Streamer and recently-turned-anime-creator Gigguk chimed in on the popular debate concerning anime production costs, specifically the false claim that an episode of Jujutsu Kaisen costs $150k compared to Invincible‘s $2.5 million. Comparing those supposed costs to his own original anime Baan, which he says cost even more, he said he would be very shocked if Jujutsu Kaisen is around that range.
Gigguk said on Twitch, “We are just making—just like fabricating numbers out of our arse. I swear to God. Because there was no source for this. The source was like some random anime news account. And the only thing that made it a random news account was that it had the word ‘anime news’ in its name. Never heard of this f****** of this account before.“
“Probably just some random account, and I would say that 150,000 for one single episode of JJK [Jujutsu Kaisen] is… I would be f****** shocked. I would be absolutely shocked. I’m only saying this because I don’t have any official sources, but I’m pretty confident that JJK costs a hell of a lot more than this [Laughs].“
“How much Baan costs? I can’t say the exact numbers, but I can say that the amount of $150,000 is significantly less than what one single OVA that I made costs. And JJK is one of the top IPs from one of the most reputable studios in Japan, right? So, the number is ridiculously far off from what the actual number probably would be for a mega production like JJK, man.“
We’ve covered anime production budgets pretty extensively recently, so we won’t rehash all of it. Multiple people in the industry have put typical ranges for TV anime at around 10 to 100 million yen (and beyond; $62.6k-$626k), with 10 million for very cheap early-morning anime series.
CEO of the anime production company ARCH, Nao Hirasawa, recently said TV anime budgets range between 18 million yen ($113k; early-morning TV anime) to 300 million yen ($1.89 million; budgets approved by internationally headquartered companies). In the case of Jujutsu Kaisen, a late-night TV anime by a reputable studio like MAPPA, with funding from major companies like Toho, would almost certainly cost several times more than the $150k being bandied around.
Just last month, enshutsu/unit director Chuan Feng Xu (enshutsu: directs a unit of anime, such as opening/endings, episodes, sections of movies, etc.) said on X that the $150k figure was “totally fake or based on some ancient standards,” with seasonal anime from July 2025 having budgets on the “scale of 200 million yen for a single episode,” adding, “and top-tier production budgets these days are in a whole different league. Way too many people are talking without knowing the facts…” This appears to support Hirasawa’s view that budgets are hitting 300 million yen.
ALSO READ:
The Costs of Anime: Prices of Episodes Have Skyrocketed, Demonstrates ARCH CEO Nao Hirasawa
Source: Gigguk Twitch, via X (formerly Twitter)
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