Talk:Anime/@comment-0332288-20150119063238/@comment-140.0.248.166-20150119154735

Fanon elements cannot be too prominent in an anime broadcast due to prior art rules governing intellectual property of broadcast material. This is different from paper publications like the 4-koma where prior art rules largely concern visual depictions and not characterization. To summarize a complex situation, technically Kadokawa Anime can be sued by the first person to depict Nagato as a loli predator (provided such person can prove it) but Kadokawa Manga can't be sued for the same person for their 4-koma because they own Momoi Ryouta's work on kancolle. This is because loli predator Nagato is a derivative character but Momoi Ryouta's loli predator Nagato is MOMOI RYOUTA's derivative character. Of course, Kadokawa GAMES, who own original Nagato, can then sue the guy who created loli predator Nagato for making an unlicensed derivative character. Yeah, that sounds dumb as heck, but such is the nature of IP laws.

Note that this specifically applies to Kadokawa's case as owner of both anime and game. If, say, Sunrise had licensed kancolle instead then they would likely have made the effort to depict characters differently, because then they'd have LICENSED derivative characters who can be further licensed for merchandising profit. They might even try to make original kanmusu for maximum gain.

It's just overall easier to avoid the headache by keeping the anime characters as close as possible to their game characters. It's also generally a good idea for the company to keep official depictions under control. One good example for why this is can be seen in the Marvel Spider-verse arc of Amazing Spiderman, where nearly all Spidey incarnations (and even Leopardon!) have made an appearance, except for about 8 derivatives which Marvel have lost rights to thanks to complex licensing. This kind of thing is also the reason Marvel has been trying to retcon the comic universe to match the movie universe to preserve a semblance of lore integrity, yet ignored the X families. This is because the mutants' movie selves are derivative characters belonging to the licensee. Kadokawa is similarly just trying to keep away from the headache of maintaining control over 180 plus kanmusu and their derivatives by maintaining multimedia character integrity from the start.