Interview with Takaki Kosaka (Nitroplus), Producer of “Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet” [2/4]

The history of the anime business

Ishikawa: The production committee credited at the end of anime, in the case of Gargantia, Oceanus, what does it do in the broadcasting stage?

Kosaka: Anime air at the promotion stage, not at the stage where profit comes in. We don’t get money from the TV network, it’s more like we have to pay the network for broadcasting.

Ishikawa: You mean buying frames.

Kosaka: Well, don’t the customers, that is, the users, look at the tags? This is wining and dining, and we do advertising to make the work known. What do we need to do in order to turn that into money? A groundbreaking character business formerly called the “Kamen Rider Trade” was born when viewers wanted to transform after watching the show, so they bought the transformer belt.

Ishikawa: You mean making toys and figures.

Kosaka: 40 years ago was an age where there were no videos, and such a character business was at its peak. It was a kind of business that collected sponsor and loyalty fees from manufacturer companies of toys, fish sausages, or sweets.

Ishikawa: How did it get to the point of raising profit with Blu-ray packages?

Kosaka: About 30 years ago, before buying things seen in TV in packages became regular, a business called OVA that sells anime made for VHS tapes was created. Then, around the time of the Eva boom, a tendency to buy TV programs on video came along, and the tapes started to contain added values such as being able to watch in high quality, extras, bonus footage, or watching the director’s cut.

Ishikawa: There were a lot of changes until it reached today’s business model.

Kosaka: There were also LDs.

Ishikawa: LDs?

Hirasawa: It was something like a monster record, and it was the direct ancestor of DVDs.

Kosaka: DVDs became widespread in a blast after PlayStation 2 came out. Anime sales on VHS and LD were declining, and thanks to DVDs, we are now able to sell anime again.

Hirasawa: As Kosaka said, since we are making anime, we are trying to profit from it, but until the mid ‘80s, there were only two patterns: make a profit by selling toys or release it to theaters and profit from the box office revenue. Besides those, there were also extremely rare, mysterious cases, when they made anime from money that didn’t need to be refunded. In the old days, rich real estate companies could make two-hour anime by giving money.

Kosaka: It’s a patron system (laughs).

Hirasawa: When corporations invest into artistic activities, it’s called artistic patronage, and the era when corporations were optimistic was 25-30 years ago. From the mid ‘80s, gaining profit by selling video tapes emerged as another pattern.

Kosaka: Making toys is hard. It seems that in the toy manufacturing world, you have to start planning a year in advance. That’s why there are considerably less cases of tie-ups with toys, although they sometimes do it in morning and evening children shows.

Hirasawa: Figures are an easy-to-understand example of that.

Kosaka: Although they are not anime, special effects stuff like Sentai or Kamen Rider also work the same way.

Ishikawa: Ultraman is also similar.

Kosaka: Toys of those kinds of things are being made for commercial purposes.

Ishikawa: Because you can’t raise profits just by broadcasting the anime.

Gargantia x Tokyo Otaku Mode Special Site:
http://otakumode.com/sp/gargantia

Source:
http://gargantia.jp/#kaito_4 (Japanese)

© Oceanus / Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet Production Committee