Ask John: Will There Really Be Fewer Anime This Spring?

Question:
Will there be more anime announced between now and the beginning of the spring season? Although I think the upcoming season looks like a fairly interesting one, I did notice that there seems to be something like 20 or so fewer planned anime than the same period in ’07. Masakazu Kubo [a Tokyo Anime Center executive] recently stated, “After the April 2008 television program schedules [in Japan] are laid out, the drop in the number of animated programs will be clearly seen.” The number of shows had already dropped in the 2007 spring season from the unprecedented amount in 2006, but do you really think there will be another drastic decrease in April’s new anime?

Answer:
At the time I compose this response, it’s early February. The spring Japanese television series practically starts in April, but in effect the beginning of the spring TV anime season looks like it will begin in mid-March this year. As I write this, there are 30 new anime television series scheduled to premier this spring, and I’m sure that at least a few more may be announced between now and April. By comparison, 59 titles debuted in the 2006 spring season, and 45 titles premiered last spring. Twenty-two of the spring 2006 series, or 37% of the season’s premiers, have been licensed for American release. That figure declined to only ten of 2007’s spring premiers, or only 22% of the season’s total number of new anime TV series, licensed for American distribution. These figures reveal two facts. First, the number of TV anime productions made in Japan does seem to be steadily decreasing. Second, the number of anime productions remaining in Japan seems to be increasing.

Based on past observations, it’s not unusual to see new anime title announcements made with relatively short notice. As of this writing, there’s still at least a month until the earliest titles of the upcoming spring season debut, so I fully expect to see one or more new titles announced within the next several weeks. However, even including hypothetical forthcoming announcements, the 2008 spring TV season in Japan does appear to be thinner than the previous two years. I think it’s interesting to note that in both 2006 and 2007 the number of new anime series released remained far greater than the number of shows licensed for American release, suggesting that it’s Japanese viewer demand, and not American viewer demand, that’s most influential in determining how many titles are produced. These statistics show that the Japanese anime industry is going to make a lot of anime titles each spring, regardless of how much or how little American demand is present.

The number of anime television series being produced each spring in Japan is undeniably falling, but it’s premature to blame this decline entirely upon a rise in American unauthorized fan distribution. I’d also like to argue that this decline is not necessarily a bad trend. While international sales are certainly important to the contemporary anime industry, Japan remains the primary market for anime. Declines in anime production may be affected by changes in Japanese viewing demographics and competition from other media. While the number of anime productions in Japan may decline, anime won’t evaporate because there’s still enough demand among Japanese viewers to encourage the production of dozens of new shows each season. Furthermore, it’s impossible to discount the idea that the massive number of anime productions released in 2006 and 2007 may be the result of artificial stimulation rather than actual demand. In effect, Japanese producers and corporate sponsors may have been commissioning the production of an inordinately large number of titles on the principle that a greater number of titles increases the odds of one or more title becoming a surprise, break-out hit that brings in tremendous profits. Rather than creating a massive number of shows and hoping that at least one of them becomes a smash success, a decrease in productions could result in better productions: a philosophy of quality instead of quantity.

In all honesty, I don’t think that it’s necessarily a discouraging trend that fewer anime TV shows are being made each year. 2006 saw an unprecedented number of anime titles – literally so many that it was impossible for anyone to keep up with everything. Similarly America’s anime community experienced explosive viewership growth in 2000 and 2001 during the “Pokemon craze” and a height of licensing and DVD releases around 2004. So the slow decline in the rate of Japan’s anime production may be, in fact, a market correction – a period in which Japan’s anime production settles back down to the levels it was at in the early 2000s after a brief period of irregular, explosive growth. While I don’t want to absolve international video piracy or excuse the impact that unlicensed anime distribution has on the commercial anime industry, I can’t believe that American anime fansubbing alone has caused the number of TV anime productions in Japan to fall by half in only two years. The number of new Japanese TV anime productions is decreasing, but the causes for that decrease and the affect that decrease will have on the anime community in the future, I think, are not clear nor obvious.