So You Wanna be a Japanese Animator

Echoing the recent coverage of the troubles facing the anime industry, here are translated excerpts of blogs written by Japanese anime industry insiders. Several are taken from a fascinating website called Off the Record Animation Industry Gossip (subtitle: "Read this if you're thinking of becoming an animator! This is the true face of the anime industry! Do you think you can survive?") Bear in mind that as these blogs are anonymous, there is no way to verify the veracity of the claims. But they are a fascinating counterpoint to the "soft power"/"Japan cool"/"otaku utopia" rhetoric often espoused by foreign journalists.

Why are Animators so Poor? (6/6/2008)

"In any country other than Japan, animators are on the regular payroll as full employees, with full salary and benefits. It used to be that way in Japan, too... But ever since Tezuka Osamu employed what could be called an 'abnormal' work system to produce Tetsuwan Atom (1963), animator salaries have collapsed, the animators were demoted from full employees to contractors, and they became poorer in the process. Animators have a special set of skills; they are craftsmen. So why are the salaries of these crafstmen on par with what you would pay a high-school kid working at a convenience store? Animators in other countres aren't poor. In America and Europe, they are paid according to their skills. Japanese animators should be paid based on the Labor Standards Act in a manner commesurate with their skills. And if you ask me, Japan deserves to lose its poor animators, so it can only have ten anime a week instead of the hundred or so currently produced. Even TEN a week is a lot by European or American standards!"

The Cruelty of the Anime Industry (10/14/2007)

"If the average citizen knew that the animators who support the highly respected art of 'Japanimation' were forced to live in extreme poverty at 50,000 yen a month ($500), television stations, advertising agencies, and publishers would be forced to change the way they do business, and animators.... would be hired as full employees and have stable lifestyles. ....Animators in their 20s and 30s are quitting in droves."

Face the Truth! (10/20/2005)

"'Japanimation' may have been raised to divine status as a medium but the animators labor under conditions worse than those faced by slaves prior to the Civil War."

Thoughts on a Recent Financial Newspaper Article (4/17/2007)

"Twenty years ago, an animator's salary was 25,000 yen... Now a new "in-betweener" gets paid about 30,000 yen. Animators and colorists basically work on a commission. A key animator gets paid by the cut; an in-betweener by the cel drawn; a colorist by the cel painted... Low compensation, long hours, no overtime, no pension, no insurance, and no days off are the norm. This is a total violation of the Labor Standards Act. We Japanese are attempting to sell ourselves as having a cutting edge content production industry, but that's nonsense spouted by people who don't know the workplace. I've said it before, but very few of the people actually producing anime in the industry take much pride in 'Japanimation.'"

Comments

[Steve Harrison]

I am fascinated how several of the posters use the long-abandoned 'Japanimation' name, somewhat proving my idea of the slow filtering of information about America and it's perception of Japanese animation. Blah blah blah.

I suspect Tim might have something to say about American animation staff and how the pay structure is. At least what can be discussed outside of a NDA that is. (my assumption, it's only if you're in the very top ranks, in the producer/director level, that you get anything like a steady paycheck, everything else being work-for-hire and independent contractor status. maybe. )

[MattAlt]

I suspect the use of "Japanimation" is a deliberate choice to emphasize "anime as the rest of the world sees it," because it isn't something I generally hear in conversation here.

[Tim Eldred]

All I can throw down on this one is that I get paid a very good wage as a storyboard artist, and just about everyone on the domestic side of any production can probably say the same. But all the actual animating happens in other countries where the dollar goes farther--or at least it used to. I'll be curious to see how much longer that lasts.

Pre-production and post-production are still solid American jobs despite several unsuccessful attempts to change it, and the number of personnel on a given show is much less than it was 10 years ago. The business model has been trimmed down about as far as possible in my opinion.

That said, I'd be very surprised if the contractors in India or South Korea have it much better than those in Japan. What they really need to do is dial up the pressure on new hires not to be lured in by the thought of all their fanboy dreams coming true. As long as someone's willing to take a shit wage, it can only be a shit industry. Keep that up long enough, and it will only be good for producing more shit.

[MattAlt]

I think Japanese animation has always been undervalued from a cost to performance standpoint. That bang for your buck is why American production companies turned to Japan in the Eighties (as you know, a huge amount of weekday afternoon and Saturday morning programming was animated there.)

That was fine so long as the anime industry was operating on the margins of society, but now that it is being positioned as a cornerstone of Japanese "soft power" (mayor Shintaro Ishihara chairs the Tokyo Anime Fair, and the Tokyo metropolitan government is producing textbooks for budding animators now), someone needs to address the conditions there. In a future post I'm going explore what exactly the Japanese government is and isn't doing on that front.

[Common Japanese words]

hmm. I didn't know that Japan had such a large problem with it's animation field. I did know that a lot of the animation is outsourced to Korea now though.

[emon]

japan animation like that? i didn't know if japan animation was so bad, it was your experience in that country or just gossip?

[MattAlt]

Not my experience personally, but all too true, I'm afraid:

http://altjapan.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/03/state-of-the-anime-industry-2009.html#more

[Brent P. Newhall]

::clears throat::

I sympathize with the plight of Japanese animators. These are poor working conditions.

However, as others have said, animation in America isn't that great, either. It's a step up, but not a big one: American animation companies routinely lay off the majority of animators after every project. Even Disney did this until very recently; most of the early Pixar staffers were animators laid off from Disney.

Also, a lot of American animators do *not* get full salary or benefits. Heck, check the back page of any issue of Animation Magazine; every issue has a full-page ad encouraging animators to unionize. A quote: "Are you sick and tired of being abused by your non-union employer? Fed up with working overtime without pay?"

Animation's not so rosy anywhere, sadly.

[Jeff]

"I am fascinated how several of the posters use the long-abandoned 'Japanimation' name"

In Japanese, "anime" just means "animation" (from any country). It's just an abbreviated form of the the Japanese approximation of the word, "anime-shon". アニメーション⇒アニメ

[marion]

What? I thought animators are rich. I can't even imagine that there salaries are just 30k yen. Thanks for the info.

[baby phat scrubs]

@marion, i am not familiar with anime industries but i like watching animes. I think its a normal salary for animators like the stories in BAKUMAN which they tried to create an anime of animators.