Japanese Anime Industry In Danger Of Fragmentation

ChibiOne writes "The Asahi Shinbun has a story about the critical state that the Japanese animation industry currently faces, claiming: 'As merchandisers grow rich, the animation industry is losing jobs to cheaper labor abroad.' The article quotes Oh Production President Koichi Murata as saying: 'Unless something is done, Japanese anime will be ruined.' An animator, toiling away on cels in a tiny Tokyo studio, might be fortunate to pull in just 50,000 yen [about $500 USD] a month."

Comments

Anime outsourced?

[youknowmewell]

Didn't know Indians could do anime, too...

Re:Anime outsourced?

[Cebu]

Not India, but most certain South Korea. Quite a great deal of Japanese animation is done in Korea; though many North Americans would like to think that anime is strictly from Japan. High profile projects such as Macross Zero, Naruto, amongst many others have benefit from foreign collaborations.

In fact, many of the smaller animation studios must look for partners internationally due to limited local resources, lack of funding, tight schedules, and a host of other issues.

Even the high budget North American fare uses animation studios in Korea; as many already know, the Simpson's is animated in South Korea.

Re:Anime outsourced?

[thesupraman]

Actually, much of it is going to Korea I would guess (the southern half).

This is not really anything unusual, the 'Simpsons' has been drawn in korea for quite a long time now.

And anyone who thinks South Korean is some kind of 3rd world low-wage country wants to go and try and live there! Seoul is the most expensive citys in the world to visit according to at least one study.

I guess they just do a good job for a resonable fee.

International competition is just part of the reality now, and if someone else does the job with a better price/performance, while meeting the requirements, then the work will (and probably should) move.

Of course, I'm making the mistake of a serious reply to an obvious troll, but why not.

Re:Anime outsourced?

[iamacat]

The "cheaper labor" would be Americans :-) Actually Chinese and Korean according to the article. Another example of how short-sighted greed can ruin culture/world-class skill set of a country. I am one of the job-based green card holders, so I guess I should feel a bit guilty to complain. But we were a) limited in number each year, b) had to be paid prevailing wages, so hiring an American wasn't out of the question and c) payed US taxes and consumed goods produced by other people here.

The worst thing is that my company hires real morons in India while some of my rather talented friends have hard time finding a job, or get ones that really suck. One of these guys is a manager of 5 people, and he actually typed 'passwd' when told to give his password as an argument for a shell script to install samples and made us debug the resulting errors. So what if you get 6 for the price of one, if they can't even solve a trivial problem as a group?

I hope Bush and his gang get voted out of the office, and replaced by people who objectively weigh advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing for american citizens (who would be given more consideration, but not to the degree of "screw everyone else") and the rest of the world, and pass the laws accordingly. "Protectionism" is not an accurate word, it carries a negative connotation. Someone in favor will just call it "taking care of all of your country's folk, not just the top rich ones".

Yes, other countries may retaliate, but that's nothing new for Americans. I am sure war on Iraq is not that popular around the world either. Just take it into account along with all the other factors, like rising unemployment because of outsourcing, loss of unique skill set/competitive advantage that the country used to have, rise of crime and mental medical care costs because people are unable to do work they are good at and have done all their adult life and some just go postal, rising cost of education because people have to get another degree in midlife...

Re:Anime outsourced?

[zero_offset]

I hope Bush and his gang get voted out of the office, and replaced by people who objectively weigh advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing for american citizens

Unfortunately, nobody who fits that description is running for office.

Re:Anime outsourced?

[Kamel Jockey]

like rising unemployment because of outsourcing

Um... you don't think that little dot-bomb bust we had 4 years might have been responsible for the jump in unemployment we had then? Besides, unemployment in the USA has been going down, not up for the past few months now. And to put it in an even better perspective, it is at the same rate now that it was when Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, but of course no one complained about "high" unemployment back then.

And if you think Kerry is going to do anything about outsourcing, then perhaps he should demonstrate some leadership on that issue by selling all of his stock in the Heinz company, which rakes in millions of dollars a year due to outsourced labor abroad. Or he should reject all contributions from the Hollywood Left, which has been outsourcing jobs to Canada for many years now.

Re:Anime outsourced?

[Jack Porter]

Seoul is more technologically advanced than any US city, kind of like a more traditional Tokyo.

It's not really that expensive - many daily things like eating out at restaurants, cell phone bills, internet (I get 50Mbps for $US30 a month), taxis, subway are cheap.

Accomodation is expensive only because they have the "key money" deposit system where you give a landlord $50,000-$150,000 to live rent free for 2 years, after which time they give you all of that money back again (with no interest). There is a hybrid system with a reduced deposit amount ($15K->$80K) and a low monthly rent. But if you've got some cash you don't mind tying up for a while, it's very cheap.

Korea is beginning to feel the outsourcing pinch from its neighbours, notibly China - where they're beginning to make things for cheaper than the Koreans can at comparable quality.

Re:Anime outsourced?

[Jack Porter]

Seth makes a comment about how the bible that appears at the end of the episode is 'backwards' - that is, it reads right to left - apparently because "the show is animated in South Korea".

Unfortunately it's just American writers' ignorance - Korean is read left to right and (unlike in Japan) the books have the spine on the same side as we're used to.

Re:Anime outsourced?

[dave420]

If you're sensitive about the whole outsourcing thing, you'd best not read this. I know it sounds like flaming, but anyway. read on if you want.

Bush didn't suddenly start outsourcing. I hate the guy as much as the next level-headed person, but let's not blame him for this one. Outsourcing isn't a good thing. It's not a bad thing, either. It's economic ebb and flow. At the moment, the jobs are going away from the US. Before, they've been going to the US. Give it a few more years, and the jobs will be coming back.

Complaining about this, as fashionable as it is, underlines the lack of objectivity when discussing this issue. How someone can defend themselves and their friends being paid vastly overblown salaries (and yes, US salaries are high, even when compared to cost of living) when people in these countries are just as able (which they are - India has schools too, yet Indian society places more emphasis on the importance of studies than American society - which favors athletic prowess), and more needing of the salary. It's being selfish.

Want to get jobs back to the US? Lower the wages. For US IT professionals to demand comparatively high salaries almost demands their jobs are sent elsewhere, especially when we're dealing with one of the most "footloose" industries present. If you want to keep your job, make sure you're the only one who can do it. Get special knowledge. Make yourself irreplacable. If you just sit at your desk all day, hammering out code anyone could do, you are replacable. It's not just IT this principle works for. Almost every single labor market out there works this way. If the workforce demands a higher salary than an alternative workforce, guess what? The work goes somewhere else.

Please folks, I can understand exactly where you're coming from on this one, but no-one moaned when this same phenomenon was working the other way round, and it's just plain immature (and selfish) to complain now.

Re:Anime outsourced?

[Genom]

Um... you don't think that little dot-bomb bust we had 4 years might have been responsible for the jump in unemployment we had then? Besides, unemployment in the USA has been going down, not up for the past few months now.

Two things the unemployment numbers don't address - Folks who have had their unemployment benefits run out on them before being able to find work, and "underemployment" - folks who have taken low-wage jobs (food service, retail sales, etc...) in an attempt to make ends meet, while they are still looking for employment in the field they are trained in. I know a good many folks in both situations, and the unemployment numbers simply don't take either case into account.

Re:Anime outsourced?

[Kohath]

I hate the guy as much as the next level-headed person

"Hate" is level-headed now?

Re:Anime outsourced?

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

At the moment, the jobs are going away from the US. Before, they've been going to the US. Give it a few more years, and the jobs will be coming back.

If by "before", you're talking about the 1960s or something, then yes, you would be correct, but America has been running trade deficits for an extremely long time--jobs have, for my entire lifetime, always flowed out of the United States. The countries they flow to change, the direction does not. There is no ebb, there is only flow.

How someone can defend themselves and their friends being paid vastly overblown salaries (and yes, US salaries are high, even when compared to cost of living) when people in these countries are just as able (which they are - India has schools too, yet Indian society places more emphasis on the importance of studies than American society - which favors athletic prowess), and more needing of the salary. It's being selfish.

I don't defend the level of my salary--I defend the fact that I have a job at all. After all, the problem isn't that wages are falling, the problem is that people are losing jobs. Being unemployed in America doesn't suck much less than being unemployed in India. Not being able to afford food or medical bills sucks wherever you are.

I don't mind so much if U.S. wages fall if it means otherwise starving countries like India will actually have food. What makes me angry is that the profits of outsourcing aren't going to just Indians--they're going to the super-rich Americans at the top of the economic ladder--the people who no longer have to work for a living, if they ever did. The free-traders chant how selfish we Americans are and how we should sacrifice for poorer workers abroad--yet they say nothing about the people in America who benefit from outsourcing. In other words, the particular Americans who are richest and sacrificing the most, end up being the ones who sacrifice nothing!

If we are going to have fiscal and monetary policies that force the worst-off Americans to sacrifice to help the rest of the world, then we need redistribute incomes in this country. Otherwise, your complaints about the selfishness of American workers are very deceitful.

Want to get jobs back to the US? Lower the wages.

Or subsidize health care and education like Europe and Canada. Or eliminate regressive Social Security taxes. Or make regular income taxes more progressive. Or have the government stop borrowing so much money from Asia. Basically, have the goverment stop doing everything it possibly can to make sure Americans don't have jobs.

Get special knowledge. Make yourself irreplacable. If you just sit at your desk all day, hammering out code anyone could do, you are replacable. It's not just IT this principle works for.

Who's just talking about IT? How do you expect 250 million people to find "special knowledge"? If you want to make sure there's no place in society for unskilled American labor, fine, just don't complain when unemployed factory workers start mugging you--it's the only job left them, now.

Please folks, I can understand exactly where you're coming from on this one, but no-one moaned when this same phenomenon was working the other way round, and it's just plain immature (and selfish) to complain now.

I wasn't alive to moan when the phenomenon was working the other direction. Were you? The only selfishness I see are those at the top of the American pyramid stealing the last few scraps of bread from those at the bottom.

Re:Anime outsourced?

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

Do you really think you can keep everyone believing that lie until the election? That's hardly the only headline like that, and the Kerry campaign has to comeup with some awfully convaluted metrics to portray otherwise.

That article admits that payroll figures have still fallen--and that fact is surely in far more headlines than your lies. Fewer people are working (payroll), more people have been born. No one disputes these two facts. Is that too convoluted for you? That an apparently illiterate fellow like you is apparently making such great money is a sign that something is amiss. So there is a shortage of one particular category of worker in the labor force--workers who have already been trained in the specific machinery mentioned in your article. Not a big deal--and indeed, why should workers retrain to operate it, when if past history is any guide their jobs will be sent overseas as soon as they graduate from their technical school?

And how will it help a damn thing to redistribute income in this country, at least anymore than it already has? I don't know about other people, but I work hard so I'm rewarded.

Umm...if you don't know about other people, let me fill you in. Other people have spent a whole lot of money on their own education, only to be earning nearly nothing as their jobs were shipped overseas. Other people have been working damn hard their entire lives only to die with nothing. (You were asking where Bill Gates's and your money came from? That's where the fuck you stole it from, you fucking leech.). Other people are either working three jobs without health insurance or lost their job because the company moved to Canada where businesses don't have to pay for their worker's health insurance.

If I don't get the fruits of my labor, why should I work hard at all? If the government took more and more of my money as my paycheck increased, that would greatly lessen my motivation to increase it. Work twice as hard for only 1/4 more pay after your wealth redistribution scheme takes the rest?

Why not? Plenty of people work twice as hard for only 1/4 your pay. Of course, taxes were raised under Clinton, and plenty of people found incentive to work then--because there were actually jobs for people to work at.

Incentives for labor is what I'm all about. That's why I'd like to see capital gains taxes raised, and taxes for the working poor eliminated--how can you expect them to work themselves out of poverty if you insist on stealing the bread from their mouths?

Their socialized health care systems are swirling down the drains of decay since they implemented the system you think is so wonderful. When you seperate the decision to pay for services so far from the decision to seek services, you raise demand while restricting supply, and everything goes to shit. Really, look into it. Socialized health care is an abject failure.

Are you even a fucking American, or are you some sort of Frenchman conspiring to destroy our economy? How am I supposed to believe that you've ever actually worked in America, when you appear to be completely ignorant of the fact that health care costs are rising at double-digit rates, and the fact that tge decision to pay for services has been seperated from the decision to seek services ever since the Great Depression, when health insurance became linked to employment? Your complaint says more about our system then theirs--our health-care system is like a strange bizzarro-socialism, neither egalitarian nor utilitarian.

Have you ever stopped to consider how even those who rate as 'poor' in the united states typically have a TV, plenty to eat (obesity is the number one health problem of the poor), and a car?

Obesity and malnutrition sometimes mix. So the poor have plenty of subsidized sugared processed grains, cheap imported consumer goods, and a powerful military that guarantees they can fill their ancient clunkers with cheap gas. They still can't afford fruits and veget

Re:Anime outsourced?

[iamacat]

Tell me, why should someone be rewarded for simply existing?

Because a) You don't want to see sick and dying people when you go for a walk, b) cheaper than fighting crime, revolts and disease, c) it could happen to you someday, so think of it as an insurance and d) they might have had job or food if you didn't take it by outcompeting them.

And communism- hey, communism has only killed 100 million people so far, so let's give it another shot. Must not have been the right people in charge, eh?

Yes, actually. Most of these 100 million were killed by abusive dictatorship/oligarhy (a political concept), not communism (an economical concept). It's true that pure communism goes against human nature and could bring on famine. But if people were really in charge (as in "working democracy") reforms would happen long before that. In another working democracy, candidates who support unrestricted outsourcing would never have a chance.

Re:Anime outsourced?

[IncohereD]

He does seem to have all the personality and focus of my left shoe though. You'd think the Democrats could have found someone more enticing, what with everything at stake and all for them.

Dean showed a little bit too much personality, and lost all credibility for it. The American (and Canadian, for that matter) political system discourages personality, as it might offend people. Like mainstream beer - it's had all the flavours removed, in case someone doesn't like one of them.

does this require...

[CAIMLAS]

Does this require an obligatory slashdot kudos of:

"Anime is dying!"
"In Soviet Russia, anime fragments YOU!"

Or something else?

* Caimlas misses the old trolls (OOG)

New business model?

[Antity-H]

Considering the enormous quantity of anime which can be downloaded for free on the internet, sometimes including very high quality fanmade subtitles.Maybe the independant Japanese animator could try to find a business model similar to that of the RIAA ?

Something like selling anime directly to the masses who can't wait to see the next episode, using the internet. Maybe he could make a small company with some of the fan translator.

The interest here would be once more to shorten the chain between producer and consumer. For everything which can be stored and transmitted on electronic medias, the internet still seems to be the best solution.

Re:New business model?

[dekeji]

Maybe the independant Japanese animator could try to find a business model similar to that of the RIAA?

You mean, a business model like extortion, press releases, and whining to Congress?

If, instead, you mean that artists should sell directly to consumers, that is a model that the RIAA dreads because they are the middlemen that are to be cut out.

Re:New business model?

[Lord_Dweomer]

I agree. I've always wondered how long it would be before a large anime studio partnered with a fansubbing group and sold an official release online via BT or something for a small price, maybe $3 or so. I realize sharing would be an issue, but I think the anime community would support DRM for something like that. For example, I could see it being very successful if the studio doing Naruto paired up with ANBU & Aone on something like this (although I'd be pissed cuz I love their free, excellent quality subs).

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if more independent anime starts popping up like Hoshi no Koe which was all done by one man and his Apple. That way the creators reap all the profits from distro and merchandising.

Re:New business model?

[Lynxara]

I don't ever see this happening, unless the producer in question was a very small, upstart company with nothing to lose. Selling the translation rights for your series to a group that cannot support the title with advertising, merchandise, or brand-name recognition would, from the Japanese point of view, just be another way of saying "our work is so valueless we don't want professionals to distribute it." Who's going to subject their work to that if it's a series that was any kind of hit in Japan? No matter how good fansubbers get, they will never be taken as seriously as professional groups by the Japanese license-holders until they become professionals themselves. They will definitely never compete with large groups like Bandai and Geneon that are ultimately just American branches of the original parent company.

Re:New business model?

[Lord_Dweomer]

You know, I honestly don't see how the fansubbing groups are any less professional skill wise for translations. Now, obviously they aren't a company, but the translations of the better groups out there put those of the "professionals" to shame. They include informative notes, often times translate onscreen text, and I have yet to see any "professionals" give kanji/kana, romaji, and english karaoki for the beginning and end themes of anime.

Seriously, I wish groups like ANBU & Aone would become an actual company because they have the talent and the quality, and they have the full support of the fan community.

Re:New business model?

[drinkypoo]

The major thing that will separate a fansub from what a pro translation can do is that fansubbers do not have access to the original scripts, and there are some Japanese translations that are just impossible to do correctly unless you can see what kanji are being used to write a particular phrase.

I have seven words for you: all your base are belong to us.. Just because they have access to the original script doesn't mean the subs will come out worth a crap. Sure that's a video game but it's the same process.

I've seen anime where the fansubbed version is superior to the eventually licensed and translated version. You frankly do not need the script if the anime is any good because A> you can tell what the characters are up to and B> typically speaking they have a native japanese speaker doing a transcription or even transliteration and then they clean it up such that it looks more or less like proper conversational english.

For an example of a really confusing sub, check out tenchi muyo oav. There's an episode where a character says (in the subtitles) "It's muffin!" instead of "It's nothin'" but nothing she said sounded like either one, so it must be a translation. Now, I don't know japanese so I suppose nothing and muffin might have similar sounds in that language as they do in English, but it would be a staggering coincidence. One of the better fansub groups would add an explanation as to what the hell is being said and if I paused there I could read it and be enlightened. I don't see Anime as a road to learning Japanese (at least not by itself) but nonetheless I find those little cultural anecdotes both amusing and informative.

There are many very crappy pro translations. There are many very good fansubs. You can reverse these statements and they will still be true but some of my favorite subs are fansubs. Even if they're not accurate to me they're still better because they seem to match what the hell is going on on the screen. A good sub would accurately match what is going on in the anime and be an accurate translation, but sometimes that just doesn't seem to work and forcing it is not the answer.

We call it translation for a reason. Having the script is really only going to make a difference in quality in the case of transliteration.

Re:New business model?

[BJH]

Two points for you:

1) A lot of kanji subtitles for opening/closing songs are actually part of the original broadcast.

2) If it's "impossible" to do proper translation without the written script in front of you, then how do Japanese speakers understand what the audiotrack means?

I've done professional translation (J-E/E-J) for nearly ten years now, including some video work, and while it can be tricky for business videos, anime is generally scripted in such a way that you don't have to have a written transcript in front of you to understand what everybody's saying.

No surprise there.

[OwP_Fabricated]

Anyone notice that a lot of the AMERICAN cartoons we like (Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, Clerks, and I believe Invader Zim) are all animated primarily by Korean animation farms? Also, I will take this opportunity to interject my worthless 2 cents about current anime: It sucks. I haven't seen a decent anime made after 1998.

Re:No surprise there.

[FromageTheDog]

This is because, quite frankly, you must be making valiant efforts to ignore recent releases.

A short list of currently running (or recently concluded) anime series which are of excellent caliber:

• Macross Zero
• Yukikaze
• Gilgamesh
• One Piece
• Full Metal Alchemist
• PLANETES
• Monster

I could go on and on. But anyway -- what I'm more concerned about:

I'm a big fan of anime licensing, as it allows me to obtain high-quality DVDs of said anime, but that sentiment is dependent on the assumption that these animators toiling away benefit from this indulgence on my part... It would be nice if the article had gone into some more detail, such as:

How do the really successful studios do? I'm thinking of places like Production IG, Studio Ghibli, Bones, etc. Are my hard-earned dollars reaching these guys, or is it getting absorbed somewhere along the way by the equivalent of the RIAA? That's a rather disheartening thought... As it is, I'm not sure what to think of the article since it's written based on the perspective of a small outfit, and the world being as it is, small outfits tend to get stepped on regardless of the industry...

- Fromage

Re:No surprise there.

[blueZhift]

The only surprise here is that there were any animators doing cel work in Japan at all. As in the case of American animation, one would think that all of the cel work would have gone to South Korea by now. Though I hate to see people lose work to offshoring, I don't think that this alone will destroy Japanese anime. I'm more concerned that the recent popularity of anime in the U.S. will result in Japanese anime made for Americans. Just as suburbanized ethnic food tends to lack flavor (ie, suck), Americanized anime could be just as lacking in taste. Only time will tell.

Re:No surprise there.

[badasscat]

I haven't seen a decent anime made after 1998.

Then you haven't seen Lain, FLCL, Spirited Away, Cowboy Bebop, or any number of other series I could name.

I always see this criticism that "anime sucks" now, that it was better in the good old days. Well, as with most things, there really was no "good old days" and you're probably just remembering anime as you first encountered it, when it was new and different to you. But anime itself is not very old (the 1950's, really, was the start of it), it generally wasn't really much better than the level of American Saturday morning cartoons until at least the mid 1980's (and even then the good stuff was mostly confined to guys like Miyazaki and Leiji Matsumoto), and it's actually diversified since then. Yes, there's a lot of crap, but there was *always* a lot of crap... there's also some good stuff too these days, in a variety of styles that didn't even exist a decade or so ago.

It's true, though, that the money has run out on a lot of studios, and it shows in many cases. Series are shorter than they used to be - there are fewer long-running TV series now, and OVA's (straight-to-video releases) now usually run just a few episodes. But a series like FLCL demonstrates just how much you can do with a short series and not much money - it's a brilliant satire/parody of anime cliches, and one of the most energetic, fun, funny, and in the end seriously well-written series I've ever seen. As in, actually somewhat profound.

I don't necessarily think financial hard times are always a bad thing in art and entertainment. The appetite for anime in Japan is insatiable - it's everywhere, and it's not dying anytime soon. If producers are forced to work on shoestring budgets with compacted storylines, maybe they'll focus a bit more on plot, character, and *interesting* animation rather than just overblown Hollywood-style productions. FLCL showed the way, we'll see if others can pick up where it left off.

Re:No surprise there.

[JabberWokky]

I haven't seen a decent anime made after 1998.

Then you haven't seen Lain, FLCL, Spirited Away, Cowboy Bebop, or any number of other series I could name.

Half of those were not made after 1998. Lain and Cowboy Bebop were 1998. FLCL was 2000, and Spirited Away (which I didn't particularly like) was 2001.

I disagree that there are no decent anime being made (in any of a number of various genres from serious drama to silly comedy), but, just like any other medium (television, film, stage), the good stuff only comes along every once in awhile. Anime is not a genre; it's a medium. The medium has certain common styles whose popularity come and go (although not all works have those common styles), but then so do stage musicals.

--
Evan

Re:No surprise there.

[Eric Savage]

I'm not trying to start a flamewar here, but my main issue with anime is the extremely low signal to noise ratio. Whoever is making most of the crap I see on Adult Swim doesn't deserve more than $500/month. There is SO much junk anime out there that it simply isn't worth my time to look for good stuff, and in fact it's not even worth my time to consider the genre worthwhile. I rely on friends to point me to the good stuff, and even that has mixed results. I think the industry needs some serious quality control. Granted, Hollywood has a strong vetting process and still manages to churn out a ton of crap, but it is a fairly cohesive environment that makes it easy to self-select and find the stuff that appeals to a person's tastes.

Also, I think some fragmentation would be good. Alot of anime is made for kids/teenagers and it's hard to find the stuff that is for an adult audience (excepting the porn stuff). To make things even worse, they try to make stuff appeal to too broad of an audience. Cowboy Bebop is a good example, it had me hooked with the first dark, slick episode but morphed into typical junk over the course of the series. I knew as soon as Edward was a character that it had probably gone past the point of no return, and was half-expecting Pikachu to appear.

I think the genre has promise, and has shown its potential from time to time, but a lot of the people like me out there who can, and would, support the form are simply deterred from doing so.

Re:No surprise there.

[JanneM]

Exchange "anime" -> "books", "making" -> "writing", "Adult Swim" -> "Amazon" and you have a nice description of the fiction market. Do the same for music and it fits there as well. Ditto sculpture, photography and so on.

Most of anything creative is bad, almost by definition. As a poster pointed out elsewhere, you have a situation with millions of people willing to do the craft, with an inverse exponential talent distribution - and subjective criteria for what constitutes a good instance, so you can not reliably actually separate the wheat from the chaff. You will end up with mostly crap no matter how you do it. Today you may have a thousand releases, 950 of which are no good (in your eyes, of course). If you allowed only twenty releases a year, you would end up with 19 lousy examples and one good one.

Hollywood is no different. Most of it is bad. What is not bad for everyone is good for some people, but bad for others. Very, very few movies (Hollywood or other) are actually good for a large majority of recpients. You can even argue with some plausibility that Hollywood is streamlining its process to such a degree that they increase its hitrate for one audience segment (male, european/american, 15-30) at the cost of losing most other demographics altogether.

Re:No surprise there.

[DavidBrown]

I don't think that the overall quality of anime is particularly different from what it was five years ago. At that time, I was actually trading VHS tapes with a physician in Osaka. I mailed him the American dub of Sailor Moon and he sent me Evangelion (what a deal that was), and other programs taped off of Japanese TV.

One of the tapes he mailed me was his annual opening title/end credits tape of virtually all anime that was broadcast new that year. After watching about twenty minutes of this, I came to the conclusion that Sturgeon's law (90% of everything is crap) applies to Anime. By the end of the tape, I was even singing my own theme song, "Another f*cking show about a bunch of f*cking kids, f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck".

And by the way, Edward rocks. She provided much-needed comic relief in Cowboy Beebop, until she was removed just prior to the last few episodes which were all chock full of angsty torture (and which were also very good).

Re:No surprise there.

[the_greywolf]

I'm not trying to start a flamewar here, but my main issue with anime is the extremely low signal to noise ratio. Whoever is making most of the crap I see on Adult Swim doesn't deserve more than $500/month. There is SO much junk anime out there that it simply isn't worth my time to look for good stuff, and in fact it's not even worth my time to consider the genre worthwhile.

so don't watch CN. the stuff CN shows appeals to the majority of their audience. that's what people watch, so that's what they show.

as another post mentions, Noir is a good adult show. some others from my collection:

• Serial Experiments Lain - a very dark techno-drama. the ending is something most kids couldn't handle psychologically.
• Noir - assassins seeking answers about their past. quite bloody and violent.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion - also a violent series. they make a concerted effort to make it light-hearted about half-way through, but the end quickly becomes quite intense, and "End of Evangelion" could not get any ratign other than R. it's too bloody, too violent, and too psychologically intense.
• Grave of the Fireflies - post-WWII story of orphans in Japan. no kiddie stuff here, either. from the get-go, you deal with the fire-bombings and a lot of death.
• Ghost in the Shell - another intensely violent movie. an action thriller.
• Millennium Actress - purely a psychological trip. too confusing for kids to enjoy, but light-hearted enough to get a PG.
• Perfect Blue - from the same guy that did Millennium Actress, but it's more psychologically intense. some violence, and featuring a non-x-rated sex scene (she's an actress) and nudity (a photo shoot).
• Mahoromatic - a great deal of nudity and only one quite perverted character. very fun and light-hearted, but the constant titties and Shikijou-sensei's constant and overly lewd comments make it inappropriate for children. it's not pr0n.
• Gunslinger Girl - recently aired on Japanese TV. very violent series about cybernetically enhanced schoolgirls.
• Voices of a Distant Star - short sci-fi movie dealing with distant relationships from a whole new perspective.

there are Anime for every genre, and some that cover so many genres that they can't be called anything but unique. Ranma 1/2, for example (by the same lady that brought us Inu Yasha), is what i call an "action drama romantic comedy". there's a lot of nudity in it, but the pure wittiness of it brings no end to the fun. (what's not funny about a boy that turns into a girl when wet and has to deal with a dozen people that literally both love and hate him? it's a love polygon so complex it would give soap opera directors brain hemorrages.)

there's the unusual movies (Metropolis), and the shows so odd they're fun (Those Who Hunt Elves). and there are non-pr0n shows that appeal to the perverts in us (Steel Angel Kurumi).

look around and give something a chance. there are several Anime databases out there that have all the information you need to learn about shows. and there are a lot of Anime out there that you might enjoy. read summaries and find something that appeals to you. then rent it or download it and see it for yourself.

please don't judge all Anime because of a dozen or so sour series.

Re:No surprise there.

[Lynxara]

My god, it's almost like anime is primarily viewed as a youth medium in Japan, and as such most anime are produced about kids because they're going to be mostly watched by kids. It's almost like the stuff that runs in Adult Swim are small niche titles aimed at the lucrative but small college-student market in Japan, most of which get absolutely trashed by kid's and family shows in TV ratings on a regular basis. It'd almost make you think that most Japanese people just watch live-action programming and stop watching much anime that isn't Lupin or Sazae-san once they get their first job. But we know that can't be true, right? Then that'd mean that Americans who watch anime at all are... well... not especially cool for doing so.

hark

[Ryan Broomfield]

When business wins over talent, the business fails and the talent eventually pops up again. Just remember what happened with Atari and its developer relations. Games were mass produced, programmers paid poorly, and cheap products were rushed to launch. This isn't so much of a danger to the anime industry as the landfills. Fortunately, anime merchandise is easier to dump than 4 million ET carts.

In addition.

[OwP_Fabricated]

I was a bad English student. I'm seriously cracking up at my bad typing.

As long as Hayao Miyazaki exists.... Anime will

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Anime die? HAHAHAH never.

As long as wonderful talents like Hayao Miyazaki exist, great anime will exist.

No one does Anime like Japan (DUH)

I simply do not see it being outsourced to indians.

Look raise the prices of the stuff. Export it to other countries... bring more money in... and dont censor it :)

Spirited Away too mainstream?

[blorg]

Was Spirited Away too mainstream for you?

Seriously, that's part of the problem. Animation is a very painstaking and laborious process and - popular though it is among some groups - Anime is a niche market outside Japan. Perhaps there is a need for films that reach out more to a mainstream demographic?

Re:Spirited Away too mainstream?

[meringuoid]

I'm going to get beaten to death with very small cellular phones for saying this, but I was never much of a Miyazaki fan.

Yep, probably. They're queuing up right now to beat the crap out of you with cuddly toy catbuses.

The only work Miyazaki or his studio have done that I've liked is Graveyard of the Fireflies, and I don't think Miyazaki himself had hardly anything to do with it, oddly enough.

Nope, that was one of Takahata's. Bloody good film... I still can't believe that thing was in a double-bill with Totoro when first released. Watching Grave for the first time I couldn't help but see Mei in Setsuko... and that just made it even more painful to watch her inevitable decline. I'd missed the start, too, so I didn't know that she died - as it became clearer and clearer that she wasn't going to make it, I damn nearly had to stop watching :-(

Re:Spirited Away too mainstream?

[Trurl's Machine]

I still can't believe that thing was in a double-bill with Totoro when first released. Watching Grave for the first time I couldn't help but see Mei in Setsuko...

And that was correct! The reason of the "double-bill" release of both features was that they were the first major acts in Japanese culture to acknowledge the enormous suffering of Japanese civilians in 1940's due to American air raids. Until then, it was a sortof taboo subject ("now we have communists to worry about, so we should hush hush all our grievances about our powerful occupant-cum-ally"). "Totoro" talks about the same topic - why do you think the whole family moved to the countryside in the first place? They escaped from air raids. Obviously, Miyazaki (in his typical style) tells the story in much more subtle way, putting the whole suffering in a bracket metahpor of daughters-missing-their-parents etc., but it's the same story, after all. Setsuko's suffering IS Mei's suffering.

Re:Spirited Away too mainstream?

[BJH]

Er... no. They left the city because the mother had tuberculosis, and country air was considered to be better for it.

50K yen? Can that be right?

[Max Threshold]

Where the hell can you live in Japan on 50K yen a month? When I lived in Okinawa, I think the cheapest rent on the island was about three times that.

Re:50K yen? Can that be right?

[bugbread]

The cheapest rent was $1,500?!

And here I was thinking that Tokyo was expensive.

As for where they can live, the cheapest rent I could find on chintai.co.jp in Tokyo itself was 13,000 yen (about $120). So it is possible.

Some Facts

[dncsky1530]

50,000.00 JPY = 451.859 USD, about 5422.30 USD per year
per capita GDP is $28,700 (2002 est.)
factbook on japan
Matsumoto said one U.S. toy manufacturer offered his company about $10 million (about 1.1 billion yen) for the rights to market merchandise featuring the characters of an animated cartoon his company hadn't even completed. The figure was particularly eye-popping for Matsumoto because it was 100 times what animated films earn on average from broadcasting rights in Japan. - One has to wonder why their aren't any regulations regarding corperate responsibility and minimun wage laws on this matter.

Re:Some Facts

[queen of everything]

Because the Japanese government isn't overbearing and doesn't feel it needs to control every aspect of daily life? I don't know that this is not the case, it just seems like it is to me. Its more like a capitalist environment in this case. If japanese animators can't afford to live, they won't be animators anymore. If the quality goes down the fans will reject new anime and the anime companies will be forced to pay japanese animators more money to use their talent. If they can have Korean animators do it for less and the fans still like it, why should a government step in and tell them they have to pay more just to have it done at home?

Animation field

[dammitallgoodnamesgo]

It's worth pointing out that the people interviewed in the article who are complaining about the death of anime, are employed by production houses who work on the very family-friendly anime - and with specific reference to "Chibi Maruko-chan" there was a well-known legal case from the voice-actors last year, as they weren't being paid residuals. I suspect that the situation is rather different for companies which make otaku-friendly anime - and I [i]KNOW[/i] it's different for companies who work with NHK. Actually, it's the otaku-friendly anime, and bishoujo anime specifically, which is powering Japan's anime boom.

Saw on Japanese TV

[Neo-Rio-101]

I saw a program about this on Japanese TV not so long ago.

The main problems with outsourcing animation is that the Koreans and Filipinos doing the animations are going to get better in these industries and create more competition for the Japanese animators themselves later on.

Even though this is the case, from what I've seen from Japanese schoolchildren with no formal art training in comic animation, there's no danger of Japan running out of creative talent.

Re:Saw on Japanese TV

[identity0]

I may be biased 'cause I'm originally from Japan... but does it really suprise you that Japanese kids do anime drawings better than other nation's kids?

I remember when I was in Japan, the kids drew their favorite characters from anime all the time, and the constant drawing was probobly good practice. One kid in 5th grade or so made a good drawing of one the guys from Dragonball, and the other kids were making fun of him for having traced it instead of drawing it, as if he was expected to draw that well without tracing.

It's kinda like the association of Americans with rock n' roll, or black people with rap. Race does not confer talent, but being immersed in a culture does help shape your talents.

Re:Saw on Japanese TV

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed what you said above as well. However, I always wondered if the drawing abilities weren't more related to the need to draw Kanji. The strokes required to draw a kanji require the skills to draw many different shapes consistently and neatly. Whereas with the english alphabet, the letters are somewhat primitive in comparison.

Re:Westernisation?

[dekeji]

It beggars belief that outsourcing have even been given a chance past its infancy to ruin so many corporations reputation.

Since when is there anything disreputable about offering good quality at the lowest prices? And since when is there anything disreputable about contributing to the economic development of some of the neediest nations in the world?

Re:How about this...

[Daedius]

An average person is greedy and couldn't care less about the aspirations of a random artist on the internet. People believe something is popular largely because corporations make them popular and get lots of money to pay their artists (outsourced or not). This is reality.

not new...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not all that new. Japanese animation work (esp. inbetweening, cel painting) has always been outsourced to Korean and Chinese studios. Some of the threat has come from the fact that there are a shortage of _good_ animators and keyframers in Japan, and there is more demand for new Japanese animation right now that what Japan has the ability to output.

Also, Japanese animators have always been underpaid. Osamu Tezuka (the "father of manga") started his influencial animation studio within the ideal of producing cheap limited animation via underpaid animators. And it worked, and the industry was born.

Additional ranting:
Right now there are 130 (!!) new TV episodes airing in Japan every month. There are just not enough employees to produce that much animation w/o outsourcing some of the labor. But 90% of it is crap anyway (naruto, inuyasha, etc.etc). Who cares if that gets outsourced more and more. We'll still have quality animated works from studios such as Production-IG (Innocence) and Madhouse (Satoshi Kon movies) so what's the worry if those fast-made 100+ episode franchise series gets outsourced? Were they worth that much to begin with?

Re:How about this...

[iamacat]

I released a program and setup an amazon honor system account for "tips" recently. As a result, I got at least 8000 downloads (counting only versiontracker) and about $50 in tips. Only two people payed $10 that I suggested.

Granted, I wrote the program because I thought it was a good idea and said myself the tips are optional, so as for myself I am happy I got a nice dinner for two :-) But I doubt optional donations can provide the main income for people who are not already famous - and then they probably have other ways to make money. Just human nature at work.

too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

There is very little awesome anime compared to the junk. Perhaps now there will be more of a focus on getting good scripts and stories before letting some clone "demon warrior princess vs mechanical mega modrons of combined force" run.

We want more ghost in the shell and akira quality film and we want more ghost in the shell SAC quality TV series. For this I am willing to pay more money than I would for hollywood movies, so I am sure they will be able to support themselves finacially.

For the rest of the "awww" blushing cutesy anime, I couldn't care less if it was all flushed away except if it blocked the toilet.

As always, good scripts are the more important than anything else.

It's because of their Arogance!!

[TheLoneCabbage]

Those d@mn over paid arogant japanese, with their big SUVs! Serves them right!

Oh wait...

(can you taste the sarcasm?)

Re:I don't get Anime

[Daedius]

In a word - escapism. Why do people read fiction books? Why do people like paintings? To feel a part of a world that is perfect and actually has meaning. Few people have that opportunity in reality.

Why don't they just move to the USA or China?

[Adolph_Hitler]

If all the money is in the USA you move to the USA. If all the jobs are in China you move to China.

Re:Who cares?

[MidnightBrewer]

Because if there is no Japanese anime industry, there will be no anime? Do you think Chinese anime would be the same? It's a cultural thing.

To upper management, everyone, regardless of their industry, looks like manual labor. It's easy to talk smack when it's not your problem.

Japan Anime Industry sounds like US animation prob

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

All of the money goes to the suits and none of the hardworking artists.

Thats the problem. Its that simple. Pay the artists what they are worth, and stop ripping them off.

This problem has been happening forever here in America. It happens in teh game industry too. The voice talent get all of the money, the profits go to all of the suits, and the real talent behind the picture get pennies. The director is generally well paid but they dont make Mike Myres money folks.

So much for that trickle down economic bullshit if you ask me. When the rich make more profits... They simply make more profits :) The workers dont see it.

Re:Who cares?

[Freon115]

Well, if you've spent years learning japanese so you can watch japanese anime, you'd be rather pissed off now that you have to learn korean or chinese ;)

Re:I don't get Anime

[zonix]

I just don't get it -- what am I missing?

Well, for one thing, that which gets censored outside of Japan.

Meaning besides the beautiful artwork, the openmindedness the Japanese culture permits the artists to express. You won't see that much anywhere else than in Anime.

z

Re:Not exactly...

[zero_offset]

I think the term you're looking for is "mythical," not "legendary."

Re:Wrong

[MidnightBrewer]

Apparently, the culture has a lot to do with it. How many other cultures do you know of that are currently producing good stories with good animation on the sheer volume of the Japanese industry? Remember, the emphasis is on "good," so choose your answer carefully.

Besides the simple ability to observe the world around me and see that Japanese, not Chinese, stories with good animations are being sought after, I also live in Osaka.

I am currently applying for a venture capital business incubator contest which is intended specifically to encourage upcoming talent with good ideas to create anime using more modern, computerized techniques, and put the money back in the hands of the Japanese animators. If you can read Japanese, you're welcome to find out more about it here:

http://www.d-tokiwa.jp/

The economics of genius

[SetupWeasel]

If you are a genius, and by that I mean an actual creator of fine art, you will always be in demand. Simply put anyone can rip off one idea, but if people want more, they'll come crawling back.

This article sounds more like the whining of an executive not getting his cut than the plight of the animator itself. I'm not saying that animators aren't being treated unfairly. I'm saying that the president of any company generally cares more about what's in his wallet than some paeon animator's.

Anyone following baseball should know the senario. If George Steinbrenner wants the city of New York to give anything to the Yankees he says, "Oh, if I don't get it, the cost of business will increase SO much that I'll have to move the team to New Jersey." Then he goes back to sleep on his bed of mint $10,000 bills.

Let's take a look at a key sentence in this article.

"Yet an animator, toiling away on cels in a tiny Tokyo studio, might be fortunate to pull in just 50,000 yen a month."

The important word here is "might." This implies that the author does not know what an animator makes. Without any sources for that figure other than a nameless 26 year-old animator, you have to conclude that the statement is at best suspect, at worst a lie.

From what I have read and heard about Japan, they face the same problem we have here. The cost of living is higher in Japan than in nearby countries. However, has cheap Mexican labor ruined CARS? No. Even the Fords made in the good old US of A will flip over and explode.

If Japanese production companies are so important to Anime, they can demand more money. Anime is far too lucrative to die out. What is more likely, however, is that these are Anime stripmines, churning out series like Harlequin churns out romance novels, or that these are just a bunch of guys who have a knack for tracing.

Like I said, maybe I'm wrong about the "Oh Productions" that the article speaks of, but you can't have it both ways. If you are the genius behind the anime, than you will be able to command the money. If you are just some guys who copy and color, then you are probably a dime a dozen in Japan and a dime for 2 dozen in Korea.

Either way, Anime itself is not ruined. At least, not by ink and paint jobs leaving Japan.

SW

1 man yen = 10,000 yen.

[OneDeeTenTee]

The parent post's point is difficult to discern if you don't know that.

I'm going to assume that you all know what "sqm" means.

Gee, how awful...

[cherokee158]

Before you know it, their cartoon characters will start having lips and noses...oh, the horror.

Is that why anime is so lazy?

[Cornelius Chesterfie]

Is budget cuts the reason why we have 30-second-long scenes where the only thing moving on the screen is the lips of the character?

Or the reason why Rurouni Kenshin spends 5 episodes doing "powering up discussions" and then another 5 episodes jumping towards his enemy while exciting music plays in the background, and in the end you don't even see him slashing the ****ing opponent, because conveniently, "KENSHIN IS 2 FAST A SWORDSMAN 4 U 2 C!"

WTF!?

Re:Fansubs? HA!

[Belisarivs]

Have you seen recent fansubs? I started collecting the fansubs of Ghost in the Shell - SAC after trying to follow the absymal DVD subs. I just watched an episode where they color-coded the personal pronouns to elaborate the fact that a character had multiple personalities and specify which pronoun refered to which personality.

While I don't know Japanese, that doesn't strike me as low quality. The community has moved way beyond bootleg VHS tapes. I'd rather have a fansub than an offical sub.

Hand painted cels?

[Lumpish Scholar]

... the wallets of the animators who piece the cartoons together are as thin as the cels they painstakingly paint.

I was surprised to hear anime makers still do this. Disney started scanning inked sketches, then coloring them on computers, maybe a decade ago. The only hand colored cels Disney makes these days are those specifically for sale to collectors and tourists.

This move has a clear downside: it eliminates a whole class of entry-level jobs available to those who want to enter the industry.

Any thoughts on the disadvantages (or advantages) in terms of quality?

Good deal

[jez9999]

An animator, toiling away on cels in a tiny Tokyo studio, might be fortunate to pull in just 50,000 yen [about $500 USD] a month.

Seems like a good deal to me. With Anime, that's $250 per cel!

Cels?

[jandrese]

Isn't it strange that the article spends a lot of time bemoaning the plight of the cel painter? Cel's are obsolete in modern anime, only a few companies (extremely cheap ones and Studio Ghibli) still use them. Almost all companies do their coloring on computer these days. It's possible they just kept the old terms for whatever reason, but somehow I wonder if this article isn't similar to one bemoaning the number of buggy whip manufactuerers going "overseas".

"enormous suffering" and culture

[jlusk4]

...first major acts in Japanese culture to acknowledge the enormous suffering of Japanese civilians in 1940's due to American...

*sigh*

I really should just keep my fingers off the keyboard and get back to work, but I'm having a hard time letting this slide.

Let me at least try to turn this into an honest question rather than just a screed (my first instinct).

I don't believe the Japanese government has ever acknowledged ill treatment of the people of other countries during the 20th century (or did I miss an apology for the Korean "comfort women"?) Ok, that's no big surprise, I don't think the U.S. government has officially acknowledged poor treatment of Indians and slaves in this country, either. (Although, the U.S. government did officially apologize to Japanese-American citizens interned during WWII. I also think there were some reparation payments.)

However, American culture is chock full of acknowledgement of past injustices. Anybody living in America who hasn't heard of smallpox-infected blankets donated to Indians just isn't paying attention. American textbooks do make reference to these things (I remember seeing a picture in a textbook of an American soldier standing beside a pile of dead, frozen-solid Indians at Wounded Knee).

I have heard, on occasion, that Japanese schools and textbooks don't mention, for example, what was done at Nanking, or to subjects/victims of medical research conducted in foreign countries (or should I use quotes: "research").

So, here's my question, to which I would truly like an answer: Is there acknowledgement in Japanese culture of the Bad Things that were done by Japan (whether by the gov't, the military or the people I'll leave for later debate) in the 20th century? We hear so much about wonderful Japanese things, Zen philosophy and tea ceremonies and Shintoism and Go and aesthetics, but I have such a hard time reconciling all that beauty and nobility with things like beheading contests.

John.

(P.S. Please don't change the subject by accusing America of Bad Stuff. I acknowledge all that. My question is about Japanese culture.)

ugh

[Zareste]

Japanese anime will be ruined.

Good God. I've heard some stupid claims before, but this one's just the icing on the cake. I don't even want to acknowledge that I just read an article quoting some complete moron bitching about how anime will lose its hideous industrial manufactured look because other more intelligent companies have realized "wait, you mean there are artists outside of Japan that are at least as good?"

It's a clear ploy, if I ever saw one, to pretend this guy's little company has some sort of place as a pioneer. But here's the painful reality dude: If you stick with the sucky artists you have right now and pretend nobody exists outside your general area, you were doomed from the start, and posing as the holder of a meaningless 20-year tradition of Japanese animation (which was begun by artists using American techniques) is not, by a long-shot, going to save your dead-end company. I bid you a good pre-riddance.

It's been that way for a very long time

[LiberalApplication]

Even the high budget North American fare uses animation studios in Korea; as many already know, the Simpson's is animated in South Korea.

A lot of our favorite toon-shows were animated in Korea. If I'm correct, these included the original G.I. Joe series, Gem, He-Man, the Snorks, and pretty much most of what was aired on Saturdays in the 80's. When I was in elementary school, I recall having wondered why there were goofy names sporadically mentioned in the credits of such cartoons. Then I realized I was Korean and that my name was goofy too.

Right...

[John Pfeiffer]

"...toiling away on cels..." Please. There's a REASON you can't make any money doing that anymore. Most anime is digitally animated. Sure, maybe most of the lineart is hand drawn, but then it goes into the computer, gets digitally 'inked' then colored... Hell, most anime these days contain insane amounts of CG (Most of which, contrary to the popular response of "Pfft....cg" YOU CAN NOT TELL IS CG.) I mean...damn. Something on the order of 1 out of 5 currently running shows is animated by Gonzo|Digimation anyway....

No one uses cels anymore

[Tsu-na-mi]

The anime industry in Japan has mostly moved away from cels to to computer-based animation. Only a few legacy shows, like Chibi Maruko-chan or Sazae-san (which has been running since the 60s, I think) still use cels. Most new shows are of the digital ink-and-paint variety and many also feature a lot of 3D CGI assist. 5 years ago this was not so true, but practically every show made in the last 2 years is almost entirely digital.

This has stemmed the flood of outsourcing to a small leak. Almost any show you watch has a batch of Korean names in the end credits, but it's still mostly japanese. And all the top jobs are still held by japanese animators.

I know someone who was a former animator, ran a small studio in the late 90s, and was later a consultant for a DIP software company (Animo). One thing he said sparked the changeover was this: In order to make sure that work farmed out to studio XYZ in Korea matched the next scene farmed out to studio ABC in Thailand, the industry created a standard set of colors for cel paint. Being a relatively small industry, this led to one company making all the cel paint for everyone. A small, old, established company that had been doing it forever. And an old man who had been doing the job of master pigment mixer forever, having things his way, etc. Well, one day he, the only guy who really knew how to mix all the colors, had a heart attack and the industry realized their livlihood rested on the health of some crotchety old man at the paint company. Most studios switched over to digital within a year. ^_^

Talent vs. labor-intensive production

[MsGeek]

Basically Japan is where a lot of the creative talent is and remains. Ever since I had a talk with Peter Chung, creator of Aeon Flux, I have been waiting for the big explosion of creative talent out of South Korea. Guess what? It hasn't happened yet. Aside from "Wonderful Days" (what I have seen of it looks gorgeous) and the "Ragnarok" series (ugly as sin, you have to play the game to understand the series) I have yet to see anything creative come out of Korea. Even their "Manhwa" (Korean equivalent of Manga) is pretty weak.

The only areas that can compete with Japan on the creative side of things are the United States and Europe. "The Triplets of Bellville," aka "Bellville Rendezvous" was a staggering accomplishment out of France, and so is the show known in the US as "Totally Spies."

In the US, "Teen Titans" is totally conceived of and posed out over here then sent to Korea and Taiwan. Yes, they overdo it with Manga cliches sometimes (they are more dependent on the visual vocabulary even than most Japanese shows) but it is by and large an entertaining series, certainly the best action show to come out of the US since the original "Batman: The Animated Series."

The labor-intensive stuff has always been sent overseas...it's been the MO since the '60s. It's been like this not only in the US but also in Japan. Take a look at "Animation Runner Kuromi" sometime. It's not a great OAV, but it has a lot of insight as to the similarities and differences between the Japanese method of animation production and the US method of animation production. Both have one main thing in common: once the layouts (key-frames, poses) are done, the layouts, storyboards and so on are sent to South Korea, Taiwan, the PRC or The Phillipines for inbetweening (plussing) and occasionally still ink and paint and photography.

The Japanese differ from the US in that the first thing that is produced on a US show is the "track" (taped dialogue) and in Japan the "track" is the last thing done along with music and sound effects. This difference I chalk up to the divergent influences on Japanese as opposed to US animation. Tezuka Osamu, the Kami-sama of anime and the person who came up with a lot of the production methods used in Japan today was heavily influenced by the Fleischer Brothers. Character Design theories, the recording of a soundtrack *after* the animation is finished, even the way pegbars are oriented all come from the Fleischer Studio's production methods.

The big influence on US animation was Termite Terrace, the original Warner Bros Animation facility. Familiar methods like the audio soundtrack being laid down first, pegbars at the bottom of the page rather than the top, and the critical importance of the storyboard are all Warner Bros production methods. Disney used a similar system too, but Disney was not as big of an influence outside its buildings than WB was. MGM's animation unit also relied on WB theories. Hanna, Barbera, Freleng, Avery, Clampett...all these people went on to basically invent the US TV animation industry in the 1960s.

The labor intensive parts of animation will always go to the lowest bidder. Japan's strength is in its creative talent, which has a potent "farm club" in the Manga industry and even draws on the producers of fan-produced "Doujinshi" for future talent.

One thing that's interesting: more animation is being produced from start to finish in America now than at any time since the '50s. South Park is not farmed out to overseas production houses because it's 100% created in Maya with 2D "cut-outs" created in 3D software. The Williams Street series that are the backbone of Adult Swim are 100% done domestically. And Camp Chaos, the Flash geniuses behind "Napster Bad!" are now doing a Flash animated series for VH1, Ill-ustrated.

As long as the talent pipeline continues to flow, Japan will have no shortage of good series. It makes no big different who's drawing the layouts or "plussing out" the show...it's all about the creativity.

Going to be? Isn't it already?

[Ra5pu7in]

I'd have to say that Japanese anime has been on a downward track for quite a while. A few dedicated artists are maintaining the high road, but much of what gets played on TVTokyo is slapped together art with so-so dialogue and a few formulas (robots, girls in school uniforms, that kind of thing). The demand, both in Japan, in the US, and throughout the world, for anime has created a market that will buy drivel -- making it much harder to find the real quality pieces.

BTW, that artist making 50,000 yen is like the artists at Disney - he is typically not the one who originated the characters, setting, or story. He simply draws and fills in based on original art. These are the slightly better than minimum wage drudges. The scripter and original artist do make better money.

Not suprising

[LordZardoz]

Its like any other media endeavour. The talent that is actually most directly responsible for creating the product gets a very small chunk of the pie.

For animation, the publishers get the money.
For videogames, the publishers get the money.
For books, the publishers get the money.
For music, the publishers get the money most of the time.

The only exception is for movies and for music, where the stars get a big chunk of money. But that is because a singer is always directly associated with the song, and can choose not to sing so no one gets any money.

TV and Movies (moreso for TV though), a particular actor usually comes to be known for the character and can destroy the endeavour by not co-operating.

And the same happens with authors, though they need to hit it big before they can get a reasonable deal.

Animation and videogames are more collaborative though, and one person is not able to just pull the plug on the deal as above.

You will not get paid adequately for your services if your reasonably replaceible, or of the publisher can do the deal without you.

END COMMUNICATION

Fragmentation?

[tbjw]

They should use HFS+.