Ask John: Why Don’t Studios Produce More Anime Based on Older Titles?

Question:
I’m aware that investing into an original anime carries great deal of risk for anime studios, and that it’s much safer to adapt exiting material because there’s an established fanbase that they can appeal to. However they almost always adapt currently running titles from manga and light novels, with exceptions of games and visual novels.

I know that it makes sense to adapt currently serializing material while fans are still following them, but there’s obvious fact about the source materials still being serialized; sooner or later studios will catch up to the latest releases and not have enough (or no more) material to adapt. Once this happens, studios will either have to end the anime and wait for new material to come out, or continue with filler materials (Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece anime are prime examples of this). For the former, there’s no telling of how long it could take before they can continue. A long enough delay could end up with fans losing interest and drift a different title (and sequels being subsequently not made). Latter, filler material can retain fans but risk disappointing them if fillers aren’t done good.

But there are plenty of finished materials that they could go after. They’ve done that with games and visual novels (and there are literally countless number of them that haven’t been adapted into anime), but there are also finished manga and light novels that haven’t been adapted into anime. Cage of Eden, Hoshi no Samidare, and Psyren are just few manga titles that have had concluded over the past decade, but have not been animated. There are many more finished light novels too. I’m aware that a good number of them may not be practical for adaption for various reasons, but the it doesn’t change the fact that [there] are many completed titles that could be adapted.

So with that in mind, why aren’t studios adapting more source materials that have finished? If studios adapted finished materials, fans won’t have to dread original or open-ended endings, or be forced to wait for next seasons (that might not materialize) to properly conclude the show.

Answer:
Amateur anime fans from outside the industry naturally perceive anime production from a perspective of common sense. We see possibility and make logical assumptions. The anime production industry, however, is a corporate structure that perceives anime in terms of losses and gains, spreadsheets, and quarterly profit reports. Average animators and the production studios that actually make anime are caught in the middle, pulled in opposite directions by the demands of fans and producers.

In most cases, anime production houses have only a small say in what titles they animate. Anime studios are workhouses, small factories that produce animation. Publishers, game developers, distributors, and other producers examine the titles that they distribute and decide which ones should receive an extra marketing push, which current titles would experience a surge in sales inspired by an influx of new fans introduced to the title by an anime adaptation. Then these producers – massive publishing entities like Kadokawa and ASCII Media Works – commission an anime studio to produce the anime adaptation. It’s the production committee that brings the project idea to the studio and pays the studio to make the anime, not the studio itself that decides which titles to animate. Certainly, fans may be aware of certain older manga titles or games that would be ideal for anime adaptation. In rare instances very powerful and influential animators may decide independently to adapt older works, like Studio Ghibli adapting decades-old European novels. But most small anime studios don’t have the money or the means to raise investment funds to produce whatever anime they’d like to. They draw the anime that they’re paid to produce. Production committees that commission anime productions have nothing to gain from commissioning the adaptation of an older completed title that’s already exhausted the majority of its profit-generating potential. Producers see anime as extended advertisements for their current goods. No one makes commercials for products that aren’t trendy anymore. Producers want to invest money into promoting the titles they’re currently working with, not the titles that they finished dealing with years ago.

Just like corporate America, the Japanese anime production industry is focused on today and immediate profits, not the titles of yesterday or the uncertain potential of the distant future. TV anime adaptations of ongoing shounen manga have been forced to occasionally utilize “filler” episodes since the early 1980s and TV shows including Hokuto no Ken, Dragon Ball, and St. Seiya. If Japanese fans haven’t abandoned popular anime TV series due to frustration over “filler” episodes during the past thirty years, there’s no reason to assume that Japanese viewer behavior will drastically change today. International fans hate “filler” episodes and story arcs, but international distaste for “filler” episodes has no impact on manga sales in Japan, so there’s no reason for Japanese producers to be fearful of needing to use “filler” episodes. Foreign observers may assume that if anime production continues to focus solely on whatever’s hot at the moment, eventually the anime industry will run out of current titles to animate. But that will never happen because Japan’s media industry produces such an overwhelming amount of new material. For every one current game, novel, or manga that gets adapted into anime, there are at least a dozen more that don’t get adapted but could. Japan’s production industry is in no danger of running out of contemporary media to adapt into anime, so there’s no need to mine the past for titles to adapt.

While overseas fans may bemoan the circumstance, Japan’s anime production industry largely adheres to the philosophy “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.” The strategies and philosophies that big Japanese corporate publishers and producers have used to determine what gets animated have worked for decades, and there’s no reason to believe that those same tactics will fail in the future. Traditional anime producers are content to maintain a status quo and continue paying studios to make anime based on whatever manga, games, and novels are current right now. It’s forces outside of conventional producers that are trying to challenge the status quo and develop new means of supporting unconventional, unexpected anime. In recent years the Japanese government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs and local Japanese municipalities have funded original anime short films. And individual studios including I.G and Trigger and the Kibou no Ki production committee have turned to public crowd-funding to support the development of alternative, original anime not based on current media franchises.