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INTEREST: High Guardian Spice, Onyx Equinox Creators Discuss the Shows' Low Budgets

So does this mean we can officially put to rest the old "budget != animation quality" argument people have been making for many years now? Seems we heard it straight from the source that low or mismanaged budget leads to low quality work.

SrNagasaki wrote:

if what they are looking for are excuses to put their animated trash in the Otaku culture, it doesn't work here. His stupid Western ideologies would only ruin anime and manga as it did with comics and Geek culture.

Yeah you might want to take this sorry excuse for a take back to the pre 10’s where it belongs. If anything ruined or rather has nearly ruined these mediums it’s people gatekeeping and soap boxing often times with blatantly discriminatory rhetoric that they insist isn’t what it seems.

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Bvick00 wrote:

Netflix probably would have loved to air your show

And then cancel it after one season.

Bvick00 wrote:

On another note, I have to disagree with what Onyx Equinox creator Sofia Alexander said "I wouldn't have been able to represent LGBT+ characters or a story about trauma and grief anywhere else" Netflix probably would have loved to air your show

That comment did seem odd because literally every American cartoon made these days has LGBT stuff in it. If anything, it's rarer to find shows that don't. Comic books too, where DC and Marvel seem to announce every other week that a superhero has comes out as gay. These shows would have fit right in on Cartoon Network or Netflix with no problem at all so it's puzzling why Crunchyroll was so vital to their work outside of wanting to be labeled "anime".

Put simply, if you are a current anime fan then there is no-one gatekeeping you from acquiring various anime works and enjoying them as a hobby. You don’t need to befriend the higher-ups in an anime club, you can just buy it and watch it whenever and wherever you want.[/b]

Hiroki not Takuya wrote:

". That would make sense if somehow writers were forced to finish work in X (small number) hours because they were paid Y (another small number) $/hr. But I'm confident that isn't the case

...I take it you've never had to write for a project like this, then, because yes that is absolutely a part of it. ...Professional level fiction writing, on the scale of a full-length season of TV, isn't something a couple people can do in a few days or weeks...

Bisuketto wrote:

The budget may be low but I don't buy it. The story, quality, and general feel of the show was substandard. You can only blame so much on the budget. Maybe take responsibility and recognize they just didn't have a good product?

Did you even read Raye's Twitter thread? They weren't even allowed to go back and fix any mistakes they made, story and animation-wise. The whole thing is Crunchyroll's fault because they set HGS up to fail with their own bad decisions, both in marketing and pushing the team to their limit.

lossthief wrote:

Hiroki not Takuya wrote: ". That would make sense if somehow writers were forced to finish work in X (small number) hours because they were paid Y (another small number) $/hr. But I'm confident that isn't the case ...I take it you've never had to write for a project like this, then, because yes that is absolutely a part of it. ...Professional level fiction writing, on the scale of a full-length season of TV, isn't something a couple people can do in a few days or weeks...

I haven't myself but I only have to look at any network show over the last 50 years to know that industry standard is to write a complete screenplay in not more than 4 days. Plus, Gene Roddenberry's Making of Star Trek gives quite an in-depth example. Take LA Law, a one hour drama. Like most it was created by two people who were the series creators and head writers and along with a couple of other head writers wrote the majority of the show. As typical, they had a staff of 4-5 associate writers in addition at any time (30 over the 8 years run) and while interviews disclosed they sometimes had 16 hour stints per day that would make 512 man-hours per episode.

HGS was a 24 minute per episode show with a staff of 5 writers and going from the previous metric, it should have taken 256 man-hours per show so they should have been able to write the whole season in 614 hours or about 40 16 hour days. About 1.5 months and with a generous salary of $100k/year that is $30k/person. That's not enough for anyone to live on in the US so that means they have other jobs. The real fallacy here is that if they were paid more, the writing would have been better. If experience teaches anything, it is that some people are good at what they do and some aren't and it shows in the output quality given the same time constraints.

This is not the Cowboy Bepop LA adaptation .

Gatekeeping is a word that has shifted over time. I originally remember it being used to describe who was allowed to call themselves a fan of something if they didn't meet certain arbitrary standards. You're not a true fan of Harry Potter if you've only seen the movies and never read the books, or you're not a true gamer if you don't play a specific game or genre. These days it's mainly used for fandom policing. Usually to try to keep people with certain political leanings out of a fandom or hobby. It's not very relevant overall though because there's many different communities and places fans congregate.

You have had good series or series that potentially could've gotten better as it went on get cancelled pretty fast.

At the end of the day, is a low budget a factor in a show doing poorly?

kawaiibunny3 wrote:

I feel like people who are determined to hate this show are going to hate it no matter what,

I mean, that was clear from day 1, when Crunchyroll dropped a (terrible) trailer that said nothing except "minorities are working on this show!" and everyone on 4chan decided that was enough reason to despise it.

HGS absolutely had some quality issues, but about 2/3rds of the people hating on it would still hate it just as much if the show looked better than a Miyazaki film.

She said that she was ultimately grateful to Crunchyroll: "I wouldn't have been able to represent LGBT+ characters or a story about trauma and grief anywhere else."

I feel like people who are determined to hate this show are going to hate it no matter what, and I just hope these same people are watching and lifting up Precure, Pripara and Kiratto Pri-chan on Crunchyroll if supporting anime for young girls is so darn important to them.