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Answerman - Does An Anime's Budget Affect Its Quality?

It's crazy to me that studios like Production IG, Madhouse, A-1, Trigger, Shaft, and Wit who are known for their animation quality charge the same as some joke studio that has only put out poor quality animation. Or that like the animation director on award winning shows time and time again doesn't get to charge more than some no name guy whose only done middling stuff.

I can't imagine a studio going in and being basically told that there just isn't money to be made in Naruto, Dragon Ball, One Piece, and every other popular show. "Nobody is eating off these shows. Hell, I'd like a raise too but there's just no money to be had in anime."

But these days, most late night TV shows are all coming in around the US$320,000 per episode mark. That's simply the going price at which most production committees have standardized. This is actually quite a jump from about a decade ago, when some shows were regularly coming in at under US$200,000. I haven't yet been able to get to the bottom of why budgets have increased so much, but I'm guessing it has to do with the sheer volume of production, and the fact that anime companies are so overbooked with work that they can afford to turn down an under-funded project.

I remember seeing the Colossal Titan in the second season of "Attack on Titan" & it looked like something out of an episode of "ReBoot".

This entity already kind of exists. It's called the Japanese videogame industry. The pay working for most game companies is considerably better, while the hours, although still horrific, is thought slightly less awful when compared to working in anime (outside of crunch periods at least). There's been a fair bit of buzz from seasoned professionals about how younger animators struggling to make ends meet are often poached or change professions voluntary in search of better career prospects.

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But these days, most late night TV shows are all coming in around the US$320,000 per episode mark. That's simply the going price at which most production committees have standardized. This is actually quite a jump from about a decade ago, when some shows were regularly coming in at under US$200,000. I haven't yet been able to get to the bottom of why budgets have increased so much, but I'm guessing it has to do with the sheer volume of production, and the fact that anime companies are so overbooked with work that they can afford to turn down an under-funded project.

Is that before or after taking inflation into account? I can't really be sure of it, but I get the hunch that US$320,000 in 2017 is not significantly worth more than US$200,000 in 2007

As budget is limited as it is, dividing that $320,000/episode to 150-200 people in a span of 3 months is not helping anyone in a long run.

In my opinion, there are way too many people working on a TV animation episode. Sure we the fans get to see prettier animations thanks to more of them, but it hurts prospects of new (and talented) people who want to join the industry and experienced artists not getting pay.