Tsuguhiko Kadokawa Interview
|Anime News Network has published an exclusive interview with Kadokawa Pictures CEO Tsuguhiko Kadokawa on Mr. Kadokawa’s views of the evolving distribution of anime and the impact of the Suzumiya Haruhi franchise on anime viewers.
It’s gratifying to hear Mr. Kadokawa recognize the promotional value of free anime distribution, but it’s also surprising, and I wonder if not misguided, to hear influential figures in the anime business refer to the Suzumiya Haruhi anime franchise as not “otaku” anime and a title with “mainstream” potential.
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>It’s gratifying to hear Mr. Kadokawa recognize the promotional value of free anime distribution
It can’t read that way.
To have it read that way would be abject suicide.
You would basically be out of your gourd to continue to market anime (and the franchises therefrom) as _anime franchises_, at that point.
Instead, you’d be looking at going to the toy companies first, and THEY then get the anime made, and not the other way around.
Free anime distribution has killed anime in the United States, and very nearly killed it off in Japan as well. The content is down, sales are down, and there’s no real hope for anime’s future, on either side of the Pacific.