Manufactured Money Maker

Something that has been on my mind for quite a bit is the focus on high production cost and/or quality in anime for some people; this is almost to the point where there is a specific type of person, who doesn't want anything that, in their eyes, isn't of the highest caliber in animation. Now, I wouldn't say that this a bad thing, to expect the best out of company, but when its the only thing you look for, that is something that bothers me the most.

When it comes down to issues like this, I wonder if people don't realize that anime is more than just animation -- or even looking pretty. Sure that's one of the main draws to a visual medium, but I don't see people refusing to watch a movie if it's cinematography isn't up to snuff. So when it comes down to making a compelling anime, there are several different factors that need to work well together, and that is the difficult part of adapting, or even just making a good anime. Whether we are being introduced to a character who is conveyed well in their new animated form, or a world that attempts to suck you in and not let go, the anime needs to marry sight AND sound together to be believable.

The one mistakes that many companies fall for, even outside the anime industry, is throwing more money at a problem thinking it will make it solved. Although money does help, it isn't going to solve the problem considering that not everyone working on such big projects are motivated by money; so forcing progress will most likely make the product end up feeling more of a contrived messed, rather than a labor of love. This is where my first pain point comes in with the anime Kyoukai no Kanata.

More Money, Less Worry

Kyoukai no Kanata was one of the more hyped anime coming out of this fall season -- right under Kill La Kill, which has its own problems as well, but I'm going into detail in this post. I'm not one that gets caught up in hype, but I will give an anime a chance if it has enough noise coming from it; and most of that noise was more to do with the studio, Kyoto Animation, rather than the anime itself. But what's wrong with hype coming from a successful studio? Well, as someone that dropped Kyoukai no Kanata on the third episode, I've noticed there is a significant amount of people that will still watch the series because of the studio, or it looks pretty -- and they might not even find it that interesting.

This is the problem I have more with people than the companies that produce these type of anime; KyoAni has come up with a formula for their products that will be successful as long as it is visually appealing. So they have no real reason to take risks as long as the copious stacks of money get injected straight into that anime. Basically what I'm getting at is that we end up with bland everything except art and animation, yet people throw there money at it like it is the best thing ever. Some people very well might like Kyoukai no Kanata, but for me it felt uninteresting even though I was glad KyoAni did something different for a change -- but it was basically injected onto their old model.

On a grander scale, I wondered why there is this yearning for higher production cost; there might be some merit to drawing parallels with the video game industry. Since both anime and videos games are often misunderstood to much older types of media, when it comes to trying to validating themselves to other people, it is almost like they need to spend "serious money" in order to be taken seriously. These types of reaction are quite juvenile, in the sense that they are just imitating what their parents are doing, and trying to capture similar audiences. This is where critique and risk taking comes in handy to help the industry grow and instead of "steal" an audience, you work toward build your own.

Change is Scary

It is easy for me to say, rather than spend more money on production, anime should be taking more risks, but sales lose is still a deterring factor for most companies. So when one studio tries something new, I try to support it as long as the results are marginally entertaining; and with the recent use of full CG being bashing on Arpeggio of Blue Steel and a while back with rotoscoping for Aku no Hana, it is clear that not that many people like change in anime.

There is a legitimate argument to be made about CG or rotoscoping not being appealing to some -- and I'm not going to try to argue over subjective opinions -- but keep in mind that this attitude does stifle progress. If the mentality of animation style can't be changed, we might still have anime that looks like where it was derived from -- which is Disney -- or fully hand painted scenes still as standard. I'm not going to go into too much detail what I've said already, being there are two separate posts about this -- Risky Business and Too Different to Care. However, what I will say is, even if change can be scary, it shouldn't hinder you from doing common things, like going outside the norm -- or in the case of anime, experiment with animation styles.

Broke

In case of production cost, many areas of anime can benefit from experimenting in several different factors. There is no doubt that there will be a rough start to this kind of transition, but not everyone has to actually do it. Just a handful of studios need to make the initial push and fine tune this type of craft. High cost or big production can only get you so far before you hit a wall and your bubble will bust.

And for the people that focus so hard on whether a curtain anime has a high production backing, you might want to reassess the things you are highlighting. I might not be some big time authority on the subject, but there are more important thing to hold a high standard for -- like story, world, or overarching feeling -- that might makes things a bit less cutesy and maybe more enjoyable.