Pierrot and Asahi Production Sign Partnership Agreement

It would be like Japanese companies having subsidiaries and imposing a very strict "you do your thing while I do mine" policy. Japanese economy right now is in a precarious spot, so this is a sign that it wants to deescalate the already-heated competitions in the market.

Damn, Pierrot's really gotten serious about making quality stuff lately, huh? Good for them. Good for them I say.

I hope this means my goat MahoAko gets a S2 that's even better than the 1st.

@Yubisoft You forget that the concentration of money and production in the hands of an increasingly narrow group of people only reduces the possibility of competition and allows you to manage the industry much more successfully and aggressively. The fewer people who have money and production, the fewer people will be able to express diverse voices and opinions. Which, of course, will reduce opportunities for competition due to the imbalance in the concentration of power, production and money. For example, it is much easier for a group of people to agree that the vegetable industry does not sell certain vegetables than a highly competitive vegetable industry with a bunch of suppliers and sellers. Yes, you could say that the Japanese market will definitely not involve politics and other dubious things in this, but this argument is completely controlled by the human factor and seeing how easily Hollywood killed off the competition in favor of a rote formula and an almost complete aversion to risk, I can't be that optimistic. Especially when the Japanese themselves have been arguing for years over whether the Japanese anime or gaming industry should censor itself for international success. Or even forced, given the insides from the creators of ReZero or Dragon Quest about the need to adjust the content for the sake of Western licensors.

I could also argue with the statement that competition is ALWAYS good, as too much constant competition forces people to overwork, constantly take risks and be constantly stressed out of fear of losing their job at any moment due to the large number of competitors. Or a too sharp and rapid increase in quality because of this, forcing workers to increasingly raise the bar and inflate production. Actually, something like this has already happened before in the gaming industry, when too rapid growth in consumption and competition led to overproduction and the emergence of a bubble, when the industry noticed too late that the audience had sharply reduced the rate of consumption (I don't think I need to tell you that various critics and even insiders are already making similar comments about the current anime industry as well). Although I would say that the excessive ambitions of the gaming industry, which too easily lost its head from the success of past years, are also to blame for the excessive rise in production costs.

But again, at the moment these are only my POTENTIAL fears, since “can do does not mean will do” and I, like others, can only sit down and see what such cooperation will ultimately lead to. Let's hope that the anime industry does not change itself and remains reasonable in the future.

@RobertBobert In Hollywood's case when things like this happen or even acquisitions, the animation projects become trash due to the fact that the biggest players for example Disney forces politics and agendas be the priority during the production and they give zero freedom even to important staff like Directors, writers etc. and as a result this situation prevents from freely expressing themselves and tell a story they want . But since this is Japan and judging how the studios above plan to use this partnership according to the text above I am confident that we will see big things from them and other studios will feel pressured by the competition . And competition is always good.

I am always for high quality and production. But with each piece of news like this, I'm becoming more and more confused by the industry's tendency to follow Hollywood's lead in concentrating content production in the hands of a few major players.

this sounds like a merger already like how square enix is but good move to increase talent pools but if they increase their upcoming projects too then i do not know if their employee count can still keep up since the reason ufotable and kyoto animation have great production quality is just they do 1-2 anime per year while the other studios do average 5 and more anime per year

Good news! I hope that more good works will be adapted!

Very exciting news . Future Pierrot projects will be further strengthened by the use of photography & CGI as cinematography, because Asahi is very strong in that regard. Really hope Mahou Shoujo ni Akogarete S2 will have even better animation!!!