CATDOLL: Shirobako producer: Japanese animation should target the Chinese and Indian markets

Recently, there have been frequent reports of animation delays in Japan, and the sales of many comic books and BDs have plummeted. A sense of "the industry is going to play" has spread. Could it be that the Japanese animation industry is really like this? Recently, Kawase Kohei, a producer of Warner Home Entertainment Japan (also the producer of the industry's animation "Shirobako"), expressed his opinion on the radio.

In the broadcast, he analyzed the current situation of the Japanese animation industry, the main profit methods, and even predicted the market trend. He hoped that the development goals of the Japanese animation industry could be global, with the Chinese and Indian markets as the priority.

Kohei Kawase describes the current situation in the animation industry:

As Netflix (an online video rental provider) and other companies invest in Japanese animation production in order to increase customers, the number of animations has increased significantly (the number of new episodes each season has indeed increased a lot compared to before), but this is only a temporary prosperity, and the number of animations will inevitably decrease in the end.

Looking back at 2015, it should be a transition period for the recovery of animation production funds, and it is almost time to transform from BD sales.

Since then, the number of animations has indeed increased, mainly due to the polarization between SF-themed works that are more popular overseas and domestic works.

Recently, the funding method of the production committee has been changing, and the original author's funding ratio has increased.

The way production companies make money by selling BDs is also coming to an end, and the method of bundling discs with event tickets has also reached saturation. Discs are no longer available, but OADs bundled with comics or light novels are selling well.

The production committee system previously established by Otsuki Shunren of King Records and others has almost reached its limit because the business model of recovering the cost of the disc has deviated from the trend of the world.

The dawn of animation and the production committee period derived from OVA have passed. 2016 has entered the third transformation period. The status of the animation industry can be seen from the data.

Ten years ago, the market for animation discs was 70 billion yen (about 4.2 billion yuan), but in 2016 it had fallen to 60 billion yen (about 3.6 billion yuan); on the other hand, the animation distribution market (the market for buying and watching animation online) increased from 40 billion yen (about 2.4 billion yuan) in 2015 to 50 billion yen (about 3 billion yuan) in 2016. At this pace, the animation disc market and animation distribution market in 2016 and 2017 may completely reverse.

The BD market is coming to an end, so it is very clear where the way out for the animation committee is. The reason for the strengthening of the distribution market is that now compared to the past, there is no delay in the distribution market worldwide, and it is easy to sell anime content to the whole world. Therefore, the number of otakus in the world is continuing to grow, and the consumer body of animation has expanded to the whole world. So don't limit your vision to the domestic disc market in Japan. Although there were foreigners who bought discs in the past, they were very few.

Kawase Hirohei specifically pointed out that when looking at the world, we should look at China first. China's distribution market is huge. Although it is accompanied by certain risks, there will also be unimaginable large amounts of capital flowing. The next market outside of China should have been the Indian market, but because of the cumbersome language, the localization barrier is very thick. Ten years ago, there was no other means of capital recovery except discs, but now, not limited to animation, the only countries that still rely on disc business are Japan and Germany. I hope that the next year will be a complex and changeable year in which BD, distribution, theaters, etc. can recover costs more dispersedly.