Veteran Anime President Fuminori Honda Highlights An Industry Problem With Netflix
Fuminori Honda of Production +h, the studio behind The Orbital Children, highlights a "most worrying" issue when working with Netflix.
Production +h’s Fuminori Honda highlighted an industry-wide issue when working with Netflix.
Talking to Full Frontal, Honda was asked about the marketing limitations and lack of control that comes with working with Netflix. "If you can only watch something on Netflix, well, you don’t know who’s watching your work, how many people, you can’t see them…” Honda explained. “For me, and for both creators and producers, not seeing them and not knowing the numbers can be the most worrying.”
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Honda was specifically referencing Production +h’s latest work, The Orbital Children, which was screened in two parts before being globally distributed via Netflix. His words come amidst the backdrop of production studio concerns about the lack of theater-goers. “Thankfully, in The Orbital Children’s case, the first and second halves were screened in special showings for two weeks each, so to a certain degree, we could see the reactions and hear the voices of the viewers. I’m really glad these screenings happened,” Honda said.
Since the pandemic, direct-to-streaming content to platforms such as Netflix have been on the rise, prompting the Oscars to mandate minimum theatrical release windows for Best Picture Eligibility awards. Direct-to-streaming typically results in lower revenues, however, the implication of Honda’s concerns potentially lies elsewhere. If studios can’t get easy access to important data such as viewership numbers, as well as more nuanced information like Most Replayed Sections — unlike the Amazon Kindle app’s Most Highlighted, for example — it becomes risky to extrapolate data from audience reactions, particularly internationally. This might lead to an aversion to making content available for non-Japanese fans.
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Honda has worked on anime such as FLCL Progressive, Psycho-Pass 3 and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society[1]. Production +h is currently working on Inio Asano’s post-apocalyptic slice-of-life anime, Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction. Selling over 3 million copies, Dededededestruction is a coming-of-age story about two girls and their daily lives after an alien spaceship descends on Earth.
Honda predicts a busy next few years at Production +h, with their animation schedule said to be full until at least 2025.
Source: Full Frontal, Anime News Network [1]
See the Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction trailer below:
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It makes for a good change to “Is this you? IP: 192.168.0.1 has accessed your location from Tromsø, Norway.” Brighten things up with some anime instead.