News

P.A. Works Responds to Public Discussion on Work Conditions

Animation studio P.A. Works (Shirobako, Kuromukuro, Charlotte, The Eccentric Family) posted a response on Friday to recent social media discourse regarding a staff member's comments on the company's working conditions for animators. The response is as follows:

As always, thank you for supporting our company and our works. Regarding the passages posted on SNS by a staff member about payment details and the like, we apologize to everyone for the worry and inconvenience. On this issue, we went to the person in question to confirm the truth. What follows are the official points of view of both our company and the person in question after our discussion.

Our company did not cancel a contract with this staff member, nor did we request or demand deletion of this staff member's SNS account. Upon our discussion with the staff member, apologies were made to concerned parties regarding what was posted on SNS. Our company again apologizes to everyone, especially concerned parties, for inviting great conflict.

Furthermore, images related to the staff member and information about other staff members are spreading against this person's wishes. The staff member is a private individual, so out of respect and privacy protection, please cooperate in showing consideration.

Twitter user @hoke_hokke allegedly posted complaints about working as an animator at P.A. Works, including a photograph of an invoice that omits the staff member's name. The tweets prompted discourse on social media regarding animator salaries and page count expectations. The account has since been set to private.

Last April, the Japan Animation Creators Association (JAniCA) published the results of its study on the working conditions, average income, and working hours of animators in the Japanese animation industry. The study concluded that the average yearly income for entry-level in-between animators in 2013 was 1.113 million yen (currently about US$10,795). Directors and chief animation directors, the highest earners according to JAniCA's findings, earned an average of 6.486 million yen (US$62,906) and 5.638 million yen (US$54,687), respectively.

[Via Hachima Kikō, Yaraon!]