The K-ON! Franchise Progression

In what could've turned out be one of the biggest blunders in anime business history, Kyoto Animation originally wanted K-ON! to be a serious slice of life anime , Naoko Yamada has revealed.

Speaking in an interview with Newtype, Kyoto Animation director Naoko Yamada revealed that the the team has wanted to create ℳℴℯ❤shit anime - without relying on plot, characterization, good animation and the like - for years, but senior management held them back.

"With Clannad, we were dead set against it being yet another good, deep anime," Yamada told Newtype, "but the board of executives really wanted it, the compromise sort of being that we'd get some funding in exchange for doing good, meaningful anime.

"We always wanted to do ℳℴℯ❤shit anime and the board of executives saw us as more of a good, deep animation studio," he said.

"And something I'll add to that, Kyoto Animation also did not want K-ON!. They thought working on a ℳℴℯ❤shit anime was risky and [thought], 'oh my god you can't do that, it's crazy!' They were doing market research to show us we were wrong the whole time," he said.

"We had to fight for everything," chimed in K-ON! project lead, Yukiko Horiguchi. "They wanted it to be drama. Again."

Of course the Kyoto Animation's risk in letting the K-ON! team go against the surveys paid off massively, and K-ON! ended up shifting over 41,000 copies.

"It just blows us away(knowing how retarded the otakus are). I'm still reeling from it," Yamada said of the success.

[Sauce]