Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Japanese anime, once a small niche in the entertainment industry, is going global. Popular series such as One Piece, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man have been gaining fans outside of their home country and boosting sales for their makers and anime streaming services. Artificial intelligence is about to give the industry a further boost.
Sony is one of the biggest beneficiaries of a growing global audience for such series. The Japanese conglomerate’s anime streaming service Crunchyroll is one of the biggest platforms, having racked up more than 130mn registered users across more than 200 countries around the world. The US, Brazil and Germany are among its biggest markets. Entertainment company Aniplex, also part of the Sony Group, a leader in anime video and music production, has also been growing outside of Japan.
Anime is already being reflected in the bottom line. In the latest quarter, Sony’s music business segment accounted for the biggest chunk of group profit, with its catalogue of best-selling artists part of the reason for music earnings growth. But the group’s anime business, which also falls under the music segment, has been another major driver. Sony has revised up its sales forecast for both its music and gaming businesses by 3 per cent.
One of the challenges of making animated films is that it is labour-intensive. As many as 2,000 people are involved each month in the production of a single series. That makes the industry ripe for disruption by generative AI tools and software. Generative AI tools have been rapidly evolving, going from just enhancing visual effects, to being able to generate every single shot in an animated film based on a script.
That is not all good news. Copyright issues are one of the biggest risks. Popular anime characters will inevitably be part of the vast amounts of data used to train AI models, making the works prone to infringement. Sony has already been dealing with similar issues for its music business, having sent formal letters to more than 700 generative AI companies and streaming platforms prohibiting them from using their content. Generative AI tools also significantly lower the barriers to entry into the industry, meaning more competition for existing market leaders.
But in the short term the benefits may be enough to outweigh the risks. Lower costs and shorter timeframes mean many more series can be made each year. Anime series may even be adapted to different target markets to maximise audiences.
As the anime fan base grows around the world, there will be plenty of room for experimenting with new formats.
Read the full article here