Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Do Anime Budgets Compare to American Animation Budgets?
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
TheAncientOne
 Posts: 1872 Location: USA (mid-south) |
|
|||||
I would say the number of new anime started each year is over double that for TV series alone. A typical anime season now will see the number of new titles ranging for the mid 40's to the low 50's. As an example, I currently count 52 for the upcoming fall season and the last count I had for summer was around 47. |
||||||
|
||||||
Hoppy800
 Posts: 3331 |
|
|||||
That's why I've said before, that they could get paid better and do better work if the number of anime airing each season is cut in half. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
|
|||||
But that assumes those funding these shows would want to pay double for 1/2 the number of products. I highly doubt there's a sound financial argument to justify that. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
H. Guderian
Posts: 1255 |
|
|||||
|
Yep, goes to show 'why doesn't America produce more animation?'
Because their labor priced themselves out of the market. keep in mind even Japan outsources a lot of animation work, meaning even the Japanese themselves are too expensive to pay. Animation is damn expensive work. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
TonyTonyChopper
Posts: 256 |
|
|||||
But i also don't think cutting away half is gonna make the other half that much better doesn't work that way. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Cptn_Taylor
Posts: 925 |
|
|||||
Japan outsourced to Korea starting in the eighties and animators and in-betweeners were still being paid jack shit in Japan. Japan has always had problems paying a living wage to its animation industry (and also manga artists btw). It's not a new thing. This is one of the reasons why much talent has left the industry. People that had talent like mecha designers today you're much more likely to find them working for pachinko firms than animation firms. In the past it wasn't like this. Don't blame the consumers, or anybody else. Japan's animation industry has always thrived on low paying jobs, it's just that the generation that was born right after WW2 and wanted to succeed would accept low paying jobs like that for the glory and an eventual possibilty of making it big. New generations are not going to put themselves into a slave job just for the glory especially if they find a better job elsewhere. |
||||||
|
||||||
leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||
The major thing here is that western animation, by and large, has a pretty wide audience. Western animation can cost that much because they get high viewership, and the studios can ask the sponsors for more (and the sponsors are more willing to pay that much). Anime, on the other hand, is pretty niche. The extra money could conceivably come out of mainstream anime series, though that would also mean a huge change in anime as it currently is. Of course, there's the other major factor: Networks pay the makers of a program in the United States, whereas it's the other way around in Japan. If a show catches on in the United States, the studio can raise the price per episode. If a show catches on in Japan, the network gets all the extra money.
Yes, it IS the standard of living. In the United States, you generally have to pay a lot for basic necessities: Taxes, rent, gas, water, electricity, food, transportation, and communications, which is just basic needs and doesn't account for furniture, clothing, climate control, medical expenses, and emergencies. And this amount has climbed rapidly due to the need for Internet and portable phones to keep in contact with other people. And then there's the presence of children, which could be more than all of the others combined. It's not that everyone demands higher wages and increased benefits for selfish ends. Try living on your own and see how well minimum wage keeps up with what you have to pay to not be homeless. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Anime Hero25
Posts: 26 |
|
|||||
|
I wish Japan would give out higher wages I wonder how a Japanese Animation team would feel if they had a paycheck like the ones who did Simpsons?
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
oblivious247
Posts: 242 |
|
|||||
I'm making $15 an hour in my first post college job. Been out of school 2 years and still living at home because $15 an hour is not a livable wage. Not in Boston it isn't. Sure I could afford to move out. If I cut out like half my meals and never have financial emergencies. |
||||||
|
||||||
Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
|
|||||
|
Not to get too deeply in this mess, but I think the whole idea of making minimum wage a "living wage" is going about it wrong; it should be a foot-in-the-door wage. This is why we see so much unemployment amongst the hardest to hire groups(teens, urban blacks, etc). Some jobs just aren't worth $15 an hour, so we all lose if somebody isn't allowed to fill them(and, cruel as it is to say, some people just aren't worth $15; the law's contained exceptions for the ones who can't help it since the beginning, but that doesn't help those who've yet to have a chance to prove their worth). Price of living also varies so heavily that what barely makes ends meet in one area can have you living high on the hog in another, so a national wage hike of that degree could easily hurt more people than it helps. What happened to Samoa when its minimum wage started spiking is a pretty dramatic example that supply and demand still apply to labor(for those curious, Samoa's wage floors never reached the national level like they were intended to; they were frozen when it became obvious the hikes were destroying the economy).
|
||||||
|
||||||
DaisakuKusama
 Posts: 85 |
|
|||||
You are correct, for the most part. When the show started, the animation was done mostly by Sunrise and TMS. Dong Woo in Korea alternated with the Japanese studios. As Sunrise and TMS became more expensive to utilize, others such as Studio Junio and Spectrum, both in Japan, took over. Dong Woo changed their name to KoKo at some point. There was one episode animated in China. It was called "The Terrible Trio." It was such a difficult experience and so many retakes were required that the producers decided not to have any more episodes done in China. Make of that what you will. One episode, "Day of the Samurai," was animated by a studio in Spain. This was also a somewhat disastrous experience. The directors used to joke that they could pinpoint the exact scene in which the studio ran out of money. What others have said is absolutely correct: the cost of having the animation done entirely in America (for television, at least) is cost prohibitive. Practically all of the animation was farmed out to the lowest bidder, but quality was a consideration. More for less, as the saying goes. The Korean studios are still thriving because they provide the highest quality for the lowest cost. Again, make of that what you will. Today, not only is animation farmed out to overseas studios, but pre-production such as designs and storyboards are also done overseas (this varies from show to show). The reason for this is that the quality of pre-production work was not very good, but the studios have upped their games considerably and now are doing high quality work at a much lower cost. I don't know if anyone here is familiar with the so-called "Tezuka Curse," but it's become an unfortunate norm in the animation industry. As somebody already mentioned, Japan has been outsourcing to Korea for years, and have been outsourcing to China as well, simply to keep costs down. In a perfect world, all of these uniquely talented individuals would be paid what they're worth. How I wish it were so. As Justin said, "The incredibly low wages in the anime business would simply not cut it over here: you could never find animators willing to work for so little." To provide a more personal example, in 1999 I was working in Ink and Paint for a highly-regarded animation studio here in the states. With overtime I was pulling in roughly $1000/week (in 1999; all of those jobs have since relocated overseas, so I haven't worked in that capacity for years). I went to Japan shortly after my contract ended and I was looking for work. I received an offer from a Japanese studio for $345/week - much less than half of what I was making in the US. The only way I could've survived would have been to live in a shared living facility with other foreigners, and to subsist on a diet of primarily ramen and green tea. I turned down the offer. |
||||||
|
||||||
Kadmos1
 Posts: 13567 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
|
|||||
|
Sheesh, I'm glad I'm not in the animation industry. Seriously, the USA could help some of these studios with the budget a bit more often than not.
|
||||||
|
||||||
Blackiris_
 Posts: 535 |
|
|||||
It was ridiculously low, only 500,000 yen per episode (~$4,200). That was more than 50 years ago, but even taking the inflation into account, it is extremely low and the animation was extremely limited. Source: 
Edit: Ah, sorry, you were asking about the 2003 version. Nevermind what I wrote! |
||||||
|
||||||
DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1116 Location: Puget Sound |
|
|||||
Half the anime airing per season also means half the DVD's, figures, scrolls, and other goods sold (which make up a huge portion of the revenue stream, and why they're so expensive) - which means half the revenue. Where exactly is the extra money going to come from to pay the animators more? |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Buzz201
Posts: 266 |
|
|||||
I think they were planning to halve the price, which would probably reduce demand, so actually to pay animators more you'd probably have to quadruple the price or something ridiculous like that. It's a shame, but paying peanuts is probably the only way for the system to work. |
||||||
|
||||||
take it to another country where people are paid $5-$6 a day instead... i think they also want Paid Vacation
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group