Anime just needs a couple thousand highly loyal fans to keep them afloat

>Anime just needs a couple thousand highly loyal fans to keep them afloat
>Cartoons can bring in half a million or more ratings and still be considered failures

What is Japan doing to cause this and why haven't some American studios followed suit?

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janica.jp
en.rocketnews24.com/2017/05/29/studio-ghibli-criticised-for-paying-low-salary-to-animators/
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merchandising?

no unions is probably the biggest point, easy to make a profit when your employees get paid slave wages

Anime get those fans by starting out as a manga. Its a bit like Hollywood making endless film adaptations and remakes because they know that at a minimum the existing fan base will turn up to the cinemas.

>What keeps most cartoons profitable is the toys they sell.
But they haven't been selling for a long time now. The only thing that sells are app games and micro-purchases, but it seems like it takes a much more considerable amount of effort to plan your cartoon's marketing plan alongside also making a mobile game, which requires at least a small team of developers vs. slave factory workers.

Various reasons. One, some anime are mostly commercials for things that really bring in the money like games or toys (Pokemon, Yokai Watch) or the manga (most Shonen Jump) or even movies (Kaiji S1 and S2 only got made because there were movies coming out)
Also anime targets whales like microtransaction filled phone games. If you want to get a BR of your favorite anime as soon as it comes out that 6500 yen for just 3 episodes. Not to mention the merch, games, even concerts. So the 1% of the obsessive fans will keep the series afloat by buying overpriced shit.

this not to mention a much smaller population

Different business models. Daytime anime on the other hand relies on viewers and possibly merchandising (if it's something like Pretty Cure), disc sales are irrelevant. I am not sure how important manga sales are. Surely the likes of One Piece and Rumiko Takahashi don't need the advertisement. They get daytime anime adaptations in the first place because of how popular they are.

pretty much makes sense (bigger populations means one country's standard for success is a fail in another).

also isn't a generation thing happening over there (less kids being born in comparison to the US)?

age gap and population shortage for a few years now possibly even decades although I hear it may be getting better

like that one user said manga and anime artists/creators are paid pennies and anime companies still stuggle to survive. in america you have to pay people real money and cant overwork them but in japan no one gives a shit

thats why anime "looks" better they work harder period but arent rewarded for it

In America you outsource most of your work to South Korea and then spend exorbitant amounts of money anyway.

Manga artists make more money the more successful they are, it's not like they should be paid a middle class salary just for writing manga.

>In America you outsource most of your work to South Korea and then spend exorbitant amounts of money anyway.

at least the animation wont look terrible like it would if it were made by unionized americans

And far as the late night model is concerned an anime can make money from many different things, like: sales of the original work, manga adaptations, BDs/DVDs, various music CDs, various merchandise, mobile games, cosplay outfits, artbooks, live events, collaborations with stores and businesses, theme cafes, and even tourism. There are tons of revenue sources. And there is a group of companies that split the costs of producing the anime and each bring in some specific expertise to the committee, like music.

Low production costs and short runtimes also help.

And another thing is that Tokyo is enormous and has fast and convinient trains to it from nearby areas so you can just center everything or most things in Tokyo.

How the fuck do weebs (and furries) have so much money to blow on merch in the first place? I have to wait for Steam sales every time I want a new game because I can't afford most of them at full price.

Rich parents.

source: my own life.

If you don't go out drinking, don't smoke, don't have a girlfriend, don't have a car, don't save for the future, and spend almost all your disposable income on your hobby, you can afford quite a lot.

Ding ding ding, we have a wiener!

Often times the production committees for anime are the merchandisers themselves. It all comes down to selling wares. Put the series out on expensive 2-episode-per-disc home video, make some 1/8 statues, and partner with GSC or Bandai, and you're set.

I have job nowdays so i can buy anime figurines and blu rays

I've never heard of a merchandising company being the lead member of a production committee unless it's something like Gundam. They don't even seem to be on committees very often. Most of the merchandise for anime comes from a mishmash of third parties, and the more popular the anime gets the more manufacturers want to get involved.

Few anime have scale figures ready to go as the series is airing. Those come later.

We did this back in the 80s and everyone hated it, the less said about it the better.
Uhhh...

janica.jp
Cartoons only need ratings to sell as if a show takes $300,000 to make and gets 1 million views it makes $1,000,000 on it's broadcast when Japan airs most of it's shows so late due to cheap time slots they have to rely on DVD/BD sales due to airing on a time slot most people are asleap.
People are getting sick of the gatcha crap however, it's why the Switch is doing so well.
Yoshio Sakamoto has said more then once that Pokemon is not a 22+ minute ad.

Also people are getting sick of gatcha as it's why the Switch is doing so well.
No, otaku shows pay more, thats it, also not all studios/publishers pay like shit.

Figure makers are hesitant to commit to something without knowing if it's going to be popular. Mass producing figures isn't cheap. For example, the original series Re:Creators has great potential on paper but there are currently no figures up for pre-order, just cheaper stuff.

Sorry about the delete. If people have shown interest the basis behind a show like a game, prior season, or even a porno (those can overlap); isn't it worth the risk to start at least designs if not small production and hold them to tease fans and drive up price?

I remember one of Big O's directors admitting (this may have been on a DVD extra) that The Big O was originally conceived as a quick way to sell toys and that they didn't start with the intention of making a serious show.

>Yoshio Sakamoto has said more then once that Pokemon is not a 22+ minute ad.

Well then, perhaps he should stick to commenting on series he's actually involved with, like Metroid and Rhythm Heaven.

>We did this back in the 80s and everyone hated it, the less said about it the better.

the quality of of product was shit though

Also Wario Land.

It's time for another one.
Does not matter, overly long ads are a bad thing in the industry.

>Does not matter, overly long ads are a bad thing in the industry.
Angry Birds, LEGO Movie, and Trolls managed to do it pretty successfully. Even Cars isn't that bad.

they dont sell body pillow cases with naked kim possibles on it.

Does not matter, He-Man, Transformers and G.I Joe were also pretty successfully as well and look what happen there.

If there's no prior material except manga or a light novel then there's usually no figures made in advance.

>drive up price
How? The price is what it is.

The Big O isn't a children's series and thus didn't sell toys, and even when it comes to children's shows there's no contradiction between selling toys and making a serious effort. If you don't make a serious effort then why would anyone be interested in what you're selling?

Bodypillows are a meme. They are not as popular as people make them out to be.

japan doesn't pay their employees

Any job + no bills = Shit ton of disposable income

I held a minimum wage job for 9 months and had enough to buy $3,500 in commissions and still have enough money to live under my parent's house with no bills comfortably. Of course that'd be fucking stupid to do, but I had the option and I'm sure other anons out there would be more than happy to take it

>Does not matter, overly long ads are a bad thing in the industry.
Agreed, but telling that to streaming services, movies, legal copies of media, and even games is impossible. It should be completely fucking illegal to force me to watch content I didn't pay for.

And am I insane or is Sup Forums cutting out random words? Just random conjunctions and pronouns are not showing up?

You lot will probably laugh at me for saying this but : Japan is a smaller country. With a lower population to garner ratings from it's easier to see how "a couple thousand highly loyal fans" would be enough to see something as a hit compared to America.

fuck off Sup Forums

There's no feasible distribution in America. Companies are just doing their jobs; Cartoon Network for kids, Adult Swim for stoners, Disney for the lowest common denominator. There's no market for the Thousand True Fans theory.

Trolls and Lego are toys that ended up as movies. Cars is a movie that ended up as a vehicle (lul) for toys.

Yes they do, not everyone pays like shit.

Late night anime isn't based on TV ratings. It makes its money through other means.

most of them do

en.rocketnews24.com/2017/05/29/studio-ghibli-criticised-for-paying-low-salary-to-animators/

I don't think anyone will laugh, not only is Japan smaller, but it's much more homologous. Whereas our Hollywood is constantly going, "We need to tap into this market, and we need to appeal to this group, and we need to have a person of color to attract the black audience", Japan doesn't really have that problem. Not in the same regard, at least.

For example, it's way easier to appeal to a group of 20 Christians about Jesus than it is to appeal to a group of 100 people who all have different religions with the same method.

Please don't start this shit. Argument over other peoples' culture is pointless.

And it's been a decade but I know some companies compensated with other things like housing.

>janica.jp

Janica isn't a union, it helps people find jobs and training.

Actually the Japanese market is full of niches. Late night anime itself is a niche.

Late-night anime shows are merchandise shit for dumb obsessive teenagers and young adults, aka otaku. Most of the late-night anime shows are also nothing more but mass-produced adaptation of some light novel or a manga. Sometimes, it's a promotion for some mobile game desperately trying to gain one or two million more players before it pulls the plug.

The real money makers in Japan are morning anime shows for children and families, just like in the rest of the world. And those shows also rely on good ratings, just like cartoons do in America and Europe.

So, there's teenage crap vs. children shows. Admitting to watching teenage crap is a shameful thing to do in Japan.

who's arguing over culture?

the article is from 2017 it's not a decade old

By having a jab that pay's more than $8.50 a hour and saving your money cause you have a/some fig(s) pre-ordered like pic related

Gona put it next to my Black and White Nightwing Statue

No, maily the lower end ones, higher end ones rarely go through with this.

Most of the big shots pay at least 2000 yen a hour.
>94886956
Yes, it is, it was founded so that animators get better pay.

>Anime just needs a couple thousand highly loyal fans to keep them afloat
False, manga can stay afloat with a low number of followers, anime however won't unless the average money those thousand fans spend in the franchise is in the thousands of dollars.
Abandon all hope of a second season for a series that doesn't sell above 9k BDs

>Cartoons can bring in half a million or more ratings and still be considered failures
Because just as in anime, cartoon ratings don't mean absolute shit unless kids are buying merch of the cartoon.

>Late-night anime shows are merchandise shit for dumb obsessive teenagers and young adults, aka otaku.
Merchandising is not the point, it's a by-product. People only buy merchandise if they like the show. Selling merchandise is just a way of making money just a like a lot of other things. Westerners have an irrational fear of merchandise.

Teenagers are a bogeyman. I'm not sure the concept even exists in Japan.

>Most of the late-night anime shows are also nothing more but mass-produced adaptation of some light novel or a manga
Anime is not mass produced and cannot be mass produced, and it doesn't tell you anything about a show's quality that it's adapted from something.

>Sometimes, it's a promotion for some mobile game desperately trying to gain one or two million more players before it pulls the plug.
There have been many fine shows based on or accompanied by a mobile game.

>The real money makers in Japan are morning anime shows for children and families, just like in the rest of the world.
I doubt that's the case.

>Admitting to watching teenage crap is a shameful thing to do in Japan.
One Piece is proportionally about as popular in Japan as Game of Thrones is in the US. It's based on a shounen manga.

One Piece is not teenage crap. It's children crap, aka it makes money.

The threshold for a second season is somewhere in the 3,000-4,000 range. It can be even less than that.

The target audience of shounen manga extends from childhood to the late teens. One Piece is not a children's show the way something like Pokemon is.

Teenagers are not a bogeyman, they exist.

Also One Piece lacks the adult fan base GOT has, if you want Japanese GOT try Monster Hunter.

Teenagers are a social construct. The numbers 13-19 end in -teen, so people in that age range are "teenagers." It doesn't actually mean anything, it's totally arbitrary. 've never seen any indication that the concept of a teenager exists there.

>Also One Piece lacks the adult fan base GOT has
It has an adult fanbase.

>The threshold for a second season is somewhere in the 3,000-4,000 range. It can be even less than that.
Not for an original anime show, which is what most people care about.

>Not knowing about I Was A Teenaged Stimpy.

Also when yes One Piece does have a adult market it's only a small amout of it.

Most people care about whatever is good, whether it's original or not.

Japan is not America. Adults watch animation there.

>Anime is not mass produced and cannot be mass produced
Making 50 or more shows each season is proof enough for it being mass produced. Those adaptions are all quite samey anyway.

So do adults in the States.

That is not mass production. The anime industry is large and is able to produce many shows. Mass production is something like making iPhones or plastic buckets.

There are samey things in all media, but anime is the only one among them that is held to such a high standard that no repetition is allowed.

Then what was your argument supposed to be?

TBA, it drifted.

In the meantime here is some notes about female characters in anime and cartoons.

Forgot picture.

Setting aside cost and merchandising, the big factor is that in the West the distributor is also the producer. In the mind of Disney or Nickelodeon, a show can be both profitable and a failure if they could have spent that money on something that was even more profitable.

Western business is top down, Japan is bottom up.

Otaku shit produced by overworked, constantly stressed out and easily replaced otaku for an otaku audience that is willing to throw their money at whatever flashes in front of the screen.
It's perfect. The best part is, those otaku are willing to work for shit pay, and are too autistic to do anything about their bad situation.

Here's hoping that the situation remains like this, so that the West continues to get cheap access to otaku shit as well.

This image is pushing a false equivalence. Those anime aren't just comedies and they have continuous storylines. They're made in a way significantly different from how children's animation is made in the US. Sailor Moon is also targeting an audience a little older than Precure. Not sure about CCS.

We can fix this, back in the 60s Japanese animators were suffering thought the same thing but everything was fixed when Japan starting to take American outsourcing jobs as the production layout, pay and budgets were much better then what the Japanese studios were doing locally.

pelleas.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9678#p9678

No it's true, CCS had a running gag with Tomoyo but the lolicon community killed it just like what happen with Ojamajo Doremi.

The group of people Westerners refer to as "otaku" do not actually exist.

No, Japan is not going to go back to that and there's no reason why they should.

I didn't say they don't have humor, and the "lolicon community" is not capable of killing anything.

>"Inbetween is not something that deserves to be paid"
That was a good one.
The anime industry there ought to start a propaganda program to tell its retarded work force that working on inbetweens is actually privilege that they ought to pay for.
Like at least 500 yen per cuts.
That way, profits can be even further optimized.
There will be enough retards there who will do it willingly.

Yes, they do.

>not willing to take 8 to 12 months per 22 minute episode rather then the stander 3 to 5 weeks most anime takes to make.
>not willing to spend millions on just 1 episode to make it as beautiful as possible.
>not willing to get 10 times the amount of money per week/month/year compared to what you get on local work.

Why will you say no to that?

>and the "lolicon community" is not capable of killing anything.
Explain CCS & Doremi then, they were canceled solely because of the lolicon community.

More like 1200 yen a hour.

Even if all of that really happened--which is really unlikely--people would not want to be contractors for some boring American shows. Also, anime episodes aren't made in a few weeks.

>Explain CCS & Doremi then, they were canceled solely because of the lolicon community.
Neither of them were cancelled, and it makes no difference what the doujinshi community is up to. People make pornographic doujinshi and art of Pretty Cure and that series just keeps going and going.

That sounds reasonable. The studios could sell it as an animation training course.
That way, they get new workers who actually finance the show as well, but won't get anything in return.
They also ought to start renting the cheap apartments they normally provide for their workers out to make even more money. Evict the old workers, and replace them with fresh ones. Perhaps develop some app like airbnb for people who want to work on anime.

Sell it as a lifestyle experience. That way, they won't even have to deal with whatever workplace law they still pretend to follow. They won't even be regarded as workers, but as course participants.

They do that for anime as well. It must suck to be a Korean animator, always being made to do the busy work for foreign animation, but almost never making anything of your own.

>They do that for anime as well.
No, they don't. This is at best a myth and at worst anti-anime propaganda.

>The group of people Westerners refer to as "otaku" do not actually exist.

You don't know shit about Japanese culture, do you?

Because anime has way lower budgets for one

The studios get their money from production committees. The production committees are more at fault than the studios.

My entire point was that you don't know anything about the real Japan. Hence the "otaku" construct.

You would be amazed just how much money you can save if you give up booze

Shows that take 2 to 3 months like Dennou Coil and Space Dandy are not the norm, most like One Piece and Pokemon only take 3 to 5 weeks to make.

Japan will fix it, this is not just ditching the animation overseas, it's about team work and helping each other out.

>CCS & Doremi...
Yes they were, both Clamp & Madhouse were disturbed with the amount of porn CCS was getting so they killed it off.

Doremi was even worse, otherwise it might still be airing with new episodes today like One Piece.

As for PreCure, they replace the cast almost every year so that people don't get too attached to the characters when they get replaced because of the porn.

Shows have several episodes in production concurrently.

>Japan will fix it
They aren't going to be fixing it by becoming South Korea 2.0.

>Yes they were, both Clamp & Madhouse were disturbed with the amount of porn CCS was getting so they killed it off.
Doujinshi events have been around since the 1970s. Corporations have official presences at Comiket. Many artists get started by publishing doujinshi... such as Clamp.

People are making porn of Pokemon, Pretty Cure and Aikatsu right now. It's not going to make the producers shut down everything. And if they are really against it they can forbid doujinshi based on those properties from being published.

Pretty Cure reinventing itself with every season has nothing to do with doujinshi.

>Doremi was even worse, otherwise it might still be airing with new episodes today like One Piece.
Eh, that one feels like a stretch. Doremi was about Doremi and friends doing cute witch things in her elementary school years. I don't think they could eternally stretch it for years until now without ruining it. The nice thing about Doremi was that it had something like a continuity and that time went on.
I wouldn't have wanted it to be eternally stuck in some undefined time bubble like Detective Conan.

>The studios get their money from production committees. The production committees are more at fault than the studios.
No they're not. They're very hands-off and just let the studio bosses they work together with deal with all that pesky shit on their own. It's not the production committee's job to tell a studio how to exploit the dumbasses who work there. That one's all the studio management staff's responsibility.

Anime is cheaper and anime studios are much more flexible and adaptable than their western counterparts. In the west studios are highly specialized and tend to do only one thing. In America we have animation studios who only make movies, who only do TV shows, and dozens of studios that only do specialized subcontract work on big budget films. But in Japan a single studio can and will do all of those things. The same anime studio will make a movie, a TV show, and do subcontract work for other studios, for film companies, or even for foreign interests. It's pretty rare to see an American animation studio, the same staff, have that kind of versatility.

Also helps that these scrappy little Japanese studios have pretty low overhead and it's fairly easy for newcomers to the industry to create one. New studios show up all the time in Japan, and decrepit ones are constantly going bankrupt too. There's a lot of turnover. Only a handful of venerable studios manage to remain throughout the years, but even they are not totally immutable. They've changed hands many times, have been bought out, sold-out, and re-branded.

The production committee hires the studio and pays them to make the anime. They provide the budget for the anime, which the studio uses to pay the workers.

You also seem to be perceiving studio owners as some kind outsiders with no interest in anime who are just there to exploit people.

Shiro Bako is one of the exceptions, not the rule, anyway.

They will have say on this.

Yea, but by the late 90s it took a like of it's own.

I already explain about PreCure and Pokemon is a long story but in short...

>Misty was replaced due to in show plot points, she found a bike and left.
>May was replaced because of all of the porn she was getting, same with Serena.
>Dawn was replaced because everyone hated her, same with Iris.

As for Aikatsu, Ichigo grew up, thats it.

PreCure's replacing cast may not have anything with the SFW doujin but it's porn does.
The thing is that by season 5 the girls would of been 13 and the show would of been about Doremi and her friends doing cute witch things in middle school, by now the girls would of been adult women.

It's not the schedule for Shirobako, it's a fictional sample schedule meant to illustrate what a production schedule looks like. Episodes are produced concurrently--that was the point. They aren't made in a few weeks.

>Yea, but by the late 90s it took a like of it's own.
It wasn't any different from before, or now. Clamp themselves published porn apparently. You may think it's some crime against humanity but it isn't anything special in Japan.

The rest of your post is pure delusion. You are projecting your issues on other people.

Yes, it is.

Yes but they didn't produce lolicon/shotacon is the thing, everyone was at least 18 years old in their pornos.

I said would of.

>Yoshio Sakamoto has said more then once that Pokemon is not a 22+ minute ad.
>Believing the wordsof the most pathetic hack at Nintendo
The anime is a big ad for the games, there is a reason as of why it was made and why they will never replace Ash and Pikachu

Try actually reading the image. It's a FICTIONAL schedule. For Musashino Animation, the fictional studio in Shirobako. Do you even know what Shirobako is?

>Yes but they didn't produce lolicon/shotacon is the thing, everyone was at least 18 years old in their pornos.
Yes, they did produce loli and shota, and nobody gave a fuck about characters being under 18. That doesn't mean anything in Japan.

The producers make use of their right to offer the contract to whomever demands the least and offers a small measure of reliability.
If the bidding studio claims that it can make a miracle for shit pay, then that's their end of the bargain to uphold.
All the QUALITY and recap episodes that are a result of overworked animators who can't even afford to go on a holiday to relax a little bit, with some directors even dying from working on several projects at once and not getting enough sleep is the studio's problem, not that of the producers.

They dindu nuffing wrong.

Studios have nothing to gain from driving down contracting fees, and a studio doesn't necessarily get contracted through a bidding contest. There are many ways for a production to get off the ground.

No it is not, Yoshio Sakamoto said so.
Link to the doujins they made.

They made them in the 80s, it's doubtful they've ever been scanned.

Then how do you know they did loli & shota then?

>Before they began creating original work, the group produced dōjinshi of Captain Tsubasa, and yaoi dōjinshi of Saint Seiya.

Most anime nowadays is not adapted from a manga. Granted, there's several adapted from light novels, but most of the time the anime is meant to promote and bring readers to tje LN, not the other way around.
Most really successful anime nowadays are original, and spawn multimedia franchises that keep them afloat.

But thats over the age of 12, and those women left before Clamp started doing original IPs.

Captain Tsubasa starts when the protag is 11 and I never Clamp specifically made shota.

>those women left before Clamp started doing original IPs
The whole group was a doujinshi group.

You are just rationalizing something that isn't anything special in Japan. A lot of people make pornographic doujinshi before becoming professionals. Some even continue making it as professionals.

>And am I insane or is Sup Forums cutting out random words?
if you're phone posting or laptop posting leaning on your phone/laptop the wrong way would cause it to cut out words. touchpads/screens can be finicky. happens to me if I even put my hand down NEAR my touchpad.

Ok, thanks for the heads up.

Clamp started out with 11 people, when it moved into original content only 4 people stood with the company.