Kyoto Animation: Studio discussion, speculation, and whatnot.

[ultimatemegax]

Originally Posted by Pocari_Sweat

Now you're just being an smartass. I don't give a rat's hoot of what episode uses what part of the source material, what episode is completely anime original or director did what episode blah blah blah. To be frank I don't care enough since I didn't like the series enough to research it, NOR AM I OBLIGATED. Heck, I don't even do that for shows I like most of the time. However, if you are USING the source material in any shape of form other than merely for title reasons, that is a LN adaptation. You don't see the first FMA anime being called an anime original series despite more than half of its material being "anime original" do you? It's a still damn adaptation. Same deal with Chuunibyou. Call it a loose one, but it's still a damn adaptation. It has anime original material, maybe even a majority? Great. Guess what, second half still sucked. They should have stuck with it as a lighthearted comedy where it worked pretty well and I was quite enjoying myself, but nope teenage power of love and melodrama comes and ruins the day.

And I don't even know why you're so persistent on this "chunnibyou adaptation point", when most of my argument has been about Tamako Market. Point is, even amongst "fans" of the genre it was pretty mixed. Sales are relatively poor, it has a pretty damn low rating for a Kyoani show of around 7.5 and 7.2 out of 10 on MAL and ANN respectively and is pretty mixed here on Animesuki too. That's not to quote someone letting my "bias" get in the way. It's definitely not the worst show of the season, but it's definitely not the best nor does it fall under anything more than "decent". Want a good example of a well done slice of life series done this season - Minami-ke Tadaima. Want a good example of something that Kyoani has done excellently in recent times - Hyouka.

Moral of the story, it's another wakeup call for Kyoani.

I keep repeating myself because you keep repeating yourself with incorrect information. It's pointed out to you that it is not an adaptation of the novel, but instead a new story with similar characters from the novel, and you continued to insist you were correct that it was an adaptation. "Half wrong at most." It's not just a majority; it's the entire damn show outside of a few concepts in episodes 1, 5, and 6 yet you continue to insist that it's like the novel. That comedic portion you liked: anime-original material.

"Sales are relatively poor" I can only assume you're talking about disc sales, which are not relatively poor in the slightest. You're ignoring the increase of bookstores carrying KyoAni LNs, ignoring the abundance of merchandise that's been made/selling at their store, ignoring the great sales for music CDs, ignoring that live video shows are continuing to be made, and ignoring that every other fall show outside of Girls und Panzer and JoJo has sold worse in one of the strongest seasons of disc sales in recent history. No, sales are not "relatively poor" they're strong, which is why they're doing more of the anime. Why should I care about MAL/ANN opinions in regards to sales of discs/merch/novels? They don't fund the show. Again, do some research before making mistaken claims that something is doing poorly.

Edit: in off-topic conversation, Beyond the Boundary (aka Kyoukai no Kanata) is getting a second volume released soon.

[Pocari_Sweat]

Originally Posted by ultimatemegax

I keep repeating myself because you keep repeating yourself with incorrect information. It's pointed out to you that it is not an adaptation of the novel, but instead a new story with similar characters from the novel, and you continued to insist you were correct that it was an adaptation. "Half wrong at most." It's not just a majority; it's the entire damn show outside of a few concepts in episodes 1, 5, and 6 yet you continue to insist that it's like the novel. That comedic portion you liked: anime-original material.

Good on them then. Not my point though. I'm sick of these rants of one comment where I said "Um... Chuunibyou is a LN adaptation" like 2 pages ago and I have a flock of angry people trying to prove it isn't a LN adaptation, when it STILL USES SOME CONTENT of it be it how small. Can we just call it a loose adaption and move on?

"Sales are relatively poor" I can only assume you're talking about disc sales, which are not relatively poor in the slightest.

Blurays didn't rank (could be anywhere between 0k-4k. We don't know). DVD sold 600ish copies. That's still relatively poor, particularly for Kyoani who are used to racking in 9-10k+.

You're ignoring the increase of bookstores carrying KyoAni LNs, ignoring the abundance of merchandise that's been made/selling at their store, ignoring the great sales for music CDs, ignoring that live video shows are continuing to be made, and ignoring that every other fall show outside of Girls und Panzer and JoJo has sold worse in one of the strongest seasons of disc sales in recent history.

Outside of you last comment on Girls und Panzer/Jojo not relevant. Never did I say Kyoani was in any sort of financial trouble because of course they will be financially healthy from thier other franchises and products... but that's not relevant to Tamako Market whatsoever. What Tamako Market LN? What Tamako Market merchandise?

No, sales are not "relatively poor" they're strong, which is why they're doing more of the anime.

I'm assuming you're talking about Chuunibyou here... whilst I'm still talking about Tamako Market. I don't recall any announcement of anymore Tamako Market being made and I don't remember saying Chuunibyou was doing badly financially in any sort of manner considering it was their best selling franchise of last year, even higher than Hyouka's.

Why should I care about MAL/ANN opinions in regards to sales of discs/merch/novels? They don't fund the show. Again, do some research before making mistaken claims that something is doing poorly.

You shouldn't but that's completely not my point. I'm using them to defend myself against claims that I'm some kinda "lone hater" on the impression of Tamako market as a series as a viewer since I am by far not the only person who had a problem with it.

Edit: in off-topic conversation, Beyond the Boundary (aka Kyoukai no Kanata) is getting a second volume released soon.

That's awesome to hear. I would love it for Kyoani to adapt it into an anime in the near future.

[ultimatemegax]

Originally Posted by Pocari_Sweat

Good on them then. Not my point though. I'm sick of these rants of one comment where I said "Um... Chuunibyou is a LN adaptation" like 2 pages ago and I have a flock of angry people trying to prove it isn't a LN adaptation, when it STILL USES SOME CONTENT of it be it how small. Can we just call it a loose adaption and move on?



Blurays didn't rank (could be anywhere between 0k-4k. We don't know). DVD sold 600ish copies. That's still relatively poor, particularly for Kyoani who are used to racking in 9-10k.



Outside of you last comment on Girls und Panzer/Jojo not relevant. Never did I say Kyoani was in any sort of financial trouble because of course they will be financially healthy from thier other franchises and products... but that's not relevant to Tamako Market whatsoever. What Tamako Market LN? What Tamako Market merchandise?



I'm assuming you're talking about Chuunibyou here... whilst I'm still talking about Tamako Market. I don't recall any announcement of anymore Tamako Market being made and I don't remember saying Chuunibyou was doing badly financially in any sort of manner considering it was their best selling franchise of last year, even higher than Hyouka's.



You shouldn't but that's completely not my point. I'm trying to defend myself against claims that I'm some kinda "lone hater" on the impression of Tamako market as a series as a viewer since I am by far not the only person who had a problem with it.



That's awesome to hear. I would love it for Kyoani to adapt it into an anime in the near future.

I apologize for my assumption your entire second paragraph in the post I quoted was about Chuunibyou. That's what I was arguing about in relation to sales. I apologize that I misread your posts. We keep saying it's not an adaptation because it really isn't. If you had read the novel, you'd completely agree with us on that point.

For Tamako Market, they have sold a decent amount of merchandise (nothing more than they did for Hyouka/Nichijou, probably less than Hyouka to be honest), and they are releasing a LN next month with 11 original short stories. Yes, sales for it disc-wise are worse than what was expected prior to airing by fans, but these two projects were likely linked together finances-wise, so it's not a total loss for all involved (not saying you said it was a loss).

[SRanger]

I can't believe you guys are actually arguing whether or not it's considered an adaptation. It's still an adaptation, but yes, megax is right..in that there is a lot of original content as well. So, yeah, the best term would be 'loose adaptation'. But Jesus, can't believe that was like 2 pages of angry otaku debate.

Hyouka's cool and all, it's definitely better than average, but to be honest, it...was a pretty boring series. I thought the ending was quite flat. If we were to get a second season, I would like it to have more substance than style.

[Warm Mist]

Whoa, this thread sure got heated.
I don't really care if Chuu2 was an adaptation or not, I was merely stating the facts. The point I want to address is this:

Originally Posted by Pocari_Sweat

Don't think we'll be getting another anime original project anytime soon considering it's 2 strikes out of 2 in that department (Munto and now Tamako Market). Kyoani is no PA works, so it's probably better to stick with adaptations which is what they are good at.

This makes no sense at all. For starters, Munto 2003 was never even meant to sell, and the 2009 re-boot happened due to pressure from Kadokawa, so its success (or lack thereof) wouldn't factor in a potential decision of making more originals.
After that, what do you mean with "strikes"? That they didn't sell, or that they weren't up to par? I assume you were talking about sales, but in that case what does PA Works and "what Kyoani is good at" have to do with it? Since when being good at doing something means it will sell? Furthermore, you later said that "Chuu2 being an original reinforces this point", when all it does is jumble it even more. If Chuu2 is an original, and it was extremely succesful, it's not reinforcing your point because it shows that they can make originals sell. But you say that it reinforces your point because it sucked, so I'm left to assume that with "strikes" you did actually mean the quality of the shows, in which case you have no argument for your initial claim of "we won't be getting another original soon". Kyoani won't decide to stop doing originals because they think their attempts sucked. I'm pretty sure both Ishihara and Yamada are pretty content with their products, as well as the teams that worked on each one.
One more thing: talking about the studio as a whole for the quality of the scenario is wrong. At any rate, blame Ishihara/Hanada or Yamada/Yoshida. Kyoani could as well hire a different writer and make him work with a different director, so talking about "Kyoani originals" or "P.A.Works originals" is null.

So, please people, before doing the "anime expert" charade, think your points through. Otherwise, stick to opinions.

[Bri]

Originally Posted by ultimatemegax

Yes, sales for it disc-wise are worse than what was expected prior to airing by fans, but these two projects were likely linked together finances-wise, so it's not a total loss for all involved (not saying you said it was a loss).

As risk diversification it makes sense to do two different one cour shows in succession. What surprises me though is the large difference in sales between Chuunibyou and Tamako Market. Is there any obvious reasons?

I haven't kept up with the AS threads, but I felt the latter was at least as good. Maybe I'm underrating Chuunibyou (it's the first Kyoani anime I couldn't connect with) or does it have a built-in-fanbase from the LN?

[ultimatemegax]

Originally Posted by Bri

As risk diversification it makes sense to do two different one cour shows in succession. What surprises me though is the large difference in sales between Chuunibyou and Tamako Market. Is there any obvious reasons?

I haven't kept up with the AS threads, but I felt the latter was at least as good. Maybe I'm underrating Chuunibyou (it's the first Kyoani anime I couldn't connect with) or does it have a built-in-fanbase from the LN?

What I see in things that sell in Japan is that "I want to own this" factor. There's something about the show that makes you just want to purchase the show. For Chuunibyou, it was the hilarity of the battles in the first half and the drama was decently liked in the latter half (better received than internationally, but not as good as the comedic portions). Tamako lacks that factor from my view and from a lot of people as well. (for Hyouka, it was the sharp visuals) It's a very family-friendly show and one that should've been aired on a station like NHK-E (public educational channel) for the whole family to watch instead of 24:30 at night. The sheer lack of promotional time hurt though. It had literally 6 weeks from announcement (with no info) until airing. No time to build up hype and rouse fans. I'm not blaming it entirely on that, but it hurt sales somewhat.

As for built-in fanbase from LNs, I can attest that there were barely anyone in Japan that read the novels prior to the anime. When they were calling Kuzuha "anime-original" I couldn't stop laughing (though you have to search to find her in the novels). It sold because it was entertaining and made you want to buy it like a lot of previous KyoAni shows.

Personally, I liked Hyouka better than the two, but I enjoyed both Chuunibyou and Tamako (though the latter took me a while to appreciate what they were going for).

[rulfo]

Personally I find Hanada a better writer then Yoshida. I also liked his Tamako episodes better. This is just me judging all the works they've done on KyoAni. I haven't dug deeper regarding those two. But I do know that Yoshida handled the script for GuP. Haven't watched that yet so I can't judge.

[Warm Mist]

I think Yoshida is leagues above Hanada. She's great with adaptations as well, she handled Aria and K-On! remarkably well. And she's done some great stuff like The Cat Returns and recently that Otona Joshi short.
As for Kyoani-related works, script-wise I put Hyouka above all so yeah (and that had a lot of in-house episodes from Maiko Nishioka, Katsuhiko Muramoto and Miyuki Egami, props to them). K-On! is pretty good as well, and I think that "mono no aware" undercurrent that is fundamental for the second season comes through best in Yoshida's episodes.

But for bigger-scope things in the writing department, the director probably is as involved as the person doing series composition. It's probably more fair to compare writers in an individual episode basis, looking at the dialogue and structure of the script (well, what you can infer from the episode since it'll be remixed in the storyboard anyway).

[rulfo]

Ahh thanks. I'mma look into these two some other time.

Adaptation wise, script writers that worked with KyoAni never have been problematic. You're right about the director's having that much of an influence over the script.

Regarding storyboarding, I do think that they add the spice but genuinely I think without the good base which is a strong script for the episode, there wouldn't be any good storyboard to come out from it or rather the series as a whole will be in complete disarray.

[Warm Mist]

For sure, a solid script is absolutely important. What I meant is that isolating the script (and thus, the work of the scriptwriter) is not so easy because said script is re-interpreted by the storyboarder. The dialogue is obviously work of whoever wrote that episode, but stuff like structure and poignancy in whatever screen elements can be changed, added or removed. Comparing scriptwriters directly is okay, but I think it's healthy to have the storyboard of the compared episodes in mind.

[Bri]

Originally Posted by ultimatemegax

It's a very family-friendly show and one that should've been aired on a station like NHK-E (public educational channel) for the whole family to watch instead of 24:30 at night. The sheer lack of promotional time hurt though. It had literally 6 weeks from announcement (with no info) until airing. No time to build up hype and rouse fans. I'm not blaming it entirely on that, but it hurt sales somewhat.

Making their shows more family friendly seems a Kyoani trend since K-on's second season. Wonder if Tamako was made with secondary markets like day time broadcasts or syndication in mind.

Originally Posted by ultimatemegax

Personally, I liked Hyouka better than the two, but I enjoyed both Chuunibyou and Tamako (though the latter took me a while to appreciate what they were going for).

I prefer Hyouka as well. In terms of atmosphere and visuals it's among their best.

I can see why Chuunibyou appeals to the fans, except the hooks didn't work for me his time. I watched it primarily for the animation, but struggled through it as I couldn't care for any of the characters.

[mistress_kisara]

Tamako market actually sold 4k BDs

[rulfo]

YESSSS WARMIST YESS!!!!

HAAAAAAAAA!!


Kyoto Animation: Kyōkai no Kanata Anime Is in the Works

[Kakkou]

Is it safe to expect a swimming anime by Animation Do next year now?

[rulfo]

Well having no materials for it and no merch to back it up.. Seems iffy..

[kyouray]

Originally Posted by rulfo

Kyoto Animation: Kyōkai no Kanata Anime Is in the Works

Yes finally !!!

[rulfo]

Makes me wonder though, will this lead to the end for KyoAni Kadokawa projects?

KyoAni seems to have moved on from any Key works. I don't they'll be touching any of Key's materials in a long time(still praying hard that Planetarian does get handled by them).

Then again I could be wrong. Still no sponsors announced for this. Kadokawa backing this up will be kinda awkward. An LN company backing up another LN company's project?

[Goggen]

Well, they've done two TBS/Pony Canyon shows in a row. Out of their two announced projects, one is a TBS/Pony project (Chuunibyou) and one is unknown, but assumed to be TBS/Pony.

Four TBS/PC productions in a row would be very strange. Maybe they've been doing something for Kadokawa that's been kept on the down low that'll come out before either of these projects?

[ultimatemegax]

Originally Posted by rulfo

Makes me wonder though, will this lead to the end for KyoAni Kadokawa projects?

KyoAni seems to have moved on from any Key works. I don't they'll be touching any of Key's materials in a long time(still praying hard that Planetarian does get handled by them).

Then again I could be wrong. Still no sponsors announced for this. Kadokawa backing this up will be kinda awkward. An LN company backing up another LN company's project?

Regarding the key portion:
The Key trio were heavily focused upon by the TBS conglomerate. BS-i (a satellite channel) and the TBS channel (a cable channel) were the only broadcasters of AIR or Kanon. Clannad had over-the-air broadcasters only through the TBS stations, but only through TBS. K-On! was only broadcast through the TBS network as well. Their own websites are hosted by the main TBS site. In short, it's up to TBS to push more Key anime by KyoAni, and I doubt that's happening at this point.

We're in a unique situation right now. We've just finished two KyoAni-produced shows and have two KyoAni-produced projects upcoming. They're in the copyright and at the top of the production committee for the past two shows, showing a majority of investment in these projects. Yet we have nothing from Kadokawa or TBS (the main financers for everything prior to Chuunibyou except Munto) announced from KyoAni. TBS seems willing to handle digital distribution/international rights for original works, but that's it for their role in the current lineup.

To my knowledge, the only studios who have really taken on top spot in the TV show production committees also on contract work (ex. Sunrise from their parent company - Gundum and P.A. with the Layton series/Angel Beats/Another/Red Data Girl), but KyoAni doesn't have anything lined up outside self-produced projects.
-Note: studios like Khara and Ghibi produce movies primarily, so I'm not entirely counting them with the anime TV show industry.

rufio may be right and this could be the end of Kadokawa/KyoAni projects, but I can't see that. With their current output model and the immense risk that each self-produced title brings, I can't seem them fully ending contract work.