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?

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!?