The president of Wit Studio believes that the anime industry is at a critical point and that everything will depend on the fans.
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| Image Credit: Crunchyroll |
Anime is becoming more and more accessible thanks to streaming platforms like Crunchyroll, and of course, it is also becoming more and more popular. Thus the demand for Japanese animated series continues to grow and grow more and more every year, with dozens of releases every quarter, and fans are now increasingly critical of the quality of the works. The level of the series being released is also increasingly higher, but according to the president of Wit Studio, this way of working will not be sustainable for much longer.
Wit Studio has brought anime like Attack on Titan, Vinland Saga, Ranking of Kings, and Spy x Family to life. Although over the years it has lost some important licenses such as the work that has become mainstream by Hajime Isayama, it has also managed to obtain some very promising projects such as The Suicide Squad Isekai and the remake of One Piece. According to George Wada, president of Wit Studio, new production deadlines and the frenetic pace of releases have led them to reconsider the way they work at the animation studio. Because there are increasingly more serious and better quality requests, they are very careful in choosing their projects.
“We're not looking for studies, we're looking for projects. And depending on the piece, we decide how important it is to bring it to a wider audience as soon as possible,” Wada explained. “For example, for Spy x Family, the animation speed is limited and to achieve this we needed two studios. This is how the decision is made whether it is necessary to collaborate with other studios to release an anime as quickly as possible and in the best quality.”
This is how Wit Studio collaborated with CloverWorks to adapt Spy x Family because two studios work faster than one and therefore can guarantee good quality in the animations. And because of these new industry standards, Wada doesn't believe studios will be able to keep up in the future. “I don't think it's possible to maintain this pace. The most important thing is that the number of fans around the world continues to grow,” continued Wada. “And once there are more anime fans around the world, companies will want to invest more money in creating anime… This will allow them to continue creating high-quality work.”
It's a fact that the more animators you have in your studio, the faster you can animate and the better quality you can achieve. Knowing this, Wada ventured to say that companies need to invest in more staff to be able to expand their studios and that “what we should do is allocate all that money to expand the talent of the teams”. Anime is an increasingly profitable business and Wit Studio is not the only one who has understood that it is necessary to invest in animators to make it a sustainable industry.
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