Taiki Sakurai, who worked as chief anime producer at Netflix from 2017 to 2023, clearly criticized the streaming service’s anime strategy in an interview – especially with regard to in-house productions. We summarize.
Criticism of in-house productions
Sakurai is of the opinion that it would have made more strategic sense to simply license existing anime series instead of investing large amounts of money in their own productions (“Netflix Originals”) right from the start. In his opinion, this approach ultimately did not prove to be particularly successful:
»It is becoming increasingly clear that bundling all rights in one company benefits neither Netflix nor the creators. With titles like ‘Leviathan,’ it would probably have been cheaper for Netflix to just purchase the streaming license from a production committee instead of financing everything themselves.”
During his tenure, Netflix pursued the strategy of creating its own anime productions with significant investments and distributing them exclusively worldwide. Looking back, however, Sakurai considers this decision to be unwise:
»Despite numerous in-house productions, in the end it was the anime whose streaming rights we acquired cheaply from external production committees that ultimately proved to be the really successful ones. This raised the legitimate question: Why put on your own productions at all? I find it extremely shameful that we were unable to achieve convincing results.«
In contrast to Sakurai’s assessment, Yuji Yamano, Content Director of Netflix Japan, has a different view. He described “Saiki K.: Reawakened” – one of Netflix’s first anime productions from 2019 – as a key moment that contributed significantly to the success of anime content on the platform.
It remains to be seen how Netflix’s anime strategy develops in the next few years. The streaming service recently announced its big plans to become the leading provider of anime content in the future.
More on the topic:
Via Toyo Keizai
© CD PROJEKT RED / Netflix
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