It's Finally out in the Open: "We can't make what we want to make"

Well, someone had to finally say it. A piece done by "SBS Dateline", an Australian news magazine type show actually had a pretty balanced report on the anime industry. The main draw of the article comes from these two quotes by A-LINEstudio head Kazumori Hashimoto.

"KAZUMORI HASHIMOTO, A-LINE STUDIO OWNER (Translation): We can't make what we want to make. To keep the business going our products must sell. The industry is geared to where demand is - which is the obsessive fan market, not the general public. That's the trend I worried about most.

REPORTER: So the pictures of the little girls, that's what sells?

KAZUMORI HASHIMOTO (Translation): It's kind of the soft-core genre, as we call it in Japan."


While anime is a business and I can respect that, you usually don't hear too much from the rank and file in the anime world. Why make a show Emma when something like Haruhi or K-ON can sell ten times as much? Perhaps those are the complaints of a jaded anime fan, but it's obvious the Japanese market is coming to a crossroads.

Will companies turn to ero and soft-core porn to survive like Gonzo is planning, or will they tow the line and try to make a buck out of existing series?