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Forum - View topicNEWS: Japan Fair Trade Commission Releases Report Highlighting Transactional, Contractual Issues in
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mdo7
 Posts: 8234 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I'm not surprised by this reports, we've known about this for years if you've been in the anime fandom for that long and familiar with the issues within the industry.
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XSp
Posts: 307 |
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I mean, they are over a decade late on this "finding", and what really matters is what's going to change with it.
Older anime fans will already know that the discrepancy on the success of a given title and what people working on it receive as wage is absurdly ridiculous even to corrupt enterprise levels. I guess most of us have already watched docs on animators and workers on a given fan beloved title as they had to live in super old buildings in the barest of conditions being supported by a landlord as much as possible because they were paid less than half a minimum wage. It doesn't only not cover costs of basic utilities, rent and stuff - it doesn't cover the cost of food. Where is all the money going to? Billion yen titles with it's workers starving. To me, the whole anime committee system is broken. Yes, I'm a fan of the works as much as many others, and I do understand that the system can (ideally) give support to staff during hard times when a production tanks and fails, but it just can't continue working like that. And while I do understand that a hyper competitive job environment tends to produce this kinda scenario - it also has been way beyond anything considered acceptable for just too long. Here's to hope that this time, the report leads to change. |
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Sinxi and heylog
Posts: 208 |
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So I have 2 questions, a price contractor is like something like studio Mappa? while the subcontractor is like the studio that gets outsourced work right?
Besides those questions I have, yeah, the report is not shocking, its good that they are investigating this though. I've been seeing ftc doing things recently, idk if that is because the ftc is doing affective ftc shit or me just noticing ftc news more |
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Slim Reaper
 Posts: 99 |
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It is actually amazing that the anime industry has been able to survive, and even be profitable, for this long under such circumstances. I mean I am no expert on finances and corporate operations, but even someone with a basic level of understanding can see that this is some crazy stuff.
I guess the next step is to see if this is all theatrics, or if it will actually lead to some real change and innovation in the industry. |
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mdo7
Posts: 8234 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Yeah, that's a good way to sum it all up. My question is will this practice hold, or will animators come to realize how exploitative it is which will lead to changes? I mean I know that in Japan, there's no Japanese collective equivalent of The Animation Guild like we have in the US. I've never seen in Japan something close to a SAG-AFTRA or a WGA strikes in Japan on a massive scale. So that makes me wonder if animation industry in Japan will reach a tipping point where we could see something equivalent of that. |
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Cypher997
Posts: 192 |
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Reminds me of what's going on in the gaming industry (across both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific). The people that work on many a beloved title on the ground level (ie: Final Fantasy's, Ace Combat's, The Witcher's, Cyberpunk 2077) are barely able to make ends meet for where they live compared to the upper brass (ie: managers and executive producers of those same titles). It just is not a sustainable practice, at all. Pay the people on the ground level a more than decent wage, you might be able to not only retain the staff, they might be able to purchase the product that they helped in creating. It does not take an economist or other financial expert to see it. Sadly, too many of the executives are high on their own gas these days.
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 10366 Location: Virginia |
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@mdo7
The problem is that the people with the purse strings are the production committee. They put up all the money to make the anime and as a result reap all the profits if the anime succeeds (they also take the hit if the anime tanks). Unfortunately the animators and others who actually make the anime don't work for them, they work for the studio. The studio negotiates with the production committed and get a set amount to produce the animation. All of their profits and expenses come out of that set amount. As a result they have an incentive to keep their expenses as low a possible. Of course the biggest single expense is the animators. If they pay a reasonable wage to the animators, they would have to charge the production committee a lot more and likely would not get the job. You would think that the studios being jammed with work would give them some leverage in this matter but apparently not. In order to unionize the anime industry, you would have to unionize all or sufficiently all of the many studios to give the production committees little or no alternative to paying a lot more. Since there appears to be dozens or more individual studios this would be a very uphill battle, assuming you could overcome the cultural disinclination to unionize. The earliest studios to unionize would probably go out of business before the process reached critical mass. I suspect that instead of unionization, the issue will have to be resolved by the government with laws requiring minimum wages for animators, regardless of them being freelancers or not. Unfortunately, currently the Japanese government apparently considers the anime industry to be a sort of golden goose and are likely to be very cautious about changing things. Probably just as well as the law of unintended consequences is likely to come into effect. Laws and other such actions do not always have the intended result. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 15210 |
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Anime studios need to produce their own IPs and have better management
Work-for-hire is no different than Western productions outsourcing to Asian studios |
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mdo7
Posts: 8234 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Alan45, I want to remind you that Japan has unions for voice actors/seiyuus (it differs even though most or majority of VAs in Japan are non-union), and writers. But I don't see this for animators, which is to me unacceptable and it's already well-known and have been acknowledged by observers. If voice actors and writers are able to have union in Japan, then so should animators (the only animator union in Japan I only know of so far is Japanese Animation Creators Association which is kind of de-facto a animators union in Japan). Hell, even Japan's entertainment industry have unions but somehow animators in Japan can't somehow create one when other aspects of Japan's entertainment industry seems to have unions. So for a country that supposed to take labor unions seriously, Japan's animation industry is pretty infamous for its lack of that. The history of union labors in Japan has been a bit mixed and a complex one. That's why we would never see a Japanese equivalent of SAG-AFTRA strike in the future. The working conditions of animators in Japan are probably not going to improve unless something is done, and I'm not sure if that'll ever happen. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2187 |
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Whenever I've heard anime production and financing described, it never really made sense unless there was a kinda systematic cabal-esque we all agree that everyone eats as long as we can keep these studios/animators in their place going on. That or that people just misheard something. Studios seem near powerless in the system but like anywhere else on Earth, an in-demand studio with a string of hits would have all the power in the world.
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10366 Location: Virginia |
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@mdo7
I wasn't saying that unionizing animators was impossible. I was trying to say that it would be extremely difficult and that the first people to try would likely get little or no work. "You can always tell the pioneers, they are the ones with arrows in their backs" Basically I don't think it will happen. Did you even read your references, the first one especially? It pretty much laid out why there are no animator unions and why they were unlikely. Exactly my point. This includes the observation that the existing organization is pretty much viewed as useless. In order for a union to be of much use, it has to be able to insist on a closed shop (if you don't join the union you don't work there) and be strong enough to negotiate over payment with the business on more or less even terms. This requires a critical mass of the people represented so there is no other option available to the business. Nothing in the history of labor unions in Japan gave the impression that the government takes unions very seriously or that they are particularly strong. Hell, even in the U.S. some states have so called "right to work" laws. They are actually "right to not join the union" even if the business is unionized. That is why Texas voice actors are not unionized. Virginia where I live is the same they call it being "business friendly" |
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