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Crunchyroll Originals Have Been A Disaster


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tintor2



Joined: 11 Aug 2010
Posts: 2128
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 8:03 am Reply with quote
Netflix eh... where do we begin? How about that recent anime about humans fighting gods or the former yakuza acting as a husband? Their budgets must be small as heck
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tfwnoymir



Joined: 03 Dec 2017
Posts: 325
Location: Hungary
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 8:22 am Reply with quote
tintor2 wrote:
Netflix eh... where do we begin? How about that recent anime about humans fighting gods or the former yakuza acting as a husband? Their budgets must be small as heck


Why are people still on this "budget" meme? When will this finally die? It's been explained multiple times in multiple articles, hell, even Shirobako, a show specifically about making anime, has no mention of this "budget" thing. No, budget has nothing to do with how things will look and, it's down on the animators, time constraints, directorial/producer's decisions and how many episodes the committee is willing to fund, among others. Specifically, the reason Househusband looks like ass is because its incompetent producer wanted it to look like this - they specifically wanted still frames, just like in manga panels and they have no idea how animation works - and bruteforced it on the studio.

EDIT: not to mention miscommunication, which I mean an adaptation usually goes through multiple filters, there might not be a direct communication with the original author, but like from the author to the editor to the producer to the director and then to the scriptwriter and so on. Which can lead to pissing off the author who then makes angry demands, see Arifureta for example and how it ended up. That must have been hell of a story.
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Mr VacBob
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Joined: 21 Nov 2004
Posts: 16
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 8:51 am Reply with quote
You know, I always thought High Guardian Spice was delayed because they realized the title sounded like a weed joke. (Or maybe it actually was one.)

But their trailer certainly didn't sell the show or even their studio; I remember it was just the studio head talking about how diverse they were over panning shots of white people.

tfwnoymir wrote:

Why are people still on this "budget" meme?.


Well, it's true that time budgets are very important and time is money, but the finances are not the causes of quality issues, no. Anime is extremely cheap whether it's good or not because animators are paid so badly.

Quote:
Which can lead to pissing off the author who then makes angry demands, see Arifureta for example and how it ended up. That must have been hell of a story.


Shirobako also covered that of course. But some real life cases are Shirokuma Cafe, where the anime staff didn't consult with the creator and so drew the animals with the wrong numbers of fingers on their hands, etc., and she didn't let them make the next season. And of course Tales from Earthsea, where Miyazaki Jr. forgot the characters were supposed to be black.


Last edited by Mr VacBob on Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:00 am; edited 1 time in total
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kawaiibunny3



Joined: 10 Aug 2008
Posts: 534
Location: Houston, Texas
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 8:54 am Reply with quote
I was actually really excited for High Guardian Spice, I want to see it so badly! I'm actually really mad that CR is postponing it due to backlash and I'm a long time subscriber to them as well.

A lot of backlash seemed to come from people (from what I saw) weren't fans of Crunchyroll anyway or weren't fans of shows aimed at female audiences. Like way to ruin it for the rest of us. (Sorry to vent like this, but I'm still bitter about it)
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Akamaru_Inu
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Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Posts: 102
Location: Florida
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:04 am Reply with quote
I just wanna say, this was a great article to wake up to and read like the morning news. That headline alone jolted me more than any coffee could because I was so excited to read it.

I do want to say for the phrasing about HGS, "but others were outraged by the focus on diversity and LGBTQ+ creators." -- most of the outrage I saw wasn't BECAUSE of those topics, but because the trailer was doing "show, don't tell" so horribly and just boasted how diverse its staff was without showing us anything from the show and letting the character designs/characters themselves actually show us the diversity and themes they promised. it was very... I don't think patronizing is the right word, I'm still half asleep, but it was all talk and no product. It was very self-aggrandizing.

What a good article though, holy crap. I had no idea they were being so secretive about so many things.


Last edited by Akamaru_Inu on Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:20 am; edited 1 time in total
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jenthehen



Joined: 23 Dec 2008
Posts: 835
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:17 am Reply with quote
The amount of shade in this article is AMAZING.

Sounds like Crunchyroll has too many irons in the fire, tbh ... the market, entertainment industry, streaming, cable, etc. is all changing so rapidly, so I kinda get it ... needing to stay relevant and to make sure you don't get lost in the shuffle, but the follow-through feels poor. I guess so many of the streaming channels (non-anime, too!) are like this now. They keep changing things, trying new things that may or may not succeed, CANCELING / NOT FINISHING SERIES. Ugh.

The secretiveness is extra weird, though, and maybe uniquely Japanese? I've always found it absolutely WILD that extremely famous content creators can go by a pen name and be basically anonymous in Japan. I can't imagine that flying AT ALL in the US.
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pip25



Joined: 22 Sep 2017
Posts: 180
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:52 am Reply with quote
Crunchyroll in general seems to give the impression of several groups which communicate very poorly with each other, one of them being their own users. I've been their subscriber for quite a few years, and the disconnect just feels more and more obvious, sadly.
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Cloudywind



Joined: 14 Jan 2018
Posts: 55
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 10:22 am Reply with quote
High Guardian Spice may well have been better received if
- it had been announced alongside Japanese anime, to reassure anime viewers that their subscription fees weren't just going into making western cartoons in
- the reveal trailer had been able to convey any reason at all why anime viewers would want to watch it aside from the all-female staff
Bad PR and communication all round.
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thekingsdinner



Joined: 25 Sep 2010
Posts: 1100
Location: Geertruidenberg, Netherlands
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 10:51 am Reply with quote
tfwnoymir wrote:
tintor2 wrote:
Netflix eh... where do we begin? How about that recent anime about humans fighting gods or the former yakuza acting as a husband? Their budgets must be small as heck


Why are people still on this "budget" meme? When will this finally die? It's been explained multiple times in multiple articles, hell, even Shirobako, a show specifically about making anime, has no mention of this "budget" thing. No, budget has nothing to do with how things will look and, it's down on the animators, time constraints, directorial/producer's decisions and how many episodes the committee is willing to fund, among others. Specifically, the reason Househusband looks like ass is because its incompetent producer wanted it to look like this - they specifically wanted still frames, just like in manga panels and they have no idea how animation works - and bruteforced it on the studio.

EDIT: not to mention miscommunication, which I mean an adaptation usually goes through multiple filters, there might not be a direct communication with the original author, but like from the author to the editor to the producer to the director and then to the scriptwriter and so on. Which can lead to pissing off the author who then makes angry demands, see Arifureta for example and how it ended up. That must have been hell of a story.
Thank you. I absolutely hate it when people throw around the word "budget" everywhere and think it determines to quality of an entire production.
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 4603
Location: New York
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 10:55 am Reply with quote
People rag on Netflix, and most of it is deserved, but the truth is, their hit percentage is about the same as their live-action shows.

Forgettable, forgettable, STRANGER THINGS, forgettable, forgettable, NARCOS, forgettable, forgettable, QUEENS GAMBIT...etc. They don't bat a thousand. They take the shotgun approach to show development and there are a lot of pellets that miss the mark.

Same thing with anime. Polygon, forgettable, DEVILMAN CRYBABY, Polygon, Polygon, BAKI (I am still a bit surprised by the fact that Baki somehow became one of the most popular shows on Netflix period when it aired), forgettable, Polygon, ULTRAMAN.

Crunchyroll? Their entire lineup of originals has been top to bottom failures. Even the ones that charitably were deemed OK petered out really quickly like God of High School once the inexperience of their writers became clear. Then we got stuff like Onyx Equinox, a show that did so poorly Cruchyroll dumped the entire thing the day after Christmas, EX-ARM, the Chargeman Ken of 2021, and FreakAngels, which will probably (correctly) never be shown because Warren Ellis made it.

Look at it this way. If the Sony deal goes through (last I checked they were still preparing arguments to demonstrate it wasn't a monopoly of anime), could you see them keeping the Originals line around? I doubt it.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3450
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 11:19 am Reply with quote
Quote:
“core principles of workplace diversity and respect”, and boasted a 100% female writers' room for High Guardian Spice specifically


There's something very lopsided about boasting about your commitment to diversity by proudly stating that only one sex was allowed in the writing room...

New production studio problems are just the results of the industry expanding faster than the talent force behind them, there's simply not enough trained people to do all the show and that's how you end up with people who have little idea how to do anime making anime. If the current level of anime production sustain itself for a few years then that should naturally fix itself (assuming it'll eventually stop expanding and stabilize) but in the meantime there's pretty much nothing that can be done, it takes time to train and sift trough people.
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FilthyCasual



Joined: 01 Jun 2015
Posts: 2375
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 11:20 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Rodriguez later described his use of the moon face emoji simply as “pain”. He absolutely deserved better.
LMAO what a line.

F for the guy though, Crunchy shells out all that cash making it and doesn't even release the thing? Let's be real here, anyone who'd rage-quit their service over its release doesn't even pay for Crunchy in the first place.
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luisedgarf



Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 669
Location: Guadalajara, Mexico
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 12:35 pm Reply with quote
[quote="tfwnoymir"]
tintor2 wrote:
Specifically, the reason Househusband looks like ass is because its incompetent producer wanted it to look like this - they specifically wanted still frames, just like in manga panels and they have no idea how animation works - and bruteforced it on the studio.



That's because the producer likely knew the show was intented for foreign audiences and he knew no one, at least from the Japanese side, will care, because no one in Japan will likely watch that series anyways.

Let's be honest: Japanese are very notorious for loving playing hardball with foreigners in business backgrounds, since they normally doesn't like to work with them, unless you state carefully, in written form, what do you want, so they couldn't get away with doing a shoddy work.
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El Hermano



Joined: 24 Feb 2019
Posts: 450
Location: Texas
PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 1:21 pm Reply with quote
Akamaru_Inu wrote:
I do want to say for the phrasing about HGS, "but others were outraged by the focus on diversity and LGBTQ+ creators." -- most of the outrage I saw wasn't BECAUSE of those topics, but because the trailer was doing "show, don't tell" so horribly and just boasted how diverse its staff was without showing us anything from the show and letting the character designs/characters themselves actually show us the diversity and themes they promised. it was very... I don't think patronizing is the right word, I'm still half asleep, but it was all talk and no product. It was very self-aggrandizing..


I think patronizing is an apt word. It did feel like a bunch of people walking into a foreign industry and going "Time to show you guys how it's really done". In an industry where half the fandom and creators are female, trying to boast about how you're breaking ground by having a female led series rings hollow. When shows like Yasuke or Cannon Busters do it, it makes sense. There's no real incentive in Japan to have black characters in anime, so westerners making shows starring black people and talking about it makes sense. But acting like anime and manga have some kind of super unbalanced gender divide just comes off as uninformed. There's a reason this particular show got so much pushback, but no other "diverse" shows did . There's was no huge outrage over Onyx Equinox, or Cannon Busters, or similar "western produced anime" on these streaming outlets.

I also agree that the timing was awful given the topic of supporting the industry and just what exactly your Crunchyroll dollars were going towards and if Japanese creators were really being paid directly. Then HGS pops up and makes it seem like the detractors were vindicated. It was just overall handled extremely poorly but I think Crunchyroll has learned since then, at least from a marketing standpoint since we've yet to see anything like that trailer ever again.
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Madster





PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2021 1:50 pm Reply with quote
This and the Sailor Moon retrospective have been my recent favorite ANN articles. This is Jason Schrier levels of investigative journalism.

One thing: Canipa, if you're reading this, I'd love to see a semi-part 2 to this article where you investigate the behind the scenes of High Guardian Spice (maybe when the show comes out). Maybe interview some former HGS staff members or CR employees who were around when it was announced? While the marketing was terrible and had some questionable aspects to it, HGS didn't deserve to get bashed by angry nerds who weren't even going to watch it in the first place. Raye Rodriguez was very passionate about this project, and it's a huge letdown CR went silent on it because of backlash.

And shoutout to @Calcipherox for speaking up, I hope other people come forward with Crunchyroll's unprofessionalism. If you're still here to check messages, may I ask: Was Crunchyroll always known to be incompetent, or was it a gradual change when the company got corporate?
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