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Pokémon Anime Profit

J

jnshucker12

Well-Known Member
Pokémon Anime Profit

What is the most productive way for the Pokémon anime to make money? Surely, it's not what it's doing right now. It's creating new, one-note characters out of thin air or copying old characters.

So what is a way they can create more revenue?

1. Use old popular characters for long periods of time. They have done it in the past, but not so much in newer seasons.

2. Use popular characters in the games. For the most part, this has been done for the girl characters and gym leaders in the games.

3. Create unique characters. Although at this point it seems impossible, they have surprised me before. Even if the last time they surprised me was Serena.

I suppose there are other ways to get an audience. Ads. Ads in other shows. Etc. What kind of ways for making money do you think they can do? What is the most efficient method? Are some methods better than others?
 
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B

Bahmo

Well-Known Member
1) We have a section specific to the anime; you should probably post there. Or maybe ask the mods to move this thread there.

2) My answer, as I essentially stated before, is that the people making this anime are probably detached from the notion of what is or isn't profitable, because that is generally the concern of people who are calling the shots and spending their money. That's essentially the people who make the video games; the anime being merely an extended commercial to promote them.

I know; I know the label "extended commercial" gets thrown around a lot with regards to cartoons, but it really can make a difference in how a show's creators approach it, because when a new source of revenue is added, it means others can be of less priority. To provide a contrasting example, it is safe to say that most live-action sitcoms do not have extensive peripheral merchandise available. What they have are commercial breaks they can sell ad space on, and their own episodes they can sell to people who don't just want to watch them on TV. This means that the quality of the show itself has to be prioritized. If viewers don't like the show, they won't buy the episodes and they won't watch them on TV, meaning they won't see the commercials either and sponsors won't want to buy that space.

The Pokémon anime is not like that, or at least, I would assume it isn't; along with most other merchandise-driven shows. It's getting what I assume is the bulk of its revenue from the game company, whose money in turn came from game sales. In other words, so long as the games are profitable, it doesn't matter if the anime is, and the anime is kept going on the assumption that it aided in the game profits.

Which is not to say that assumption is accurate. Presumably, they do studies to figure out how popular the anime is, but I don't think there's any way to know how successful it is to the bottom line of game sales; short of discontinuing the anime and seeing if the games still sell. I don't expect them to do that right now, but if they somehow stop profiting as much, I could see the anime being discontinued as a way to cut losses.

Meanwhile, though, having established that the anime likely gets most of its money from the company selling the games it advertises, the way to make more money off of it would probably be to tie itself more closely to the games. Or vice-versa works, too. I think Ash Ketchum and Team Rocket became a bit of deadweight on the anime's function as a commercial for games; by G3 they were main characters in an anime promoting games in which they weren't present at all. Short of their being removed, ways to compensate had to be found, which I think is why the movies hawk legendary Pokémon--they actually are in the games, and represent the fruits of playing them with dedication. It's also the likely reason why we've now got two (last I counted; now there may be more) Pokémon based on Ash that are obtainable in the games.

However, the above moves are not, in my opinion, the most ideal way to tie the anime into the games. As I've said many times before, the better way would be to feature both of a game's actual protagonists as traveling companions in its related anime season. Ash can stay, too, but instead of being powered down, he should be the mentor to these amateurs.
 
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