Hey, Answerman!
I've been seeing all these [insert show here] has been green lit for production or will be coming out in so and so season/date/etc. I was wondering: how do the anime production studios (J.C. Staff, Production I.G., etc) choose what they will make into a show? Popularity is probably one factor, but are there others.
This question totally threw me for a loop - it's terrific, for one thing, and also I had no idea exactly how to answer it. I'm sort of a connoisseur for behind-the-scenes shenanigans, but the notoriously secretive production arms that fund and produce the vast majority of anime are notoriously tight-lipped about the actual pitch process. So I hit up our resident expert Justin Sevakis:
A show getting green-lit depends entirely on the show's ability to find a sponsor. The pitch might originate at an anime studio (like the ones named in the question). These tend to be the shows that are original stories, but the vast majority are pitched by the sponsors, which could be the manga publisher, who's out to use the anime to promote merchandise or the original manga, or a media company like Media Factory or Geneon Japan or Bandai Visual, who are interested in using the TV broadcast to promote the eventual DVD release. (The vast majority of late-night anime are controlled by these media companies. If you watch them on TV in Japan, every commercial is for their own product. The broadcasts themselves are paid for; the entire airing is basically an infomercial for the DVD.) The studios that actually produce the anime itself are usually just doing the work for hire.
How it works is this: a company with an idea (which might come from a staff artist, or a director that works with the studio) brainstorms how that idea could be monetized, and who might be interested in investing in that possibility. For example, if Madhouse comes up with an idea for a show they might go to VAP or Klockworx to see if they want to pay up-front for the DVD rights, to an advertiser like Pizza Hut for product placement, and then to Tomy or Bandai for toy rights. For a very mainstream show, the TV network might find the show valuable enough to throw in some money for the broadcast rights as well. Together these companies form a "production committee," or "seisaku iinkai". Everyone who put in money gets a say in the show itself, but the most power is held by whoever put up the most money, the "Grand Sponsor." Ever wonder what's up with that introduction after the show opening, "This program was brought to you by our grand sponsor"? That's them. The "original creator" (be it the person whose idea it was, or the manga artist) gets a lot of say as well.
The "seisaku iinkai" method has made it possible to continue coming up with enough money to produce anime since the burst of the bubble economy in the 90s. Unfortunately, it also bogs down the shows in a nightmare-inducing amount of red tape. Since every sponsor gets sign-off rights, everyone has to be consulted and agree to things like international rights sales, and sometimes details as minuscule as packaging and dub casting. It's one of the major problems that has to be overcome as the industry tries to adapt to the realities of the internet age.
As Japan, along with the rest of the world, slips deeper into the current economic crisis, these sponsors are becoming more and more frugal with the shows they're able to sponsor (bad Japanese "reality" TV is sure a lot cheaper to make). So there are fewer and fewer shows originating from the creative minds at the anime studios themselves, and more that will be produced based on the decisions made by manga publishers and corporate sponsors looking to push the rights across multiple platforms of potential monetization.
Fascinating, innit?
(if a new movie will actually come out)
