People often forget that anime is a loss leader to get secondaries to buy the manga and/or merchandise. I don't know if anyone has ever watch anime as it originally aired on Japanese TV, but there's a scrolling list of sponsors and stakeholders involved at the beginning of each episode, and they'll cut funding if they don't see an uptick in their respective sales.
Yeah, a lot of it is. I think only the "big long runners" don't fall into that category, because things like Bleach or DBZ or One Piece managed to escape that and eclipse their own manga. But that's why a lot of series are just 1 season with little resolved of their own plot, they existed to pull in a larger audience rather than be their own thing.
That's not even anime specific, nearly all cartoons in the 80s and a bit into the 90s were just glorified toy commercials. It wasn't until Cartoon Network took off that Western animation broke out of that.
Adaptation anime can be, but isn't always. Adaptations are low hanging fruit and while the anime itself doesn't always break even they aim for merch sales and the like as well.
Anime originals are not at all expected to lose money - and this is where most of the top tier shows come from anyway. Gundam sure as hell prints money, any and all gundam manga are barely tertiary compared to the show and model kits etc.
Cowboy bebop, for a less "toy salesman" example. That wasn't made as a loss leader.
People often forget that anime is a loss leader to get secondaries to buy the manga and/or merchandise. I don't know if anyone has ever watch anime as it originally aired on Japanese TV, but there's a scrolling list of sponsors and stakeholders involved at the beginning of each episode, and they'll cut funding if they don't see an uptick in their respective sales.
Yeah, a lot of it is. I think only the "big long runners" don't fall into that category, because things like Bleach or DBZ or One Piece managed to escape that and eclipse their own manga. But that's why a lot of series are just 1 season with little resolved of their own plot, they existed to pull in a larger audience rather than be their own thing.
That's not even anime specific, nearly all cartoons in the 80s and a bit into the 90s were just glorified toy commercials. It wasn't until Cartoon Network took off that Western animation broke out of that.
Adaptation anime can be, but isn't always. Adaptations are low hanging fruit and while the anime itself doesn't always break even they aim for merch sales and the like as well.
Anime originals are not at all expected to lose money - and this is where most of the top tier shows come from anyway. Gundam sure as hell prints money, any and all gundam manga are barely tertiary compared to the show and model kits etc.
Cowboy bebop, for a less "toy salesman" example. That wasn't made as a loss leader.