Weeks ago, Goro Taniguchi criticized current anime as “junk food” produced without directorial vision. Now, in a new university conference, he went further, pointing to a more structural issue: how Japanese society itself is changing who can make anime and what stories are told in it.

The director of Code Geass, Planetes, and One Piece Film: Red outlined anime’s history from its 1960s origins through what he describes as eight stages of evolution. He placed the current moment in the seventh stage and warned that social changes in Japan are influencing both creative content and how productions are managed.

The central concept he used was “white society”, a term from sociologist Toshio Okada that refers not to race but to a highly transparent and sanitized social environment shaped by smartphones and social media. In this context, aggressive, disruptive, or unconventional behaviors are increasingly discouraged, while superficial harmony is prioritized. Taniguchi compared this pattern to the Japanese stereotype of Kyoto people, known for their extremely indirect way of expressing negative opinions to maintain appearances.

According to him, this social trend is directly filtering into anime’s protagonists, particularly in narou-kei and isekai, where the hero type that avoids conflict and reads the social atmosphere has become dominant. The problem isn’t just thematic: Taniguchi noted that producers increasingly prefer creators who are easy to manage and can faithfully reproduce original material without imposing their own ideas. This leads ambitious creators to receive fewer opportunities and eventually leave the industry.

This is compounded by the weakening of the traditional apprenticeship system, partly due to the proliferation of short one-cour series, and the greater influence now held by original authors and rights holders over adaptations, complicating the director’s role and making it harder to maintain a coherent creative vision. The result, in his analysis, is an industry prioritizing short-term profits and easily consumable content over artistic ambition.

Looking ahead to the eighth stage, the next decade, Taniguchi acknowledged that Japanese anime has achieved genuine global recognition but warned that this advantage could erode if the domestic industry continues on this path, especially with the accelerating production seen in China and South Korea. The comparison he used was ukiyo-e, the Japanese art that flowed to Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries without Japan capitalizing on that influence as others did.

Despite the outlook, he closed with a note of hope: he believes anime has a secure future because people will always need stories. Stories help us understand others and the world, experience emotions and decisions indirectly, find meaning in events, alleviate loneliness, and transmit past wisdom. In his view, anime is well-suited to fulfill all these roles.

About Goro Taniguchi

Goro Taniguchi is one of Japan’s most recognized anime directors, with a career including Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, s-CRY-ed, Planetes, and One Piece Film: Red. His latest work is L’étoile de Paris en fleur, released in Japan in March 2026. His observations on the industry’s state come from decades of experience within the system, giving them particular weight in the medium’s ongoing discussions about its future.

Do you think anime is losing creative ground for the reasons Taniguchi points out, or are there signs the industry still produces works that challenge that mold?