Last year was well loaded with anime series, but surely the one that took them all by band was ‘Chainsaw Man’, which had manga fans very excited waiting the MAPPA series. The anime studio also put all the meat on the grill and was in charge of 100% of the production, marketing, merchandising… and everything, because ‘Chainsaw Man’ was a sure bet that was going to make millions.
Well, it seemed so. Because after the end of the anime, many fans were not happy and some even began to launch requests on the internet for the series to be redone “correctly”, and it seems that Blu-ray and DVD sales were not very buoyant either.
Success, but with a little self-criticism
It is still up in the air if we will have a second season of the anime, although it could be announced soon at a ‘Chainsaw Man’ event, but while the president of MAPPA has already confirmed that the anime has indeed been a commercial success.
“Handling such intricate processes as rights, licensing, merchandising planning, which is normally handled by a production committee… It has been a very valuable learning experience,” said Manabu Otsuka. “Although other production companies already have that experience, for us it has been an important experience to grow.”
Despite the bumps, the numbers have ended up adding up. otsuka has also revealed that they are still catching up on some things and looking for new strategies, especially to better sell the anime in physical format (which in the end is one of the main sources of income for studies).
‘Chainsaw Man‘ was already a well-known manga before MAPPA got its hands on it, and a very juicy license, so they also found themselves in a huge spotlight for the first time before releasing the anime. And although in the end the move of investing in Denji and his chainsaws did work out for them, they also have the thorn in them that it was not the massive bombing to the level of ‘Jujutsu Kaisen’ that they had been expecting.
“In financial terms, we can definitely say that it has been a resounding success,” Otsuka confirmed. “However, when it comes to achieving the same level of impact as our recent work with ‘Jujutsu Kaisen’, we are still not completely satisfied.”
Otsuka also revealed that MAPPA plans to release between six and eight anime a year, be it series or movies… So it’s very, very possible that the continuation of ‘Chainsaw Man‘ be among them. Now to see if self-criticism works to see what to improve with the new chapters.
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