Ask John: Is Gonzo Losing Its Edge?

Question:
Is Gonzo losing some of its edge? They are still putting out a great amount of high-end anime, but cracks are starting to show. With Hellsing having left Gonzo and Full Metal Panic still over at Kyoto Animation, I have to wonder what happened. It is not entirely abnormal for an OVA series to take 3+ years of production to come out, but it will have been almost an entire year between Yukikaze episodes 4 and 5. I think they are losing a bit of their luster that made them fresh and exciting at the turn of the century, but they are by no means grabbing for straws just yet.

Answer:
I’m very lucky to have visited the Gonzo Digimation studio in Tokyo and personally met many of the Gonzo animators and staff. I know from first hand exposure that the staff of Gonzo are anime fans themselves. Therefore I find it difficult to say anything negative about Gonzo, but as a critic I must be objective. Speaking objectively, I’ve had the impression that Gonzo has stretched itself a bit thin since 2001, and I think that the company adopted a new philosophy in 2003 which has affected the style of several of its recent shows.

In 1999 and 2000 Gonzo produced only two series each year. While Melty Lancer wasn’t a bit hit, Blue Sub No. 6, Vandread and Gatekeepers were successful enough to turn Gonzo into an international sensation virtually overnight. In response to its rapid ascension, Gonzo’s production more than doubled in 2001 with four television shows and the internet anime series I Wish You Were Here. But among those series produced in 2001, Final Fantasy: Unlimited was received mixed reactions and had its planned length abruptly cut in half because Square Enix couldn’t continue funding the anime production due to losses from the commercial failure of the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie. The Real Bout High School television series started out promising, but suffered from atrocious lapses in production quality and writing. Hellsing, while popular, has been subject to endless criticism of its divergence from its manga source. And I Wish You Were Here exhibited impressive animation quality for an internet broadcast series, but has been critically lambasted for its lackluster story.

The consistent theme behind these criticisms applies to most of Gonzo’s work. Gonzo anime is stylish, superficially ideally suited to appeal to hardcore anime fans, and often suffers from shortfalls in production and development. It’s as if Gonzo always has too many works in progress at the same time and can’t devote as much attention to any of them as they deserve or require. Gonzo titles including Kiddy Grade, Gadguard, Bakuretsu Tenshi, Gantz, and Speed Grapher have been promising but haven’t fully lived up to expectations. The Yukikaze series has taken four years to see the release of six episodes.

Considering that Gonzo has grown more successful and internationally prominent each year since its inception, I think it’s quite logical to presume that Gonzo seemingly expanded its target audience in 2003, making a deliberate effort to attract female viewers. In 2003 Gonzo released the DigiGirl Pop! and Kaleidostar television series- both shows seemingly targeted specifically at female viewers. And Gonzo’s 2003 Chrno Crusade and Peacemaker Kurogane series both included bishonen characteristics for female viewers, which had never before appeared in any Gonzo produced anime. While shows like Chrno Crusade, Peacemaker Kurogane, and Trinity Blood may attract more female viewers who previously weren’t interested in Gonzo anime, this new style of more effeminate shows may be distancing some of Gonzo’s long time male fans who long for the days of Gonzo’s pure shonen & seinen anime that weren’t compromised by a desire to appeal to female viewers. Contemporary Gonzo produced shows such as Chrno Crusade, Peacemaker Kurogane, Sunabozu, Trinity Blood, and Bakuretsu Tenshi feel kinder, gentler, and in a sense more commercially compromised than early works like Blue Sub No. 6, Vandread, and Hellsing, which feel more niche oriented and more concerned with appealing to hardcore anime fans than appealing to a massive, mainstream audience.

I don’t want to create the impression that Gonzo is becoming too commercial because it seems as though Gonzo’s goal has always been to fulfill consumer demand. I also don’t wish to suggest that Gonzo no longer produces outstanding anime for hardcore fans. Gankutsuou, Last Exile, and Samurai 7 have been excellent, just to name a few. Basilisk feels like an anime series clearly made exclusively for the hardcore, niche audience of young adult males who were Gonzo’s original target audience. But while Gonzo still creates slick looking, trendy shows, the studio seems to have somewhat over-expanded in its attempts to satisfy everyone. The studio may be attempting to do more than it size should allow. Gonzo is not a monolithic company, but as of this writing Gonzo is simultaneously producing the Speed Grapher, Trinity Blood, Basilisk, G.I. Joe Sigma 6, Black Cat, and Soltyrei television series, the Gin-iro no Kami no Agito motion picture, the Afro Samurai and Saishuheiki Kanojo OAV series, and has managed to also squeeze in production of Sentou Yosei Yukikaze OAV 5 and the opening animation of the Densha Otoko television dorama.

While Gonzo was an innovative, exciting anime studio five years ago, now fans have become accustomed to Gonzo’s distinctive style of anime, and Gonzo itself seems to be less able to devote a lot of time and effort to each of its productions because the studio is working on exponentially more shows now than it was five years ago. I have a great deal of respect for Gonzo and its staff, and I want to enjoy every title that Gonzo releases (although how much I do actually enjoy various Gonzo series varies). But despite my sentimentality, I do have to agree that Gonzo is deserving of tempered respect. When a studio like Gainax seems to release only two or three shows a year, I have to suspect that Gonzo may be a bit overburdened when it has three TV series on Japanese television at the same time and many others in simultaneous production.