Kyoko Kotani, a Japanese animator known for her work on anime series and movies such as Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and several of the My Hero Academia movies – recently took to X to talk about the difficulties of producing anime series in long, consecutive seasons.
Likely in response to people being disappointed about the Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX anime getting only one season that spans twelve episodes (for now), Kotani says that while most animators are willing to create more content, the contrast between the number of professionals in the animation industry and the quality expected of anime makes them hard to produce.
Kotani explains that the professional shortage is worse than it was ten years ago, when animators were expected to work overnight and on Sundays. Even if an animation studio were to secure enough skilled staff for a year to work on a modern anime series such as Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, Kotani estimates that this would yield only one season of high-quality animation. As such, it is still common for animators to give up sleep and holidays to work overtime.
While there are a lot of willing animators, Kotani says that there are only a few who specialize in layouts and key animation. As such, many animation studios tend to reach out to amateur artists active on the Internet. Not all of the animation work provided by these freelancers is on par with what is expected of TV anime, so the animation director and director spend a lot of time redoing the work.
To be clear, Kotani doesn’t blame viewers for the demand for high-quality animation. According to her, the expectation arose from the presence of different factors. While there is a shortage of professional animators, Kotani states that the constant rotation between animation directors and directors helps keep anime production going. She also praises production teams that contact key animators as soon as the storyboards are finished – further speeding up the production process.
