Why Anime Telecasting Stopped In India?

Hey, guys welcome back to Animeindia.in. You know the most searched phrase in India regarding anime is “Why Anime Stopped In India” or “Why Anime Telecasting Stopped In India“. I have been doing research regarding this topic for the last 3 weeks and I will be sharing my findings with all you guys. I will be explaining each and every point in detail and in reference to that information, I will be providing links and sources as well.

For starters, it was not a single moment that led to the fall of anime in India. The process took place gradually over a period of time. And I want to clear a misconception that the anime community in India has, which is that ” anime is banned by the government “. This is totally wrong the govt of India has never directly or indirectly banned the anime (Japanese animation) in India. So let us talk about what were the actual reasons behind.

Anime Licensing & Production Cost

The cost of making a good looking anime series of 13 episodes is insanely high. And a good reason is the number of animators involved in a project like this. Each and every scene in anime is hand-drawn by an animator. Most of the time, on a single episode nearly 20 key animators are working, and a good chunk of the work is also outsourced to different small animation studios. According to Masamune Sakaki, a CG creator in the anime industry, an average 13-episode anime season costs around 250 million yen (or $2 million USD). This cost is nearly 14 – 15 Crore Indian Rupees. The problem with the anime industry is that the animators are still underpaid, but this topic is for another day.

So roughly for making a single episode, it cost more than 1 Crore Indian Rupees, for perspective A media professional quoted the price for producing 2D or 3D animated content to be Rs 10-20 lakh or above for one 11-22 minute show like Chota Bheem or Motu Patlu.

This production cost reflects in the licensing of these series. Eventually, the licensing cost of anime is very high in comparison to some home grown animated series. For telecasters, it makes more sense to license a more cheap animated series with more episodes and show them back to back, rather than licensing dragon ball or one piece.

Censorship & Audience Targeting

In India animation or animated content is considered to be for a younger demographic. This is seriously a problem for anime content because by default for most Indian the anime needs to be appropriate for children. Most popular anime series have over the top dramatic fight scenes and use of not so appropriate language. But actually, anime is for a much mature audience, let me give you an example one of the most famous anime in the world is Death Note, but a 13 year watching it probably is not a good idea.

This leads to the complaints of parents and censorship by authorities. This eventually leads to people not understanding that anime and not liking it. This reason is quite significant if you want to understand the identity crises of anime in India, which is people not knowing the difference b/w anime & cartoons. A good example is Sanji’s Loli pop obsession.

The one-line difference is most anime are for mature audiences and most cartoons are for younger audiences. Most anime are Japanese and the rest most animations are cartoons.

Language & Dubbing

Next major reason Why Anime Stopped In India was no Indian language dubbing by TV channels. In India many different language are dominant leading to question- in how many languages we need to dub the anime? The numbers and costs adds up leading to scraping the idea of dubbing. I think anime like Shinchan and Doraemon are successful because of their successful 4 language availability in India & they are loved by children.

If the entertainment is not available in your native language you will feel discouraged to try any thing new. Same goes for anime as well, you can’t encourage/force your friends that cannot understand English or face problem in reading subtitles.

Size Of Anime Community

The size of anime community is very small in comparison to the countries population. It is a very harsh reality and growth speed is also very slow. The simple and understandable example is anime youtubers in India. The subscriber counts of their channel and directly proportional to the size of anime community in India.

Death Of Animax & Toomani (India)

These all reasons above led to the closing of both TV channels that telecasted anime in India.

Animax was an Indian television channel owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment. It was operated and broadcast from Singapore by Animax Asia and distributed by Sony Pictures Networks India Pvt. Ltd. It started Hindi dubbing of anime for some time and its demographic age was 7 to 14 years. Then it only shows English dubbing with some Japanese with eng sub and was also the first animation channel targeting the 15-25 year old demographic and was the only channel in India to stream anime simultaneously in the same week and on same day as Japan.

Animax stopped broadcasting in India on regular television and was replaced by Sony Yay on April 18, 2017. Sony Pictures Networks then made Animax Asia HD available as a live channel on its Indian digital platform, Sony LIV.

On May 8, 2020, the Animax Asia HD live channel became unavailable for viewing on Sony LIV, likely due to the acquisition of Animax in Vietnam by KC Global Media.

Toonami was launched as a block on Cartoon Network, India’s oldest children’s channel, on September 8, 2001. Turner International India launched Toonami on February 26, 2015.

On July 1, 2017, Toonami India was recast as a classic animation channel, all-action animation programming was removed except for some shows. The channel aired programs from the Cartoon Network Studios, Hanna-Barbera, and Warner Bros. Animation libraries And few anime series like Dragon Ball Super and Dragon Ball Kai. Toonami India stopped broadcasting and stopped broadcasting at the end of May 15, 2018.

What Next?

This article is becoming more discouraging than informative. Don’t worry about what happened that was in the past but we have new hope to watch anime in India. Netflix is becoming more and more active in anime category especially in India. Other anime streaming platforms like Wakanim, Funimation are researching the Indian market for the audience for possible future expansion.

Crunchyroll is present in India and it is slowing increasing it’s original anime list in India. I have some inside news from Netflix people that they are going to release anime in Hindi dub pretty soon, Yes but I will not promise anything because big companies change their mind quickly and quietly.

Other than that In India Anime distribution companies like Muse Asia and Medialink Group (Ani-One) are becoming more are more active with their YouTube channels that stream anime the same day from japan. Their anime library is increasing at lightning speeds. It is now becoming harder to update these anime lists on our website but in a good way 😉 .

This is “Why Anime Stopped In India“. This article article was very time consuming not because of its writing but because of the research it required. I did wanted to give you guys incomplete information so i contacted few people i know and read more than 20 articles regarding somewhat similar topics. Any updates regarding these topics will be updated in future. I am not criticizing any Cartoon series or promoting any company, these all are just facts. If anyone wants to use this information in video just give us credits in description. If you liked our work do share with others.

Let me know your thoughts in comment section. Which anime on Animax was you favorite? Or share us with your childhood anime story.