Anime Recession?

[DarkPrince_92]

So this is a little surprising. I knew the work wasn't doing much for animators, but this sounds like serious shit. The lifestyle over there is drastic. It's basically a choice between a comfortable life, or drawing in a small ass room. Glad I chose to be an animator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc-0Y1wJkck

[SSJ God Gogeta]

Wow that is a little surprising to see. Thanks for posting this Dark.

[dbboxkaifan]

This explains why Episode of Bardock was so bland and mediocre.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Yikes....I mean, I figured that animators weren't making particularly good money, but DAMN.....that really is a shame. I wish I could go up to the guy and be like, "I'm so sorry, for whatever it's worth, I think you make awesome work!"

And that guy's in Toei, too. If memory serves (which it may not), they're the only animation company in Japan whose employees are unionized. If that's what their union is bringing them, then I shudder to think what the non-union animators must be making. Again, not to sound like I'm preaching, but hopefully this will get more people, even if it's only a marginal amount, to support the official release.

Also, on a side note...CNN......please read the title screen. It's not "One Peace."

[KentalSSJ6]

I want that SSJ4 Goku cell from the Budokai 3 intro.

[ShinGaijin]

Very interesting, thank you for sharing.I'm not really surprised, however, it's sad to hear that.Again and again.Even in the japanese press.

[HG-Project]

It's been this way for a while, there's a gap between the east and the west in terms of salary, though experienced animators from both sides are talented as fuck. It's kind of sad.
Also, being an animator in general, even looking at it from a global point, isn't very lucrative. That's why being passionate about what you do rather than nitpicking about pay will make you a happier individual if you want to become a specialist in the creative fields. (keeping this mindset gets difficult as you get older)
If money is higher than passion on your priorities list, you're better off just finding other jobs, imo.

[Freeza Soldier #156]

Thanks for posting that, it was extremely interesting...and amazingly sad. It's amazing the amount of work these people put into their job just to get so little in return. I know so many people who think being a manga artist or an animator allows for a cushy lifestyle; it's incredible how wrong they are.

[Attitudefan]

I've seen this or at least a similar documentary around 5 years ago. However, I doubt much has changed, and this is why I don't advocate for piracy. It really hurts business and the life for those people in it.

Moral of the story, don't be an asshole and pirate shows. If you like an anime or manga, purchase it or watch it on TV or a legal stream like CrunchyRoll or the Anime Network.

[DarkPrince_92]

internet Piracy is a major business killer for them too, like they mentioned. How can they make money if everything is more or less at our fingertips. A full season of anything is only a download away. I'm a culprit of this by the way... but more so because lack of money these days. We broke out here... If I had the means, I would definitely buy everything. Obviously.

It's still pretty strange how they have One Piece and Dragon Ball and things are this bad... goddamn.

[Attitudefan]

internet Piracy is a major business killer for them too, like they mentioned. How can they make money if everything is more or less at our fingertips. A full season of anything is only a download away. I'm a culprit of this by the way... but more so because lack of money these days. We broke out here... If I had the means, I would definitely buy everything. Obviously.

It's still pretty strange how they have One Piece and Dragon Ball and things are this bad... goddamn.

I can't afford everyhting either. But I stay true to myself and try to stick with legal streams only such as Hulu, where I completed the Tiger and Bunny anime, Crunchy Roll for practically everything else, and the Anime Network which has some really good gems that are really difficult to get elsewhere such as the New Fist of the North Star and Clannad.

However, that is not to say I haven't got some stuff.... in an immoral fashion. A friend 'loaned' me Bakuretsu Hunters; but since it is really old and hard to find, I'll make an exception. Out of print anime and manga can be the exception. Sometimes.

[KentalSSJ6]

internet Piracy is a major business killer for them too, like they mentioned. How can they make money if everything is more or less at our fingertips. A full season of anything is only a download away. I'm a culprit of this by the way... but more so because lack of money these days. We broke out here... If I had the means, I would definitely buy everything. Obviously.

It's still pretty strange how they have One Piece and Dragon Ball and things are this bad... goddamn.

I do this a lot too, primarily as a try before you buy method and as a means of having a digital backup should something happen to my physical copy. I make it a habit to buy all anime I have downloaded and if I didnt like the anime, I just delete the download and move on to something else. I avoid burning a hole in my wallet, and the companies still get money from my purchase when I am eventually able to get it.

[Super Sayian Prime]

What year is that from? You've got b-roll of a SDTV (or an early HDTV) and references to cell animation.

[Attitudefan]

internet Piracy is a major business killer for them too, like they mentioned. How can they make money if everything is more or less at our fingertips. A full season of anything is only a download away. I'm a culprit of this by the way... but more so because lack of money these days. We broke out here... If I had the means, I would definitely buy everything. Obviously.

It's still pretty strange how they have One Piece and Dragon Ball and things are this bad... goddamn.

I do this a lot too, primarily as a try before you buy method and as a means of having a digital backup should something happen to my physical copy. I make it a habit to buy all anime I have downloaded and if I didnt like the anime, I just delete the download and move on to something else. I avoid burning a hole in my wallet, and the companies still get money from my purchase when I am eventually able to get it.

Yeah, I tend to do that too, such as with Steins; Gate.

But anime DVD's are expensive! Dragon Ball use to be that way too when it was fresh. However, that was in the day before illegal streaming was a viable option.

[KentalSSJ6]

internet Piracy is a major business killer for them too, like they mentioned. How can they make money if everything is more or less at our fingertips. A full season of anything is only a download away. I'm a culprit of this by the way... but more so because lack of money these days. We broke out here... If I had the means, I would definitely buy everything. Obviously.

It's still pretty strange how they have One Piece and Dragon Ball and things are this bad... goddamn.

I do this a lot too, primarily as a try before you buy method and as a means of having a digital backup should something happen to my physical copy. I make it a habit to buy all anime I have downloaded and if I didnt like the anime, I just delete the download and move on to something else. I avoid burning a hole in my wallet, and the companies still get money from my purchase when I am eventually able to get it.

Yeah, I tend to do that too, such as with Steins; Gate.

But anime DVD's are expensive! Dragon Ball use to be that way too when it was fresh. However, that was in the day before illegal streaming was a viable option.

Depends on who's releasing the products. a lot of Funimation's titles are quite affordable on Amazon. For a little under 150 bucks I got all of Spice and Wolf, Soul Eater, Sengoku Basara, Samurai Champloo, and the first half of FMA Brotherhood all on bluray.

If you want expensive, look no further than Aniplex.

Kill la Kill bluray 1. 4 episodes = 60 bucks.

Sword Art Online bluray 1. 7 episodes = 90 bucks

Gurren Lagann complete series + movies bluray set = 1,300 bucks

[DarkPrince_92]

Last thing I bought Anime-wise was the last couple Orange Bricks half a year ago. I needed to finish the collection I started in like '09 or something. I want to get the Blu Rays, but that's a bit steep. I'm an animator so as you know... money is forever tight.

[DragonBalllKaiHD]

I don't really understand how these animators make so little money. This field requires tremendous talent and degree to work for an animation company. You'd think that an animator who has to work a lot of hours to get your cuts done would get a pretty good pay, but I guess this is not the case. Kudos to all these animators who animated over 500 episodes of Dragon Ball as well as movies and TV specials.

[Hujio]

What year is that from? You've got b-roll of a SDTV (or an early HDTV) and references to cell animation.

Yeah, I remember this news piece. It made the rounds about five years ago. Here's the original article on CNN from July 2009.

[rereboy]

internet Piracy is a major business killer for them too, like they mentioned. How can they make money if everything is more or less at our fingertips. A full season of anything is only a download away. I'm a culprit of this by the way... but more so because lack of money these days. We broke out here... If I had the means, I would definitely buy everything. Obviously.

It's still pretty strange how they have One Piece and Dragon Ball and things are this bad... goddamn.

Except that without internet piracy, most mangas and animes would be much less known outside Japan than they are today, and even in Japan there wouldn't be so many familiar with it. In fact, besides the top series, other manga/animes would be virtually unknown outside Japan.

What they don't tell you is that this causes a lot of sales from people that end up loving the series that otherwise wouldn't happen (inside japan and outside japan). In fact, I know a lot of guys who would never have bought anything manga/anime related if they hadn't seen it pirated first and become fans of it.

So, yes, internet piracy causes a drop of sales on one hand, but also increases sales on the other hand.

This is never mentioned because it doesn't serve their purpose, of course, and they focus only on what serves their purpose, like the silly argument that every pirated product is a real and accountable loss for their income, like every person who pirates something would actually buy the product if they couldn't pirate it (lets just forget about the fact that most wouldn't buy it because they don't have that kind of money to spend on those products).

What is actually doing major harm to anime/manga is the economic crisis of 2007/2008 that is still going on, and the fact that they lack domestic and international digital support and distribution at cheap prices. Netflix and its massive success basically proved that, as long as the digital service is good and the price is good/cheap, a digital business can effectively compete with digital piracy and turn people off of it. Most people won't even bother to pirate stuff if they can basically have almost everything that interests them streamed to them for a monthly cheap fee like Netflix's success proved.

[JulieYBM]

I uploaded the video from this CNN upload.

Long time Dragon Ball animator Shida Naotoshi (perhaps you remember the cuts he did for the 2013 Dragon Ball Z: Kami to Kami) is interviewed in that clip, but they don't even talk about his work. ~_~ I find it funny they have a director-level animator who is undoubtedly one of if not the best paid animator at the studio talking about conditions. It is very important for us to keep in mind that if you have talent and work hard you make it to relative success. Just because you are an animator it does not mean you are entitled to a lot of money. In-between animators are paid between $2-3 per sheet/cel/page/whathaveyou and can draw fifteen drawings per day. Rookie key animators--those just promoted to key animation or entering the industry as key animators--are paid $40 per cut (shot) and can usually do two cuts per day. Because the qualifications to be a key animator are usually rather high it is also a great training ground for future directors, so that is one more gateway into more money.

Veteran animator Cindy H. Yamauchi (sometimes credited as Yama'uchi Hideko) has blogged about pay before. It is very interesting to consider what she has to say:

Sure, I had some rough times when I first started out as an inbetweener, and the least I probably earned was around $8500...but that was part-time work done decades ago, back when I was still in high school! Back then, the rate per single inbetween drawing was around $0.85 (based on ¥95 = $1). The current rate per single inbetween is currently around $2.65.

Yamauchi further describes that the surveys conducted regarding animator pay is almost always only filled out by young animators. Kids just out of high school who have joined the industry with neither experience, talent, or much in the way of ambition.

Top artists are compensated according to their skills and the level of contribution to a project. I mean, c'mon...does anyone really think that good artists will stick around long enough to reach a so-called "top artist" position that only pays $31,000 a year? I can only imagine that artists who make a decent living may have not have participated in the survey since they have no need for a labor union (even though JAniCA is technically not an union.)

The industry was hit by the recession five years ago. In 2009 only 111 animated series were created in Japan. So far in 2014 there are 162 animated series. The industry is thriving so much that there is not enough time for animators to do their jobs, so dozens of animators might wind up working on a single television episode. Toei Animation (and their partner networks) alone is able to support six-to-eight new episodes per week.

Pay is less so an issue than time. While trial by fire is helpful, it's also nice for young animators to have enough time to do their work under the guidance of their seniors at the studio. Right now only the supremely ambitious animators who have God-given talent are doing much of that.

I don't really understand how these animators make so little money. This field requires tremendous talent and degree to work for an animation company. You'd think that an animator who has to work a lot of hours to get your cuts done would get a pretty good pay, but I guess this is not the case. Kudos to all these animators who animated over 500 episodes of Dragon Ball as well as movies and TV specials.

Many posts where made while I was writing this one, so I didn't see this until I tried posting the above so read what I wrote above. Skilled or senior animators are paid well. Young animators or those with otherwise little skill are paid what they earn. This is why the video is deceptive. Shida Naotoshi is interviewed, but his conditions are never discussed. He's a veteran of nearly thirty years and is the go-to action animator of a massive studio yet all he does is vaguely talk about how one has to work a lot. Of course one has to work a lot, even those paid well need to place a lot of time and effort into becoming skilled and creating great animation. It's deceptive editing and writing on CNN's part.

This is an extreme example, but Iwane Masa'aki of Studio Cockpit key animates entire episodes of Pocket Monster himself. He is a senior animator who has been around since the 1980s, but let's pretend he only makes $40 per cut. A single episode has 300 cuts. That is $12,000 per episode, but let's lower that to $10,000 to account for bank animation that is reused to lower costs. Iwane does every five-to-seven episodes of Pocket Monster. He usually key animates five months before an episode airs. Pocket Monster is unusual in the Japanese animation industry because of its good schedule. Most series make episodes in one-to-three months with many episodes not being finished until right before broadcast. Iwane is, of course, a relatively extreme example, though. Yokoyama Kenji used to solo episodes of One Piece, but as schedules have grown worse for Toei Animation cartoons he has begun to have other key animators help him. On Dragon Ball a handful of episodes were key animated entirely by freelance animator Aoshima Katsumi.

Hard work and skill does indeed good money, to say nothing of connections with other animators and directors. If you work hard and make friends you will make even more opportunities for money.