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Answerman - What's With All the Delayed Aniplex Shows?

The thing is, though, people should have seen this coming.

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The thing is, though, people should have seen this coming.

Exactly. Covid is certainly still around, but hiding behind that excuse is not credible at this point. The real issue isn't covid. The real issue is that management knew about covid (and Chinese holidays) and utterly failed to account for it.

For sure. I don't doubt it played a role, but relying on the same old ways of trying to crank out as much content on as tight a deadline as possible was going to make it a problem that they couldn't work around.

Since the production committees have to pay for TV time, I do wonder of the added cost of relying on reruns and then buying more time to finish the season will make them take note.

Actually, it doesn't. Let's do some simple math. Let's say a 12-episode show costs $1-million per episode to make, for a total of $12-million dollars. If a production company has to wait until all 12 episodes are finished before delivering them to a broadcaster, that means it has to raise that full $12-milion ahead of time to pay everybody working on it. How the system really works is that a production company has perhaps 4 episodes in the can - meaning they've spent $4-million - by the time the show starts airing. $4-million is a lot easier to raise than $12-million. As money for completed episodes enters their coffers, they can cash flow the rest of the episodes in the pipeline.

Blood- wrote:

Actually, it doesn't. Let's do some simple math. Let's say a 12-episode show costs $1-million per episode to make, for a total of $12-million dollars. If a production company has to wait until all 12 episodes are finished before delivering them to a broadcaster, that means it has to raise that full $12-milion ahead of time to pay everybody working on it. How the system really works is that a production company has perhaps 4 episodes in the can - meaning they've spent $4-million - by the time the show starts airing. $4-million is a lot easier to raise than $12-million. As money for completed episodes enters their coffers, they can cash flow the rest of the episodes in the pipeline.

That sounds like a business problem. Are production companies operating on such tight margins that they don't have cash on the books to fund a cour of anime? That seems like an even bigger problem than production delays.

Kubo Won't Let Me Be Invisible is not an Aniplex production, but looking at the staff, it's clear it is yet another case of poor scheduling and bad distribution of staff.

I've mainly focused on Aniplex in this column because it's the most egregious example on display. Still, it is worth noting that Kubo Won't Let Me Be Invisible, headed by Pony Canyon, has also announced a delay until April. It's a tough situation all around.

TheSleepyMonkey wrote:

Kubo Won't Let Me Be Invisible is not an Aniplex production, but looking at the staff, it's clear it is yet another case of poor scheduling and bad distribution of staff.

This is said right there in the article:

Quote:

I've mainly focused on Aniplex in this column because it's the most egregious example on display. Still, it is worth noting that Kubo Won't Let Me Be Invisible, headed by Pony Canyon, has also announced a delay until April. It's a tough situation all around.