The Critical State of the Anime Industry

[ein-stein]

http://www.asahi.com/english/arts/TKY200406020134.html

Found through slashdot.

For all the fat profits that Japanese animation generates from merchandise these days, the wallets of the animators who piece the cartoons together are as thin as the cels they painstakingly paint.

[Otohiko]

Yea, sadly, I've heard of this in other articles, too. So much for a 'dream job' of many people

[)v(ajin Koji]

Then What does this spell for anime in the future?

[Hrothgar]

might be fortunate to pull in just 50,000 yen a month.

Holy shit! Thats only $450.03 a month, and $5400.35 a year in USD (exchangerate.com), thats even less than teachers make! sucks to be them.

[taeli]

I read this story on /. too, but I'd take it with a pinch of salt. From the comments on the site:

If you are a genius, and by that I mean an actual creator of fine art, you will always be in demand. Simply put anyone can rip off one idea, but if people want more, they'll come crawling back.

This article sounds more like the whining of an executive not getting his cut than the plight of the animator itself. I'm not saying that animators aren't being treated unfairly. I'm saying that the president of any company generally cares more about what's in his wallet than some paeon animator's.

Anyone following baseball should know the senario. If George Steinbrenner wants the city of New York to give anything to the Yankees he says, "Oh, if I don't get it, the cost of business will increase SO much that I'll have to move the team to New Jersey." Then he goes back to sleep on his bed of mint $10,000 bills.

Let's take a look at a key sentence in this article.

"Yet an animator, toiling away on cels in a tiny Tokyo studio, might be fortunate to pull in just 50,000 yen a month."

The important word here is "might." This implies that the author does not know what an animator makes. Without any sources for that figure other than a nameless 26 year-old animator, you have to conclude that the statement is at best suspect, at worst a lie.

From what I have read and heard about Japan, they face the same problem we have here [ie: programmer outsourcing to India - taeli]. The cost of living is higher in Japan than in nearby countries. However, has cheap Mexican labor ruined CARS? No. Even the Fords made in the good old US of A will flip over and explode.

If Japanese production companies are so important to Anime, they can demand more money. Anime is far too lucrative to die out. What is more likely, however, is that these are Anime stripmines, churning out series like Harlequin churns out romance novels, or that these are just a bunch of guys who have a knack for tracing.

Like I said, maybe I'm wrong about the "Oh Productions" that the article speaks of, but you can't have it both ways. If you are the genius behind the anime, than you will be able to command the money. If you are just some guys who copy and color, then you are probably a dime a dozen in Japan and a dime for 2 dozen in Korea.

Either way, Anime itself is not ruined. At least, not by ink and paint jobs leaving Japan.

[Charizard305]

Because Japanese animation creators have nowhere near the funds of Disney animators, they must make do with fewer frames and instead concentrate on creating appealing story lines

I wee that all too much. :S+[/quote]

[DemonSpawn]

The problem is, the companies are making money, but they're screwing the people actually doing the grunt work. i.e. the supervisors get paid lots of money, but the people drawing the cels aren't making enough to live on.

In a lot of ways, it's like that here in the US.