The experienced anime producer Taro Maki has expressed himself very critically about the current production culture of the Japanese anime industry and particularly criticized the lack of willingness to take risks. We summarize below.
Criticism of “safe” anime projects
In an interview with ITmedia, Maki, whose best-known productions include “PLUTO”, “Serial Experiments Lain”, “Millennium Actress”, “In This Corner of the World”, “Patlabor” and “Tokyo Godfathers”, explained that many Japanese studios today would primarily focus on projects that are as safe as possible.
The producer sees the Japanese corporate culture as the main reason for this, which in his opinion is too focused on avoiding errors.
Instead of taking creative risks, many producers would primarily try to avoid potential failures.
According to Maki, this results in increasingly similar and predictable projects that are based on already successful genres. In this context, the number of more experimental or sophisticated works would also continue to decline.
For this reason, Maki advocated giving directors and other creatives more opportunities to try out new ideas in the future – even if a project is ultimately unsuccessful.
He also hopes that the industry will reduce its dependence on manga adaptations somewhat and enable more original anime projects again – a wish that has recently been increasingly expressed by industry representatives.
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Via ITMedia
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