The moment a friend "enlighten" me that Ufotable's "budget" is just a bunch of filters and inhouse post-production team, the worshipping of Ufotable from the common weebs disgusted me. Ita made much worse when they also tried to defend its management from its fraud cases
I don't really see how either of those things, especially Ufotable having a very strong inhouse post-production team, makes them an less of a good studio. Most studio makes use of post-production and are the usual reasons why a show ends up as good as it is. They fix up any issues that made it through the previous steps in production, add effects to add that extra flare, smooth scene transitions, add in the sound effects, and a crap ton of other things. There are so many steps
before post-production that have to be done well leading into post-production that you can't just discredit and give the full praise to the last step of a long process. Also, if the previous stages of production were in poor enough shape that post-production is the big reason why Ufotable looks so great then it makes them even more impressive of a team.
Ufotable also probably leans into strong post-production and filters because they probably have a very skilled team in those departments, just like in their cgi departments, so why would they intentionally cripple themselves by not leaning into their strongest elements? It's like Sunrise has certain studios internally that are more skilled with mecha animation or combat which they'll usually make use of for their bigger IP that use mecha, because unless there's gross mismanagement (or the A-Team isn't available because they're stuck on another project) it makes the most sense to use the right people for the job.
It's still incredible impressive in what they can accomplish
I just realized that most of Ufotable's works are just adaptation of franchises, or owned by big players. What you can count as original works are either co-developed, or flopped
You know how hard it is to actually release original works compared to adaptions from major companies that are willing to both give you a very nice budget, but also help advertise said work? Original works almost have to be self funded unless they manage to rope in other investors, which is pretty hard to do given the risk involved and how they are likely to flop without a pre-established fanbase or massive marketing ability. It's not even a problem with just anime, but with everything getting released.
I bet a lot of studios would love to put out original works since that means they have full control over the property and merchandising, but the risk likely involved outweighs the benefits unless they get a surprise success or have enough saved money that it being a flop won't cripple the studio. It's one of the reasons why when a studio puts out an original work they usually rely on
who's working on it as a marketing attempt to get people to check it out.
Don't really hold it against a studio if they make good money putting out adaptions and want to continue to do that, along with the odd attempt at original works, because it pays the bills. Doesn't make them less of a studio in my mind unless they're just putting out straight garbage adaptions with zero actually effort put in like many other anime studios are far more guilty of doing.
