Forum - View topicINTEREST: Anime Industry Member Discusses Production Committee System
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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If the production committee system were just sucking off profits, it would be easy for animators to do original projects and make money, either with their own money or crowdfunding. It doesn't seem to be so, and original projects failing have brought down companies like Manglobe. In reality, production committees absorb the risk of failures in exchange for profiting from the hits.
Shows during normal hours care about ratings some, but not late night anime. The plight of entry level workers especially is a big deal, though I would hardly appreciate it if the alternative to low paying apprenticeships were people paying tuition money to go to school and accumulating debt, the alternative we seem to do in the USA. |
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#861208
Posts: 423 |
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If there are 2000 or 3000 discs... what? Sold total? Remaining? Clarification would be appreciated...
This is basically it. A basic thing about business that most people don't really understand. Like most basic things about business. As for student debt being "the alternative that we seem to do in the US"... I don't think the analogy is really accurate. The situation with higher education in the US is peculiar, and it covers a lot more than just one industry, so you can't compare almost the entire workforce of a very large country to a single industry in a smaller one. |
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Ushio
Posts: 635 |
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Anime being an $18.2 billion industry in 2016 sounds a lot until you realise that is over 150 late night anime plus the big 10 long running daytime anime.
According to Bandai Namco's financial results merchandise of from One Piece was over $260 million in revenue last year and Dragon Ball was over double that. Is all that counted as part of the $18 billion anime industry? |
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Ushio
Posts: 635 |
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Those disc's would be sold as print runs of that small size are a loss for disc sales. For example the 1996 film Twister sold over 10,000 copies last week in the USA at position 750. |
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Hoppy800
 Posts: 3331 |
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This can be summed up as every move the industry make often screws them over and the partners and rightsholders. They can't catch a break. I wonder if things would've been better if they started back from the drawing board when it came to business models.
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2902 |
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different print sizes in japan, so my guess is that he meants 2-3k discs unsold; that's the beauty of "presales" sicne that way they can gauge interests and not print many discs.
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Dfens
Posts: 462 |
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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? Maybe someday a few will work themselves up the latter but for the vast majority they will still be just simple animators etc. One day the passion for creating Anime will finally lose out to the the harsh wages and tough life style, and newer talent will become harder and harder to find when their is already a dark cloud surrounding the position. We may have it good now with over 150 or so shows a season imagine if that drops to half or less? Sure it wouldn't be the end of the world but for these production committee's they might get the hint. Sadly theJapanese business world is always is slow on change and set in their hardheaded ways. We may need one day for the industry to collapse so that they can restructure the industry to meet the needs of today. 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. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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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.
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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Yes, it's an entirely misleading figure. Take a look at the report from which this figure is taken: http://aja.gr.jp/english/japan-anime-data, particularly http://aja.gr.jp/?wpdmdl=1005. In particular examine the chart that reports revenues in the "broad sense" versus the chart for revenues in the "limited sense." That latter figure, about 200 billion yen or $2 billion, is the number of interest when it comes to seasonal anime that most people here discuss. |
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bigivel
 Posts: 536 |
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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). |
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H. Guderian
Posts: 1255 |
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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. |
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Jonny Mendes
 Posts: 997 Location: Europe |
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Glad to see a very good article showing how the Production Committee system works in the inside.
If only 1 of 10 are a hit and sells enough DVDs/BDs and merchandise to make a profit, and all the others are in the red, why do we get so many anime in a season? From the little i know about this, is that the Publishers is covering the losses. Is still probably less expensive to make a anime to advertise the mangas and LN's than use the usual publicity in daytime television. Late night slots are cheap and even if they have to pay to the rest of Production Committee the losses, is still probably less expensive that publicity in daytime tv channels. This probably why the don't even consider reducing the number of anime made. This would be a good question to Answerman. |
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bigivel
Posts: 536 |
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"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?) Well those guys or are part of the Production Committee or they are just licencors. The Production Committee is the one that gathers the money and manages the project, There is nobody below them that gives them money for anything. At most you have side people that sponsor the project, but that is certainly not the Publisher. Being just a licensor means that they basically don't do anything, but receive royalties for any revenue generated, because they have the copyright. When is said that a Production Committee is in the red, it really means in the red. That they lost money! There is no other save guard, the producers put their money and they came out of it with less money plus a product. Note that just saying they were in red in 9 projects doesn't tell what dimension of loss they went through, nor when they say a success is anywhere implied how much. In fact you as an investor/producer only really know after everything is done and rolling. And that is the risk. You can end up placing 1Million dollars, and get out of it with 10 dollars(and the anime). The reason they make so many anime is to combat project risks. More series you do, closer to finding a success that is able to reset previous loses. |
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Juno016
 Posts: 2420 |
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Production committees are good at reducing risk with their merchandising and general disc sales. Retailers tend to keep a minimum stock, but they keep this stock updated. Rental sales often help gauge post-release sales, and some unsold discs and merchandise with some lasting demand are able to be sold to second-party retailers and shops for cheap. It's complex, but losses tend to be much smaller than profits for investors, hence why they are willing to cushion failures. That said, it's still risky. Some projected hits, in order to maximize profits, are over-produced. If those do not live up to expectations, the consequences can be dire.
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peno
Posts: 349 |
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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. |
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