Anime Screenwriter Dai Sato Blasts Anime
Reportedly during the “Cultural Typhoon” academic conference held at Komazawa University earlier this month, Ergo Proxy & Wolf’s Rain screenwriter Dai Sato made a number of harsh, and seemingly self-contradictory, statements decrying the current state and direction of Japan’s anime production industry.
Sato claims that due to international outsourcing Japanese anime is no longer Japanese. “We can’t do our own anime,” Sato said. He also stated that anime has been this way since 1982.
Sato claimed that Japan takes great pride in producing anime, even though a significant portion of it isn’t animated in Japan. He then proposed that Japan’s anime industry is exploiting Asian outsourced labor by not teaching non-Japanese sub-contractors the advanced skills necessary to create good “anime.”
Sato claimed that the Japanese audience has lost appreciation for unique stories, citing that his own Ergo Proxy anime series is available in DVD boxed sets internationally but not in Japan, and that many anime fans dismissed Eureka Seven, which he co-created, as an Evangelion clone. (Even though the series was successful enough in Japan to get an extended TV series, a motion picture, multiple video games, and manga.)
Sato reportedly complained that the complex and challenging anime stories he composes result in him getting no work in Japan while Hollywood rips off ideas like his because Japanese audiences are more interested in simple, easily digested stories. Sato explained that Japanese fans prefer watching cute, superficial stories in place of “reality and real problems.” Note that Sato’s screenwriting has included Ergo Proxy, Cowboy Bebop, Halo Legends, Samurai Champloo, Wolf’s Rain, Ergo Proxy, Freedom, Battle Spirits: Shounen Toppa Bashin, and other “realistic” anime that deal with “real problems.”
“Sato seems to be consciously fighting against… stories where personal problems are equated with problems of the entire world,” and referred to his Higashi no Eden as “anti-sekai-kei” (anti-world-type) anime despite the fact that it revolves around a particular Japanese psychological problem affecting the entire world.
I’m not saying that Sato’s arguments are invalid or incorrect; however, in concise summation his points seem frequently contradictory, self-absorbed, and particularly apocalyptically hysterical.
Source: Otaku2
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Ha ha ha! Well he maby be a bit flimsy but he´s kind of right in many ways.
I have followed anime for around 30 years and i have witnessed outsourcing affecting animation quality from time to time, for me the time that was most damaged by this and probably other things was at the end of the 90´s.
But i think that these outside japanese outsourcing companies have become better and better recent years so i dont see it as the “big problem” issue now.
I really dont see these past like 3 years have any major visual downsides and even the storys and genres have a quite broad spectrum too… The biggest thing i miss and think can be a good thing is to produce some more hardSF titles with less moe and more hardcore mechas and details. Put in more work on intricate coloring on characters like some of the late 80´s titles like Bubblegum Crisis etc.
Well, some would say that Bubblegum Crisis has moe but i would say it´s more of a feminin aura mixed with the cyberpunk than modern moe…
Marduk Scramble is one new titles that has much of what i talking about, hope the story is as nice as the lush visuals!
Somebody order a slice of Mel-Gibson? haha.
Well, Ergo Proxy is really one of the best anime, and when I say best..
I mean one of my favorite. He is right in a way. How much of the same crap
does Japan and the anime industry need?
And you know how I know John thinks so too…he wrote it twice in the same sentence by accident.
Good on him. Others should be just as expressive.
I don’t find what is posted here to be really contradictory at all really, is there a full excerpt somewhere?
I find that the Anime MR Sato has worked on involves a lot of characters that are very real and face very realistic/relatable issues and problems that must be overcome even in their fantasy settings, like Cowboy Bebop. On the other hand, even though other moe-anime are based in a real world (no fantasy elements or mecha aside usually) the characters seem completely fake to me.
Also, Eureka Seven may have been enough to make some bucks, but its nothing compared to the weight EVA still carries around. I think his comment has a lot to do with how Anime fans are kind of stubborn and simply dont like a lot of things and he probably has to deal with that a lot which stifles his imaginative capability = has ideas = can’t make them because his target audience won’t pay for them.
I think he finds serious themes with scifi elements to be fascinating because it forces us to take a look at our current world and what it could become it exaggerated, but instead the world prefers how to see their CURRENT world if girls sexual desires (or cuteness) are exaggerated to extreme levels and nothing more.
I dont know, thats my take on it. Could be wrong.
“Hollywood rips off our ideas.”
So I guess he’s pissed about Wall-E copying Freedom, too. ^^