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Interview: Polygon Pictures President Shuzo John Shiota

Yeah, I really don't understand why the interviewer didn't take that chance to dive in deeper on their frame rate decision. It's easily one of the most discussed aspects in the West when it comes to Polygon anime

Because when someone offers you an interview, you don't derail it for a personal gripe. And this discussion has been had like 10,000,000 times already, so beating that dead horse is pointless. If you want to know why they do it, you can pretty much read it directly from the response "we don't want to turn people off who are used to the 2D look". Whether or not that makes sense or is successful is pretty irrelevant, but there is no sense is delving into it more, yet again...

I'm interested if Netflix ends up getting Knights of Sidonia season 3, this interview makes them seem more involved in the first two seasons than I thought, but the first two seasons aired on Animeism, which Amazon has exclusive streaming rights to now.

And in regards to business, the budgets have been going much much higher thanks to the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Crunchyroll .... So we needed to find our own way to recoup our investment. Luckily we got the North American rights and because of our presence in the North American market, we knew the going price for anime properties with the normal players like Funimation and such. So we decided to go mainstream. We approached Netflix and Hulu and thankfully Netflix signed us as their first original anime and gave us pretty decent license fees and it's been going up since then.

So we had tried it and we knew it was going to work, so when Pingu in the City came… initially there was talk about making it look more like a normal animation, but after talking to the producers at NHK, Mattel and Sony, we decided we should make it look like a stop-motion kind of thing.

64BitRatchet wrote:

I'm interested if Netflix ends up getting Knights of Sidonia season 3, this interview makes them seem more involved in the first two seasons than I thought, but the first two seasons aired on Animeism, which Amazon has exclusive streaming rights to now.

Netflix was only a licensee, despite the misleading "Netflix Original" moniker, hence its broadcast on Japanese TV as with nearly all other titles. Justin had addressed this specifically in a previous Answerman.They were mentioned in the same context as other licensees such as Funimation, Crunchyroll in terms of raising the budget through higher licensing fees. The show was already produced before the solicitation process:

Quote:

And in regards to business, the budgets have been going much much higher thanks to the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Crunchyroll .... So we needed to find our own way to recoup our investment. Luckily we got the North American rights and because of our presence in the North American market, we knew the going price for anime properties with the normal players like Funimation and such. So we decided to go mainstream. We approached Netflix and Hulu and thankfully Netflix signed us as their first original anime and gave us pretty decent license fees and it's been going up since then.

It should also be noted that Netflix did not get the full versions of Sidonia either--Sentai did for the US.

Only current Bones co-productions of new original material is where Netflix actually gets involved.

relyat08 wrote:

Because when someone offers you an interview, you don't derail it for a personal gripe. And this discussion has been had like 10,000,000 times already, so beating that dead horse is pointless. If you want to know why they do it, you can pretty much read it directly from the response "we don't want to turn people off who are used to the 2D look". Whether or not that makes sense or is successful is pretty irrelevant, but there is no sense is delving into it more, yet again...

The discussion has been had a million times among random anime fans. The chance of having the discussion with president of Polygon itself is a unique opportunity that has far more value than those other conversations.

I'm interested if Netflix ends up getting Knights of Sidonia season 3, this interview makes them seem more involved in the first two seasons than I thought, but the first two seasons aired on Animeism, which Amazon has exclusive streaming rights to now.

They might be my favourite animation studio and the fact that they gave Fist of the Blue Sky to Taiwan makes sense but the fact that they're proud of it makes me feel really disappointed.

And all of a sudden, the Netflix option seemed much more attractive, especially because of their pricing.So it's been a huge influence, and I think it's been a good influence in that now we're able to deliver our properties to 190 different countries and millions of people all of a sudden with subtitles. So I think in this case, we're combating what was previously a big issue of piracy because people can see it legitimately and they don't have to wait like they used to.

Some people have raised concerns that that might happen for Fist of the Blue Sky. What is your approach with Fist of the Blue Sky that may allay those concerns?

Well, so far as I've seen, it's looking pretty good.

Panoptican wrote:

relyat08 wrote: Because when someone offers you an interview, you don't derail it for a personal gripe. And this discussion has been had like 10,000,000 times already, so beating that dead horse is pointless. If you want to know why they do it, you can pretty much read it directly from the response "we don't want to turn people off who are used to the 2D look". Whether or not that makes sense or is successful is pretty irrelevant, but there is no sense is delving into it more, yet again... The discussion has been had a million times among random anime fans. The chance of having the discussion with president of Polygon itself is a unique opportunity that has far more value than those other conversations.

It has literally been addressed by this same person. And like half a dozen other people who work for the company. Check out their social media accounts and other interviews. They are aware that some people don't like it. They are also under the probably reasonable assumption that many people do like it. Nothing we can do about it. I don't think it looks so bad, personally.

Quote:

And all of a sudden, the Netflix option seemed much more attractive, especially because of their pricing.So it's been a huge influence, and I think it's been a good influence in that now we're able to deliver our properties to 190 different countries and millions of people all of a sudden with subtitles. So I think in this case, we're combating what was previously a big issue of piracy because people can see it legitimately and they don't have to wait like they used to.

...(Goes out of room, begins laughing)...(catches breath)...(comes back in), ok, I think they need to crosscheck their info...(starts laughing uncontrollably)

Plus there's this movement for the Castlevania kind of thing where anime tastes are opening fans up to American-ised or European-ised international storytelling. And Netflix is all over that now, it'll open up some doors. It might have the hardcore anime fans dissing it, but I think it'll open up a door for other variations of so-called anime.