Producer Yusuke Onuki Says Overseas Streaming Minimum Guarantees Decide Anime Greenlights
Onuki's account puts the greenlight decision in the hands of overseas platforms' upfront payments, meaning a title's viability can rest on streaming terms rather than domestic popularity.
Reporting from 1 source: Animehunch.
Yusuke Onuki, president of Bushiroad Move and a producer on titles including 100 Girlfriends and Grisaia: Phantom Trigger, says overseas streaming money now decides which anime get made. A 12- to 13-episode late-night series needs roughly 350 million yen, and production committees lean on Minimum Guarantee advance payments from Netflix, Disney+, and Crunchyroll to cover costs before broadcast.
Onuki describes the Minimum Guarantee as the deciding factor: an upfront payment from a streaming platform, calculated against a fixed number of views, that production committees use to cover animator salaries, studio rentals, voice recording, post-production, and marketing before a series airs. If viewership passes the agreed metric, rights holders earn supplementary income through revenue sharing.
He also ties the size of those offers to exclusivity. A platform that gets a title exclusively tends to offer a higher MG, while a work simulcast across many platforms from the start sees that value drop, with terms shifting on the title's name recognition and expectations.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.