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INTEREST: Animator Claims Anime Studio Production IMS is Not Paying


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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 20, 2017 11:36 pm Reply with quote
I once worked in a place run by someone who intentionally would avoid paying people and other businesses if he could get away with it. And except for utilities and other services that would cut him off if he dodged payment, usually he could. (Even then, our electricity, Internet, and such would be frequently disconnected, upon which he'd reluctantly pay the minimum amount they ask for.)

Because of those experiences, this perspective particularly makes me mad if what this animator says is true. I know there are many businesses out there, big and small, run by people for whom paying money to others is like getting a shot at the doctor's office. And the worst part is that there is little the rank-and-file can do to change things besides anonymous whistleblowing like this.

samuelp wrote:
The rumor is they are bankrupt, that's why.


Yeah, that's an understandable reason. Of course, withholding information about their bankruptcy is kind of scummy in some other ways.

relyat08 wrote:
^Yep. It's not that they don't want to. It's that they can't. I don't have any reliable sources or anything, but that's the only thing that makes sense. In general, Studios don't pay animators so little because they want to, it's because they can't afford to pay more.


I thought it was because there are a lot more people who want to be animators than there are positions available, which causes competition between applicants, and which in turn disincentivizes the employer from offering better pay or better benefits.

Of course, I'm simply applying the principle of the minimum-wage service jobs to this. Lots of people will apply for those positions even at minimum wage, so the company would have no reason to pay higher wages or to offer any benefits, which are incentives for positions with fewer qualified applicants than available positions. I don't know if anime animators encounter similar problems with getting hired as people applying to AutoZone or somesuch.

Greed1914 wrote:
That is a bummer, if true. They've worked on lots of things that I liked. It also makes me wonder what might happen to their project in January. Anime usually needs a decent lead time, so it might not be possible to switch studios, unless this situation was already known to the production committee. Then again, the committee probably wouldn't have contracted with IMS if they thought they risked not finishing.


It is possible IMS was keeping it a secret from the rest of the production committee about how bad the financial situation was over there so that they could be given projects. I'd guess that if word got out that they were about to go bankrupt, they'd have a hard time finding production committees to join.
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relyat08



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PostPosted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 12:08 am Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:

relyat08 wrote:
^Yep. It's not that they don't want to. It's that they can't. I don't have any reliable sources or anything, but that's the only thing that makes sense. In general, Studios don't pay animators so little because they want to, it's because they can't afford to pay more.


I thought it was because there are a lot more people who want to be animators than there are positions available, which causes competition between applicants, and which in turn disincentivizes the employer from offering better pay or better benefits.

Of course, I'm simply applying the principle of the minimum-wage service jobs to this. Lots of people will apply for those positions even at minimum wage, so the company would have no reason to pay higher wages or to offer any benefits, which are incentives for positions with fewer qualified applicants than available positions. I don't know if anime animators encounter similar problems with getting hired as people applying to AutoZone or somesuch.


The situation within the anime industry is actually entirely different. There is a massive shortage of labor in-part because people don't want to learn a difficult craft like animation and then get paid less than they can to work at McDonald's. That's how you end up with only the most passionate people who actually push through and stay in the industry.
The reason the pay is so low, is indeed because studios simply can't afford to pay more. There are exceptional cases like KyoAni thanks to their consistent hits and more ownership over their productions, and movie studios, but in general, animators are getting paid garbage because the animation studios can hardly afford to keep their lights on with the contract fees they are in turn being given by production committees. That's why companies like Bones, PA Works, Ufotable, and Production IG do their best to create other incentives for workers, like providing dormitories, cafeterias, training and schooling, and what little job security they can in order to encourage people to work with them consistently and to make the dismal wages they can afford to pay slightly more bearable.

As a more optimistic anecdote though, one of the few benefits of the contract work is both that, when a studio can't pay, everyone learns quickly and simply doesn't take work from them, and also that exceptionally skilled animators, like Nakaya Onsen, can ask for more money per cut than the average and in turn make a better living since demand for people like him is ever increasing while fewer people are capable of doing the work. It's not common, by any means, but many of the animators that your average sakuga-fan would be familiar with(Yutaka Nakamura) are able to ask for more compensation and get it.
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leafy sea dragon



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PostPosted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 12:51 am Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
The situation within the anime industry is actually entirely different. There is a massive shortage of labor in-part because people don't want to learn a difficult craft like animation and then get paid less than they can to work at McDonald's. That's how you end up with only the most passionate people who actually push through and stay in the industry.


Heh, I was actually thinking that giving your people the shaft would be how you get only the most passionate people who remain, because only the most passionate people would put up with those conditions. (This is what I encountered when I worked in Hollywood: There were hundreds of people who would work for movie and TV studios for YEARS without getting paid, as legally they were "interns." Some would be promoted to a paid position, some would be given permission to work freelance, and most would just be discarded and they go find some field of work not related to entertainment. These people become free help, knowing they're getting abused by the system, because they're competing against many people just as willing to sacrifice everything they have.)

If the existing labor is lower than the demand, however, then yeah, the situation would be very different. I thought animation was a sort of dream job for a lot of Japanese people and that it'd be a popular major at college or something.
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Nachtwandler



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PostPosted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 2:24 am Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
^Yep. It's not that they don't want to. It's that they can't. I don't have any reliable sources or anything, but that's the only thing that makes sense. In general, Studios don't pay animators so little because they want to, it's because they can't afford to pay more.


samuelp wrote:

The rumor is they are bankrupt, that's why.


That is strange actually. Produsers started the studuio exactly because AIC almost got bankrupt and tried not to repeat mistakes of its management. Also, the studio was not short of work last years, so it looks somehow strange if they go bankrupt. There are better candidats for it in the industry.


Last edited by Nachtwandler on Thu Dec 21, 2017 3:10 am; edited 1 time in total
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relyat08



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PostPosted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 3:06 am Reply with quote
^Even while a studio is fully scheduled out for years, they can still go bankrupt pretty easily in this industry. All it takes is a little financial mismanagement when your margins are as tiny as they are for animation studios, unfortunately.
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Nachtwandler



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PostPosted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 3:12 am Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
^Even while a studio is fully scheduled out for years, they can still go bankrupt pretty easily in this industry. All it takes is a little financial mismanagement when your margins are as tiny as they are for animation studios, unfortunately.


I'll wait for more appropriate proofs. Generally if studio has financial troubles, it is visible beforehand.
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relyat08



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PostPosted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 4:12 am Reply with quote
^Certainly. I'm just saying that a studio having what appears to be lots of recent work doesn't provide as much insurance as you seem to be assuming. As I noted before in this thread, Actas nearly went out of business just after producing Girls Und Panzer while it was literally raking in the dough.
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Nachtwandler



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PostPosted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 4:28 am Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
^Certainly. I'm just saying that a studio having what appears to be lots of recent work doesn't provide as much insurance as you seem to be assuming. As I noted before in this thread, Actas nearly went out of business just after producing Girls Und Panzer while it was literally raking in the dough.


But Actas was purchased by Bandai because of the same GuP. If result satisfies produsers, they generally prefer to give the studio more work instead of searching for a different contractor.
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relyat08



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PostPosted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 1:33 pm Reply with quote
^That's irrelevant. Actas almost went out of business while incredibly busy and with a big hit. That's the point.
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leafy sea dragon



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PostPosted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 5:37 pm Reply with quote
Nachtwandler wrote:
If result satisfies produsers, they generally prefer to give the studio more work instead of searching for a different contractor.


It depends on how much they are paid. Anime animation is essentially contract work: They complete a particular project for a fixed amount of money (possibly more, depending on the contract). Doing a good job doesn't mean they're paid more, just that they'll build trust and a good reputation, allowing them to find project partners more easily.

If this is like other contract work (such as road work and building construction), then I'll bet anime studios go on a bidding war with other anime studios, each one lowering the price they'll accept to do the work until they all back out except one. This would lead to extremely slim profit margins, but it also requires the bidders to avoid naming a price lower than what the anime studio must pay to make it, or the company will lose money. Have this happen too many times too frequently, and the company will go bankrupt.
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samuelp
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 3:58 am Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:

If this is like other contract work (such as road work and building construction), then I'll bet anime studios go on a bidding war with other anime studios, each one lowering the price they'll accept to do the work until they all back out except one. This would lead to extremely slim profit margins, but it also requires the bidders to avoid naming a price lower than what the anime studio must pay to make it, or the company will lose money. Have this happen too many times too frequently, and the company will go bankrupt.

This is where the special nature of Japanese business practices actually helps stabilize things. This sort of cut-throat undercutting is not nearly as common as it would be in the US. It's more common that a production committee (or proto-committee) asks around for studies that have space on their schedule at the right time where they have a contact with director or someone associated with that studio, and then the studio and prod committee mutually agree to a budget and schedule the time. Since Japanese businesses are so "nice and honest" this budget isn't inflated and is the studio's best estimate to how much it would actually cost to make. What happens to squeeze budgets is more often that the production committee's promised budget ends up shrinking from the original handshake agreement because one of the committee partners decides they won't put in as much money as they thought or like a 5% player backs out (say a figure company or something). Japan does so much without actual contracts in place the studios just adjust the best they can to changing budgets and schedules... Plus factor in that it's difficult to predict how much animating a series will really cost before getting majorly into the production phase.

So it's usually a combination of studios sacrificing themselves for the project (and their reputation... if they refused for example the studio would be a lot less likely to get work in the future), and also good old fashioned mis-management that leads to losses piling up.
I don't think cut-throat undercutting is happening.
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leafy sea dragon



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PostPosted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 8:39 pm Reply with quote
So it's not that the anime studios go to the production committee, but the other way around? Based on your description though, it still sounds like undercutting is going on, just from the committee rather than the anime studio.

I've seen so much dishonesty among businesspeople that it can be pretty hard for me to believe that "nice and honest" people can run successful businesses, because the people who aren't so nice or honest will stomp all over them. (But I think some of that comes from my parents, who tried their best to drill "Nice guys finish last" into my head, because that's what they themselves witnessed growing up in their country, only worse.)

Then again, there IS an incentive to name a price as low as possible, I'd guess, or else the committee can turn to someone else.

All in all, I think the complaints about not getting paid just struck a sore spot for me, because that's what happened at one of my previous jobs. And unlike IMS, there was no evidence that it was struggling as a business. The guy who ran it just hated having to pay money. (That job was also where I learned just how powerless collection agencies in the US actually are.)
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relyat08



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PostPosted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 11:50 pm Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
So it's not that the anime studios go to the production committee, but the other way around? Based on your description though, it still sounds like undercutting is going on, just from the committee rather than the anime studio.


There is some undercutting, especially between studios who don't have a lot of connections or a significant name or identity(or those who happen to be available around the same time that the production committee wants), but the ones that are "household names" among anime fans would generally be sought out by the Production Committee, or a Producer, and wouldn't be competing directly with other studios too much. There is an expected range though, and few studios, would be bidding outside of that unless they are given specific permissions to do so.
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reanimator





PostPosted: Mon Dec 25, 2017 1:27 am Reply with quote
samuelp wrote:
This is where the special nature of Japanese business practices actually helps stabilize things. This sort of cut-throat undercutting is not nearly as common as it would be in the US. It's more common that a production committee (or proto-committee) asks around for studies that have space on their schedule at the right time where they have a contact with director or someone associated with that studio, and then the studio and prod committee mutually agree to a budget and schedule the time. Since Japanese businesses are so "nice and honest" this budget isn't inflated and is the studio's best estimate to how much it would actually cost to make. What happens to squeeze budgets is more often that the production committee's promised budget ends up shrinking from the original handshake agreement because one of the committee partners decides they won't put in as much money as they thought or like a 5% player backs out (say a figure company or something). Japan does so much without actual contracts in place the studios just adjust the best they can to changing budgets and schedules... Plus factor in that it's difficult to predict how much animating a series will really cost before getting majorly into the production phase.

So it's usually a combination of studios sacrificing themselves for the project (and their reputation... if they refused for example the studio would be a lot less likely to get work in the future), and also good old fashioned mis-management that leads to losses piling up.
I don't think cut-throat undercutting is happening.


I don't think inflated budget is bad. At least I think it can serve as a form of good insurance against unforeseen problems such as missed deadlines, data loss, lost production materials (animation drawings), and so on. And extra money could help production studios to expand their own business, motivate workers, and the training and retaining new hires.

On "nice & honest" part, being "honest" is good practice in long run, but I do think that studios can't afford to be "nice". Production companies can give their best estimate to clients as honest as possible, but they shouldn't be playing nice by making verbal agreement that involves so much money. This is not like a person owed another person five dollars.
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samuelp
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 26, 2017 4:11 am Reply with quote
reanimator wrote:

On "nice & honest" part, being "honest" is good practice in long run, but I do think that studios can't afford to be "nice". Production companies can give their best estimate to clients as honest as possible, but they shouldn't be playing nice by making verbal agreement that involves so much money. This is not like a person owed another person five dollars.

Something tells me the studios that follow your good advice are the ones that aren't going bankrupt.
Well, for all we know, it could be a serious case of embezzlement and not mismanagement. But if you're going to steal from a business an animation studio seems like a really, really bad choice Wink
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