When you hear a statement like "They say that ..." or "That's what they want you to believe" the Illuminati is being talked about but when you hear, "What the heck were they thinking?!" and "They really blew it" somebody is talking about producers.
All the anime that you see, as well as most entertainment on TV or in the theater, is brought to you by sponsors and producers. The sponsors have the money and the producers wring it out of them. It is the job of the producer to wrangle the creative team and make sure they produce something that is commercially viable. The producer can see if the project is heading towards being over budget or behind schedule or encountering other troubles, and he can help the creative team stay on track.
We expect the client to have certain demands, and since it is their money being spent they definitely have a right to them. Japanese sponsors tend to be pretty smart about where they invest their money and they won't invest in a team of creators unless they trust them to be able to do a good job in the first place so they generally don't get too involved in the creative aspects.
Animation of most any type is a commercial product and it needs to sell in order to make money so that the creators can eat and so that they can make more. Every product has a target audience and some point where the project will break even. The target audience may be narrow, say fans of a specific kind of game, or wide, say elementary school age children. The break-even point is determined by the total show budget plus any advertising expenses and such added afterwards. TV shows are now often made with video sales in mind and a large part of the initial investment is returned that way. The volume of sales necessary for enough money to be generated that some flows back to the creators instead of the middlemen can be quite large.
Due to the economic troubles in Japan, fewer people have disposable income so there are fewer customers for OVA series and the market for them has almost disappeared. Overseas, the market is stronger but there are more middlemen and piracy problems so it is not yet profitable enough to rely upon. While the market in the US is growing, mainstream penetration is still slow and unsure. Mainstream sales are critical, as it is unreasonable to pursue only the fan market because it is not only small but fansubbing and other factors erode the potential sales of a title very quickly. (Do not speak to me of "fansubber ethics" (a contradiction in terms) as even if the fansubbers really do cease pirating the shows their wares are forever available in the vast illegal distribution system that knows no ethics. There is no honor amongst thieves.) We are hoping that the US market for anime will grow to the point where we can release shows specifically targeted at US audiences.
It sometimes becomes the job of the producer to be the arbiter of taste and to decide what projects will be picked up and which will not. One of the things that I love most about the Japanese animation industry is that there are enough broad-minded people in it that good projects happen regularly and even off-the-wall ideas can be picked up for production. One of the dangers in this is what is currently happening in the anime movie market—projects that are not commercially viable are showing up too regularly. The producers seem to have lost touch with the market. I am no brilliant market analyst but I can see what is obvious.
Take the example of TONARI NO YAMADA-KUN, the new film from Studio Ghibli. When I heard that the original was a 4-panel newspaper comic I could not quite figure out how they were going to translate that into a film. Upon hearing that they were planning on doing it in an animated watercolor style I thought that would look very interesting but that the audience would saturate (get tired of it) after about 30 minutes. I also questioned the wisdom of trying to sell an animated film based on a comic targeted at businessmen. The reviews now say that the film is pretty but you get tired of looking at it after 20 minutes, the story is fragmented and the humor is over the heads of most of the audience for animation. The film is not doing very well at the box office. I figured that ANYBODY could see that one coming.
I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with the idea but I think that it would have been a much better video release than a film. It would have cost less and been more available to potential buyers.
The same thing happened with another film by another company. The film, which we will call "Z" is based on a series of manga stories. The manga did not sell particularly well and live-action works based on that world were unsuccessful. When I heard that Z was going to be made based on that world, I thought that not only would nobody watch it because of its content but that it was a serious error in judgement to produce the film right after the major success of another film by the production company. I figured that ANYBODY could see that it was going to be trouble. They took a lot of time and spent a lot of money and made a film which is beautiful in all technical ways but that nobody wants to distribute. Z is going to sit in the can for a long time and maybe eventually be distributed but it will never be a hit.
So why didn't they take it to video and use that feature budget for something that would be more viable? Why didn't the creators see that they were on a one way trip to commercial oblivion? How could they not see? I do not understand.
Unlike Hollywood, anime producers do not have the financial resources to buy their way to popularity so it's pretty easy to tell what a show will best be marketed as just by looking at its proposal or pilot.

The Danger of Being Near Creative People

One of the problems we face is producers suddenly deciding to be creative and to inject their vision into a show. They'll often come up with ideas that the director just dismisses right away but sometimes it becomes a real fight. You get requests to use specific music, specific voice actors and to make sure certain items—which will be marketed as toys—are used regularly but none of those are particularly damaging. (Unless the actor is really terrible and they want her or him to play the main character. In that case all you can do is sit in the recording studio with your head between your knees.)
If there is some really odd element in a show that doesn't belong there, you can bet that it came either from a producer or a sponsor. They'll say things like, "We need to have more explosions but make sure that you can't see anybody get hurt." They'll want some change to a scene that will make it impossible to fit it into the show. "We want to see all the characters appear in this scene" even though half of them are on another planet or something. They'll also demand that you use 3D elements even though they don't belong in the show just because they think they look "cool." This is how you end up with a scene where you have the 3D bust of Karl Marx bombarding a city with marble sheep from his eye cannons in a series based on classical children's literature.
You tell them, "Gee, this looks really stupid. Nobody is going to like this and in fact, people will mock this mercilessly." And a few months later the producers can't understand why people are reacting that way. It seems to do no good to tell them that any normal person could have seen what was going to happen.
Sometimes the producers use the mind control helmet on you and there's little you can do. You're sitting in the studio trying to come up with good ideas for a new TV series and the next thing you know you're wearing the mind control helmet and you're watching yourself develop a CRAYON SHINCHAN/PRETTY SAMMY crossover OVA. It can be pretty ugly. You never really see the helmet but you know that they have it. Just like the drugs they put in your tea that make you think that women are more attractive with chainsaws instead of hands. Sure, they try and tell you that it's just fatigue and that you've been awake too long but you know that it's something else. MK ULTRA had nothing on anime producers.
All in all, though, I suppose that it's better than being an animator because that must be like waking up as a galley slave. As a director, I've toyed with the idea of using one of those big drums they have in the galleys that they beat to set the rowing pace, however many beats per minute. When we were doing OK, I'd call the production assistants and yell, "EIGHT BEATS!" Boom Boom Boom. When we were getting too close to the deadline, I could yell, "TWELVE BEATS!" BoomBoomBoomBoom That would be good. Even better would be whipping the animators and splashing them with salt water ... er ... uh.. I mean, yeah, an uh ... animation company is like a ship. Where's that star to steer her by?