Sasayaku You ni Koi wo Utau Production Problems (Full Text)
While not posted here on the Fediverse, a user on the site has gotten in contact with a user to leak the problems the staff are working with while producing the anime. (Note: Some spelling corrections, source from Patstar_1999, OCR in text form) I may write a follow up editorial post on this over on my main blog at a future date.
Now updated with rebuttals.
https://kireinayuri.com/sasayaku-you-ni-koi-wo-utau-production-problems-full-text/
@chikorita157 “Did you know what scummy business Yokohama and Cloudhearts are during with the Sasakoi? They use outsourcing studios”????? anime fans need to stop thinking that outsourcing is not normal. Gosh even beloved KyoAni started as an outsourcing studio! I’m not saying that there’s nothing wrong with the production of that show, but a rant by someone that doesn’t seem to understand the production process doesn’t help
@mofumofu That is why I take it with a grain of salt since it’s a “leak” after all. Outsourcing for the most part happen to all productions, even some known studios as well.
I wonder if there is more reliable accounts in the industry that give the full picture of what is actually happening.
@chikorita157 also why are they complaining about a missing microphone? No one complained when Minmei sang with a chicken drumstick
@chikorita157 I'm not very knowledgeable about anime production aside from what I've gleaned from watching shows like Shirobako, but I'm skeptical about this leak because the part about the concert scene only having 2-4 people working on it contradicts the credits in the episode itself.
I suppose it's possible that they credited a bunch of people who did little or no work on this scene, but why? (The thread even claims there are problems with people not being credited, rather than the opposite.)
Also the part about "different schedules, no chance to communicate" seems weird. I've never heard of anime production, during the actual animation process, being anything other a back-and-forth thing - the animators aren't getting minute-by-minute feedback on each frame from the directors or anything. AFAIK, cuts usually get turned in when they're done, then reviewed as time permits, then returned and revised.
I don't doubt there's brutal crunch on Sasakoi and episodes are barely being finished in time, but anyone could guess that just by watching it. I do doubt that the finer details in this "leak" come from a trustworthy source.
(Side note, not all these thoughts are original, I owe some of them like the credits discrepancy to a friend of mine on deadbird. But as said friend has had their account privated for a long time, I think they would prefer I didn't spread their name around.)
@lethekazhorai Interesting that the credits does not match up the allegations in the Twitter thread, which is why I’m pretty skeptical, although the production was delayed by at least three months.
I wonder if @kbnet would know more about this since he focuses on some animation stuff.
But given it's the deadbirdsite and leaks, I think people should take any allegations here with a grain of salt, but of course the animation quality issues are of course apparent, but there is probably something more to the story than this unreliable account provides, although it might seem plausible.
@chikorita157 @lethekazhorai Yeah, OP has no idea what they're talking about. They may or may not know a staff member, but if they do, then something got lost in translation.
Letheka is right: the credits clearly contradict what OP is saying and staff not all being in the same office is the norm. Traditionally there'll be an animation meeting or "sakuuchi" where the episode director (enshutsu) and production assistant meet with all the key animators (although ideally sakkan, douga kensa, etc. should be there too) and explain each of the assigned cuts, but these days you might also just have the enshutsu record videos for each animator and asking them to reach out individually with questions. OP is right that the lack of communication is a bad thing, but wrong that this is abnormal.
To be fair to OP, if they're not straight-up bullshitting, it's possible that like…animators are receiving storyboard and settei packets with no further elaboration. The contradiction with the credits and the way it's mentioned alongside the essentially meaningless "different schedule" thing makes me suspect bullshit, but there *is* a plausible interpretation.
>another small thing that is probably known is the fact that Yokohama and Cloudhearts are not the ones making the schedules and budget management
…yes, yes that is how anime works unless you are KyoAni. You can get pedantic here because anime studios actually *do* always set their own budgets because the production committee pays the primary contractor a fee to make the cartoon and then the primary contractor spends however much of their own money they need to get the dang thing to air. That just makes OP's claim weirder though because I don't know how a studio can lose control of how it spends its own money unless there's something very weird I don't know about how these particular studios are structured. The best I can come up with for a charitable reading is that OP might've heard that the contractor can't just ask for more time and money and misunderstood.
>They use outsourcing studios, giving them nothing to work with and in the end the outsourcing studios are the ones with the backlash.
Again, this has been how TV anime has worked since Astro Boy. This is so vague that you can once again imagine OP heard something and just didn't understand the context, but there's nothing "scummy" on the face of it. Maybe the primary contractor really is weirdly uncommunicative with its subcontractors. Maybe OP is making shit up. Who knows? According to my METI anime subcontracting guide, Japanese law considers failing to deliver information such as required to complete the job described in the contract to be an abrogation of the terms, so it better not be the former lmao
>Yokohamas entire team left the project because of these awful conditions. […] What happened is that since EP3, every EP has a different team, people are getting not credited.
That doesn't seem to be true though? What would that even mean anyway?
@chikorita157 @lethekazhorai I hit the character limit but you get the idea. As much as I'd like to give OP as much charity as possible, this reads like fanfiction – same as that alleged Yuri on Ice "leak."
@kbnet @lethekazhorai Here is one of the accounts I found on that thread on deaddit.
It seems that the future episodes are delayed by two weeks. Something must be up.
@chikorita157 @lethekazhorai Oh, production is fucked for sure, it's just the specific things OP was saying
@kbnet @lethekazhorai OP post aside, I'm curious what lead the production to get into the state that it is in now. I’m sure that more people who actually worked on the production will give some insights, not just an outside unreliable account that seem plausible (in Japanese or if they know English), but still not trustworthy enough to be sure given the mistakes on specific things.
@chikorita157 @lethekazhorai Coming back to this, apparently OP later reached out to Kevin Cirugeda of SakugaBlog to find a way to better express what they were allegedly being told. Maybe something will come of that. https://bsky.app/profile/yuyucow.bsky.social/post/3ku2gcntdba2d
@kbnet @lethekazhorai Interesting. I look forward to seeing what comes out from this and perhaps a more put together explanation of what is actually going on.
@lethekazhorai @chikorita157 also: “They use outsourcing studios, giving them nothing to work with”. What does that even mean? Hey outsourcing studio, go and make something up… whatever! It’ll be fine!