[Rant] Why do directors kill top performing anime

Because ultimately the vast majority of anime projects are not started with the intention of finishing them. Most anime are still produced and considered something of an advertising expense. They're designed to increase popularity and brand recognition so that the members of the production committee (made up of various businesses who have some sort of stake in the property) who funded the project can make money on the products and services they offer based on the property the anime is based on.

Because of that, and the fact that most anime studios are booked out years in advance on projects means that you end up with large gaps if they decide to do more of an anime, and sometimes it takes awhile for the production committee to make it's money back and make enough profit to justify more anime content, then you run back into the scheduling issue.

(Also, Slime is coming back this April with a 50 episode season.)

I'm out of the loop, what happened with Solo Leveling?

> Im in the Tech field...

So you should know that it's product managers that determine what features get made rather than the developers, right? It's the same way in anime. It's not the directors making the call on making new seasons of an anime, the studios are usually just contractors making an anime for a production committee.

That's not a director issue. That's a production committee issue and a moronic trend of Anime switching to almost every anime being only 1-2 cours. The truth is that while anime is made to ideally be popular, it's not being made to create some ideal version of the story being adapted. The staff will try their best with what they have, but let's say you have 13 episodes for a manga with 200 chapters and aren't given a proper amount of time to do the work, it's not going to turn out as ideal as a fan might like.

Mods should really pin a video from some YouTube guy that explain how Anime are commissioned. Firstly mostly it's fault of production committee. Secondly first season is always the best because committee wants to boost merchandise seeks with it and don't care about next one

What do you think a director does?

Enshittification. 


And it's not the directors, or the animators, or the voice actors or artists etc etc.  Don't blame the workers, they're doing the best they can.

Blame production committees, not directors.

This is the exact reason I got into Light Novels: I was tired of getting invested in great shows that were lucky to get 2 cours, but usually got 1, with stories that barely cover their prologues.

Both the studio and the staff (many of them are freelancers) are booked out for years. If they start the production immediately, then they would lacking talented staff and staff in general.

First, please don't blame this on directors. Directors have nothing to do with this and have zero control over release schedules. Something important you should know is that anime are funded by something called a Production Committee. Basically, a bunch of companies come together and each put some money into the production, and the more money they put in (and thus the more risk they take) the more control they have over it. Super simplified version.

Ultimately, this is a cultural difference. The anime industry is perfectly serious, but the way that series are greenlit is different from how it is in places like America. If you live in America, you might be used to series releasing new seasons constantly until they get cancelled. Series are greenlit with the idea that they will last basically forever, and to stop airing they have to do poorly or have some reason to get cancelled. Japanese television works the opposite way. A series is greenlit for a set number of episodes by the production committee, and once that set of episodes is done the production committee dissolves. There's no such thing as "getting cancelled," a series is greenlit for 12 episodes and that's the end of production until more is greenlit. To get a second season, the production committee has to reform because they decided it's worth it to make more of the show. It's a very risk-avoidant strategy.

This can take years because, well, people are fucking busy. The members of the committee and the staff working on the anime are booked years in advance. If they want a second or third season, and they want to keep the same staff or most of the same committee, they have to wait until everyone is available again. That's how you get cases like OPM season 2, where so much of the staff were working in other things that the committee didn't want to wait too long and just switched to a different studio and new staff. In cases where the second season is announced right after the first one ended, that means the production committee planned for there to be a second season right from the start. But if they weren't planning it and they decide they want one, they have to take the time to actually get everyone together to make it.

They want to sell the manga, Blurays and figurines; not necessary the story or give it a satisfying conclusion.

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Because directors usually don't have the power. Most of the anime industry is based of freelance work. That also goes for directors.

But primary because production committees (the group of companies that finance an anime project) tend to do it season by season these days. It keeps the risk rather compartmentalised and small. They invest money into a season of a series and contract with a studio which in turn gathers the people (usually a lot of freelancers besides for a few outlier studios) for the project. But the power (and all potential profit) still tends to stay with the companies on the production committee.

This power dynamic of the production committee owning everything and studios being more like short term (for the duration of the project) contract workers means the anime industry (the people actually animating) is run into the ground.

Studios have to look for the next project way before they start work on it because they have to get money to keep the lights on. They are not paid lavishly. And because they usually don't get paid extra for work outside of the initially agreed upon scope as they are just contractors (like extra corrections or hiring more freelancers for a rush job due to a rather crunch heavy schedule) their schedule and financial means tend to slowly get worse if they mess up just a few times. And who hasn't messed up once or twice in their life?

The companies on the production committee side like the power they have in that relationship (and the profits they reap). It also keeps studios in a subservient position. Until a few years ago they could benefit from that and often rather easily get a studios for the next job because studios were always in need of the next pay cheque.

But in the last few years two things have happened: The first is that the the product (anime) got more popular worldwide. And connected to that is that anime is comparatively cheap to produce (compared to a live action series) so a lot of (streaming) services beyond anime focused ones also wanted anime to bulk up their catalogue (some of it is exclusive some is not).

That meant studios got a bit of power when it comes to negotiations because their services were in higher demand. I think it was two/three years ago that it was reported that most anime studios were essentially booked up for at least one year in the future. That has only gotten worse with increased demand. This means studios also got more money but they still had significant expenses (and/or debts) so it didn't just trickle down to the actual workforce.

And while we're on the topic of workforce, here's point two: The anime industry has an established way of doing things. It was developed decades ago but that also meant that salaries have developed along similar lines and also stagnated similarly. Salaries (also payment for freelancers) that were healthy in the 1980s, simply aren't in the 2020s even if we account for some inflation adjustments.

This means the people in the industry are underpaid for the job they are doing and they often have to work unhealthy long days just to make ends meet. These days a lot of newbie animators seem to burn out of the industry within their first year. That led to the industry developing an unhealthy workforce balance (like the video game industry did in the past before it started addressing it somewhat) where you have those veterans who survived (slowly dwindling as people die off and/or retire) and a lot of newbies who can't take over that workload yet (too inexperienced, too slow, lacking skills) while the middle, what should be the biggest group, of seasoned animators is too small.

On top of that most inbetweening was outsourced out of Japan. That was usually one of the first steps to becoming an animator in Japan so onboarding new animators has become more difficult on that side too (not just wages and workload). They need more workers but can't/won't pay them enough to make it worth their while. Even working at McDonald's seems to pay better in Japan than being a young-ish animator.

Now remember that there's this rising demand of the last few years and how production committees are happy green-lighting one season only because they are risk averse and now let that crash into a too small, but overworked, workforce.

With how things are going the studio that worked on a season you liked might be booked for the next two, maybe even three, years in advance. And even if the production committee were to get that studio, the producer who was able to wrangle all those freelancers (from director to outsourced inbetweening company) into that project might be occupied with some other project, and the same goes for the rest of the staff, even if the producer were waiting for that specific project to get green-lit.

It's important to understand how anime tend to get made, as the dynamic is at least somewhat different than it is in the west, especially western movies, where a big time director like a Stephen Spielberg, Martin Scorcese or Chris Nolan has a lot more power than you'd expect and acts in a dual director/producer role (I can't think of this happening in anime).

An anime typically is part of a multi-media project also involving the original source material (most commonly manga or a light novel, but could also be a visual novel, video game, etc...) and involves a bunch of different companies that get together known as the production committee. While there still are anime originals being made, most are adaptions of some already existing IP. The intent is for there not to just be an anime that exists, but also for there to be the original source material, spinoffs in other forms (ex. if it was a video game, and they do an anime, why not also do a manga?), sell music relating to it, etc... which makes sense given the production committee set up. Each of these different companies puts up a portion of the money to fund the anime. They are taking the financial risk. Which is why if an anime flops, or even if an anime is successful but all the ancillary things are not, you may not see any more anime made for that IP because they think they'll lose money on it overall. Or the opportunity costs involved. An anime may be slightly profitable, but if they think they will be better off financially creating another one they may go in that direction instead.

The director is essentially an employee in this situation. They are the primary creative responsible for the anime, but at the end of the day they are just an employee and are reporting to a producer who makes a final call. A director often may not have the authority to make the high level decisions that lead to issues like those in your post. A perfect example of Yoshiyuki Tomino, a very prolific anime director through the 70s and 00s who was constantly making mecha anime, year after year. He had a ton of experience with it and was a great creative, so it makes sense why he was still doing them. But he had sponsors and producers to report to which often put a lot of pressure on him or forced him to include things in the anime that he may have not wanted to. For example during the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime he was forced to put a mid-air docking sequence of the main robot in every episode for a while, leading to some very weird moments, or him simply throwing a clip of it in the episode as the first scene to get it over with.

If the director isn't doing more of an anime you like, most likely it isn't actually their call. But it is also possible that scheduling makes it tough, for example Keiichiro Saito hit it big with Bocchi the Rock a few years ago. Then hit it even bigger with Frieren shortly after. Expecting lots of extra seasons from both of these IPs with them both being directed by him is rather unrealistic.