Troubled Production/Real Life/Anime and Manga

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Examples of Troubled Productions in Real Life Anime and Manga include:

• Neon Genesis Evangelion. Creator Breakdown and severe depression on behalf of Hideaki Anno, Gainax's shifty accounting practices ending in their CEO being arrested for tax fraud, sponsors pulling out in droves once the show dove off the deep end... Yeah, it's amazing that they even managed to finish that show, even with all the budget-saving Limited Animation at the end. Do we have another candidate for the Apocalypse Now of anime?
  • Rebuild of Evangelion is also a contender in light of Anno's more recent Creator Breakdown episodes and a host of various issues, the main one being the disintegration of the original Studio Gainax (with Anno leaving to form Studio Khara for the creation and release of Rebuild and half of the former Gainax staff founding Studio Trigger), and the financial head of what remained of Gainax repeatedly refusing to give Anno the rights and royalties from his former work while committing financial fraud (notice a pattern here?). The resultant clusterfuck caused that the final film of the tetralogy were repeatedly delayed until their announcement of a mid-2020 premiere, 8 years after the third film premiere - in comparison, between the first and the third film only passed 5 years.
• Code Geass for its first season. Reportedly, Sunrise was wary of trusting a full series to director/co-creator Goro Taniguchi, thanks to his reputation for perfectionism and his other quirks, so he was only handed 25 episodes to begin with. The staff often had to piggyback off of other parts of the studio that were working at the same time (for example, the Geass staff didn't even have their own photocopier) and the writers were only three or four episodes ahead of the broadcast, about half the "buffer" that most series have. When the series became a runaway success, things went much better, but fans tend to blame the series' being split in half for the perceived drop in quality in the second half.
• Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny is an example of this, partly because of head writer Chiaki Morosawa's battle with cancer during production, which resulted in her turning her scripts in late, and thus, necessitating the numerous clip shows throughout the series. Also, although Shinn was supposed to the main character of the series, Kira was thrust back into the spotlight from episode 39 onwards, because of his popularity with the Japanese audience. Finally, there was director Mitsuo Fukuda being demanding on the voice actors on the way how they're supposed to be portrayed (specifically, Naomi Shindo [the voice of Cagalli] and Maaya Sakamoto [the voice of Lunamaria]). This was confirmed by Rie Tanaka (the voice of Lacus and Meer) at her 2008 New York Anime Festival appearance, as well as Kenichi Suzumura (the voice of Shinn) in one of his Twitter posts.
  • Of course, the very first Mobile Suit Gundam show's production was no picnic, either (as is chronicled in the tongue-in-cheek "Making Of" series Gundam Sousei). Then came Zeta Gundam, which suffered fewer financial hardships than the original, but both the TV series and the Compilation Movies rather infamously suffered complications as a result of the romantic blunders of various men involved in production with at least three voice actresses.
    • Most (in)famous of which was the legendary feud between the Prima Donna Director and scriptwriter Yoshiyuki Tomino and equally self-important mecha designer Mamoru Nagano. It became doubly notorious because not only both men were feuding over the Beltorchika Irma's Seiyuu Maria Kawamura, but over Creative Differences as well.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam F91 also fell to this. Originally intended to be full series before it was dropped, a lot of compromises were made in order to compress what material Tomino had into a feature-length movie. Crossbone Gundam would ultimately resolve many of the plot points from that film.
  • Mobile Suit Victory Gundam also became rather notorious. As while it's considered one of the darkest works in the franchise, the series was also made at the height of Tomino's Creator Breakdown, with telling consequences.
• The Dream Machine the final movie of the late Satoshi Kon has experienced its share of trouble, having gone from production into Development Hell, back into production only to fall back into development hell. First Kon's death from pancreatic cancer put the film on hold to determine the next course of action. Kon's widow and Studio Madhouse's Masao Maruyama told they would finish the film and production resumed. However, at Otakon 2011 Maruyama reported the movie has been put on hold due to financial difficulties. Maruyama is still determined to finish the film eventually with about 600 shots out of 1500 had been animated at that point.
• For a long time, Mahou Sensei Negima looked like a happy subversion. Ken Akamatsu wanted to do a shounen-action series from the start, but his producers wanted a harem show like his extremely popular Love Hina series. Akamatsu faked a harem series, using the first two volumes to lay down characterization, then slowly segue into the fighter series he wanted from the start. This resulted in an extremely intelligent and popular series known for its Amazon Brigade and ridiculously badass ten-year old protagonist. However, some three hundred chapters later, the executives tried to take the rights to the series away from him. He responded by ending the series abruptly, with a carefully crafted final chapter that managed to use the Where Are They Now? Epilogue to make sure no one else could use his series. It remains to be seen if there will be any more releases filling in the unanswered questions.

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