In
2004 at Animazement, veteran producer and anime industry representative
Yasuo Yamaguchi said the Japanese animation industry was looking ahead
to three major animated feature films to learn how audiences would
react - and to find how much money they would make. One year later,
Yamaguchi returned to report that two of those films were box-office
disappointments in Japan while the third was a success. Innocence-Ghost
in the Shell from Mamoru Oshii and Steamboy from Katsuhiro Otomo were
mediocre box-office performers, with neither film making it into
Japan's top ten, said Yamaguchi. Howl's Moving Castle, from Hayao
Miyazaki, was the only success of the three, and it's expected to be
one of the top moneymakers in Japan for 2005. The other two films will
have to depend on overseas attendance and video sales to make money,
and Yamaguchi said that's already happened with Innocence, whose
producers told him that they had sold 600,000 DVD's of the feature film
worldwide. That sales story reinforced for Yamaguchi the power of
Japanese television in making a film a success. Several other animated
features were among the year's top ten box office successes in Japan,
and all of them were spin-offs from successful animated TV series.
Depending
on how you count, there are from 83 to 100 animated series on Japanese
television each week. Representing the Japanese animation trade
association, Yamaguchi showed a half-hour video package of trailers and
promos from most of those series, and he noted several trends with
those series. Just under half of all animation is shown on the
commercial TV Tokyo station, all but a token handful are animated
digitally by computer rather than with obsolete pen and ink, and
another aspect of computing - high-speed Internet access - has
increased the use of subcontractors in China, Korea and India by
Japanese animators. That outsourcing is needed because of a a shortage
of animators in Japan, Yamaguchi said, and he feels it's a good trend
because it lets the elements of the animation industry be used in their
most efficient manner - funding flows from one source (increasingly
from the U.S.), creative work takes place in Japan, and the labor moves
to other Asian countries. "Having learn from how friction was garnered
in the automobile industry, I garnered that collaboration should
happen," said Yamaguchi, looking at the change that has seen Japanese
automakers open dozens of assembly and component factories in the U.S.
to match their rising share of the auto market. "We're also placing an
important effort into collaborations with American production houses,
and we are starting to see results from these efforts."
In
2004 at Animazement, veteran producer and anime industry representative
Yasuo Yamaguchi said the Japanese animation industry was looking ahead
to three major animated feature films to learn how audiences would
react - and to find how much money they would make. One year later,
Yamaguchi returned to report that two of those films were box-office
disappointments in Japan while the third was a success. Innocence-Ghost
in the Shell from Mamoru Oshii and Steamboy from Katsuhiro Otomo were
mediocre box-office performers, with neither film making it into
Japan's top ten, said Yamaguchi. Howl's Moving Castle, from Hayao
Miyazaki, was the only success of the three, and it's expected to be
one of the top moneymakers in Japan for 2005. The other two films will
have to depend on overseas attendance and video sales to make money,
and Yamaguchi said that's already happened with Innocence, whose
producers told him that they had sold 600,000 DVD's of the feature film
worldwide. That sales story reinforced for Yamaguchi the power of
Japanese television in making a film a success. Several other animated
features were among the year's top ten box office successes in Japan,
and all of them were spin-offs from successful animated TV series.
Depending
on how you count, there are from 83 to 100 animated series on Japanese
television each week. Representing the Japanese animation trade
association, Yamaguchi showed a half-hour video package of trailers and
promos from most of those series, and he noted several trends with
those series. Just under half of all animation is shown on the
commercial TV Tokyo station, all but a token handful are animated
digitally by computer rather than with obsolete pen and ink, and
another aspect of computing - high-speed Internet access - has
increased the use of subcontractors in China, Korea and India by
Japanese animators. That outsourcing is needed because of a a shortage
of animators in Japan, Yamaguchi said, and he feels it's a good trend
because it lets the elements of the animation industry be used in their
most efficient manner - funding flows from one source (increasingly
from the U.S.), creative work takes place in Japan, and the labor moves
to other Asian countries. "Having learn from how friction was garnered
in the automobile industry, I garnered that collaboration should
happen," said Yamaguchi, looking at the change that has seen Japanese
automakers open dozens of assembly and component factories in the U.S.
to match their rising share of the auto market. "We're also placing an
important effort into collaborations with American production houses,
and we are starting to see results from these efforts."
