JoJo’s Producer Talks About Increasing Western Competition

Otaku USA Magazine recently interviewed the well-versed anime producer, Temuri Niishi. She is currently working on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Diamond is Unbreakable. When asked about the increasing western competition, she seemed carefree. According to her, the new Western studios diving into the anime world have not affected sales here as much: 

“We have not felt the effects at all. You often hear about big budgets going toward anime, but I don’t feel like a lot of that money is being spent on great artists. Payment is another challenge. Because of the way that payments are made to the industry, they may be partial payments, or it takes a while for payment to happen. When a project is commissioned, they say, “Okay, make 12 episodes. We will start paying you after you complete 12 episodes.”

She further explains the new trends in the anime industry and states how she would like to further improve upon them:

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not the way that anime has normally been made in the past, so that might be affecting the way that budgets are spent now. It’s a new process. Nobody is really used to making anime this way so it might be difficult to manage it.

A good way to do it would be if small teams could make the entire production in-house, without outsourcing, like Mecha Ude. Utilizing small teams that do high-quality work without a bunch of checkers in between would be one way to increase efficiency. But there’s not a good training process to get animators to the level where they don’t need a bunch of quality control.”

About Diamon is Unbreakable

Diamond is Unbreakable; alternatively Diamond is not Crash, is the fourth part of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from May 1992 to December 1995. Titled initially JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4: Josuke Higashikata, the arc spans 174 chapters and is preceded by Stardust Crusaders. Set in 1999, 12 years after the events of Stardust Crusaders, Jotaro Kujo tracks down Josuke Higashikata, the illegitimate son of Joseph Joestar, to help him find a magical bow and arrow which grants people Stand powers. Along the way, Josuke and his friends discover that a Stand-using serial killer is on the loose in their hometown of Morioh and they set out to stop him.