Forum - View topicNEWS: Yoyogi Animation Institute Declares Bankruptcy
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fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
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Another company going bankrupt? Is this a sign, people?
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ChichiriMuyo
Posts: 201 |
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Doubtful. These sorts of things just happen (just look at the airline industry). It's not as if the industry is going to simply collapse, it's just that the weak need to make room for the strong to survive.
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redline
Posts: 35 |
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>Total debts are estimated at 220 million yen ($19 million US)
This figure has been mistranslated, the correct figure cited in the press release is 2.2 billion Yen. It's the last line of text in the writeup of your own source here: http://www.tdb.co.jp/tosan/syosai/2239.html |
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Bahamut God
 Posts: 113 |
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The article states that one of the problems was competition from other schools. That suggest that there are other schools with this focus (or that offer a major in the field) that they simply lost out to the competition. If it was the last of it's kind, then maybe you would have a problem.
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Abarenbo Shogun
 Posts: 1573 |
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How the hell does a "low birth rate" qualify as a legitimate excuse as to why they went belly up?
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Ranmah
 Posts: 294 Location: Stomp'n on Tokyo Tower |
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well that sucks. I was going to apply to this school. The school is very hard to get accepted. They didn't allow that many foreigners. Oh well, I guess I have to try another avenue then.
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red stranger
 Posts: 184 |
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RezSav
 Posts: 542 |
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"In this article, We erroneously stated that Yoyogi Live Animation's debt was 220 million yen, it is in fact 2.2 billion yen. ANN apologizes for the error." hmmmmm..... I don't find any solace in this
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daxomni
 Posts: 2650 Location: Somewhere else. |
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A sign of yet another poorly thought out and/or poorly expressed post? Yes. Now that we've gotten that out of the way let's move on to the actual topic at hand.
It doesn't. Only in a relative closed society like Japan would a childish excuse like this carry any weight at all. Obviously there should have been appropriate cutbacks and/or diversification much earlier on or perhaps even calls for more open immigration instead of calls for more unwanted Japanese children. Japan is highly modernized in some respects but pockets of Japanese culture appear to still be fully grounded in the past and show few signs of improvement.
Is there anything in Korea or perhaps even China? There were schools for computer animation here in the US last time I checked, but that was quite a while ago. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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You two have underestimated the power of population growth/decline and have little knowledge of the Japanese politics and education policy. With life settled down after WWII and two regional wars not too far (Korean and Vietnam), Japan gained a lot of economical growth thanks to being a major US logistics center. The Japanese baby boom was about 1-2 decades behind that of US, and when they reached educational ages those kids needed more schools, public or private (and you all knew that Japanese secondary education was very competitive; Japan was in a desperate need of educated workforce back then, and not having enough schools could cause more problems). When they grew even older they'd need vocational schools like Yoyogi, so they expanded. That was the era when their parents have lifetime employment and 30-year low interest mortgage for their homes. Furthermore, politicians were under ballot pressure to build more schools for children; those who were against it might be branded as "unwilling to provide adequate education to the next generation," not to mention politicians could obtain kickbacks from construction companies and textbook publishers; the more schools were built, the more money they got. However, when another 20 years have passed, the bubble economy had passed its heights and started going down, if not started breaking up. Overurbanization and ever-increasing cost of living postpone age of marriage, and raising a kid is more expensive than ever -- daycare, preschools, cram schools, private tutors -- limited how many children a family could raise. Yet schools are unlike private businesses: you can't just let one declare bankruptcy or be acquired by another firm; many students' futures are at stake. When a school is facing financial difficulties, most likely it wouldn't tell its students and their parents directly, fearing students might flee. A public or private school in the secondary education might ask government for help, but a vocational school for young adults (thus more similar to a common business firm rather than schools; I'm not sure which ministry has the authority over vocational schools) might not be able to do the same. A similar example in Taiwan (which has a very similar government/business conglomerate culture like Japan): a certain Nobel laureate promoted increasing the number of colleges to "alleviate pressure of high schoolers." Ignoring warnings from statistics experts, the number of colleges have been doubled in mere ten years because "every student should be able to acquire a college diploma if s/he wants to." Now, with declining economy and low birth rate, many 2nd to 3rd tier schools have terrible enrollment rate (less than 10%). In summary, voices of statistical and population experts can never compete with "voices of the people." The latter are often very short-sighted, you know.
There are always suggestions like these, but things are not as easy as you might think, even excluding xenophobic elements. In urban areas there are not enough budget housing for their own citizens; how would allowing foreign students and workers affect the land value? Many related laws and regulations have to be created, modified, suspended or overhauled, and doing so takes a lot of time.
They both have industrial/business parks for animation right now. Most in-between animation and backgrounds are outsourced to them today. Some of them are doing really good jobs that match Japanese studios. Their Achilles' heel is direction (camera angels, pacing) and storytelling, which is still one to two decades behind Japanese counterparts. |
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daxomni
Posts: 2650 Location: Somewhere else. |
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Although that may indeed be true, I don't see how your post answers our contention beyond adding some additional influences to the mix. A declining population doesn't occur with massive immediate impact after minimal warning like a tsunami, earthquake, or fire might. In this era you get nearly two decades of warning before a sustained adult population decline can arrive on your doorstep. Thus, it is hardly a legitimate excuse for a long lived business to list as a substantially contributing factor in bankruptcy. Although it is true that I'm no expert on Japanese politics and Japanese education policy, I know enough to question their motives and their honesty. Population decline might not even be considered a net loss except for the fact that Japan placed the burden of caring of the old on the backs of the young. We made the same mistake here in America by providing checks to a whole generation that hadn't paid into the system. That kind of buy now, pay later nonsense will eventually bring our own system to its knees as well and we have a population that is still growing. No matter how much effort and how many incentives the current Japanese government puts into raising birthrates it's going to come too late to resolve the initial issue that is already upon their doorstep.
They have had decades to begin their work and have only managed to come up with bizarre initiatives aimed at promoting peer pressure toward women and earmarking money-for-conception schemes courtesy of the taxpayer. If I were a Japanese citizen I'd probably be outraged by the shortsightedness of my own government and the complacency of the electorate. Of course if I were Japanese then I might also be so preoccupied with keeping Japan's non-native population artificially low that I might put up with this sort of nonsense in return.
Two decades ago I was marveling at Galaxy Express 999. If they're already at that level with their own homegrown titles then I might be a little worried if I was a Japanese anime studio. The anime schools are likely to be the canary in the coal mine in this context and while the Japanese consumer seems to be toeing the line perhaps the industry itself will be heading for another round of consolidation on the Japanese end. I see China being the final winner in all this. Their massive labor pool, minuscule mean income, and growing self-consumption are just too good of a mix for people focused on the bottom line. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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One school going under, is not necessarily indicative of some underlying future trend that is speeding it's way toward the anime industry like a torpedo. The way I read this is this school had some festering administrative problems, especially in the accounts department, that has finally caused the water to come over the bow so to speak, and no one took over the helm before hand to make some drastic changes to those manning the pumps.
Students are any private schools' raw material to make into a product that others will want in the end, just like any other business. Together with apparently bad management, and poor accounting, the drop in raw material, meaning students, was the last wave that broke it's keel. At 2.2 Billion in losses lenders can only hope that someone clever can salvage the wreak, and get it back afloat. other wise it will be like sharks on drowning passangers. It will be a strong warning to the more successful schools to keep a close watch on their gauges, else they end up the same. |
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Tyrenol
Posts: 398 Location: Northern California |
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Cry me a river, why don't you.
We don't even take having a school for art and animation seriously in the US. It's now "computer generation" and "outsourcing" all the way. Then there's Disney, Pixar, Warner Brothers, Hanna Barbera, the so-and-soes here and there that created the shows for the Western audience... The United States SUCK at even trying to compete with its Asian counterparts when it comes to 2D animated shows. And while any good business going bankrupt is sad, let's look at the animal we became before shedding our tears. We might be crocodiles. I'm saying this because I want this country to stop taking and taking continuously and learn how to pull by their own straps. Go "We can do that too" as oppose to "I wonder how popular it will be when we take that and edit it down." |
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