The reality behind the “AI assistance” they so loudly champion is nothing more than sheer “nursing care” for a demographic—whom it is frankly absurd to even call “writers”—who cannot develop their own literary style and possess substandard linguistic skills. Abandoning the process of agonizing over their own thoughts and weaving words character by character, they rely completely on AI as a motorized wheelchair to generate everything from plots to descriptions. Calling such a state “creative work” is a profound deception.

This system, which relies on “nursing care” rather than a genuine creative challenge, has resulted in the explosive proliferation of shallow, substandard works that merely look like proper Japanese on the surface. As the market and submission platforms are buried under a deluge of low-quality, hollow text devoid of novelty or passion, genuine manuscripts crafted through the blood, sweat, and tears of flesh-and-blood creators are being physically drowned out, dragging down the audience’s trust in content as a whole.

The very corporation that once exploited data to burn its own market to the ground and plunged its publishing division into the red is now using AI as an absolution to repeat the same mistake in an even more toxic form. KADOKAWA—selling out the dignity of expression and constructing a graveyard for culture solely to maintain page views and shield itself from liability—must be held entirely accountable and face rigorous social condemnation.

This is not the first article on Automaton West that talked about the profitless boom of anime. If you go back to the previous articles, it seems less because the hype for anime has declined as you conjectured but more because the Japanese workforce can’t keep up with current demand, which caused more outsourcing, which caused higher outsourcing fee and production delay — hence increased cost cutting into profit.

Frankly speaking, I’ve doubts about the idea of “word of mouth advertising” when it comes to modern-day anime. We don’t live in the era of forums and Tumblr anymore. Everyone’s interests are fragmented while places like Twitter aren’t conductive to spreading information to people who doesn’t directly engage in the conversation. There is a reason why the truly big anime and TV shows hits happened during the pandemic when everyone had limited options.

(And it isn’t like anime hasn’t having problems profiting abroad since forever. For every 10 people who pirated anime and proselytized about a specific show, you get 2 or 3 who’re actually willing to pay for the Blu-Rays or official merchs).

Frankly speaking, the Japanese anime industry, buoyed by the pandemic hits, has made a bad bet by increasing the number of productions. Just because more people tuned in during the pandemic doesn’t mean new anime nowadays are guaranteed to get the same number. And don’t let me started on how many people are actually willing to pay for anime, especially in this economy.