Joseph Luster
October 15, 2024 
You may have heard the term ‘light anime’ thrown around recently. It’s used to describe shows with limited production values and a simple style of animation, with the aim of cutting down on the cost and time of production. Considering how many anime series air each season, adding up to an imposing and ever-increasing total per year, it kind of makes sense. If it were more of an artistic decision, there might even be some kind of heart beating beneath these budget productions, but unfortunately it’s just a purely cynical move to get more content to the masses.
One of the recent series to make its way to the screen is Lockdown Zone: Level X, which just announced season 2 plans. This one comes from Dai Nippon Printing as part of its Animation ID project, which previously included the likes of Moriarty’s Perfect Crime and Marui Kanojo to Zannen na Kareshi. They’re more akin to motion comics than actual animation, employing many of the same panels-come-to-life techniques to convey action and movement. According to the folks behind it, the ultimate goal is to produce anime more promptly in “response to consumer needs.”
Light Anime in Action
This is where it loses me almost immediately. This isn’t about building a vision around a budget, or creating the best art you can with the limitations presented. It’s about putting some more grease on the anime production wheels so all the “consumers” out there have more disposable media to sift through. It’s cynical enough on its own, but the real fact of the matter is that this is a product no one needs.
There’s already too much anime out there as it is. There’s certainly more than enough to entertain your average viewer for the rest of their lives, and we’re getting dozens more every three months. There’s anime in every genre imaginable, from slice-of-life fishing to otherworldly epics. Animators are getting worked to the bone on a daily basis to churn this stuff out, and as much as the higher powers may want to ring the bells for “more, more, more,” it’s simply not sustainable.
The expectation should never be that all anime must be nothing more than pure, absurdly fluid and stylish fodder for social accounts reposting sakuga clips. That’s not what this is about. If this weren’t such a transparent ploy for getting more product out there on a faster timeline, ‘light anime’ might actually be able to be sold as a reprieve for the artists that make all of this possible in the first place. It might be nice to work within that space with the knowledge that the folks in charge had your best interests in mind, and maybe we’ll get there someday. As long as anime continues to be the powerhouse that it is, though, expect to see more ‘light anime’ make its way to the screen, for better or worse.
