Forum - View topicWhen did the OVA die?
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Joe Carpenter
 Posts: 503 |
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I've noticed people lately bemoaning the death of the OVA as a standalone entity as opposed to spin off "bonus episodes" of a TV series.
I have to agree with this, OVAs were interesting because when they were done well they were a great middle ground between a movie and TV series, offering better animation than a TV series and sometimes able to tell a longer story than a movie. But my question is, when exactly did the OVA as a standalone entity end? The last ones I can think of making waves were all in the early 00's, namely FLCL, Read or Die and Dead Leaves. Dead Leaves was 2004 and I cannot for the life of me think of another one more recent than that, was the early 00's when it came to an end? |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Well, I should preface this by saying that I'm just a fan without any real firsthand knowledge. If you're really curious, this might be a great question to send in to ANN's Answerman column. Personally though, I would say OVAs have been steadily dying since the mid 90s and more or less disappeared entirely in the early 00s. As to why, that's a much longer story. See, to understand why OVAs are largely dead you first need to understand why they were so big in the past. OVAs were at their peak from the early 80s to the mid 90s. This was mainly because this was when home video really took off. Of course, VCRs had been around for a while prior to that but it wasn't until this point that they really started to find widespread acceptance. This created a huge new market for video content, particularly of the sort that was a bit too niche for full blown theatrical release but also not suited to the long running and (relatively) family friendly TV anime of the time. This sort of content could suddenly thrive off of video rentals. Of course, the overall economic conditions helped a lot as well. Japan was in the midst of a massive economic bubble in the 80s and early 90s. That meant a ton of disposable income to be spent on entertainment as well as a ton of companies with cash to burn willing to take risks on all kinds of extravagant anime productions. This basically gave us the OVA boom as we know it.
Sadly, things have pretty much been slowing down ever since. The first real blow came when the larger economic bubble burst in the early 90s. That in itself actually didn't slow things down as much as you'd think right away. Without a doubt, we still saw a lot of OVAs after that point. Perhaps this was because, by this point, all those 80s OVAs were enjoying a nice little boom in the west. Although, it may also just be that the anime industry has always been pretty resistant to change and it usually takes quite a few years and pretty dire financial constraints before it catches up with reality. In any case, arguably the biggest factor that prompted real, tangible change was the explosion of TV anime as a much more diverse format in the late 90s. You really didn't see much of the sort of content you saw in OVAs on TV prior to that point but around then things really seemed to open up. The number of shows produced per season exploded and the diversity of content did as well. Mind you, this is a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. I'm not really sure if OVAs diminished because TV anime exploded or if it was the opposite. Certainly the latter seems a lot more plausible if you assume the larger economic situation put the squeeze on the industry and make the lower budgets of TV anime seem significantly more appealing. Suffice to say in any case, a lot of the content that I described earlier that initially made OVAs explode found a home on TV. In truth, you could quite arguably end the story there. Sure, we still saw a few big name OVA productions after that but they were more the exception than the rule. I will say though that certainly, subsequent developments did not help either. TV anime hit it big in the west with programming blocks like Toonami. (Initial) acceptance of single DVD releases of TV shows among western fans proved to be an absolute cash cow. There was just way more money to be made off of TV shows than OVAs. Then, things started to go bad. What was left of the video rental market died a slow and painful death, followed eventually by a huge collapse in the market for physical media in general. If there was any semblance of a market for OVAs it died with the partial industry collapse that happened when the western bubble burst in 2008. Things have gotten way better since then but still, nowadays streaming is a huge part of anime which really doesn't suit the OVA format at all. Physical media is increasingly just something for die-hard collectors. Producing an OVA that is a standalone feature just makes a whole lot less sense when you're expecting to make your money off off die-hard fans who will actually but a copy at a premium price, as opposed to a wider audience who will see your OVA on the shelf at a rental place and give it a try. It makes a lot more sense to produce a TV show (preferably one that adapts existing material) that will attract a steady group of buyers for each volume that to gamble on a half dozen different stand-alone OVA projects. It's a shame really. I like the OVA format. I think a ton of anime productions would benefit from being simple 4-6 episode OVAs instead of full TV shows. I think it's also fair to say though that the OVA boom was never actually something sustainable. It was always a result of a very perfect storm for factors. That being the case, eh, what can you do? |
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Saffire
 Posts: 1256 Location: Iowa, USA |
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Answerman tackled this about a year ago, I think, though it's more "why" then "when". Third question.
animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2014-08-15/.77634 |
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Dessa
 Posts: 4438 |
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One must also consider, though, that they have also been replaced, with ONA, in the internet age.
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18426 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Stand-alone OVAs are still being made; they're just a lot rarer than they used to be. For instance, 2008's Master of Martial Hearts was a stand-alone OVA, as was 2009's TO, 2010's Coincent, 2011's This Boy Can Fight Aliens!, or hell, the title whose review came up today: 2012's Corpse Party - Tortured Souls. And those are just ones that I can think of off the top of my head. Hence while probably 80-90% of the OVAs these days are series extensions/bonuses, stand-alone stuff is still being made. |
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louis6578
 Posts: 1875 |
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^ Corpse Party is based off a game.
I think by standalone, the first poster meant "originally an OVA." Like Ultimate Teacher, Master of Martial Hearts, and most things from the OVA boom of the mid 90's. Why are they not being made as much anymore? If I had to guess, it's because it's a niche market in a niche market. Why fund a direct-to-DVD project if you know that there's no pre-existing fanbase? Before the internet, people were willing to take risks. Now? If the next thing like Gunbuster or Bubblegum Crisis was made, I doubt it would be an OVA, or if it was, the quality work would go unnoticed.. |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1796 Location: South America |
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Neon Genesis Evangelion killed the OVA.
With EVA it showed that niche TV animation aimed at more mature anime fans* was a commercial possibility thanks to it's huge profits. As a result all the effort made to make OVA's was channeled to TV shows. Hence, our modern OVA's are essentially the 11-26 episode TV show. Although one thing that changed is that now they run for longer (like 300-600 minutes instead of the 100-200 minutes of OVAs) allowing for more complexity in plot and character but the budget per minute decreased, reducing the quality of the animation. To blame the decline of the OVA on the Japanese economy is nonsense. First, because the anime industry actually increased a lot in size since 1990, peaking in size in 2006: Size of anime industry (numbers from memory): 1990 - 100 billion yen 1995 - 150 billion yen 2006 - 260 billion yen 2010 - 230 billion yen The much larger manga industry, declined, however, since 1995: 1995 - 550 billion yen 2010 - 450 billion yen The reason is that manga can be easily read on the internet for free and alternatives such as the internet, anime and videogames exploded since 1995. Clearly, the fact that broadband internet became standard by the mid 2000's explains why the anime industry peaked in size in 2006, since now most people stream anime (either legally or not) and physical sales collapsed, which are the ones that give real money to the studios. Anyway, OVA's started to die a full decade before the anime industry peaked in size. And today more anime is made than ever before, in 2014 I think that nearly 200 TV shows and 130 movies and OVA's were made. *Even though Anno claims EVA is "shounen" it clearly is much more similar to seinen titles than Naruto and Dragonball Z. |
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Joe Carpenter
Posts: 503 |
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Not quite, what I meant was a standalone anime OVA not tied to a prior TV series, there are OVAs that are based on manga, like Gunsmith Cats or Golden Boy and ones based on light novels, like the aforementioned Read or Die, both of which certainly come to my mind when I think "OVA" |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Thank you for sharing this. I was very much unaware that this could have been the case. It is certainly common knowledge that Eva was commercially successful, but is it also broadly accepted amongst industry insiders that a single show—rather than a conjunction of background causes—was the catalyst for an entire format's demise? |
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louis6578
Posts: 1875 |
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Honestly, to adaptation OVAs? Good riddance to all (minus Hellsing Ultimate). Things like Gunbuster got a good run and conclusion, but most things that adapt from something into an OVA instead of a TV show don't finish their run or even get very far. Usually between 3 and 6 episodes really. I'd rather have my stuff adapted into a TV show, even if it has to initially be heavily edited for television (I buy DVDs anyway so it doesn't really matter).
One of my favorite OVA series, Denpa Teki na Kanojo, only lasted 2 episodes. It was a great run with a few interesting characters, suspenseful thrills, and of course, crazy psycho girls all around. Part of the fun was the mystery behind the female protagonist and just how loyal she was to her perceived king in a previous life. There are more novels and stories to adapt, but for some reason, after two OVAs, the entire anime is discontinued. |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I think this is a bit of a myopic understanding of what this data actually means. It's true that overall the "size" of the industry continued to grow well into the 90s and mid 00s. However, that doesn't in itself mean there weren't a lot of changes going during that period in terms of how the industry worked and what kinds of content it produced. I mean, you're correct insofar as OVA content didn't so much truly disappear as simply move to a new TV format. However, in all likelihood that move was a result of a lot more than the mere realization that more niche, mature TV shows could be profitable. Rather, this move was at least in part necessitated by the need to make more money on a tighter budget due to a declining general economy. You have to keep in mind too, there's a massive difference between profit per show and total revenue (or even total profit) generated by the industry as a whole. The industry has continued to produce more and more content but the profit margins on a given show are razor thin. I mean look, you could be right. We're all just largely speculating here. I think it is safe to say at least that things are a lot more complicated than you're making them out to be. |
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Jose Cruz
Posts: 1796 Location: South America |
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So lower profit margins means they had to do TV shows? I don't follow your logic. Economists understand that profit margins are temporary things, things that have no fundamental correlation with equilibrium situations but to changes: Profit margins are always razor thin in any industry everywhere in the long run.
The industry shifted from OVAs in the mid 1990s to TV by the mid 2000s, at the same time there was an overall increase in the total volume of animation produced and the economic size of the industry. This means that the total amount of economic resources dedicated to animation increased. Which means that Japan could invest more money on expensive animation, in fact the most expensive animated film ever produced in Japan was made in 2013 (Wind Rises). Overall, it appears to me that OVAs were just something that worked until animation studios discovered that airing stuff on late night was better. Then they shifted to late night. It was more part of a process of industry formation, OVAs were just a temporary equilibrium before Anno discovered the potential for TV and caused the shift in the industry. EVA had a huge impact on animation indeed. |
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Lone Immortal Bai Xiang
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Addendum: Evangelion was running in the afternoon. It was "Elf o Karu Mono-tachi" in 1996 pioneering a night slot for anime and the major success of that by now unknown anime is was caused late-night anime to be a thing. Evangelion did a whole lot of things for the anime industry, but it didn't cause the late-night shows. It also wasn't particularly adult themed or what you want to call it. Japan is culturally different. In the early eighties there was this Mahou Shoujo anime for little girls, where the protagonist was run over by a truck and died. Then they had plenty of episodes left to deal with the aftermath of that character now being dead. What I want to say is that Evangelion wasn't anything special in regards to the themes it showed. It was special because it was a good show. |
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Spawn29
Posts: 556 |
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I feel like late night anime played a role because you can get away with more content and do it with a cheaper budget.
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Nate148
Posts: 508 |
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One the post before you was from 2016 and two anime in the 90's was super safe due to lack of funds and dragon ball changing the landscape EVA was a return to trying to say things. |
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