animators having a good amount of pay and a break that's what KyoAni stands for.
For Bandai Namco on Sunrise yeah I remember that Sunrise almost getting bankrupt on their anime way before in the 1979 their first anime Mobile Suit Gundam almost got nothing in their pocket but when Sunrise decided to make a 3 part movie of the original Mobile Suit Gundam they somewhat earn on the merch and the vinyl disc consist of soundtracks of the OG Gundam and somewhat being saved from bankruption and then Sunrise still the one of the studio that doesn't bankrupt because they rely on Gunpla sales thru Bandai Namco and now Bandai Namco invested in idol series like Idolm@ster franchise, Idolish7, and Sunrise' own idol show Love Live! because they are relying on BD/DVD that's why BD/DVD matters to Japanese markets and studio
It should be obvious japanese companies will always be very wary if a foreign company wants to get on "their" turf. That is why the big producers want the majority ownership. Don't give this japanese thing, anime, into dirty gaijin hands, right?
So all we can do is say: "Dear big japanese investor, please cut your profits and invest more money so you get less short-term but probably more long-term, if all your competitors also do this."
It really does seem like they are trying to push the industry as far as I can go (or stretching it as far as it can). It’s very short term thinking, rather than long term for sure.
I've been thinking about this for a long time. There is enough money going into the industry; though I, personally , went even mind paying a bit more for my monthly subscription if it would help the situation.
But with money being split between so many projects, It becomes a case of quantity over quality. Even projects with good source material get mediocre adaptations. And there's only so much good source material to go around; eventually you have to take the mediocre source material and give that a… mediocre adaptation. Mediocrity times mediocrity is only ever going to be mediocre.
Thanks for the explanation as to why it's getting divided between projects... that's interesting. It's a shame, and I don't think the problem is going to be solved any time soon.
There's so much storytelling and directing and animating talent... I wish it would all get its chance to shine and Its chance to get properly compensated.
Tbh i think you have kinda questionable tastes in anime but ngl some of the industry lore you have is very insightful and im grateful for that.
I think solution is simply conviction these new outside investors need stand up against the old guard and brute force their way onto Jo Tv
wow thanks for the video
Solution: We need wealthy anime philanthropist!!!
Yea, Some who will star in the anime itself....with a giant Toblerone Bar
I think that there are some good reasons for the committee to exist for such a long time.
The one thing I can think is that massive investment and prevent competitiveness (imagine a random small under the radar having massive foreign investment, and suddenly there is a right or wrong answer to what studio to work for)
some studio are on production committee
Well I for one dont blame them too much. I do not want western "sensabilities" controlling anime production.
Poetic, how the one to expose the practices of the industry would be a former president of Gainax Studios, a workplace once founded by Hideaki Anno, who suffered depression while making Evangelion, and received so much harsh backlash from his viewers he nearly committed suicide.
It is often said a man reaps what he sows. It would seem now that these overindulgent ingrates have brought ruin upon themselves by asking too much.
Informative video. I am always interested in the guts of financing and production of animation and film. Well done.
Thanks! Odaka deserves the credit, I'm just the messenger!
You maybe should consider switching the end of the title with the beginning. I don’t know but it would seem to make the video stand out and represent itself as being as informative as it really is.
That's why modern anime is so shit. The 80s were a big part of the Japanese economic boom period so anime was good then and then the 90s was the depressed anti-modern era of cyberpunk and anti-escapism and it also produced good anime into the mid-2000s before everything became pure escapism with no substance.
We need the "HBO Max" of anime. Effectively, we need a premium streaming platform that expects a higher grade of animation.
Right now the bar is set too low for the majority of anime. It's so bad that some budget anime are little better than and handful of frames used over and over again.
The industry needs to also better tie together the relationship between anime and the source manga and light novels. Japan should be owning those profits rather than ceding them to Amazon and such. When you watch an anime it should be clear how to obtain the source.
Also i wonder how diffrent the situation is for japanese studios that broadcast their shows exclusively on foreign streaming platforms.
Wasn't Chainsawman 100% funded and published by MAPPA? Does that mean they didn't have to go through these production committees and could instead just use the money to reinvest into the next season? Could CSM success set a new president?
Well, there are a lot of projects with single producers. But it hopefully is a big win for them in the end. People are quick to claim it didnt sell well in blu-rays but those stats do not account for MAPPA's store, nor licensing dollars made from oversees distribution which is huge.
Either i didn't include the link or it was removed but the video i said you would find interesting is this one ua-cam.com/video/AguRPUVn83c/v-deo.html
I hope anime avoids the woke money that will ruin the medium.
What is Woke?
Look what happens in USA and you'll find out....
Anime seem kinda woke to me alr tbf
@@SeismicWolf Velma is a great example of "woke"
@@geekhammergamer1438 Depends. Hardly an harem anime gonna be treated as woke by some feminists.
Hey @OtakuSpirit i think you would find this video interesting