SUNRISE: Studio discussion, speculation, and whatnot.
 

http://i894.photobucket.com/albums/a...lf/sunrise.jpg

well I decided to make one since there isn't any thread about SUNRISE, which is weird considering it should have a lot of fanbase from Gundam series, Code Geass, Cowboy Bebop and many other popular shows by Sunrise

Little History about Sunrise taken from Wikipedia

They saved anime through Nichibros.

too bad the sales for Danshi not that really good...

well at least they should have enough revenues from other series (like and Horizon and T&B)

Regular home run hitter; responsible for too many classics to really discuss. Some of the more notable ones to me include the Gundam Franchise, the Big O, Tiger and Bunny. Scryed and the first Mai-HiME series were fun to watch. Then there's stuff like Gintama and Nichibros. And they made the movie Colorful. It really never ends; they along with Madhouse have consistently proven to deliver. In fact I can only think of two shows I haven't liked from that, and that would be Code Geass and the later Mai franchise shows.

It's amazing how long it took for this thread to appear, considering how relevant Sunrise had been to the anime culture.

For an even more detailed summery about the studio and it's structure, this is a great blog post about the studio

Yeah, not really sure what to say other than that I like a lot of the stuff they bring out, and they are usually pretty much when I think of shows that try and be innovative and/or creative most of the time. They have a lot of titles under their belt with a longer history, and even to this day can bring new stuff to the table.
Now now, let's not forget that Yamakan had already got us all out of that first.
*looks at articuzwolf's sig*

ah, I get it :p

I don't think it really matters if a show does poorly when it comes to Sunrise, considering just how massive they are. Wouldn't be a stretch to say they and Toei are probably the most financially stable anime studio's atm ...

LOL, I won't say that I'm not biased but the examples are just based on the latest hit shows (with over 20k sales/volume) by Sunrise which one of them is coincidentally in my sig pic. :heh:

and not really, Gundam Age doesn't sell well either especially considering it has "Gundam" name attached to it. And there is other show like S7 that did not do so well in term of sales,

and about does the show are poorly delivered or not I think it depends on who watch it and does he/she like it or not

I like Nichibros and (the current arc of) Gundam Age but the sales are low compared to other series :(

anyway I think the discussion about sales and how profitable are they is more appropriate to be discussed in other thread. :D

Haha, no, I just get now why you started the thread. :heh:

Well, putting Gundam AGE aside for the moment, do remember that Sunrise had been around for nearly four decades at this point, during which time they had produced a lot of shows. Gundam isn't by far the only cash cow they have, even if it's often marketed as the studio's flagship title. Also, they have many stakes into other outlets than just the DVD/BD market, so even if a show doesn't do well in one area, doesn't mean it isn't doing so well in the others.

As for Gundam AGE ...

I like the show as well, and it's unfortunate it isn't doing so well, but regarding the sales of the BD's/DVD's, do recall that the target audience for the show (kids and families) aren't really huge buyers of BD's, and if anything, sales of kids television series are usually more abysmal than AGE's.

Of course, the show should have done much better considering that the size of the Gundam fanbase, but going by the reception the show had gotten ...

Nah, I'm sure we can talk about it here, as long as it's relevant.

To start things off, just how does Gintama manage to keep on selling so much for a SHonen Jump series?

Perhaps the best thing about Sunrise is that it's large enough, 'storied' enough, and profitable enough, that it can safely engage in actual experimentation.

By that, I mean:

1) Sunrise puts out a lot of prominent anime originals. I've found over time that a disproportionately large percentage of my favorite anime shows are anime originals, and so I obviously think it's great that Sunrise is able to produce a lot of them, and does so.

2) Sunrise can go off the beaten path a bit. Tiger and Bunny is a great, recent example of this. A somewhat campy, action-packed show with obvious western influences and a male lead that's in his 30s and with a daughter. I can't think of many well-known anime shows with a male lead like that, and fewer still that are also action-packed. Basically, Sunrise can do stuff (and actually get it to sell, in some cases) that a lot of other studios can't.


Edit: On the topic of Gundam Age. I understand what Sunrise was going for there, and it really is important for Sunrise to try to bring in a new, younger generation of Gundam fans. Sadly, the effort failed. I will be curious to see where the Gundam franchise stands in the mid-to-long term future.

Agree with this. Same reason why I like P.A. Works a lot too, though they tend to be less "grand" or "risk-taking" than Sunrise's as they are mostly slice of life (True Tears, Hanasaku Iroha and now the upcoming Tari Tari).

Sunrise seems to be one of those solid studios that churns out a large amounts of titles a year, and a steady amount of hits. Their best titles are usually sci-fi (and by extension mecha) related but it doesn't mean they can't do a good drama once in a while like the recent film Colorful.

Growing up Sunrise were easily my favorite studio thanks to shows like Escaflowne and Cowboy Bebop as well as the Gundam titles and their other mecha related titles, like Gasaraki for instance. With the Bones split though they lost a lot of talent and it showed.. though the works of Taniguchi Gorou (Infinite Ryvuis & Scryed) kept me interested. Yet in that time Bones had became my fav studio thanks to mostly RahXephon... (+ Cowboy Bebop Movie, Angelic Layer, FMA, Scrapped Princess etc). It just felt like after Bones left that Sunrise wasn't able to put out that "top of the line" TV series that they used to back in the day like with Escaflowne and Bebop... Gundam SEED just came off as cheap and/or lazy and Witch Hunter Robin and Mai-Hime just couldn't compare to works of old. Yet the top Bones series could reach those levels... fast forward nearly a decade and Bones are slumping and Sunrise are more varied than ever. They're currently working on a second LN adaption, have a slice of life series airing right now and also have an iDOLM@STER ripoff inspired series to air later this year.

Anyway is anyone able to break down each (or at least the main) Sunrise Studios and show what they have worked on and/or are currently working on? The only studio I've seen people go into detail with is the Mai-Hime studio... lol.

Probably because it appeals more to an older crowd and fujoshi's more than a typical Jump manga.. but even taking that into account its consistency is amazing... forget how much it sales... that it's able to sell so much for so many volumes in a row is the more impressive thing.

Taking things a bit more seriously, what I love about Sunrise is that they're a big corporation yet they always experiment. They invest on titles which are technically obscure. Take Tiger & Bunny for example. Bandai never expected much revenue from it yet they were probably surprised when the DVDs sold out in the first volume in which they had to reprint (they only made 15 000 copies iirc).

Though of course their main attraction is mecha but they have such a wide variety of it. They have space dramas (Infinite Ryvius), plot heavy politics (Code Geass), big franchise hits (Gundam) and even super heroes (Tiger and Bunny).

They've been saving anime for me longer than that for me let me tell you. I don't even know where I'd be right now if it weren't for these guys and their sci-fi and experimental stuff. :uhoh:

For whatever reason Sunrise seems to end up under a lot of peoples radar despite how consistently important/exposed their average work typically ends up being. I don't know if this has anything to do with the fact that they got some positively brutal treatment from anime blogs and message boards up until a little while ago and labelled as this "trainwreck" studio, but I just never seem to see them thrown into the conversation whenever a discussion of premiere studios show up or just even in general. It is really odd, but again I think a lot of peoples impression of them is different from my own.

I never really got into Gintama (honestly, the main reason why is that its length at this point is daunting to me :heh:), but from what I did check out, I did feel that its comedy quality really is a cut or two above. Gintama has a great sense of humor, and it just "gets" comedy in a more well-rounded way than a lot of other anime comedy shows do, imo.

Plus, I think that Gintoki is a really refreshing male lead for a lot people, since he's far from a Yuji Everylead, but he's also not exactly your standard shonen main protagonist either (he spoofs them, rather than being them).

"Trainwreck" studio goes to Gainax. The term "Gainax endings" exist for a reason :p.

Speaking of comedy, I used the graph function with MAL and found that apparently among my least favorite genres in anime is comedy and I think I know why. The problem is that when it comes to Japanese comedy styles they are typically extremely limited to a select subset of gags. Foremost among these has to be the Manzai comedy duo style which seemingly utterly dominates the comedy scene in Japan and thus has obvious influences that can be seen in a lot of anime gag comedy. It gets old after a while though because the basic premise never really changes from somebody says something stupid and then gets slapped around for it and called a fool.

Then of course the other style I see a lot is the otaku reference one where you pretty much have to be familiar with the niconico and 2ch cultures to even get half the jokes and the other half requires you to be versed in anime culture. This style tends to be really repetitive and borderline predictable too IMO. I doubt it would kill writers if they no longer used the whole sudden switch to 2D Dragon Quest style gag.

The other common style is word play and puns which I won't even get into why this is a problem for your average English-speaking anime fan.

And lastly the other common style I see a lot is what some might call pantsu comedy, where the joke is simply that somebody stumbles into a room with a naked girl and something contrived happens that causes him to awkwardly fall on top of her possibly grabbing a breast or two, he gets embarrassed and then she slaps him and calls him a pervert. I doubt anybody is keeping track of how many times they've seen this bit over the years.

Now I think where a lot of comedy shows that Sunrise has done differs is that they often tend to follow a more western style approach of finding the humor in every day life (observational humour), which is a relateable style to both Western and Japanese fans and opens the door to more experimentation with different types of gags, jokes and witticisms than we're normally used to seeing. I think that's a big part of the reason why shows like Gintama and Daily Lives of High School boys stand out so much to people.

I totally agree with you there, Kaioshin. Comedy is also one of my least favorite anime genres, and for the exact same reasons as yourself. I also like that observational form of humor.

Some anime get that observational form of humor (Haruhi, Bakemonogatari, Mawaru Penguin Drum, Steins;Gate, the two Sunrise shows you mentioned), but most don't, and ironically enough, the ones who get it are usually not comedy anime by genre listing.

Sunrise always manages to do great things but they never really have "fans" like Kyoani or PA Works. You never anticipate the things they do (if they're not established franchises yet) but they usually pull through.

And this is why I tell myself to watch more of their anime originals, because most of the shows I've seen by them are immensely entertaining at the very least.

I watched Brigadoon earlier this year, one of their more unappreciated anime, and was blown away by it. I need to see more like that. :D

On Gundam Age, it was never meant to sell dvds/blurays, so how are sales of the merchandise?

I did actually see AGE merchandise selling over here... :p

Well, I don't understand what Sunrise is going for there at all. It's most certainly not reeling in kids, because the plot could very well go for a late night anime. It's not reeling in the core audience either, because in terms of design and action it is a huge step down from 00. And the previous Gundam show was already for kids: SD Gundam Sangokuden, which wasn't half bad actually.

At least Unicorn is faring well still. Maybe Sunrise is going to adapt more of the literary Gundam works in anime form instead of booting up anime originals from now on. At least I kind of hope they would as they're getting kind of lost with their new TV-productions.