The Creator/Creation Relationship
After the airing of Re:Creators in 2017 exposed audiences to the potential for dramatic consequences of art and writing, people finally started to consider the effect that someone's work has on the artist. Usually these relationships are simple where a person with a creative drive expresses what they want to see and leave it at that, but there are other possibilities. Unfortunately, most anime creators have a terrible relationship with their works.
What I find interesting is that this idea came to me when watching the latest episode of Sword Art Online. Watching Kirito get captures made me think about the forces working for and against him. First of all, the plan of the Axiom church to kill him would not exactly work because his representation in the underworld is simply a copy of his consciousness. The worst they could do to him is giving him bad memories. Also, he has allies on the outside. The programmers of the simulation could just pause it and save him if they wanted, so it got me thinking about how programmers feel about their projects. Personally, I program for one of three reasons. Either to practice a skill, because I'm doing it for someone else, or because I want to. Tough the only thing I get back from it is either awe or disappointment at what I've done.
This is actual code I wrote. guess what it does.
Luckily, the world is a bigger place that has more than just me in it, so people have much more complex relationships with what they make. Take two of my favorite youtubers, for instance. Nerdcubed has the philosophy that every video he releases has to be one he is willing to watch, while Bill Wurtz has never seen the final History of Japan video after uploading it. Max Planck doubted his own discoveries, and Isaac Newton shared his with the world.
Reki Kawahara, the writer of Sword Art Online had a particular philosophy about writing where he would simply put out as many books as he possibly could, hoping to sell quickly and reliably. This makes him lack interest in keeping all the themes in his stories connected and actively prevents him from using complex and well-thought-out elements. This is why many of the series he was involved in are seen as being of a lower quality than many other anime.
Generally, the most experience people have interacting with their own art is from talking to people who enjoy it. Unfortunately, most anime studios refuse to engage with their audiences, leading to the creation of more cynical projects and fewer good anime. Some studios like Trigger have decided to engage with their audiences more, but they still do not know how to combine the thought of anime as a job with that of an art form.
Generally, making an original anime forces the studio to put more thought into making a good product, and thus more of an interest in their own work. Even with more originals coming out lately, I believe the anime industry needs to recognize that their relationship with their work has gotten stale, requiring a refresh. I will be much more interested.