Ask John: Why Are Successful Anime Not Given Sequels?

Question:
Why do anime series like Trigun that are incredibly successful have only 26 episodes and no sequels or movies when they would easily make money?

Answer:
Because I’m not totally familiar with the Japanese industry, I won’t be able to provide an authoritative response, but I can provide some factors which all influence which anime series do and don’t get sequels or longer broadcast runs. To address this question, we have to keep in mind several things: first the difference between the American and the Japanese markets, and then particular elements within the Japanese industry including sponsorship, target audiences, the animation creators themselves and the nature of the industry.

If you consider which anime series have numerous sequels or a massive number of episodes, most of the examples you’ll come up with are either children’s or family shows, or shoujo anime. Series like Gundam, City Hunter, Tenchi Muyo and Slayers have all had long runs and multiple series, but for every Hokuto no Ken or Ranma 1/2, there are several Sailormoon, Maison Ikkoku, Marmalade Boy and Hime-chan’s Ribbon shoujo series that have 50 or more episodes. Likewise, for every “otaku oriented” show like City Hunter or Gundam there are several family shows like Dragonball, One Piece, Detective Conan and Doraemon that have many, many episodes. This is largely accounted for by the demographic of anime viewers in Japan. Shoujo anime and “family” anime is simply more popular in Japan than “otaku oriented” anime. Using the current (June 2001) issue of Newtype magazine as a reference, the most popular “otaku” anime programs on air in Japan right now, including Noir, Argent Soma, and Project Arms average viewer percentages in the 1.2 up to 3.2. Popular family and shoujo series including Digimon 02, Pokemon, Doraemon, One Piece, and Sazae-chan have viewer percentages ranging from 10.0 up to 23.7. You can see from this that “popular” anime series like Trigun manage only a third or fewer viewers than shoujo and “family” anime programs capture. Even in America, we can see examples of this trend. While Escaflowne was canceled for poor ratings, “family” shows like Cardcaptors, Dragonball Z and Pokemon continue to earn record breaking Neilsen ratings in America. With these type of percentages, it’s simply not nearly as profitable for Japanese studios to produce sequels to Cowboy Bebop and Trigun as it is for them to simply make more episodes of One Piece or Crayon Shin-chan.

Because most anime series that may be in contention for more episodes or sequels are television series, we have to remember that Japan is a very different market than the US. In the US, “popular” series are the home video releases like Evangelion, Trigun, Tenchi Muyo, Ranma and Escaflowne which sell to die-hard anime fans. In Japan, these shows are also popular with die-hard otaku, but may not appeal to the mainstream Japanese television viewers necessary to give a show lasting support.

Furthermore, it’s also necessary to consider the Japanese industry when considering what anime gets produced. Anime is a contemporary art form, and taken very seriously in Japan, but at the same time it’s still a commercial product produced with the money paid by sponsors that buy advertising time on television. Food and car companies that commonly run commercials during anime broadcasts won’t necessarily want to see the same series run for a year or more. Different series may bring different, new viewers that will see the sponsors’ TV commercials. And furthermore, long series can sometimes become stale and loose their core viewers. For example, by its fifth year, the Japanese ratings for Sailormoon had declined to the point that Toei decided to conclude Sailormoon because most of the show’s audience had quit watching. Unlike the American market, in which anime fans tend to develop strong emotional attachments to particular anime series, the Japanese market is very much a thing of fads and the latest craze. For most Japanese anime fans, a series that’s a year old may as well be ancient history.

And anime creators may also get tired of working on the same show week after week. There’s immense pressure in the Japanese industry to have new episodes ready for each week, and only so many new episodes can be produced in advance within a set budget, so it’s not impossible for Japanese animators to simply decide that 26 weeks is long enough to spend working with a particular set of characters and a single story before wanting to try something different. Furthermore, a manga may go on for years because it only requires a small number of people to create and publish. An anime requires dozens of people to produce, so considering the cost of making anime, it may be a wiser decision to experiment with a new series every 3 months instead of continuing to produce more of the same series because there’s no telling when the next series on the drawing board may be the next breakthrough, mega-successful hit.

As Western anime fans, we should always be mindful that we’re lucky to be seeing any anime at all. Anime isn’t made for Westerners, and the Japanese industry typically doesn’t actively try to promote anime outside of Japan, so rather than wish that there was more of a particular series, we should be happy to have what we do. Simply put, series do or don’t get sequels based on their popularity and success in Japan, which may be very different from the response a show gets in America.