20 ms·

Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

344 points by methou 3y ago

brendoelfrendo 3y ago
There's an interview with J.C.Staff founder Tomoyuki Miyata making the rounds right now (Japanese language original: https://animan634.com/interview/231215_int_2_1.html https://animan634.com/interview/231215_int_2_1.html; English language summary: https://www.cbr.com/jc-staff-anime-studio-founder-work-stress-stomach-remove/ https://www.cbr.com/jc-staff-anime-studio-founder-work-stres...) where he talks about how he developed a severe stomach ulcer from work-related stress, had to have 2/3 of his stomach removed, and was back at work 10 days after surgery.
madrox 3y ago
When I read things like this, I think back on my experience in games and entertainment. I believe that the more generally prestigious the industry is, the more likely it is to see worker exploitation. Part of your pay is wrapped up in getting to brag that you work in industry X on product Y. Almost by definition, that means young, passionate labor. Industry leaders quickly learn how to exploit the young and passionate. This is exacerbated in Japan, that already has a significant salaryman culture. However, I'm not sure this could be fixed through regulation. It's very wrapped up in human nature, and is a problem that you see across the world. Ultimately, the people involved have to make a choice about how they spend their lives. I might be wrong, but people have tried to fix the systemic issues for longer than I've been alive.
- savanaly 3y ago
  I totally agree with your diagnosis, but I don’t see why it’s considered to be a problem. Why shouldn’t people be free to trade off salary against other desirable traits in a job? Even at the extremes?
  - madrox 3y ago
    I tend to agree with you. In the end, salary reflects what the market will put up with, and if you're not willing to take a salary hit to work in games, someone else will. This is why I don't think regulation will fix this. It has to be on the individual to decide what's right for them.
    - Ecstatify 3y ago
      Yeah let’s get rid of minimum wage while we’re at it.
      - madrox 3y ago
        Minimum wage does solve a certain kind of unskilled worker exploitation. I don't think passion tends to be at play for minimum wage jobs. This is a different kind of exploitation that's more difficult to regulate.
      - s1artibartfast 3y ago
        100% would agree.
        Andrex 3y ago
        [flagged]
        mcmoor 3y ago
        The solution for that is UBI not minimum wage
        s1artibartfast 3y ago
        no, I just think that minimum wage is the worst possible way to address the issue, from an economic perspective. It would be far better to pay people what their work is actually worth, and then give them charity through the government, supported by taxes, if need be. Same goes for healthcare, which should absolutely not be a mandated part of employment. Pay people what they are worth, and let them buy healthcare. If we want to subsidize or provide charitable healthcare, then we can do so too.
        Ecstatify 3y ago
        Why should the taxpayer foot the bill for a business unable to pay their employees a living wage.
  - dymk 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - slothtrop 3y ago
      The "children" (i.e. working adults) have to go well out of their way to work on games and anime and know how much it pays. The mines (for real) in developed countries actually pay really well and are sometimes unionized.
    - oatmeal1 3y ago
      When the alternative is starving, they do. The problem isn't children being allowed to work in mines. The problem is the lack of superior alternatives available to them.
      - kelnos 3y ago
        Right, and in this case, the superior alternative should be an animator who makes a decent living. Sometimes, unfortunately, we have to legislate the superior alternative into existence. I'm not certain that's a good or necessary move in this particular case (I doubt there are many if any animators where their choice is to be an animator for low wages, or starve and live on the streets), but it's an option. I always thought it weird that we have minimum wage levels for hourly workers, but once you're salaried, you work however many hours your employer wants, or you get marginalized or fired. For many HNers that's not that big a deal, as our effective hourly wage still ends up to be many hundreds of dollars. But there are salaried workers down at the low end who are required to work quite a bit more than the 40 hours a week their "nominal" hourly wage might be calculated off of, and some of those people end up well below what a minimum wage would be for hourly workers.
        a_t48 3y ago
        This is what salary exemption in CA is for, in my understanding. Unless you're making more than twice minimum wage overtime must be paid, even if salaried. The bar may be even higher for certain professions (like software!) (Caveat that more of the world exists than CA)
  - Andrex 3y ago
    If unionization were endemic to the global economy, that might work. Lacking that, power dynamics are such that workers need protections enshrined in legislation. If salaries are a race-to-the-bottom, nobody benefits except the ones doing the hiring. You may have a "job," but the market salary average would be depressed while the companies enjoy a large talent pool of replaceable workers. If I didn't know history too well, I likely wouldn't hold this position. But it's clear as day if you crack open a history book.
    - financypants 3y ago
      When would candidates compete to work for less? I haven’t seen that demonstrated anywhere. I have seen firms compete on pay.
      - badosu 3y ago
        When they can replace you no matter how talented you are, it only takes hiring the next bright eyed young aspiring artist.
      - Andrex 3y ago
        > When would candidates compete to work for less? The first example to jump out in my mind is gov't contractors, which isn't a direct analogue to workers but the mentality of undercutting your competition to get ahead is basic human nature IMO. Two candidates vying for the same job wouldn't consciously sabotage each other (let's assume). But if they both give a salary quote, why wouldn't the lower-priced candidate be a more appealing hire? With no protections, it would come down to whoever is willing (or able) to cut more pieces of their body off to win the job. And that behavior is not conducive to a well-functioning economy that supports a large and contented middle class, which is the preferred economic status of all state actors.
    - madrox 3y ago
      Unions were on my mind when I read this. However, for some reason unions don't tend to take over in creative fields or fields of passion. SAG-AFTRA is the only exception to this that I can think of. This is why I think it's become common practice for tech companies to profit share. We take it for granted now, but it's not common...especially for artists.
  - Moru 3y ago
    Because it's a very uneven power balance. Big company using young inexperienced workers that just want a foot in the door on a childhood dream and have no idea how much their work is worth. Most companies knows to exploit this to the full. Especially known in arts, music and game industry. Less so with (metal) industry jobs where there are old unions helping the workers to a healthier power balance. Except for Musk that seems to be a strange new coin behaving like the industry did 200 years ago.
    - double0jimb0 3y ago
      Tesla as an innovation-driven company couldn’t be further from the types of metal industry jobs you refer to. Why can’t an innovative company trade its “capital” to get the young and ambitious to work for less pay?
    - tomcam 3y ago
      Did people 100 years ago get stock options and similar forms of compensation along with their meager salaries?
    - astrange 3y ago
      Anime doesn't really have big companies. Maybe Aniplex (Sony) at most.
  - ParetoOptimal 3y ago
    The problem is it becomes collectively forced and the value of their labor is devalued.
  - GuB-42 3y ago
    Because there are not many desirable traits. If people were really doing what they enjoyed, it would be fine, but the problem is that they often don't. I am thinking more about the video game industry, but I think there is a similar problem in animation and all other "fun" industry. People who get in these industries often want to get paid for what they already do for fun, being doodling or coding small games. Or maybe they see the big projects like a popular anime or a game they loved and want to be part of it. But in many cases, what they only get is a repetitive, not very creative, and high pressure job, with all the fun sucked out of it. Which would be fine if the pay was worth it, but it isn't, and the prospects are not great either, because the really interesting positions are few compared to the grunt work. Problem is that newcomers don't know that, or maybe hope they are special, and companies really play on that, schools too. What happens is that a few years later you get a bunch of guys that are completely drawn out, hopefully they find a better job elsewhere, to be replaced by a new batch of kids with a soon to be broken dream. Some are luckier and get the job they really wanted (it probably won't be you), and others are really unlucky because their skillset doesn't translate well to other industries and end up with burn out, depression and poverty.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  minimum acceptable labor practices enshrined in law have a long term effect of reducing tragic outcomes for individuals, and the costs associated with that.. combine that with whatever ethical or moral system you may consider, and that starts to say why "anything goes" is an undesirable situation over decades. that said, there are no other countries like Japan, so what works there has limited applications elsewhere, even for casual conversation.
  - madrox 3y ago
    I agree
- hindsightbias 3y ago
  In the 80’s, I always thought the Origin kids looked emaciated because they were working all night on games and forgetting to eat. College kids flipping burgers made more and got leftovers. If there’s one set of people from that era I can never find on LinkedIn, it’s game developers. No idea what happened to any of them.
- vvanders 3y ago
  I generally agree, that said we had a number of our animators move into gamedev from traditional VFX roles and from they way they told it gamedev was significantly better, uf da.
  - gpspake 3y ago
    What's "uf da?"
    - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uff_da https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uff_da
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- radium3d 3y ago
  They literally put it in the job descriptions -- "Must have worked on AAA game X" for the high paying job listings. This makes people think "ok, I have to do this shitty low paying job to get my name on a AAA game, so I will work for peanuts for now" but then the cycle repeats because the listing also says "within the last 3 years" or similar.
- gmerc 3y ago
  I don’t think it’s about prestigious as much as it is about passion. People in these industry join and often work there out of genuine passion, which makes them do sacrifices that take years to regret.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- itake 3y ago
  This doesn't hold water when you look at the prestige of tech companies and their compensation packages. It is simply supply and demand. There are many people that can draw the characters, so their employees are fungible.
  - jimmyjazz14 3y ago
    I don't really think good artist are that common, then again I guess we are talking about anime here (jk, I appreciate the art of much anime).
    - itake 3y ago
      it really depends on what you mean by 'good artist'. Most of the labor in an anime is animating (copying) another artist's work. I am sure the creative directors are paid well, but the people drawing each frame are probably a dime a dozen.
  - lacrimacida 3y ago
    Who takes the money home though? Those too can be made fungible. Let’s not try to justify exploitation and grift.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ycdxvjp 3y ago
  It can be fixed. People need to learn some basic finance if they want to influence how creator economy businesses run. If you can't do that make friends with business experience who you can trust and rely on. If you can't do either, don't get into a creative field. Most of the time creatives just hand over all financial decisions completely to some one else. And then guess what, the financial engineers gain much more influence over how the business run. Even Disney is being pushed around (see Nelson Peltz). And the reason Peltz and finance logic hasn't totally over run them is there are people with finance skills saying profit maximizing, cost cutting finance logic cannot run this shop. You will not find a single sucess story in a creative field without someone with business skills involved.
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    > You will not find a single sucess story certainly depends on the definition of success..
    - charlieyu1 3y ago
      Disney is doing well in the finance department but its appeal is falling hard.
- scythe 3y ago
  I think the most extreme case of this is probably ski patrol. Dangerous, difficult, high skill, high cost of living, pays peanuts and pocket lint.
mperham 3y ago
[flagged]
sillysaurusx 3y ago
Then by definition, that’s what their time is worth. It should alarm animators that they’re paid so little. It alarmed me as a gamedev when I saw how much webdevs earned in comparison. It’s partly why I left, and I was much happier for it. No amount of legislation or shame articles will change the reality that market forces have profound effects, and these effects are difficult to break. Unions try. To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a successful one yet for software, but I’m ignorant of the art world; maybe they have one. But be prepared to receive exactly what the union can give you, and no more.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  This is like a collective action problem. Any industry with enthusiasts or which is itself a hobby is subject to this behavior. People need to stop being so naive as to accept poorly paid jobs because they think the subject matter is 'funner'. Game Devs are the first example I thought of here. If you love games, that's great.. but why not go work in literally any other software dev work for maybe 2x the pay and/or 1/2 the hours. As Don Draper said 'That's what the money is for'. Plenty more money and time to buy & play games.
  - huytersd 3y ago
    That’s never going to happen unless they unionize. People are not going to voluntarily turn down jobs as a collective everywhere at the same time in mass numbers.
    - sillysaurusx 3y ago
      But then by definition, that’s what their labor is worth. Unions can be a stopgap measure, but they can’t correct the underlying market forces. Or at least, I haven’t seen particularly persuasive evidence that unions can do more than make everyone collectively equal, which implies that everyone in X industry would be paid the same, or based on seniority rather than merit. Not my cup of tea, but I’m also privileged not to have chosen a field suffering from a surplus of labor. People really can get themselves out, though. I did. There’s no reason for individuals to subject themselves to it unless that’s what they really want. I.e. it doesn’t necessarily seem like a bad thing that situations like these exist.
egypturnash 3y ago
searches for "union" hahaha yep, this word exists in this article but entirely in the context of how Japanese animators have absolutely no union. I ain't saying the US animation union is perfect but at least there is one; if I hear that some big production like Spiderverse2 is at a non-union shop then it's off my list to bother seeing, even via piracy. I trained to be in this industry and burnt right the fuck out from working at a non-union shop run by a truly evil person, but I still feel solidarity with folks who stuck it out.
- debacle 3y ago
  Does Japan have a labor movement? I would expect not a strong one.
  - diggan 3y ago
    > In 2005, 43,096 labour unions in Japan, with a combined membership of 7,395,666 workers, belonged either directly, or indirectly through labour union councils, to the three main labour union federations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_Japan
  - cybrox 3y ago
    How would they have time for that with those overtime schedules..? Jokes aside, though, yes they do. Though as far as I am aware, mostly in the traditional sense for the primary industry sector to keep companys from working employees to death physically but not really modernized in the tertiary sector. Memberships are declining and I think a great many issues that make life difficult for people in these now more prominent sectors of industry are not openly recognized and tackled.
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    Japan had a very strong labor movement that was systematically dismantled in the 80s, as it was in the U.S. Miyazaki Hayao was a union leader at Toei early in his career and quite famously criticized Tezuka for establishing the exploitation and underpayment of animators as industry practice with his studio, Mushi Production.
Apreche 3y ago
While the industry as a whole makes a lot, the majority of individual anime and manga make next to nothing. It’s a few very popular properties that make all the dough. If people were paid fairly, most productions would be untenable. There would be just a few anime per year instead of many. But also, how would the popular ones come to be? Every new property would be a huge gamble. As an anime and manga fan, I actually want that to happen. Pay the animators what they deserve. Give them good working conditions. People just have to accept that means the industry will shrink dramatically. So many things will just never get made. That also means far fewer people will get to become animators. They’ll have to find some other job as competition for the jobs that remain will be sky high. And that competition is what brings down the wages in the first place. There are just so many people that want those jobs.
- chasing 3y ago
  The "if we paid people fairly things would be prohibitively expensive" argument is a terrible one, just to note. First, it rarely seems to actually be the case since the requirement that employees be paid fairly mostly just drives away low-value efforts. It's also an attitude that, if taken to its logical extreme, demands society have an underpaid underclass that suffers so the rest of us can have nice things.
  - cmdli 3y ago
    While I agree with your argument, it's not as simple as "letting the low value efforts die". If most anime were to stop being produced, most of the animators would also be fired and be unable to continue what is (I assume) their passion and career. The simple fact is that there isn't enough money going into the industry to pay all the animators a fair wage, so either animators get paid less or there are fewer animators.
    - kmeisthax 3y ago
      Vocational awe is a curse. If you have an endless supply of people willing to work pennies then the industry will build itself around paying them pennies. This does not mean that this is the only way you can build an animation industry - just that this is the path Toei and Sunrise took. The amount of money that goes into the industry is not static. The original linked article specifically cites cases in which members of the production committee (often toy companies like Good Smile[0]) decided to deliberately take less money because they didn't want their control diluted. They're only able to do this because they can fleece animators into working longer for less money rather than having to get more capital in the project. As for animators having to find new work... good? The current situation is one in which animators pursue their passions, and then have their passions completely take over their life and crush their soul. If they quit en masse, that would be backpressure against productions that want animators to fall on their swords, and production committees that want shit done cheaply. [0] Who, incidentally, funded Hiroyuki Nishimura's[1] buyout of 4chan in exchange for all those J-List ads the site had. [1] Former operator of 2channel who got pushed out in an incredibly sketchy way by his website host.
dsugarman 3y ago
People have free will; market rate is driven by supply, demand and economics of production and revenue. It's similar to people in the US willing to forfeit their financial future to see taylor swift live and the reseller market understanding and exploiting the market dynamics. Are the resellers the problem? or is it inevitable when people value the financial security of the rest of their lives less than seeing taylor for one night?
- chasing 3y ago
  They do have free will, but large groups of people are at an extreme negotiating disadvantage versus individuals or small groups that can more easily plan and coordinate -- and who happen to control the resources. This is why we need things like unions and government regulations: Not to unbalance things in favor of workers but to help achieve some amount of balance between owners and employees.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    Agree that these animators should work to unionize if they want to improve their situation. But I think for professions like these, the "they have free will" argument is pretty compelling. If they were being exploited in a low-skill, low-status job, where there are few to no alternatives, sure, definitely an industry that needs worker protections. But no one needs to be an animator at a big anime studio to survive. They're there because they want to be, and many/most/(all?) could find gainful employment in an adjacent industry or field where they'd have better pay. To me it's similar to game development. Game devs famously get paid poorly (compared to other devs) and work under stressful conditions. They don't have to do that. They can get a job as a web developer, or an embedded developer, or... some other kind of developer, and get paid more, and experience less stress. But they want to build games, so that's what they do. I'd definitely support all these folks if they wanted to unionize. But I'm not sure I'm convinced legislation is warranted. (Well, except for strengthening and actually enforcing sanctions against union-busting efforts.)
    - pcwalton 3y ago
Gigachad 3y ago
Meanwhile furry art is a fairly small industry that pays artists fortunes.
- nextworddev 3y ago
  First time hearing. Any examples I can take a look at?
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    It’s a little bit tricky to get the stats because it’s all self employed artists and they don’t tend to post their finances publicly, but you can see some data from patreon. This artist (NSFW https://www.patreon.com/braeburned https://www.patreon.com/braeburned) has over 4000 monthly paying subscribers. We can’t see what tier they are paying, but even if they all picked the cheapest one, they are earning as much as I earn as a programmer on patreon members alone. And then they have a whole load of merch like printed books, posters, etc that would be earning a decent amount. Since there are basically no corporations in the furry space, the only cut being taken is the payment provider cut. No management, no marketing, no shareholders. It’s not the highest paying career ever, but I’d say it’s above median.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- fluxem 3y ago
  That’s because no one wants to draw degeneracy. You read stories about what artists had draw because “rent was due” and just shake your head
  - astrange 3y ago
    It's because furries are very wealthy because they're all gay IT workers.
huytersd 3y ago
It’s only going to get worse with AI now in the mix.
- echelon 3y ago
  > It’s only going to get worse with AI now in the mix. s/worse/better Soon the creators and artists will be able to make full films without studio capital in the mix. This should start happening by the end of the year. The studio system exists because film and motion media is hard to make. It requires a lot of people, a lot of logistics, and a lot of capital. That's not going to be true for much longer. Soon the webcomic / fanfiction creator will be able to build their own anime shows and audiences.
  - _sys49152 3y ago
    thus the creation of a ai anime market curation to sort the wheat from the chaff, marketing and merchandising and all that.
  - livueta 3y ago
    Agree. There's an example in democratization of music production tech: the market has become broader and deeper in direct proportion to the declining relevance of expensive hardware. In the context of Japanese culture, consider how many production/songwriting/instrumentalist/vocalist careers were launched by Vocaloid. The way it panned out has been the complete opposite of the death of the "real" vocalist industry; just look at Reol's career arc as one example of this dynamic.
    - redwall_hp 3y ago
      Vocaloid is amazing for that. It's the final piece of the puzzle democratizing music creation. It's easily my favorite music scene for how fan-driven and collaborative it is. A few other major careers launched from that scene that come to mind: Kenshi Yonezu started as the vocaloid producer Hachi, and went on to have numerous hits, including a few anime openings and recently the end credit songs for The Boy and the Heron and Final Fantasy XVI. Yoasobi had one of the most popular music videos, globally, on YouTube last year and is playing Coachella this year. One half of Yoasobi is the (active) vocaloid producer Ayase. (Hatsune Miku is also on the list for Coachella, as well as a new North America tour...) Ryo/Supercell has been big for awhile, Giga (who used to work with Reol) just did a Pokemon X Hatsune Miku collab and does work for Hololive songs occasionally...
genman 3y ago
[flagged]
vondur 3y ago
This seems to be the case with the entertainment industry in general.
ohionono 3y ago
[dead]
Ghufran007 3y ago
[dead]
nextworddev 3y ago
Then who’s making money?
- andirk 3y ago
  Probably the Japanimation upper brass. I don't watch it but most of the characters look identical with the good guys being Japanese but looking like white Americans: large eyes, fair skin, tall, voluptuous. Maybe it's easy to find those animators since their skillset is the same across the board.
  - astrange 3y ago
    That's called mukokuseki. They don't look like anime Americans, who are either black or blonde with blue eyes. And executives getting paid super-well is an American thing. They don't get paid well in Japan either. Nobody does.
  - rcfox 3y ago
    Anime characters are cats. https://i.redd.it/i6awe5ngp5cb1.jpg https://i.redd.it/i6awe5ngp5cb1.jpg
    - franciscop 3y ago
      It's also widely believe that domesticated dogs and cats have been selectively breeded (either on purpose or by accident) to resemble their baby stage, which among mammals it's commonly found as "cute" (big eyes, small nose, etc): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12582-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12582-2
    - andirk 3y ago
      You took my half baked opinion and proved that it's false but even better. I got overwhelming nays on this but you sir/madam have taken it to a peer reviewed (1 peer) level and I thank you for that. Even in the study my half baked opinion is mentioned then negated perfectly! That is HN.
- rnd0 3y ago
brutalized 3y ago
[dead]
sergiotapia 3y ago
Just like videogames and movies/tv. There's an infinite, ever refreshing revolving door of fresh meat for the grinder. And people want to be part of it regardless. With such conditions there will never be an increase to pay. It's just the way things will be in these segments - forever!
- autoexec 3y ago
  Just like with movies/tv you can make a lot more progress with unions.
  - dimgl 3y ago
    I don't think that necessarily applies. Over time movie stars tend to become their own products and movies sell because of their involvement. I just don't see the same thing happening with animators aside from the most prestigious.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      TV writers, or even the folks doing lighting and holding microphones don't gain prestige like movie stars do either, but they're in unions which allows them them get better wages.
    - ff2400t 3y ago
      I think that was reasonable thing to bet over a decade ago. But these days there are very few Big time movie star who can carry a movie on their back. The Last big movie star would be Tom Cruise and he also isn't a surefire way to success by how the latest Mission impossible Performed. The more reasonable thing to bet on these days is Recognizable IP which is what the Big studios have been milking for years. And that also gives more power to the Studio since people don't go to theater for Robert Pattison, they go there for Batman.
nitwit005 3y ago
> because people just don't particularly care enough to look through the glass. No, I suspect absolutely everyone with any knowledge of animation knows animators are paid terribly. The article itself has a meme image about the pay.
- astrange 3y ago
  Western animators aren't paid that terribly, just anime animators, and only some of them. But part of the compromise that Western animation does to be more productive is that it all looks bad. There's a fake-anime style Superman cartoon on I saw that has the artistic quality of maybe a Japanese elementary schooler. And then Netflix makes animated sex comedies that look like old Flash cartoons.
  - dron57 3y ago
    Since you mention Western animation and Netflix. Have you seen Blue Eyed Samurai? Amazing show and it has a beautiful style that looks like it's hand drawn and Japanese, but it's actually French made CGI. I suspect that even this industry can be disrupted by technology.
    - rishav_sharan 3y ago
      The French have their own thing going on. Fortiche and Blue Spirit are making some of the most beautiful animations we have seen in western TV series. They draw from a rich heritage of art and comics.
    - MikusR 3y ago
      If you think it looks hand drawn go to nearest eye doctor as soon as possible.
  - Der_Einzige 3y ago
    I'm sorry, all western animation looks bad? Such sweeping generalizations, and so wrong. Exhibit A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_NIMH https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_NIMH Exhibit B. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince_of_Egypt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince_of_Egypt Exhibit C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Into_the_Spider-Verse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Into_the_Spider-Ve...
pcwalton 3y ago
The comments here are talking about how that's the entertainment industry for you, and that's true, but it's also Japan, where salaries are much lower in general than in the US or Europe. Per a quick Google search, at current exchange rates, it's not uncommon to see programmers with 2-3 years of experience earning $30K/year USD there, sometimes lower than that. Japan's economy has been stagnating for decades and that's reflected across the board, not just in entertainment.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- neaden 3y ago
  Labor conditions in Japan in general, in terms of pay and hours, seem so much worse then nations with similar per capita GDP I don't really get why.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > at current exchange rates Looking at exchange rates is the wrong way of looking at things since they vary widely in the space of 5 years or so. You need to look at purchasing power in their local currency. Like eating out in japan is WAY cheaper than in Europe for anything comparable. And looking at the bubble that is programmers salaries is ridiculous as a benchmark, because then it mostly depends on whether there are large actors to drive such salaries up in said countries.
- franciscop 3y ago
  > (It's another reason why, as a Westerner, you almost certainly do not want to try to live in Japan.) This is a really bad take, I've lived in Tokyo for 6 years. As a western developer (in IT as we say here in Japan), you will most certain improve your quality of life by moving to e.g. Tokyo vs most USA cities. While what you said it's true, there's also other truths: - As others comment, as a foreigner working in Tokyo with some experience, you can opt to much higher salaries than the local graduates (for so many reasons). It'd be easy to make 6-8M JPY in Japanese companies, and depending on other factors 8-10M JPY is not rare. Since we are in HN, I'm sure many here can even opt for 10M+ JPY. - If you can, just work remotely for US/EU while living here, or for a branch of a EU/US company, since salaries will be much higher. That is true. That way you can make 10-30M JPY easily, and with that you can live _very_ comfortable. Only issue you might have is how you manage to get a Visa. For reference, you can live well as a single guy in Tokyo with 4-5M JPY. Lifestyle is different though, so it depends on what you value, e.g. houses ARE smaller, but neighborhoods are walkable and beautiful (highly depends where you come from). If you do want to have your cake and eat to, meaning living in a "very big" house for Japanese standards while having everything else nice from Japan, yeah you'll need to be making 8M+ JPY for sure.
charcircuit 3y ago
This title is hyperbole. The worst pay for animators would be for contractors / freelancers doing douga (drawing in betweens) who are very slow at drawing. The pay is per frame so it's all about efficiency. You would have to take multiple days for a frame to only make pennies per day.
asylteltine 3y ago
I just learned recently there’s a lot of drama of “localizers” blatantly mistranslating or inserting their own words to push their ideologies.
- astrange 3y ago
  You learned nonsense right-wing propaganda.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    Even so, it is true and does happen. Though I suspect it is less about pushing an ideology and more for trying to appeal to an audience of the localizer's peers. Either way the end result is that it repulsed a demographic of the distribution platform's target audience. Beyond that official translations often don't come with honorific, don't bother explaining puns, are not literal translations, try to replace a Japanese concept with a western one, and other annoying things. I would rather there not be an official translation or localization process, but since non Japanese streaming platforms want to constantly expand their business no matter what, the desires of hardcore anime fans will not be respected as normal people outnumber us, so bad subs will continue to be produced.
    - xboxnolifes 3y ago
      > I would rather there not be an official translation or localization process Localization isn't just bad subs though. Localization is sometimes unavoidable due to differences in language and the cultural usage of the language. Not everything can be directly translated, as that's not how languages work. Sometimes the only way to avoid localization is to not translate, and then it's no longer a translation.
      - astrange 3y ago
        Other reasons to do it are: * translating a joke "literally" makes it no longer a joke and so no longer an authentic translation * the original creators want their work to sell to people who weren't already prepared to like it
google234123 3y ago
What percent of the content consumed is pirated?
imgabe 3y ago
$25 Billion what? Revenue? Profit? Total Transactions? That is a meaningless number without some context. It's also not a whole lot for an entire industry. Why is that supposed to mean that animators should be paid more? They could be making $25 billion in revenue and have razor thin margins or be losing money already.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
brcmthrowaway 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
chocolatkey 3y ago
Before making conclusions about animator wages being due to lack of this or that, please watch this informative video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iExwO1v_V-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iExwO1v_V-s It covers a point that I am not seeing the discussion here, about the role that anime production committees play in the wages of animators and gatekeeping in the industry in general. This channel has other informative videos on the subject as well.
- chii 3y ago
  Why is that video an unlisted video?
qwll 3y ago
The same author also made a video on the subject that has some additional context as well. An example being this part [1] with a QC flow chart. [1] https://youtu.be/BDEIPa9b3OU?t=934 https://youtu.be/BDEIPa9b3OU?t=934
labster 3y ago
I don’t understand why this author completely writes off the possibility of not releasing weekly. Honestly in the era of streaming, who cares about releasing every week? Often I wait until a season is wrapped before watching any of it. As a fan I can’t imagine getting upset at a longer cadence, and at the most slightly annoyed.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  It doesn't really matter that much in terms of logistics. Animators will usually be working on episode 8-9 of an anime by the time episode 1 airs. If not outright done with the 12 episode cour. Weekly schedule is usually done for the sake of broadcast channels, which is still a bit more relevant in Japan than over in rhe West.
aj7 3y ago
Yakuza.
lowbloodsugar 3y ago
And soon nothing because AI.
tanime 3y ago
and yet they are the first to preach others
AniseAbyss 3y ago
[dead]
bemmu 3y ago
I briefly hung out with a manga illustrator while studying in Japan, and what astonished me was how incredibly fast he was at drawing. We went out for hamburgers, and while I was sitting there munching on my burger he made the initial sketch for an entire page.
jongjong 3y ago
I bet a lot of people are thinking "Why don't they do their own animes" but this neglects the reality that all distribution pipelines for any kind of media have been totally monopolized. The anime creator has zero bargaining power over the media monopolist.
- throw123123123 3y ago
  There's the internet.
jsemrau 3y ago
I believe that the movie industry is just before a major disruption. 1. Big movie studios have been overproducing content with reduced returns. 2. Business model change to direct-to-consumer (streaming). 3. Regulatory changes (DEI minority interests - Oscars). 4. Technological changes (generative AI). 5. Customer preferences (watch the review on Youtube).
HALtheWise 3y ago
Anime is a $25B industry in terms of revenue, but that doesn't actually imply anything in particular about whether there's any profit in it. I see people make this sort of mistake all the time, and it bugs me. In this particular case, I think the appropriate reaction is very different if the anime industry is wildly profitable vs losing money as a whole, but the article is happy to throw revenue numbers around in the headline without engaging with that distinction. < /rant>
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  Actual facts instead of unsourced opinion: plenty of profit is being made - by the distributors. https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/t5illb/comment/hz57dwo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/t5illb/comment/hz57d... Also, you seem to be terribly confused by "the company is not making much profit on paper" and "the people in management and running the company are paid plenty." You think management is paid as lowly as the animators? This is no different from hollywood where studio management make plenty of money and the army of people actually doing the lion's share of the work, especially GFX/SFX, are poorly paid, and accountants make it look like the film barely breaks even.
- dylan604 3y ago
  If your industry is making $25B and there's no profit, your industry is not very efficient. I've been part of working with licensed content, so not actually in the production side from actually animating. However, just from the interaction with them in that manner, you can tell they are not working in anything that would make you think they are doing things efficiently at all. It only seems that would percolate through out that side of things
  - lchen_hn 3y ago
    That’s just not true. There are many industry that runs efficient but generate little profit. In general, the more competition, the less profit. Warren Buffett sold the airline business for this reason. Many businesses are simply too hard.
  - Aerroon 3y ago
a_gnostic 3y ago
Get them to unionize so they become less competitive?
zeroCalories 3y ago
Damn bro, that sucks. You should quit and get a McJob.
mark336 3y ago
I agree with the guys that said they have to accept the industry to shrink, by paying animators what they deserve. I think that the government is failing here. They should be the ones that defend the worker even if the worker wants to get paid $5/hr. I don't agree that people who want to be animators can't because competition for the fairly paid jobs is high. There should be some kind of non-profit level business for people who want to intern and get paid a few bucks if they really are in love with the industry. But corporations should not be allowed to underpay their staff.
grumpy_coder 3y ago
All hit-driven industries, TV, movies, toys, games, anime, etc... need to be forced to pay the people who make them royalties. Money is always tight most of the time, but when someone makes a hit they need legal protection to a fair share of the huge profits.
- Aerroon 3y ago
  Won't investment in the industry reduce in that case? Ie less anime, movies, tv shows etc will be produced, because potential profits are going to be lower. Nothing is technically stopping an animator to go and do their own thing. It's just a hugely difficult and expensive undertaking that requires a decent amount of investment. Especially nowadays you could put it on YouTube, but it probably wouldn't be worth their while.
quadhome 3y ago
We're sorry, due to circumstances beyond our control, the script to the rest of the episode was lost on its way overseas. Luckily, the episode was finished by the Korean animators. We hope you enjoy the new ending. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-ReoBPl4mM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-ReoBPl4mM
elektrontamer 3y ago
This sounds like a "dream job syndrome".
sadpolishdev 3y ago
so is gamedev so is gastro so is public services so is almost anything that isnt some high-level IT stuff, breaking news
jubulence 3y ago
Anime prioritises high production rates over quality. Anime looks largely samey. There's a few notable distinctions, like Attack on Titan, but the animators on that are getting paid better then what's being quoted in this article. This article is quoting the pay scales for the animators working on single season anime that get cancelled halfway through that are based on an obscure manga that has only been read because it was published in a major magazine, but was never particularly popular and actually got cancelled a month before the anime came out. Yeah, there's a lot of great anime, and the stuff we get in the West is the stuff that's popular, with proper studios putting time and effort in. The people getting paid $5 a day aren't working on the major productions. Sure, the people that did Fairy Tale probably can get paid more, but the guys working on Visual Prison, yeah, they're not priority. Why don't they unionise? Because the people who would most benefit are afraid they might lose their jobs in the industry they want to work in. Is this backed by studies? Nope, but you tell that to someone facing down the prospect of losing their chance at their dream. And the 15% average wage increase from unionisation, let's be honest, isn't going to do anything. The issue here is the output. If anime is going to be more humane, it needs to cut how much random noise they produce. Look at Western animation. You get a handful of shows a year. Anime you get 3 years of content every 3 months. Workers are the ones that bear the brunt of that schedule.
- zepearl 3y ago
  Thank you for your post, I tend to agree with most of what you wrote. (Maybe in the future pleeease create chapters/paragraphs so that it's easier to read than a single block of text? Highlighting "Blank lines separate paragraphs" mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc ) >...it needs to cut how much random noise they produce. Look at Western animation. You get a handful of shows a year. Anime you get 3 years of content every 3 months. I think that I understand what you mean about the "random noise", but I personally don't think that a direct comparison makes sense on multiple levels (e.g. anime in Japan being watched by a large range of audience with sub-groups focusing on specific themes, low/middle-cost western animation primarily focusing on kids, etc...). Cheers!
fennecbutt 3y ago
Isn't this every industry? Wealth is being concentrated by people who are already wealthy. The whole system is set up to work like this. We could band together and change it, but we don't.

344 points by methou 3y ago

There's an interview with J.C.Staff founder Tomoyuki Miyata making the rounds right now (Japanese language original: https://animan634.com/interview/231215_int_2_1.html https://animan634.com/interview/231215_int_2_1.html; English language summary: https://www.cbr.com/jc-staff-anime-studio-founder-work-stress-stomach-remove/ https://www.cbr.com/jc-staff-anime-studio-founder-work-stres...) where he talks about how he developed a severe stomach ulcer from work-related stress, had to have 2/3 of his stomach removed, and was back at work 10 days after surgery.

madrox 3y ago

When I read things like this, I think back on my experience in games and entertainment. I believe that the more generally prestigious the industry is, the more likely it is to see worker exploitation. Part of your pay is wrapped up in getting to brag that you work in industry X on product Y. Almost by definition, that means young, passionate labor. Industry leaders quickly learn how to exploit the young and passionate. This is exacerbated in Japan, that already has a significant salaryman culture. However, I'm not sure this could be fixed through regulation. It's very wrapped up in human nature, and is a problem that you see across the world. Ultimately, the people involved have to make a choice about how they spend their lives. I might be wrong, but people have tried to fix the systemic issues for longer than I've been alive.

savanaly 3y ago
I totally agree with your diagnosis, but I don’t see why it’s considered to be a problem. Why shouldn’t people be free to trade off salary against other desirable traits in a job? Even at the extremes?
- madrox 3y ago
  I tend to agree with you. In the end, salary reflects what the market will put up with, and if you're not willing to take a salary hit to work in games, someone else will. This is why I don't think regulation will fix this. It has to be on the individual to decide what's right for them.
  - Ecstatify 3y ago
    Yeah let’s get rid of minimum wage while we’re at it.
    - madrox 3y ago
      Minimum wage does solve a certain kind of unskilled worker exploitation. I don't think passion tends to be at play for minimum wage jobs. This is a different kind of exploitation that's more difficult to regulate.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      100% would agree.
      - Andrex 3y ago
        [flagged]
        mcmoor 3y ago
        The solution for that is UBI not minimum wage
        s1artibartfast 3y ago
        no, I just think that minimum wage is the worst possible way to address the issue, from an economic perspective. It would be far better to pay people what their work is actually worth, and then give them charity through the government, supported by taxes, if need be. Same goes for healthcare, which should absolutely not be a mandated part of employment. Pay people what they are worth, and let them buy healthcare. If we want to subsidize or provide charitable healthcare, then we can do so too.
        Ecstatify 3y ago
        Why should the taxpayer foot the bill for a business unable to pay their employees a living wage.
- dymk 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - slothtrop 3y ago
    The "children" (i.e. working adults) have to go well out of their way to work on games and anime and know how much it pays. The mines (for real) in developed countries actually pay really well and are sometimes unionized.
  - oatmeal1 3y ago
    When the alternative is starving, they do. The problem isn't children being allowed to work in mines. The problem is the lack of superior alternatives available to them.
    - kelnos 3y ago
      Right, and in this case, the superior alternative should be an animator who makes a decent living. Sometimes, unfortunately, we have to legislate the superior alternative into existence. I'm not certain that's a good or necessary move in this particular case (I doubt there are many if any animators where their choice is to be an animator for low wages, or starve and live on the streets), but it's an option. I always thought it weird that we have minimum wage levels for hourly workers, but once you're salaried, you work however many hours your employer wants, or you get marginalized or fired. For many HNers that's not that big a deal, as our effective hourly wage still ends up to be many hundreds of dollars. But there are salaried workers down at the low end who are required to work quite a bit more than the 40 hours a week their "nominal" hourly wage might be calculated off of, and some of those people end up well below what a minimum wage would be for hourly workers.
      - a_t48 3y ago
        This is what salary exemption in CA is for, in my understanding. Unless you're making more than twice minimum wage overtime must be paid, even if salaried. The bar may be even higher for certain professions (like software!) (Caveat that more of the world exists than CA)
- Andrex 3y ago
  If unionization were endemic to the global economy, that might work. Lacking that, power dynamics are such that workers need protections enshrined in legislation. If salaries are a race-to-the-bottom, nobody benefits except the ones doing the hiring. You may have a "job," but the market salary average would be depressed while the companies enjoy a large talent pool of replaceable workers. If I didn't know history too well, I likely wouldn't hold this position. But it's clear as day if you crack open a history book.
  - financypants 3y ago
    When would candidates compete to work for less? I haven’t seen that demonstrated anywhere. I have seen firms compete on pay.
    - badosu 3y ago
      When they can replace you no matter how talented you are, it only takes hiring the next bright eyed young aspiring artist.
    - Andrex 3y ago
      > When would candidates compete to work for less? The first example to jump out in my mind is gov't contractors, which isn't a direct analogue to workers but the mentality of undercutting your competition to get ahead is basic human nature IMO. Two candidates vying for the same job wouldn't consciously sabotage each other (let's assume). But if they both give a salary quote, why wouldn't the lower-priced candidate be a more appealing hire? With no protections, it would come down to whoever is willing (or able) to cut more pieces of their body off to win the job. And that behavior is not conducive to a well-functioning economy that supports a large and contented middle class, which is the preferred economic status of all state actors.
  - madrox 3y ago
    Unions were on my mind when I read this. However, for some reason unions don't tend to take over in creative fields or fields of passion. SAG-AFTRA is the only exception to this that I can think of. This is why I think it's become common practice for tech companies to profit share. We take it for granted now, but it's not common...especially for artists.
- Moru 3y ago
  Because it's a very uneven power balance. Big company using young inexperienced workers that just want a foot in the door on a childhood dream and have no idea how much their work is worth. Most companies knows to exploit this to the full. Especially known in arts, music and game industry. Less so with (metal) industry jobs where there are old unions helping the workers to a healthier power balance. Except for Musk that seems to be a strange new coin behaving like the industry did 200 years ago.
  - double0jimb0 3y ago
    Tesla as an innovation-driven company couldn’t be further from the types of metal industry jobs you refer to. Why can’t an innovative company trade its “capital” to get the young and ambitious to work for less pay?
  - tomcam 3y ago
    Did people 100 years ago get stock options and similar forms of compensation along with their meager salaries?
  - astrange 3y ago
    Anime doesn't really have big companies. Maybe Aniplex (Sony) at most.
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  The problem is it becomes collectively forced and the value of their labor is devalued.
- GuB-42 3y ago
  Because there are not many desirable traits. If people were really doing what they enjoyed, it would be fine, but the problem is that they often don't. I am thinking more about the video game industry, but I think there is a similar problem in animation and all other "fun" industry. People who get in these industries often want to get paid for what they already do for fun, being doodling or coding small games. Or maybe they see the big projects like a popular anime or a game they loved and want to be part of it. But in many cases, what they only get is a repetitive, not very creative, and high pressure job, with all the fun sucked out of it. Which would be fine if the pay was worth it, but it isn't, and the prospects are not great either, because the really interesting positions are few compared to the grunt work. Problem is that newcomers don't know that, or maybe hope they are special, and companies really play on that, schools too. What happens is that a few years later you get a bunch of guys that are completely drawn out, hopefully they find a better job elsewhere, to be replaced by a new batch of kids with a soon to be broken dream. Some are luckier and get the job they really wanted (it probably won't be you), and others are really unlucky because their skillset doesn't translate well to other industries and end up with burn out, depression and poverty.
mistrial9 3y ago
minimum acceptable labor practices enshrined in law have a long term effect of reducing tragic outcomes for individuals, and the costs associated with that.. combine that with whatever ethical or moral system you may consider, and that starts to say why "anything goes" is an undesirable situation over decades. that said, there are no other countries like Japan, so what works there has limited applications elsewhere, even for casual conversation.
- madrox 3y ago
  I agree
hindsightbias 3y ago
In the 80’s, I always thought the Origin kids looked emaciated because they were working all night on games and forgetting to eat. College kids flipping burgers made more and got leftovers. If there’s one set of people from that era I can never find on LinkedIn, it’s game developers. No idea what happened to any of them.
vvanders 3y ago
I generally agree, that said we had a number of our animators move into gamedev from traditional VFX roles and from they way they told it gamedev was significantly better, uf da.
- gpspake 3y ago
  What's "uf da?"
  - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uff_da https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uff_da
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
radium3d 3y ago
They literally put it in the job descriptions -- "Must have worked on AAA game X" for the high paying job listings. This makes people think "ok, I have to do this shitty low paying job to get my name on a AAA game, so I will work for peanuts for now" but then the cycle repeats because the listing also says "within the last 3 years" or similar.
gmerc 3y ago
I don’t think it’s about prestigious as much as it is about passion. People in these industry join and often work there out of genuine passion, which makes them do sacrifices that take years to regret.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
itake 3y ago
This doesn't hold water when you look at the prestige of tech companies and their compensation packages. It is simply supply and demand. There are many people that can draw the characters, so their employees are fungible.
- jimmyjazz14 3y ago
  I don't really think good artist are that common, then again I guess we are talking about anime here (jk, I appreciate the art of much anime).
  - itake 3y ago
    it really depends on what you mean by 'good artist'. Most of the labor in an anime is animating (copying) another artist's work. I am sure the creative directors are paid well, but the people drawing each frame are probably a dime a dozen.
- lacrimacida 3y ago
  Who takes the money home though? Those too can be made fungible. Let’s not try to justify exploitation and grift.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ycdxvjp 3y ago
It can be fixed. People need to learn some basic finance if they want to influence how creator economy businesses run. If you can't do that make friends with business experience who you can trust and rely on. If you can't do either, don't get into a creative field. Most of the time creatives just hand over all financial decisions completely to some one else. And then guess what, the financial engineers gain much more influence over how the business run. Even Disney is being pushed around (see Nelson Peltz). And the reason Peltz and finance logic hasn't totally over run them is there are people with finance skills saying profit maximizing, cost cutting finance logic cannot run this shop. You will not find a single sucess story in a creative field without someone with business skills involved.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  > You will not find a single sucess story certainly depends on the definition of success..
  - charlieyu1 3y ago
    Disney is doing well in the finance department but its appeal is falling hard.
scythe 3y ago
I think the most extreme case of this is probably ski patrol. Dangerous, difficult, high skill, high cost of living, pays peanuts and pocket lint.

mperham 3y ago

[flagged]

sillysaurusx 3y ago

Then by definition, that’s what their time is worth. It should alarm animators that they’re paid so little. It alarmed me as a gamedev when I saw how much webdevs earned in comparison. It’s partly why I left, and I was much happier for it. No amount of legislation or shame articles will change the reality that market forces have profound effects, and these effects are difficult to break. Unions try. To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a successful one yet for software, but I’m ignorant of the art world; maybe they have one. But be prepared to receive exactly what the union can give you, and no more.

steveBK123 3y ago
This is like a collective action problem. Any industry with enthusiasts or which is itself a hobby is subject to this behavior. People need to stop being so naive as to accept poorly paid jobs because they think the subject matter is 'funner'. Game Devs are the first example I thought of here. If you love games, that's great.. but why not go work in literally any other software dev work for maybe 2x the pay and/or 1/2 the hours. As Don Draper said 'That's what the money is for'. Plenty more money and time to buy & play games.
- huytersd 3y ago
  That’s never going to happen unless they unionize. People are not going to voluntarily turn down jobs as a collective everywhere at the same time in mass numbers.
  - sillysaurusx 3y ago
    But then by definition, that’s what their labor is worth. Unions can be a stopgap measure, but they can’t correct the underlying market forces. Or at least, I haven’t seen particularly persuasive evidence that unions can do more than make everyone collectively equal, which implies that everyone in X industry would be paid the same, or based on seniority rather than merit. Not my cup of tea, but I’m also privileged not to have chosen a field suffering from a surplus of labor. People really can get themselves out, though. I did. There’s no reason for individuals to subject themselves to it unless that’s what they really want. I.e. it doesn’t necessarily seem like a bad thing that situations like these exist.

egypturnash 3y ago

searches for "union" hahaha yep, this word exists in this article but entirely in the context of how Japanese animators have absolutely no union. I ain't saying the US animation union is perfect but at least there is one; if I hear that some big production like Spiderverse2 is at a non-union shop then it's off my list to bother seeing, even via piracy. I trained to be in this industry and burnt right the fuck out from working at a non-union shop run by a truly evil person, but I still feel solidarity with folks who stuck it out.

debacle 3y ago
Does Japan have a labor movement? I would expect not a strong one.
- diggan 3y ago
  > In 2005, 43,096 labour unions in Japan, with a combined membership of 7,395,666 workers, belonged either directly, or indirectly through labour union councils, to the three main labour union federations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_Japan
- cybrox 3y ago
  How would they have time for that with those overtime schedules..? Jokes aside, though, yes they do. Though as far as I am aware, mostly in the traditional sense for the primary industry sector to keep companys from working employees to death physically but not really modernized in the tertiary sector. Memberships are declining and I think a great many issues that make life difficult for people in these now more prominent sectors of industry are not openly recognized and tackled.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  Japan had a very strong labor movement that was systematically dismantled in the 80s, as it was in the U.S. Miyazaki Hayao was a union leader at Toei early in his career and quite famously criticized Tezuka for establishing the exploitation and underpayment of animators as industry practice with his studio, Mushi Production.

Apreche 3y ago

While the industry as a whole makes a lot, the majority of individual anime and manga make next to nothing. It’s a few very popular properties that make all the dough. If people were paid fairly, most productions would be untenable. There would be just a few anime per year instead of many. But also, how would the popular ones come to be? Every new property would be a huge gamble. As an anime and manga fan, I actually want that to happen. Pay the animators what they deserve. Give them good working conditions. People just have to accept that means the industry will shrink dramatically. So many things will just never get made. That also means far fewer people will get to become animators. They’ll have to find some other job as competition for the jobs that remain will be sky high. And that competition is what brings down the wages in the first place. There are just so many people that want those jobs.

chasing 3y ago
The "if we paid people fairly things would be prohibitively expensive" argument is a terrible one, just to note. First, it rarely seems to actually be the case since the requirement that employees be paid fairly mostly just drives away low-value efforts. It's also an attitude that, if taken to its logical extreme, demands society have an underpaid underclass that suffers so the rest of us can have nice things.
- cmdli 3y ago
  While I agree with your argument, it's not as simple as "letting the low value efforts die". If most anime were to stop being produced, most of the animators would also be fired and be unable to continue what is (I assume) their passion and career. The simple fact is that there isn't enough money going into the industry to pay all the animators a fair wage, so either animators get paid less or there are fewer animators.
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    Vocational awe is a curse. If you have an endless supply of people willing to work pennies then the industry will build itself around paying them pennies. This does not mean that this is the only way you can build an animation industry - just that this is the path Toei and Sunrise took. The amount of money that goes into the industry is not static. The original linked article specifically cites cases in which members of the production committee (often toy companies like Good Smile[0]) decided to deliberately take less money because they didn't want their control diluted. They're only able to do this because they can fleece animators into working longer for less money rather than having to get more capital in the project. As for animators having to find new work... good? The current situation is one in which animators pursue their passions, and then have their passions completely take over their life and crush their soul. If they quit en masse, that would be backpressure against productions that want animators to fall on their swords, and production committees that want shit done cheaply. [0] Who, incidentally, funded Hiroyuki Nishimura's[1] buyout of 4chan in exchange for all those J-List ads the site had. [1] Former operator of 2channel who got pushed out in an incredibly sketchy way by his website host.

dsugarman 3y ago

People have free will; market rate is driven by supply, demand and economics of production and revenue. It's similar to people in the US willing to forfeit their financial future to see taylor swift live and the reseller market understanding and exploiting the market dynamics. Are the resellers the problem? or is it inevitable when people value the financial security of the rest of their lives less than seeing taylor for one night?

chasing 3y ago
They do have free will, but large groups of people are at an extreme negotiating disadvantage versus individuals or small groups that can more easily plan and coordinate -- and who happen to control the resources. This is why we need things like unions and government regulations: Not to unbalance things in favor of workers but to help achieve some amount of balance between owners and employees.
- kelnos 3y ago
  Agree that these animators should work to unionize if they want to improve their situation. But I think for professions like these, the "they have free will" argument is pretty compelling. If they were being exploited in a low-skill, low-status job, where there are few to no alternatives, sure, definitely an industry that needs worker protections. But no one needs to be an animator at a big anime studio to survive. They're there because they want to be, and many/most/(all?) could find gainful employment in an adjacent industry or field where they'd have better pay. To me it's similar to game development. Game devs famously get paid poorly (compared to other devs) and work under stressful conditions. They don't have to do that. They can get a job as a web developer, or an embedded developer, or... some other kind of developer, and get paid more, and experience less stress. But they want to build games, so that's what they do. I'd definitely support all these folks if they wanted to unionize. But I'm not sure I'm convinced legislation is warranted. (Well, except for strengthening and actually enforcing sanctions against union-busting efforts.)
  - pcwalton 3y ago

Gigachad 3y ago

Meanwhile furry art is a fairly small industry that pays artists fortunes.

nextworddev 3y ago
First time hearing. Any examples I can take a look at?
- Gigachad 3y ago
  It’s a little bit tricky to get the stats because it’s all self employed artists and they don’t tend to post their finances publicly, but you can see some data from patreon. This artist (NSFW https://www.patreon.com/braeburned https://www.patreon.com/braeburned) has over 4000 monthly paying subscribers. We can’t see what tier they are paying, but even if they all picked the cheapest one, they are earning as much as I earn as a programmer on patreon members alone. And then they have a whole load of merch like printed books, posters, etc that would be earning a decent amount. Since there are basically no corporations in the furry space, the only cut being taken is the payment provider cut. No management, no marketing, no shareholders. It’s not the highest paying career ever, but I’d say it’s above median.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fluxem 3y ago
That’s because no one wants to draw degeneracy. You read stories about what artists had draw because “rent was due” and just shake your head
- astrange 3y ago
  It's because furries are very wealthy because they're all gay IT workers.

huytersd 3y ago

It’s only going to get worse with AI now in the mix.

echelon 3y ago
> It’s only going to get worse with AI now in the mix. s/worse/better Soon the creators and artists will be able to make full films without studio capital in the mix. This should start happening by the end of the year. The studio system exists because film and motion media is hard to make. It requires a lot of people, a lot of logistics, and a lot of capital. That's not going to be true for much longer. Soon the webcomic / fanfiction creator will be able to build their own anime shows and audiences.
- _sys49152 3y ago
  thus the creation of a ai anime market curation to sort the wheat from the chaff, marketing and merchandising and all that.
- livueta 3y ago
  Agree. There's an example in democratization of music production tech: the market has become broader and deeper in direct proportion to the declining relevance of expensive hardware. In the context of Japanese culture, consider how many production/songwriting/instrumentalist/vocalist careers were launched by Vocaloid. The way it panned out has been the complete opposite of the death of the "real" vocalist industry; just look at Reol's career arc as one example of this dynamic.
  - redwall_hp 3y ago
    Vocaloid is amazing for that. It's the final piece of the puzzle democratizing music creation. It's easily my favorite music scene for how fan-driven and collaborative it is. A few other major careers launched from that scene that come to mind: Kenshi Yonezu started as the vocaloid producer Hachi, and went on to have numerous hits, including a few anime openings and recently the end credit songs for The Boy and the Heron and Final Fantasy XVI. Yoasobi had one of the most popular music videos, globally, on YouTube last year and is playing Coachella this year. One half of Yoasobi is the (active) vocaloid producer Ayase. (Hatsune Miku is also on the list for Coachella, as well as a new North America tour...) Ryo/Supercell has been big for awhile, Giga (who used to work with Reol) just did a Pokemon X Hatsune Miku collab and does work for Hololive songs occasionally...

genman 3y ago

[flagged]

vondur 3y ago

This seems to be the case with the entertainment industry in general.

ohionono 3y ago

[dead]

Ghufran007 3y ago

[dead]

nextworddev 3y ago

Then who’s making money?

andirk 3y ago
Probably the Japanimation upper brass. I don't watch it but most of the characters look identical with the good guys being Japanese but looking like white Americans: large eyes, fair skin, tall, voluptuous. Maybe it's easy to find those animators since their skillset is the same across the board.
- astrange 3y ago
  That's called mukokuseki. They don't look like anime Americans, who are either black or blonde with blue eyes. And executives getting paid super-well is an American thing. They don't get paid well in Japan either. Nobody does.
- rcfox 3y ago
  Anime characters are cats. https://i.redd.it/i6awe5ngp5cb1.jpg https://i.redd.it/i6awe5ngp5cb1.jpg
  - franciscop 3y ago
    It's also widely believe that domesticated dogs and cats have been selectively breeded (either on purpose or by accident) to resemble their baby stage, which among mammals it's commonly found as "cute" (big eyes, small nose, etc): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12582-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12582-2
  - andirk 3y ago
    You took my half baked opinion and proved that it's false but even better. I got overwhelming nays on this but you sir/madam have taken it to a peer reviewed (1 peer) level and I thank you for that. Even in the study my half baked opinion is mentioned then negated perfectly! That is HN.
rnd0 3y ago

brutalized 3y ago

[dead]

sergiotapia 3y ago

Just like videogames and movies/tv. There's an infinite, ever refreshing revolving door of fresh meat for the grinder. And people want to be part of it regardless. With such conditions there will never be an increase to pay. It's just the way things will be in these segments - forever!

autoexec 3y ago
Just like with movies/tv you can make a lot more progress with unions.
- dimgl 3y ago
  I don't think that necessarily applies. Over time movie stars tend to become their own products and movies sell because of their involvement. I just don't see the same thing happening with animators aside from the most prestigious.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    TV writers, or even the folks doing lighting and holding microphones don't gain prestige like movie stars do either, but they're in unions which allows them them get better wages.
  - ff2400t 3y ago
    I think that was reasonable thing to bet over a decade ago. But these days there are very few Big time movie star who can carry a movie on their back. The Last big movie star would be Tom Cruise and he also isn't a surefire way to success by how the latest Mission impossible Performed. The more reasonable thing to bet on these days is Recognizable IP which is what the Big studios have been milking for years. And that also gives more power to the Studio since people don't go to theater for Robert Pattison, they go there for Batman.

nitwit005 3y ago

> because people just don't particularly care enough to look through the glass. No, I suspect absolutely everyone with any knowledge of animation knows animators are paid terribly. The article itself has a meme image about the pay.

astrange 3y ago
Western animators aren't paid that terribly, just anime animators, and only some of them. But part of the compromise that Western animation does to be more productive is that it all looks bad. There's a fake-anime style Superman cartoon on I saw that has the artistic quality of maybe a Japanese elementary schooler. And then Netflix makes animated sex comedies that look like old Flash cartoons.
- dron57 3y ago
  Since you mention Western animation and Netflix. Have you seen Blue Eyed Samurai? Amazing show and it has a beautiful style that looks like it's hand drawn and Japanese, but it's actually French made CGI. I suspect that even this industry can be disrupted by technology.
  - rishav_sharan 3y ago
    The French have their own thing going on. Fortiche and Blue Spirit are making some of the most beautiful animations we have seen in western TV series. They draw from a rich heritage of art and comics.
  - MikusR 3y ago
    If you think it looks hand drawn go to nearest eye doctor as soon as possible.
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  I'm sorry, all western animation looks bad? Such sweeping generalizations, and so wrong. Exhibit A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_NIMH https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_NIMH Exhibit B. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince_of_Egypt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince_of_Egypt Exhibit C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Into_the_Spider-Verse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Into_the_Spider-Ve...

pcwalton 3y ago

The comments here are talking about how that's the entertainment industry for you, and that's true, but it's also Japan, where salaries are much lower in general than in the US or Europe. Per a quick Google search, at current exchange rates, it's not uncommon to see programmers with 2-3 years of experience earning $30K/year USD there, sometimes lower than that. Japan's economy has been stagnating for decades and that's reflected across the board, not just in entertainment.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
neaden 3y ago
Labor conditions in Japan in general, in terms of pay and hours, seem so much worse then nations with similar per capita GDP I don't really get why.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ekianjo 3y ago
> at current exchange rates Looking at exchange rates is the wrong way of looking at things since they vary widely in the space of 5 years or so. You need to look at purchasing power in their local currency. Like eating out in japan is WAY cheaper than in Europe for anything comparable. And looking at the bubble that is programmers salaries is ridiculous as a benchmark, because then it mostly depends on whether there are large actors to drive such salaries up in said countries.
franciscop 3y ago
> (It's another reason why, as a Westerner, you almost certainly do not want to try to live in Japan.) This is a really bad take, I've lived in Tokyo for 6 years. As a western developer (in IT as we say here in Japan), you will most certain improve your quality of life by moving to e.g. Tokyo vs most USA cities. While what you said it's true, there's also other truths: - As others comment, as a foreigner working in Tokyo with some experience, you can opt to much higher salaries than the local graduates (for so many reasons). It'd be easy to make 6-8M JPY in Japanese companies, and depending on other factors 8-10M JPY is not rare. Since we are in HN, I'm sure many here can even opt for 10M+ JPY. - If you can, just work remotely for US/EU while living here, or for a branch of a EU/US company, since salaries will be much higher. That is true. That way you can make 10-30M JPY easily, and with that you can live _very_ comfortable. Only issue you might have is how you manage to get a Visa. For reference, you can live well as a single guy in Tokyo with 4-5M JPY. Lifestyle is different though, so it depends on what you value, e.g. houses ARE smaller, but neighborhoods are walkable and beautiful (highly depends where you come from). If you do want to have your cake and eat to, meaning living in a "very big" house for Japanese standards while having everything else nice from Japan, yeah you'll need to be making 8M+ JPY for sure.

charcircuit 3y ago

This title is hyperbole. The worst pay for animators would be for contractors / freelancers doing douga (drawing in betweens) who are very slow at drawing. The pay is per frame so it's all about efficiency. You would have to take multiple days for a frame to only make pennies per day.

asylteltine 3y ago

I just learned recently there’s a lot of drama of “localizers” blatantly mistranslating or inserting their own words to push their ideologies.

astrange 3y ago
You learned nonsense right-wing propaganda.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  Even so, it is true and does happen. Though I suspect it is less about pushing an ideology and more for trying to appeal to an audience of the localizer's peers. Either way the end result is that it repulsed a demographic of the distribution platform's target audience. Beyond that official translations often don't come with honorific, don't bother explaining puns, are not literal translations, try to replace a Japanese concept with a western one, and other annoying things. I would rather there not be an official translation or localization process, but since non Japanese streaming platforms want to constantly expand their business no matter what, the desires of hardcore anime fans will not be respected as normal people outnumber us, so bad subs will continue to be produced.
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    > I would rather there not be an official translation or localization process Localization isn't just bad subs though. Localization is sometimes unavoidable due to differences in language and the cultural usage of the language. Not everything can be directly translated, as that's not how languages work. Sometimes the only way to avoid localization is to not translate, and then it's no longer a translation.
    - astrange 3y ago
      Other reasons to do it are: * translating a joke "literally" makes it no longer a joke and so no longer an authentic translation * the original creators want their work to sell to people who weren't already prepared to like it

google234123 3y ago

What percent of the content consumed is pirated?

imgabe 3y ago

$25 Billion what? Revenue? Profit? Total Transactions? That is a meaningless number without some context. It's also not a whole lot for an entire industry. Why is that supposed to mean that animators should be paid more? They could be making $25 billion in revenue and have razor thin margins or be losing money already.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

brcmthrowaway 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

chocolatkey 3y ago

Before making conclusions about animator wages being due to lack of this or that, please watch this informative video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iExwO1v_V-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iExwO1v_V-s It covers a point that I am not seeing the discussion here, about the role that anime production committees play in the wages of animators and gatekeeping in the industry in general. This channel has other informative videos on the subject as well.

chii 3y ago
Why is that video an unlisted video?

qwll 3y ago

The same author also made a video on the subject that has some additional context as well. An example being this part [1] with a QC flow chart. [1] https://youtu.be/BDEIPa9b3OU?t=934 https://youtu.be/BDEIPa9b3OU?t=934

labster 3y ago

I don’t understand why this author completely writes off the possibility of not releasing weekly. Honestly in the era of streaming, who cares about releasing every week? Often I wait until a season is wrapped before watching any of it. As a fan I can’t imagine getting upset at a longer cadence, and at the most slightly annoyed.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
It doesn't really matter that much in terms of logistics. Animators will usually be working on episode 8-9 of an anime by the time episode 1 airs. If not outright done with the 12 episode cour. Weekly schedule is usually done for the sake of broadcast channels, which is still a bit more relevant in Japan than over in rhe West.

aj7 3y ago

Yakuza.

lowbloodsugar 3y ago

And soon nothing because AI.

tanime 3y ago

and yet they are the first to preach others

AniseAbyss 3y ago

[dead]

bemmu 3y ago

I briefly hung out with a manga illustrator while studying in Japan, and what astonished me was how incredibly fast he was at drawing. We went out for hamburgers, and while I was sitting there munching on my burger he made the initial sketch for an entire page.

jongjong 3y ago

I bet a lot of people are thinking "Why don't they do their own animes" but this neglects the reality that all distribution pipelines for any kind of media have been totally monopolized. The anime creator has zero bargaining power over the media monopolist.

throw123123123 3y ago
There's the internet.

jsemrau 3y ago

I believe that the movie industry is just before a major disruption. 1. Big movie studios have been overproducing content with reduced returns. 2. Business model change to direct-to-consumer (streaming). 3. Regulatory changes (DEI minority interests - Oscars). 4. Technological changes (generative AI). 5. Customer preferences (watch the review on Youtube).

HALtheWise 3y ago

Anime is a $25B industry in terms of revenue, but that doesn't actually imply anything in particular about whether there's any profit in it. I see people make this sort of mistake all the time, and it bugs me. In this particular case, I think the appropriate reaction is very different if the anime industry is wildly profitable vs losing money as a whole, but the article is happy to throw revenue numbers around in the headline without engaging with that distinction. < /rant>

KennyBlanken 3y ago
Actual facts instead of unsourced opinion: plenty of profit is being made - by the distributors. https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/t5illb/comment/hz57dwo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/t5illb/comment/hz57d... Also, you seem to be terribly confused by "the company is not making much profit on paper" and "the people in management and running the company are paid plenty." You think management is paid as lowly as the animators? This is no different from hollywood where studio management make plenty of money and the army of people actually doing the lion's share of the work, especially GFX/SFX, are poorly paid, and accountants make it look like the film barely breaks even.
dylan604 3y ago
If your industry is making $25B and there's no profit, your industry is not very efficient. I've been part of working with licensed content, so not actually in the production side from actually animating. However, just from the interaction with them in that manner, you can tell they are not working in anything that would make you think they are doing things efficiently at all. It only seems that would percolate through out that side of things
- lchen_hn 3y ago
  That’s just not true. There are many industry that runs efficient but generate little profit. In general, the more competition, the less profit. Warren Buffett sold the airline business for this reason. Many businesses are simply too hard.
- Aerroon 3y ago

a_gnostic 3y ago

Get them to unionize so they become less competitive?

zeroCalories 3y ago

Damn bro, that sucks. You should quit and get a McJob.

mark336 3y ago

I agree with the guys that said they have to accept the industry to shrink, by paying animators what they deserve. I think that the government is failing here. They should be the ones that defend the worker even if the worker wants to get paid $5/hr. I don't agree that people who want to be animators can't because competition for the fairly paid jobs is high. There should be some kind of non-profit level business for people who want to intern and get paid a few bucks if they really are in love with the industry. But corporations should not be allowed to underpay their staff.

grumpy_coder 3y ago

All hit-driven industries, TV, movies, toys, games, anime, etc... need to be forced to pay the people who make them royalties. Money is always tight most of the time, but when someone makes a hit they need legal protection to a fair share of the huge profits.

Aerroon 3y ago
Won't investment in the industry reduce in that case? Ie less anime, movies, tv shows etc will be produced, because potential profits are going to be lower. Nothing is technically stopping an animator to go and do their own thing. It's just a hugely difficult and expensive undertaking that requires a decent amount of investment. Especially nowadays you could put it on YouTube, but it probably wouldn't be worth their while.

quadhome 3y ago

We're sorry, due to circumstances beyond our control, the script to the rest of the episode was lost on its way overseas. Luckily, the episode was finished by the Korean animators. We hope you enjoy the new ending. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-ReoBPl4mM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-ReoBPl4mM

elektrontamer 3y ago

This sounds like a "dream job syndrome".

sadpolishdev 3y ago

so is gamedev so is gastro so is public services so is almost anything that isnt some high-level IT stuff, breaking news

jubulence 3y ago

Anime prioritises high production rates over quality. Anime looks largely samey. There's a few notable distinctions, like Attack on Titan, but the animators on that are getting paid better then what's being quoted in this article. This article is quoting the pay scales for the animators working on single season anime that get cancelled halfway through that are based on an obscure manga that has only been read because it was published in a major magazine, but was never particularly popular and actually got cancelled a month before the anime came out. Yeah, there's a lot of great anime, and the stuff we get in the West is the stuff that's popular, with proper studios putting time and effort in. The people getting paid $5 a day aren't working on the major productions. Sure, the people that did Fairy Tale probably can get paid more, but the guys working on Visual Prison, yeah, they're not priority. Why don't they unionise? Because the people who would most benefit are afraid they might lose their jobs in the industry they want to work in. Is this backed by studies? Nope, but you tell that to someone facing down the prospect of losing their chance at their dream. And the 15% average wage increase from unionisation, let's be honest, isn't going to do anything. The issue here is the output. If anime is going to be more humane, it needs to cut how much random noise they produce. Look at Western animation. You get a handful of shows a year. Anime you get 3 years of content every 3 months. Workers are the ones that bear the brunt of that schedule.

zepearl 3y ago
Thank you for your post, I tend to agree with most of what you wrote. (Maybe in the future pleeease create chapters/paragraphs so that it's easier to read than a single block of text? Highlighting "Blank lines separate paragraphs" mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc ) >...it needs to cut how much random noise they produce. Look at Western animation. You get a handful of shows a year. Anime you get 3 years of content every 3 months. I think that I understand what you mean about the "random noise", but I personally don't think that a direct comparison makes sense on multiple levels (e.g. anime in Japan being watched by a large range of audience with sub-groups focusing on specific themes, low/middle-cost western animation primarily focusing on kids, etc...). Cheers!

fennecbutt 3y ago

Isn't this every industry? Wealth is being concentrated by people who are already wealthy. The whole system is set up to work like this. We could band together and change it, but we don't.