1 The series was done by Gonzo, so how does Kadokawa figure in it?

Gonzo did the production on the series, but it's not like they have their own video label or anything, nor would they be financing the series entirely off their own backs. Presumably Kadokawa is part of the mysterious production group for this series, co-funding the production in exchange for the home video distrobution rights in Japan (by contrast, the other Gonzo show at the moment, Linebarrels of Iron, is distrobuted by JVC).

I kind of suspect that Strike Witches, and a lot of the other recent Gonzo shows, will probably never see an R1 license. These studios claim that fansubs hurt their sales, particularly of niche titles. Given these shows have not only been available to legally download for a fee, but also to watch completely free via streaming sites, and are likely to remain their for the forseeable future. I can't see any R1 label wanting to take on that kind of risk.

2

Yes, it's true that SW was released here for pay download (I bought it) but we got the censored versions. I haven't seen any sales figures for BOST and/or CrunchRoll for R1 paid downloads, but I think they did reasonably well, selling hardsubbed censored versions.

Given the assumption of decent sales here for the censored versions, and given the good sales of the uncensored DVDs in Japan, I don't see any reason to think they wouldn't want to try to milk the R1 market as well for a second pass.

I'd buy the DVDs if they came out here.

3 Niche title - "action series fans who aren't put off by the whole no pants thing". Plus the whole "second bite at the apple" problem with fans who already paid once to see the show.

It's not necessarily a killer; in 2004 I think it would have been picked up. But the market here is a lot slower now, and even good shows are sitting around with nobody picking them up; the only big player in the market at the moment is still digesting their last mouthfuls, and everyone else is battening down the hatches. It's not a good time to take a risk on a marginal title.

It COULD get cheap enough, but Gonzo is strapped for cash; how many shows can they give away? Especially given that Strike Witches is their most-lucrative title at the moment. For that matter, we don't have any idea how their contract with Crunchy affects the idea of DVD licensing or even if that's allowed.

4 For those of us not in the loop... what did Gonzo do to goof themselves up so badly in the first place?

5

Produce lots and lots of lousy series. It's not really too complicated.

Strike Witches and Vandread are their two big successes, and it was a lot of years between them. If you look at their CV for the ones that say "Animation Production", you won't find many there which are reknowned. But you'll find quite a few which are reviled (cough Dragonaut).

Everybody works for everybody else at various times, and Gonzo has done animation work for others on shows that were decent such as Kaleido Star. But their own series mostly were not all that hot.

6 I think Last Exile was a credible attempt at breaking the bad streak, but they did not have the will to stick to it. It will be sad if Strike Witches turns out a one-off (although I like the Druaga, it's no masterpiece).

7

The problem is that coming up with hit shows is hit-or-miss, as it were. Some studios have a better record at it than others, but everyone produces stinkers, and it's not always easy to tell why one series is a hit and another one is not.

Certainly there was nothing about Strike Witches as a concept which obviously would make it a big hit. Fan service, action, lots of girls; it's not like those things are rare in anime. But a lot of shows like that don't hit big.

There was a chemistry in SW which I think made it work. I don't think it was just the nudity and pandering.

Whatever it was, Gonzo hasn't been very good at finding it in their other attempts. Why was Strike Witches a hit, and Dragonaut was junk? (If the answer is "Loli nudity" then we're all doomed.)

Whatever it is, Gonzo clearly doesn't know. Which is why they don't have the kind of reputation that attaches to Kyoto Animation or J.C. Staff, or even Gainax. Nor are they doing as well as those studios.

8 Last Exile was also Gonzos 10th Anniversary Project - they spent way more money and got way more indulgent on it than they probably should have. They couldn't really do that with every production.

Kaleido Star was actually in-studio Gonzo rather than something they just did animation work for - I seem to remember them having actually set up a sub-brand for producing shows aimed at girls for it's production, then promptly did nothing else with it.

I think the big problem with Gonzo is that, up until Strike Witches, they focused heavily on the kinds of shows which sold better outside Japan than in their own country. This was fine until the bottom started falling out of the licensing market a couple of years back. Some of their recent productions (SW in particular) seem like a deliberate attempt to appeal to the home market.

That said, I do think Gonzo have produced more decent shows than most give them credit for, but the genres are pretty disparate and largely outside of what I'd except your field of interest to be. Gankutsuou, their SF version of The Count of Monte Cristo, is particularly outstanding, but they've lots of productions like Full Metal Panic, Gate Keepers, and Kiddy Grade that, at worst, were at least entertaining.

9

Kiddy Grade had excellent production standards. The character designs were interesting, the animation was competent, and the CG was amazing.

The problem there was the writing and the characterization. And in fact a lot of Gonzo's shows are like that, with really good production values and very iffy writing.

If you compare them against J.C. Staff, they just don't measure up. J.C. Staff has a lot of shows which are a lot better than anything Gonzo ever did IMHO: Sugar, Potemayo, Azumanga Daioh, Someday's Dreamers, among others.

They've got a lot of shows which are comparable to Gonzo's best, which would be considered second tier for J.C. Staff, like the Shana series, the Slayer's series.

J.C. Staff has had its turkeys, too (Maburaho) but I trust the brand a lot more than Gonzo. It seems like every season one of the shows that gets a lot of buzz is from them, and sometimes more than one. Right now, for instance, A Certain Magical Index is one of theirs.

Gonzo just doesn't manage that as consistently.

10 At some point I was reading the list at the ANN link posted above and wanted to argue that Gonzo was not _that_ bad. Then I looked at J.C. Staff's equivalent list. It's not just Azumanga and Someday's Dreamers, but also Ai Yori Aoshi, Nodame, Potemayo, Toradora (same seazon with Index! -- just how much talent do they employ?). There is an obvious difference in the density of good shows between the two lists.

11 Basically that. Gonzo churned out moderately-good action show after moderately-good action show, interspersed with crappy action shows. Not a lot of real hits in there.

But it's got to be more than that. Plenty of animation studios have a "meh" average and get along fine. Maybe they're just overspending?