Japan’s Animators Say Anime is Dying
The Asahi newspaper reports that Yasuo Yamaguchi, managing director of The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA), recently described Japan’s anime industry as a “bubble that burst several years ago. The marketplace is on a falling curve due to declining birth rates and the recession.” The AJA reports that the number of annual new television anime productions rose from 124 in 2000 to a record high 306 in 2006 before declining to 288 in 2008. A record setting 60 new TV anime premiered in April 2006 while April 2008 saw only 36 new TV series premieres.
According to Japan Video Software Association (JVA) statistics, anime home video sales within Japan that totaled 97.1 billion yen in 2005 declined to 77.9 billion yen in 2008. The declines are blamed on a variety of factors including video piracy and redundancy in the content of contemporary anime that has served to reduce viewer interest in new productions.
Source: Anime News Network
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Basquash! and Higashi no Eden are two recent examples of anime that, at least to me, have brought something new and exciting to audiences.
There will be ups and down in every industry, but as long as creators continue to innovate in their given art form, the market should mature out of any slump in time.
I think it is rather misleading to say that an industry with a 20% drop in sales over three years — especially when the global economy is already on the way down — constitutes that industry “dying”. In decline, certainly, but not dying. People in Japan are buying LESS anime than before, but they are still BUYING anime, which is the important thing (the rough equivalent of about $770 million in yearly revenue isn’t anything to sneeze at).
And the reason fewer anime series are being produced is because of market saturation. There are simply too many series, and when there are too many available, it’s a matter of simple economics that not all of them can succeed (i.e. people only have so much money and time to devote to things). Personally I’d rather have 36 good, quality series to choose from in a given broadcast period than have 60 series that are of dubious quality (and where only a few are actually really good). If 60 series are produced and only a few dozen are successful, that means around 36 productions lost money, which can lead to studio bankruptcies and so on. However, if only 36 series were produced, and two dozen of them are successful, then only 12 productions lose money.
The anime industry is not dying. It is refining itself.
Not really cause in England and America sales are booming so he has to recheck