ITmedia interviewed veteran anime planner and producer Taro Maki, president of GENCO, about challenges facing the anime industry. This was ahead of the Aichi-Nagoya International Animation Film Festival (ANIAFF) scheduled from December 12 to December 17.
Maki highlighted how, while companies may be spending large sums on booths at large business-led events like AnimeJapan for advertising, that investment doesn’t necessarily return to creators. This was his motivation for co-founding the more creator-focused ANIAFF. It will be the festival’s first edition.
He also spoke about the animator shortage and the need to improve creator-to-customer relations. Maki also says that film festivals are necessary to enshrine human contact, not only between fans and creators, the latter of whom sometimes feel like streaming has made their work just one of many, but also between fellow creators for networking. You can read Maki’s views on that in the first part of ITMedia’s feature. Many of his sentiments also appear in Full Frontal’s interview with Maki at ANIAFF last year, which comes in English and Japanese.
In the second part, Maki says that Japanese producers play it safe with projects due to Japanese corporate culture. He mentions a “minus-point culture (減点法),” a style of evaluation that deducts points from projects for bad aspects. This is contrasted with a plus-point culture (加点法), where projects accumulate points for their good aspects:
“There are many company-employed producers, and in Japan, the standard system is a ‘minus point system’ rather than a ‘plus-point system.’ In other words, the top priority is to avoid failure, and the concept of taking risks through adding up points is nonexistent. This is why they end up going for genres that are successful and safe projects.“
“The truth is, you never know how the audience will react, and even difficult films have meaning in cultivating an audience. In the past, there was a culture of ‘watching slightly difficult films’ at mini-theaters, and there was room for experimentation. But now, those kinds of venues have disappeared, and I feel like the overall experience has become a little shallow.“
You can read about Maki’s production philosophy and ideal vision for the anime industry at ITmedia. They include giving directors multiple opportunities to challenge themselves, even if the result is failure; reducing the reliance on anime adaptations of manga somewhat; and cross-border inspiration through international collaboration.
Maki’s production credits include In This Corner of the World, Millennium Actress, Kino’s Journey, Patlabor, PLUTO, and Serial Experiments Lain (executive producer).
Source: ITmedia Part 1, Part 2
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