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Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Are Anime Production Delays the New Normal?
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Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1112 |
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As a capitalist, I find crunch and black enterprises like the ones present on 100 List as extremely inefficient and short signed, sacrificing future bigger profits for short quick ones its how politics "work", not business.
The series shows a basket full of names of people who quit and Japan's population is in decline, is actually easier to hire more people instead of just threating your current employees better? If you are gonna hire more people anyways then why not before people quit and stablish a night shift, getting double on your real state investment in the process and doubling your work flow? Do 1 tired employee is more productive than 2 fresh happy ones? Nonsense. Nintendo is well known Japanese company that treats its employees fairly, the result its that games may take 10 years to make but they sell 20-30 million at $60 each. As Iwata said "holding job uncertainty over your staff halts creativity and productivity. Nobody can really be asked to give it their all when they don't know if they'll have a job the next day after all". |
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Villain-chan
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I haven't read this yet but, this very question is an Answerman question and I've been wondering where thats been for a while now? I mean it came back, albeit like once or so a month but I think the last time we had a column of it was back in June unless the search function isn't working properly.
edit: I read it and I gotta say, it does and at the same time doesn't answer its own question... I'd like to request the Answerman column to answer the question properly and clearly. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3492 Location: Back stateside |
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Except that is how it works in a system driven entirely by quarter-to-quarter growth, which is very much the state of capitalism today. Especially in America, and America is a bigger market for anime now than Japan. If a company sacrifices short-term profits for long-term investment, they can frequently find themselves bought out by hostile takeovers from other, less scrupulous companies or so-called vulture capitalists who will invest money with the intention of tanking it and selling off the parts. Even Henry Ford, the stalwart champion of the philosophy you're espousing, had to start overworking his workers to keep up with his competitors who didn't share his views (and when they tried to unionize, he engaged in ruthless union-breaking tactics and blamed the workers' anger on (((them))) but that's a whole different story). |
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Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1112 |
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I work in one huge USA company with profit issues, my higher ups are so adamant against any way of overwork that sometimes pisses me off.
I used to check my workload on Sundays for 5 mins so I could hace an idea of how to take it on Monday, they told me I had to stop doing that. Anyways, I didn't say it didn't happen, just that its inefficient on the long turn, so, no idea of what you wanna tell me. |
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vashfanatic
Posts: 3492 Location: Back stateside |
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Sounds like your company got hit with a labor-law violation that they're still smarting from.
And my point is that capitalism is literally always going to end up exploiting workers in the long run, so don't be a capitalist. 
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2476 Location: Germany |
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The amount of TV and web anime being made every year during the last decade+ isn´t just historic, it´s unsustainable. Something had to give and it wasn´t the market this time as I wrongly assumed. That can still happen of course. It´s the release pipeline that fell apart. So yes. Production delays are the new normal now unless we go on a crash diet. Hiring ever more foreign staff members for key positions (I fully support this) won´t really solve this either. Gaming has the same issue and has had that problem for much longer. A lot of that is due to the ever more complex tech being used.
Would all of this have happened without Covid? Probably? Both manga and anime had a real uptick during Peak Covid, likely why Tokyo Revengers exploded, so the production companies have to be hungrier than ever. Blame them. Anime movies are bigger than ever in Japan and ate the live-action industry alive. Someone has to make all of this though and that person and most of the staff have no life outside of slaving away at their tablet and likely sleeping at the very same desk for 6 days a week. They are the real victims. Nier was always destined to get both cours due to being a game ad. 86´s chances of going beyond 2 cours were fully killed by its delays despite the staff giving it their 110%. I ain´t even crazy about it but the finale is one of the best directed eps of anime I ever saw. The absolute shit show of Wonder Egg Priority needs to be studied on the other hand. What even happened there?!? Half the special being a clip show is what really gets me. |
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AQuin1904
Posts: 267 |
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While Wonder Egg Priority certainly had production issues, the writer interviews included with the Blu-rays suggest that those weren't what tanked the ending. The writer seems to have gotten distracted by shiny new ideas halfway through an already dense story and then course corrected heavily to focus on them, despite knowing that there wouldn't be enough time to resolve everything that way.
(I speculate that he might have hit a block trying to come up with conclusions for some of the threads established early on, but nothing he's actually said indicates that. Either way, it sounds like the age-old problem of not working out the story fully enough in preproduction.) |
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residentgrigo
Posts: 2476 Location: Germany |
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No one knows for sure but Boruto might have gone on break due to production issues as it stops mid-arc. Enough chapters to finish that atc fully existed way before the break and there is even a perfect place to place filler after finishing that stretch but nope. Part 2 will return with literally the next ep that would have aired in April no matter what. The manga is also on break but it might be preparing a time skip. Imagine the confusion if the show returns to then do a time skip after like a dozen eps! That has me convinced that something went really wrong.
The Boruto manga is barely anything and the anime is a near travesty but is a show with neatly 300 eps and a film to its name. If such a production runs out of steam then anything can. Taking one half-year break out of the blue, or more, is of course much better than what Nier went through. The producers will have to advertise in 2024 that S1´s ending already aired and that S2 won´t just finish off S1. |
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TheSleepyMonkey
Posts: 929 |
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Several animators who worked on it admitted several times about how bad the schedules for the episodes are, mentioning having to do tons of layouts in very short periods of time. Boruto stopping for production issuee isn't even "theories" at this point, it's pretty much obvious this was the case. |
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PotatoGirl
 Posts: 79 |
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Yeah, I have the art book and it seemed to imply that at some point the writing team started shooting for a 2nd season to wrap everything up. Over-ambition was something that plagued the entire project, and while I like that they tried, I would rather have an okay full story than an unfinished controversial one. |
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Lizuka
 Posts: 269 |
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Yeah, the issue with capitalism, or at the very least unfettered capitalism that prioritizes endless growth above all else, is that eventually everything becomes too big and too profit-driven to continue to sustain itself and collapses. What's happening now has been an unavoidable end consequence of the continually growing market and demand for more and more and more shows each season. |
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Southkaio
Posts: 359 |
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Remember the Tokyo Babylon 2021 project? What happened with it?
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k_ozdragon
Posts: 19 |
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It always boggles the mind that so many people who would call themselves creative or loving their freedom wouldn't enjoy capitalism, and spend way too much time dwelling on it as some boogieman. Because the ability to do what you want, and earn money for it, are inherently bad somehow. A planned economy that takes even more power and freedom away from workers is best, and even better if it stifles creativity and the desire to do better; that is apparently the order of the day. These types of economies have worked so well elsewhere. Just remember that as you type on your cellphones or computers - both products of capitalism.
As for anime delays, they are killing what would be excellent series. Nier should have been a huge hit, and instead many people I know haven't even finished it yet. Same with Uncle From Another World. The studios can keep blaming covid, but the problems run much deeper than that. If this is a case of studios getting greedy, expect the market to correct for that. As we've seen, anime that should have been huge are set to the wayside by delays. So it doesn't even make sense economically either. Also, hooray for the three week delay for Jujutsu Kaisen after just five episodes.... |
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Ebb1993
Posts: 118 |
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I'm just gonna say this. This is EXACTLY one of the many reasons why I think anime is falling apart right now, as well as one of the many reasons why modern anime suck.
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Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1112 |
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My government takes 55% of what I produce to grant me services that either I didn't ask or refuse to use for its low level. Our "Free" healthcare system almost killed my mother 2 times, I have to pay over $2000 in taxes my our cars yearly and our highways are a disgrace, our education system has terrible results and I have no hope of getting the pension I am paying 23% monthly for. |
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