Modern anime and the industries that shape its creation and distribution have been on a similar trajectory to how video games have been since around 2020, the height of the Covid pandemic, when everyone was stuck at home with nothing better to do than work through their backlog of games (or in this case, shows). More and more people bought games or subscriptions to streaming services to watch anime, and the industry quickly expanded to meet demand—but then when restrictions were lifted and people returned to their offices or schools, both industries struggled to adapt again.
Like video games, which have seen record layoffs this year, which many see as a result of massive expansion in 2020, anime has become a victim of its own success. Crunch, the production of Remakes that may or may not justify their existence, long-promised titles that see the light of dayand online discourse about eye-catching animation against persuasive writing have thrown the medium into disarray in recent years. While in many ways too much of a good thing is still a good thing, anime is experiencing a similar boom to the gaming industry. Whether it will follow a similar path is unclear, but one thing we do know is that it is not sustainable.
The problems of the anime industry
As with gaming, mismanagement in anime studios all too often leads to bottlenecks that force animators to rush a project that could have used more time in the proverbial development oven. Look no further than respected studios like Mappa. Its meteoric rise to a fan-favorite studio with acclaimed shows like Jujutsu Kaisen and the last season of Attack on Titan coincided with the studio’s reputation for enabling crunch while subsequently cancelling long-promised projects. A phenomenon that can be traced back to Naughty Dog and its protracted cancellation of The Last of Us 2 Online multiplayer content after years of development.
Anime has the distinct advantage of having a flood of seasonal content consisting of adaptations of thriving weekly manga series, quickly spun into twelve 20-minute anime episodes. This feedback loop has kept both industries healthy for years, but it has also shown signs of instability as animators and manga authors have struggled under the demand for Produce more content weekly.
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In the best case, manga authors and animators longer breaks for one’s own healthIn the worst case, they have to produce immature episodes to meet the seemingly limitless demands of their consumersAnd in an emergency, the solution to the problem of not being able to adapt new series is to remake old series.
As with gaming, it has become a bit too comfortable in contemporary anime to indulge in nostalgia with anime remakes like Spice and Wolf, Fruit basket, Urusei Yatsura, Ranma ½, The Rose of VersaillesAnd Magic Knight Rayearth to name just a few. While some remakes (like the Neon Genesis Evangelion Rebuilding films) justify their existence by exploring alternative narrative beats of the source material à la Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy, others like Netflix and Wit Studio’s anime remake for A piece—aptly titled “The One Piece“ – make the fans think.
When asked why they would remake an ongoing anime that is available on most streaming services and in its own live-action series, George Wada, president of Wit Studio, gave an answer not dissimilar to Capcom’s, which justified a remake of Resident Evil 4 for the umpteenth time: today’s technological advances coupled with the claim that The original format of the anime (4:3 format) is off-putting for new viewersThe common refrain that remakes are necessary simply because the original productions are old is exactly the kind of unimaginative justification that the games industry uses The Last of Us 2 Remake shortly after the release of the original.
The anime monopoly problem
And just like in the modern gaming landscape, Monopoly has found its way into the anime industry. The acquisition by Microsoft and the recent mass layoffs of Activision Blizzard employees points to the problems that arise when one company devours another. The anime version of this is Crunchyroll, the pirate website that became Sony’s own media conglomerate. In the course of its own big-money acquisition of Competitor Funimation at the beginning of the yearFans have confronted the loss of their digitally acquired anime, Closing digital shop windowsand price increases.
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This becomes particularly egregious when you consider that for animation, as for games, there are only four major streaming services: Crunchyroll, Hidive, Netflix, and Hulu. While each has its own merits in terms of presentation and cost, these services often fail to promote a show properly, or they remain in a delayed release schedule like Disney-exclusive anime. It is no wonder that manga and anime fans are so vocal about piracy rather than paying for a service that They throw their heads in the black at every opportunity.
Not everything is doom and gloom for anime. Similar to SuperGiant Games’ Hades revolutionized the roguelike genre, the last anime year has seen a steady stream of smash hits like Freeze: Beyond Journeys End And Tasty in the Dungeon Saving the fantasy genre from the monotony of unimaginative, sentence-long isekai fantasy shows. Their secret? Aside from being written by women, a rarity in a male-dominated field, both series dare to go against the grain by not copying and pasting tried-and-tested anime formulas.
Even if not all of the above points clearly mean the downfall of the Roman Empire for anime as we know it, there are structural parallels to the state of gaming, which undoubtedly in disarray after layoffs is worrying. Hopefully anime can turn things around and focus more on quality rather than quantity.
