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Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why is there a huge push for Western companies to make their own original anime content?
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mdo7
 Posts: 6513 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Let me start with adding this: There were already western companies already getting their own original western-produced anime even before Nettflix and Crunchyroll (or any streaming platform you can think of) existed. Did people in anime fandom forgot Little Nemo? That was a US-Japan co-production from 1989, it came out in Japan first and it didn't get a US theatrical release until 1992. Did any of these anime fans that complain about "Western companies need to stay out of anime" complain about Little Nemo when Little Nemo was a western idea and backed by western producers and writers like Chris Columbus (yes, that Chris Columbus, the one who directed the 1st 2 Home Alone film series, Mrs. Doubtfire, and the first 2 Harry Potter films)? I never heard any complain from today's anime fanbase bashing Little Nemo and faking ignorance is not an excuse, I expected the fanbase to have mature enough to studied or even did some background research on this even from decades ago. I'm kind of surprised some of these demographic that complain about western companies getting involved with anime didn't bother to read these past ANN articles from decade(s) ago:
Mike Toole's 2011 article: Anime or Not The List's 2014 article: 7 Japan-International Co-Productions The List's 2016 article: 6 Japan-International Co-Productions Revisited And do I have to bring up This Week in Anime from last year talking about western co-production anime. So don't tell me there was a big amount of ignorance in the anime/manga fandom because those same "western companies need to stay out of anime" demographic should've already known about this for a long time. And you know what, I've seen this before and this wasn't targeted at anime, but OEL manga (and also at manhwa & manhua) before that. I didn't hear the same "Western companies need to stay out of anime" audiences going after South Korea or China for pushing anime adaptation of Manhwa/webtoons and Manhua, was there any backlash from this other then the anti-OEL manga backlash that unfortunately targeted Korean manhwa and other non-Japanese East Asian graphic novels. Are these the same people that complain about Hollywood and western companies shouldn't get involved with anime are the same people that complain about OEL manga & non-Japanese East Asian graphic novels like in the case of manhwa/webtoons and manhua decades ago, then that means these people are hypocrite and probably I shouldn't use this term: Japanese supremacists (think white supremacist but replace white supremacy with Japanese and treat Koreans and Chinese and Southeast Asians as inferior), because that would explain why these same people keep changing targets when it comes to western stuff getting Japanese or making stuff that looks like Japanese medium. What do these people are going to complain about when Amazing Agent Luna, Aoi House, and other OEL manga (ie: Megatokyo) in the near future going to get anime adaptation, how are they going to react if western companies team up with Japanese companies to adapt OEL manga into anime given that a western webcomic is getting a anime adaptation courtesy of OLM Studio, how are they going to react to that? If these same "western companies shouldn't get involved with anime" complainers/critics don't put up with this, who are they going to go after next if that become accepted? I mean why are people complaining about western producers and western studios doing anime since it already happened before streaming and anime became mainstream in the US/west, I don't understand the complaint and backlash from the western anime fandom/communities. Last edited by mdo7 on Mon Nov 18, 2024 5:06 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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cutslo
Posts: 75 |
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Honestly, the relatively "artistic" endeavors you like to talk about aside, I think there's just an increasing trend to add "X: The Anime" to your corporate IP mining workflow. Just like you get X: The ComicBook, X: The Cereal and X: The Video Game and used to get X: The Saturday Morning Cartoon. Gotta reach every last person on the planet with your IP somehow, and people do like anime, and if you give Japan some money they'll make you one of those.
I mean, even if you think Suicide Squad: The Anime or Rick and Morty: The Anime are worth watching, that is literally the only reason those exist. |
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yeehaw
 Posts: 598 |
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I don't get how crunchyroll helping produce MORE anime is healthy for the industry when too much anime is part of the problem |
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light turner
Posts: 194 |
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Even when it's written and created outside of Japan they still label it as anime for marketing reasons like with Castlevania and Scott Pilgrim. Anime is just a marketing word since cartoon has negative and childish connotations to it. If you can hire a studio to make you an actual anime then it's all the better. In same cases it does turn out some good stuff like Edgerunners. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4671 |
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It depends. Overproduction is certainly a problem in terms of things like working conditions and rushed projects. However, a major partner pulling out and reducing the funding available risks that there is less work out there to keep the studios afloat. There would be a decent chance that the remaining partners would tighten up their own belts and fund fewer projects while also expecting the studios to make due like they have before. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5525 |
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Ultimately, the explanation is this. In the 50s and 60s, companies like Hanna-Barbera, transformed the animation industry into a media that produces bottom of the barrel entertainment for children. Despite efforts in the 30s and 40s to elevate the medium to so much more.
So creators don't want their work to be called cartoons or animation, because that has a very negative association. And companies want to call their content, as they call it now, a name that has more association with quality and maturity. |
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paulchaested
Posts: 271 |
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For those wondering how much anime CR co-produces and has co-produced, the link below is a huge list of shows they’ve been involved in that I have kept track of since 2015. I lost count but they’ve co-produced well over 150 shows (possibly way more).
https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=2052669 They started very small with 5-10 min short series and it wasn’t until 2017 where they really started to ramp up. From 2017-2022, they co-produced an average of 2-4 shows per season. Once they got acquired by Sony they’ve been consistently co-producing around 9-13 shows since per season since Spring 2022 with Spring 2024 being their record breaking season at 16 co-produced shows. Last edited by paulchaested on Mon Nov 18, 2024 4:53 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2317 Location: Online Terminal |
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Math If 33% of the anime being turned out now has Crunchyroll involved, that means there's 67% that doesn't. If the "ideal" amount of anime output is significantly more than 67% of what the industry is turning out now, than one can conclusively say Crunchyroll has a major role in the production of anime. I don't know what the ideal amount of production is, but I'd probably lean towards supporting the Answerman's statement. I'd also have thought Netflix would've been a larger presence in the context of this question. |
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oogenesis
Posts: 25 |
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but scott pilgrim takes off was created in japan, by a japanese studio, with japan-based talent (abel gongora at science saru has been in the country for at least 15 years. he counts) the fact that it's based on a canadian comic series doesn't make it NOT anime. lots of anime are based on western IPs; i don't see anyone going after studio ghibli's anime cred for howl's moving castle or arrietty. castlevania is based on a japanese IP and was produced in the US by an american studio that borrowed many japanese animators to work on the project. it's anime in the same way avatar: the last airbender is anime (it's not). no one's actually labeling it as anime for marketing, but the fact that it's heavily anime-influenced IS a selling point. |
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1862 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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Netflix Philippines classifies Castlevania as anime. Dunno about the rest of the world. Been a while since I watched the first two seasons, but aren't the animators mostly Korean? Mostly recalling producers as Japanese names in the credits. |
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Glordit
 Posts: 696 |
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Netflix classifies anything animated, as anime. It's a marketing term for them. |
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yeehaw
Posts: 598 |
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That makes sense. I guess it's kind of a problem were the studios needs absurd amount of work to stay afloat but that work is also too much for the actual animators so many of the shows end up looking bad? Dream scenario I guess would be crunchyroll sponsoring less shows with more money so more people and studios could be involved, lessing the workload and making better looking shows |
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mdo7
Posts: 6513 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I can argued the same for the 1994 American Sailor Moon live-action/animation hybrid pilot despite being based a Japanese IP, it's not classified as a anime. I can argued the same reason why Ultraman: Rising is not classified as anime despite being based on a Japanese IP, but given that the animation was done by Netlfix Animation and Industrial Light & Magic, and not by a Japanese studio, it doesn't count as anime despite being based on a Japanese IP. That's the same reason why the 2009 Astro Boy CG film is not classified as anime despite being based on a Japanese manga. Oddly enough, Imagi Animation Studio, the studio responsible for animating the 2009 Astro Boy CG animation film was also responsible for animating Highlander: The Search for Vengeance & Digimon: X-Evolution which both of them have been classified as anime by ANN and other anime databases. So it's interesting that Imagi Animation Studio doing a CG animated film based on a Japanese IP that is not classified as anime while the same studio worked on 2 animation projects that are & have been classified as anime. This is where the "is it anime" debate get interesting, how many of you are familiar with Rankin-Bass? See this is where it's get interesting, for those of you that watched Rankin-Bass's Christmas special or any of their animated films, you'll be surprised to find out their stop-motion and hand-drawn animation were all done in Japan, and also several famous Japanese studios were involved like Toei, Mushi Production, and a studio where half of the animators would later worked on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind for Hayao Miyazaki, and later Studio Ghibli. I believe Mike Toole has talked about it in 2016. Now we have talked about Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim being the upcoming anime film, but this might not be the first LOTR anime, because Rankin Bass did 2 animated films from LOTR that pre-dated the War of The Rohirrim, The Hobbit from 1977, and Return of the Kings in 1980 (look both of them up on Wikipedia, and no, Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings from 1978 is not a Rankin-Bass production so it doesn't count). Both Rankin-Bass's The Hobbit and Return of the Kings were animated by Topcraft Studio in Japan. So if we are to applied the "is it anime" into both of them, that would mean both of Rankin-Bass's adaptation would be classified as anime and they would be the earliest anime adaptation of LOTR before War of the Rohirrim. I want to bring up Topcraft studio in here because that studio had half of the animators that would later worked for Studio Ghibli, so this has led to people and anime fans (like me) question if several Rankin-Bass/Topcraft production should be re-classified as anime in light of this revelation. People have asked if The Last Unicorn, and The Flight of Dragons should be re-classified as anime, I mean The Stingiest Man in Town (which is a Rankin-Bass/Topcraft production) has already been re-classified as anime according to ANN's encyclopedia. This has also been asked regarding Rankin-Bass's Christmas stop-motion animation specials because given the stop-motion studio that worked on Rankin-Bass's Christmas specials was involved in Nutcracker Fantasy (which looks a lot like something you watched from Rankin-Bass's Christmas special). Takeo Nakamura, who was the director of Nutcracker Fantasy was also involved with several Rankin-Bass's Christmas stop-motion animation specials like Santa Claus is Comin' to Town. Again, if you are to classified Nutcracker Fantasy as an anime, then this mean by logical mindset that all of Rankin-Bass stop-motion Christmas specials done by that same studio will have to be re-classify as anime by today's standard. True story: Nutcracker Fantasy being a stop-motion animation, has been mistakenly (before the internet, and Wikipedia/Wiki Fandom existed) identified as a Rankin-Bass production because of the stop-motion used in the film being 1 on 1 almost move the same way. That's why this has led to debates if Rankin-Bass's stop motion Christmas specials should be re-classify as anime. |
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RickyTheRat
 Posts: 33 |
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Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is no more anime than Tiny Toons or Batman the Animated Series. American writers and producers hiring a Japanese studio to animate their work doesn't make it anime. The executive producers on the show according to Wikipedia are: Marc Platt, Edgar Wright, Michael Bacall, Adam Siegel, Jared LeBoff, Nira Park, Kouhei Obara, Dylan Thomas, Eunyoung Choi, BenDavid Grabinski, and Bryan Lee O'Malle. Netflix explicitly labels Castlevania as anime and has marketed it as such. Source: https://www.netflix.com/title/80095241 |
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KabaKabaFruit
 Posts: 1903 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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Considering the growing convolution of what is considered anime and what isn't, I can't help but feel that at some point, we're just going to eliminate the anime vs general animation categorization and just go with "animation" as an absolute category.
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