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Hey, it's December now! Guess what that means? It's time for my personal top 12 moments of 2022!
Buuuuut we're unfortunately going to start off on a sour note, on something that while not technically associated with anime, does reveal a lot about the state of the animation industry as a whole and how people who don't understand it tend to treat it.
One day, on August 17th, 2022, a crap ton of animated shows were randomly removed from the HBO Max streaming platform with zero warning. Infinity Train, OKKO Let's Be Heroes, Uncle Grandpa, Summer Camp Island, Victor and Valentino, the list goes on. Not just whole shows, but certain episodes of other shows that hadn't been released would likely never see the light of day. Hell, even stuff that was due to be released on HBO Max but wasn't yet was getting axed. But this wasn't the end of it. The removed shows, and everything related to them—commercials, pilots, promotional stuff, short episodes, and so on—were being flat-out removed EVERYWHERE. There was even a point that their DVD releases were flat-out stopped, with no word on whether they'd remain in print. There are some people who even lost all the assets they made for said animation because they hadn't been given enough notice so they could actually make the effort to preserve them! Many assumed that this was the result of Warner Media and Discovery undergoing a merger and bringing in new management.
With one name in particular being responsible for all of it: David Zaslav. He was appointed the new CEO of WarnerMedia around that time, and as this article can tell you, he's pretty much ruined a lot of things for not just HBO Max and Discovery, but the people who wanted their creations brought into existence. Oh, but it only gets worse. Apparently the REAL reason 70% of HBO Max's animated shows were removed from there was so Zaslav and Warner/Discovery wouldn't have to pay residuals to the people who worked on those shows in favor of easy tax write-offs and shitty reality TV shows! All so they can apparently save money and get out of debt! And keep in mind, animators don't exactly get paid a whole lot of money. In fact, there's a movement going on to try and convince higher-ups to allow animators to unionize so they can receive better pay, health insurance, and job security! That's not even getting into the fact that Warner Bros. basically built their whole legacy on animation as a whole. Hello, remember Looney Tunes? That was their bread and butter! There are reasons why people still love Looney Tunes to this day, both the old and new versions of them! And now this idiotic boomer just wants to nuke animation out of every Warner-owned platform he can think of just so he can make more crappy reality shows and not pay the animators who worked their butts off? Uh, no. That's fucking unacceptable. But don't take my word for it. This video also goes into more detail about this. Just read the comments and see just how terrible the whole fiasco is.
This, unfortunately, isn't necessarily anything new. Animation as a medium has always been considered unappreciated and treated like a second-class citizen compared to live-action stuff. Corporate bigwigs have always been quick to dismiss animation as just babysitting fodder for kids, or see any cartoons as children's shows or low-brow adult comedies on the level of Family Guy and South Park, refusing to acknowledge it as the amazing, versatile art form that it is. Dismissing and devaluing animation as a whole as just direct-to-DVD fodder to babysit kids or little more than gross-out fodder is doing a massive disservice to the medium as a whole, along with the artists who pour their hearts out trying to create wonderful movies and series for people who love them. Hell, one of the reasons I review a lot of anime, cartoons, and video games, is to highlight the good and even underappreciated ones to whoever cares enough to even seek them out, because I feel they deserve more love and appreciation than they wound up getting. Animation is capable of so much more than live-action is. That's not to say all live-action stuff is bad, far from it, but to devalue a very versatile art form and the people who create it just because it's not 90 Day Fiance or The Kardashians, to the point of actively refusing to pay them for their hard work because you can't be bothered to treat them the way they deserve to be treated is fucking unacceptable.
Moment #12: The Warner Media/Discovery fiasco and the uncertain future of the removed shows in question.
Buuuuut we're unfortunately going to start off on a sour note, on something that while not technically associated with anime, does reveal a lot about the state of the animation industry as a whole and how people who don't understand it tend to treat it.
One day, on August 17th, 2022, a crap ton of animated shows were randomly removed from the HBO Max streaming platform with zero warning. Infinity Train, OKKO Let's Be Heroes, Uncle Grandpa, Summer Camp Island, Victor and Valentino, the list goes on. Not just whole shows, but certain episodes of other shows that hadn't been released would likely never see the light of day. Hell, even stuff that was due to be released on HBO Max but wasn't yet was getting axed. But this wasn't the end of it. The removed shows, and everything related to them—commercials, pilots, promotional stuff, short episodes, and so on—were being flat-out removed EVERYWHERE. There was even a point that their DVD releases were flat-out stopped, with no word on whether they'd remain in print. There are some people who even lost all the assets they made for said animation because they hadn't been given enough notice so they could actually make the effort to preserve them! Many assumed that this was the result of Warner Media and Discovery undergoing a merger and bringing in new management.
With one name in particular being responsible for all of it: David Zaslav. He was appointed the new CEO of WarnerMedia around that time, and as this article can tell you, he's pretty much ruined a lot of things for not just HBO Max and Discovery, but the people who wanted their creations brought into existence. Oh, but it only gets worse. Apparently the REAL reason 70% of HBO Max's animated shows were removed from there was so Zaslav and Warner/Discovery wouldn't have to pay residuals to the people who worked on those shows in favor of easy tax write-offs and shitty reality TV shows! All so they can apparently save money and get out of debt! And keep in mind, animators don't exactly get paid a whole lot of money. In fact, there's a movement going on to try and convince higher-ups to allow animators to unionize so they can receive better pay, health insurance, and job security! That's not even getting into the fact that Warner Bros. basically built their whole legacy on animation as a whole. Hello, remember Looney Tunes? That was their bread and butter! There are reasons why people still love Looney Tunes to this day, both the old and new versions of them! And now this idiotic boomer just wants to nuke animation out of every Warner-owned platform he can think of just so he can make more crappy reality shows and not pay the animators who worked their butts off? Uh, no. That's fucking unacceptable. But don't take my word for it. This video also goes into more detail about this. Just read the comments and see just how terrible the whole fiasco is.
This, unfortunately, isn't necessarily anything new. Animation as a medium has always been considered unappreciated and treated like a second-class citizen compared to live-action stuff. Corporate bigwigs have always been quick to dismiss animation as just babysitting fodder for kids, or see any cartoons as children's shows or low-brow adult comedies on the level of Family Guy and South Park, refusing to acknowledge it as the amazing, versatile art form that it is. Dismissing and devaluing animation as a whole as just direct-to-DVD fodder to babysit kids or little more than gross-out fodder is doing a massive disservice to the medium as a whole, along with the artists who pour their hearts out trying to create wonderful movies and series for people who love them. Hell, one of the reasons I review a lot of anime, cartoons, and video games, is to highlight the good and even underappreciated ones to whoever cares enough to even seek them out, because I feel they deserve more love and appreciation than they wound up getting. Animation is capable of so much more than live-action is. That's not to say all live-action stuff is bad, far from it, but to devalue a very versatile art form and the people who create it just because it's not 90 Day Fiance or The Kardashians, to the point of actively refusing to pay them for their hard work because you can't be bothered to treat them the way they deserve to be treated is fucking unacceptable.
Moment #12: The Warner Media/Discovery fiasco and the uncertain future of the removed shows in question.
