Forum - View topicINTEREST: Animator in Japan Reveals Their 1st Year Earnings In the Industry
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
xxmsxx
 Posts: 563 |
|
|||||
I think the best speculation one can have is to look at Kyoto Animation's annual output. They can produce three shows per year, but most of the times, they produce one or two shows only. This is likely how many shows a studio can produce when they own the IP, train and pay their staff properly and has a proper employment benefit package as KyoAni does that. The amount of shows we get in one season is INSANE. Other than the quintessential definition of a race to the bottom, I really don't how to describe why this would be the case. The thought process must be: to make more money, we need to produce more shows, to produce more shows, we hire more people to make the production deadline, when we hire more people, wage cost goes up, so more revenue is needed and when money is needed, we need to produce more shows. To keep things from getting out of control, wage is suppressed. Structural change is needed. Fans paying for official stuff, whether its source material, legal streaming, merch, doesn't go far enough and probably exacerbate the problem to some extend, although it can make a point to the industry. |
||||||
|
||||||
zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
|
|||||
|
@Psycho101 @Blood- I think the argument of "they would make x number of anime if they paid animators better" is fundamentally flawed, implicitly assuming there is a fixed pie of money and manhours devoted to anime, which can then be split up in a way that is more equitable to animators, and it honestly gives us fans too much credit/blame for the current situation.
Certainly, there are costs to making an anime, but they also bring in revenue, through disc sales, licensing for streaming, merchandise, etc. Of course, unless the studio is on the production committee, that revenue doesn't go directly to the studio, but ultimately, more anime means more projects that they can get money for, and also allows them to hedge their bets so one project that doesn't pan out doesn't mean they can't pay their employees or the costs of doing business. Yes, there is demand from the audience for anime, but the reason studios make so many is that they need to get that much work to consistently get the revenue they need to stay in business. Less anime would mean less work, which would mean less money, for studios and for animators, as many are freelance. I could relate this to previous jobs I've had where there were rounds of layoffs due to less work from the customers (and the people left over sure didn't get raises; at least not those doing the work on the ground), but the events of 2020 in the anime industry show that clearly enough, with the delays caused by the events of 2020 causing there to be less anime, which, as I said earlier, meant less work for those in the industry, not only animators and studios but also voice actors and more, and thereby less money. It's not all on the studios either, as they too are often underpaid by the production committees, which means they have less to pay the animators. I do have issues with the idea of the solution being to get rid of the fluff shows, that there would be enough to get to your expected number, and that it would lead to a desirable result. Sure we can point to a number of shows we think that could be done without, but the problem is we would all have different ideas about what those are, and we definitely couldn't agree on 30-40 shows a season to cut, not that we would be the ones with the ax anyhow. Many would choose shows that definitely would make it through, and many would mourn the loss of the shows that wouldn't if those who would hold the ax brought it down. Of course there is more anime than one person can keep up with. Anime fandom is not a monolith. Different shows appeal to different people. We can't go back to the time when anime fans all watched and discussed the same shows, and frankly I don't think we should. Let's take Psycho's 10 show high estimate and apply it to this season, for example. Going by the top 10 shows this season by number of members on MAL, for example (other sites tell a similar story, but MAL has the highest sample size of the sites I checked and was the most straightforward to filter this way), the ten shows this season would be Attack on Titan, Promised Neverland, Dr. Stone, Slime, Re:Zero, Horimiya, Mushoku Tensei, Quintessential Quintuplets, Redo of Healer, and Wonder Egg Priority. A solid enough list, on balance, though not necessarily the one I would choose. It is what you would probably expect to happen if they had to cut down the number of shows: Most are sequels, most are adaptations of popular source material, Shonen and isekai are the most common genres (and in fact, they would be a higher percentage of shows than with the current number of shows). Some shows not on the list: Beastars, Cells at Work, Laid Back Camp, SK8, several other shows with enough following to warrant this site reviewing them weekly. Ask yourself, would you be satisfied with that? Would that be better than the current situation? I'm not saying I have the answer to this, but I don't think cutting the number of anime is the best solution, for us or for the people who make it. Or at least it would probably come at great cost to many of the animators that we all would like to see better off and more fairly compensated. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
nargun
Posts: 924 |
|
|||||
Above and beyond all else it's pretty normal usage in Australian English. There's been papers about this, where singular they gets used in all registers for individuals of known but irrelevant gender. Other dialects are probably a bit more restrictive, American ones particularly so. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Swissman
Posts: 768 Location: Switzerland |
|
|||||
|
@Nargun
Thanks for the information. I didn't know the pronoun is used like this in Australian English. It reads to me like some kind of mistake, but I'm not an English native speaker, so who am I to tell? |
||||||
|
||||||
NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2294 |
|
|||||
|
The article doesn't exclusively use they/their -- seems to switch back and forth between the two, e.g.:
I think from an American English perspective it (referring to an individual using 'they', pronoun preferences aside) reads as somewhat casual, but not incorrect, exactly.
Are the 'production committees' not typically part of the studios? I had imagined them as consisting mostly of each studio's executive management, but it sounds like you're describing them instead as some outside group that contracts a studio to take on a specific project. |
||||||
|
||||||
Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9836 Location: Virginia |
|
|||||
|
NeverConvex wrote:
According to the information here on ANN, the production committee are the bankers. Basically representatives of all the companies that invested money into the show. They are the boss and the studio is the employee. The studio has no input into the production committee unless they are also an investor. The studio does work for hire for the production committee at a fixed amount. Basically the committee takes all the risk. If the show tanks they take the loss and if it succeeds they get all the profit. Actually it is not quite that simple since the individual members of the committee also get profits from the products they make based on the IP (source material, figures, TV broadcast, merchandise etc.) In many cases, the committees are made up from a limited pool of investors. Setting up a new committee for each show limits the risk to that project. The problem is that to some extent the studios are bidding against each other (based on price, quality and reliability). This tends to keep the amount a studio charges low which in turn keeps the wages it can pay low. It doesn't help that the studios are mostly run by former workers who may be better artists than business men. |
||||||
|
||||||
Brent Allison
 Posts: 2444 Location: Athens-Clarke County, GA, USA |
|
|||||
|
@zrnzle500 I'm fine with cutting the number of shows that come out every season to ten or fewer. It would give me the chance to catch up on all of the other shows I missed over the years, and I could still meet my two episodes per day on average quota.
|
||||||
|
||||||
Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23762 |
|
|||||
First, just to be clear, I wasn't blaming fan demand for the crazy number of shows each season. However, I do believe my assumption that if there was a more equitable distribution of money in the anime industry, there would be fewer shows made. There is a fixed pie of money available to finance anime production since by definition there is no infinite amount of financing money available. If producers paid their staff properly, they'd have to be more selective in what they made as opposed to the, "hey, we're underpaying people so that allows us to stretch our anime budgets and we can make a bunch of shows and see what sticks" approach. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
zrnzle500
Posts: 3767 |
|
|||||
I'm sure that works for you, but my point is that many would not feel that way if it did happen, many shows that are well regarded by fans and critics would get the ax, even before some shows they absolutely detest or don't find interesting, and some concerns people have about the range of shows that are made, like the amount of variety in genre and premise and the amount of original shows, would get worse, not better, in a situation where the amount of shows dramatically decreased. There will probably be fewer anime made in the long run to make things more sustainable for animators and studios, but it won't be that drastic, and we need to be clear eyed about the cost of that, and not just assume they'll only get rid of the shows we don't like or watch.
Yeah, most of the argument was aimed at Psycho101, and not you.
True, there is only so much money the companies that make up the production committees will invest into anime, but just looking at the current pie and thinking we can just combine the slices into bigger ones oversimplifies the situation. One problem is the decisions are being made at different levels. The production committee has the money, and they are going to try to get the best deal they can for that. The studio can say "I need this much to pay the people making it a living wage" but unless the studio's name itself brings interest in the project, the production committee will probably go for the one that will do the work at roughly the same level of quality but at a lower price, and the studios will have to settle for the prevailing rate and pay their workers accordingly. How the studio pays its employees and freelancers is not their business, so long as it isn't illegally low, though bad press might provide encouragement to reconsider the prevailing wage, but it would probably have to be in the general news and not just niche outlets, especially not those outside Japan. Maybe if the animators unionized across the industry, they could change the prevailing rate they get together, which will in turn change how much the studios quote the production committees for, which would likely mean less anime being made to compensate. Absent that or some sort of regulatory change which forces the wage up across the industry, the prevailing wage will probably be around where it is. Though, given how I have read Japanese unions work in other articles here, with them being attached to the company and not the industry at large, unions might not really help make that industry wide change. There is also how taking the budget from one anime and putting it into another one is not going to get you the same amount of return as both combined. Of course, having your eggs in fewer baskets increases the likelihood one failure will cause you to lose money, but even setting aside the possibility that one project may not be as successful as another, it may not make sense from a business prospective. While people do only have a set amount of time to devote to watching anime, cutting the number of anime you produce in half is not going double the viewership, disc and merch sales, etc. of the remaining shows, especially in the age of streaming where time is often the only cost to watching a show for many people. While some people on the margins may find more time to watch those shows with less shows, most people not watching a show aren't watching because they aren't interested, and that won't really change with more time to do so. For example, even if every other show this season was cut, I would not watch Redo of Healer. I would just do something else. Conversely, even shows in the same genre aren't necessarily competing with each other in a zero sum game. Look at that top 10 I shared earlier. I would bet that many of the people watching Slime are also watching Re;Zero (I am at least), and while at the margins, some people might switch to the other if one wasn't airing, for many it would just be one less show they are watching, as they are already watching both. Less shows would probably mean less revenue from shows, which would mean less money to reinvest into anime. The slices might get bigger, but the pie will get smaller. |
||||||
|
||||||
CrownKlown
 Posts: 1762 |
|
|||||
|
I think the other thing people completely gloss over is that if you aren't willing to take that wage someone in China Korea Vietnam Philippines is. I'm not saying they don't do hard work but most of this labor is largely replaceable. The skills needed aren't unique or hard enough to acquire so I'm sure I can get similar results in a foreign country .
Like no disrespect to artists, but great artist are a dime a dozen, you can find any number of talented folks that can pretty much recreate you any art work . It's the style concept and ideas that make people the real money and separate folks. Ultimately it's like trying to raise the minimum wage in the us, most of the jobs paying that are e what the market dictates . And are typically low to no skill jobs that are often meant to be short jobs not careers. At the end of the day all raising the wage will do in Japan or any where else is put most of these animators out of job on exchange for the handful that remain getting a higher wage. I'm not saying its right but reality and morality are often conflicting and ambiguous . Should animators be paid sure , but the reality at some point costs would get pushed on to fans , who already complain about how expensive an anime, Manga volume or figure are, and at some point they would push back. A lot of guys on here are okay chipping in a few bucks more pateron or the like, but out of the people on her who watch like five or six shows a season , how many of you actually spend anywhere near the cost of that five sets of dvds or Blu rays, 40 volumes of Manga or light novels as source material. A 200 400 dollar remember figure. You hand waive saying i support them by paying practically nothing with a monthly fee to watch unlimited shows and maybe by like one show every couple of years or a few manga seires. My point with that last rant is to show the reality that this a for profit business , where market and reality , including consumer spending power and desire dictate the situation, and that situation is there is no such thing as fair or the right thing you are worth because reality doesn't work that way. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 647 |
|
|||||
|
I get that it feels right to lean into “but you won’t get to choose which shows go away, and good ones might too!” but at the end of the day my only response is “so what?” I’ve really no interest in trying to justify why the people making things I love should have to be disregarded and treated poorly. With less shows per season it’ll just mean some get pushed back to future dates when they’re more feasible. There’s already plenty of shows that never get made that we never know about, and the idea you’d suddenly be able to tell when there’s a few less a season is ridiculous. I love anime, and I’d be completely ok with the idea that some of my favorite shows may never have been made under a better system, because I know that even better works are possible under a better system.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2294 |
|
|||||
|
Do we have any reason to believe profitability of the industry is actually tied to the pay of the least well paid animators? It kind've beggars belief that a 24 billion dollar industry (though I think that's given in revenues rather than profit -- and, obviously this is industry-wide; woudl be much more informative to examine individual studios) is primarily underpaying its newest and least powerful employees to the tune of $6K/year because it literally can't afford to do otherwise without sacrificing production quantity or quality. The very low pay seems much more likely to be a structural issue with this market than a matter of there "just not being enough" money, I think.
I don't understand this statement. You don't need an "infinite amount of financing" for 'the pie' of financing money to be something that's malleable and will grow or shrink depending on market conditions and market structure. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
zrnzle500
Posts: 3767 |
|
|||||
|
@ATastySub No one is saying the situation is okay. If less anime is the cost of a more equitable and sustainable industry, that is a cost we should be willing to pay. But I don't care for those who think it will just be solved if the industry doesn't make the kinds of shows they don't like or makes less of some of the prolific genres that they don't like, which can sometimes bleed over into blaming, implicitly or explicitly, fans of the shows and genres they don't like for the state of the industry, either in terms of working conditions and pay or in whether the types of shows they like get made or get made in the amounts they want, which I don't think is fair or accurate.
If it's just a few shows a season less, yeah, we probably won't really notice. If it's 10 or more fewer shows, like during the seasons last year that were most affected by the delays, I think we will notice. Not necessarily in the sense of noticing the lack of specific shows, but more like "...that's it?...". It was to a point that this site brought back the classic reviews to fill in for the shows that were delayed. We'll notice if it gets to that point. You'll notice. If that's the cost we should pay it, but I have no interest in entertaining ideas that everything will be better if only the shows one doesn't like weren't made. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23762 |
|
|||||
Yeah, that was just my awkward attempt to indicate that I don't think production financing is all that elastic. I'm not saying it's completely static, but if the total of all financing in a given year is $x amount it's unlikely to be $2x the next, for example. I think the financial reality is that there is only so much financing out there, producers are aware of that, and so it's to their benefit to keep salaries as low as humanly possible. |
||||||
|
||||||
El Hermano
 Posts: 450 Location: Texas |
|
|||||
That's the gamble with freelance work. You don't get a salary wage like a McDonalds employee would, and that means minimum wage isn't applicable either. So if you don't get that much work you can make even less than a minimum wage job. |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group