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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

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.
    - jstarks 3y ago
      > As for animators having to find new work... good? Isn’t this a paternalistic point of view? Why do you know better than the animators who are accepting these jobs? Who are you to tell them that their career choice is wrong?
      - kiba 3y ago
        We have regulations like minimum wages and other labor regulation rules to prevent abuse. Unless you want to say that getting paid a minimum wage paternalistic?
        smabie 3y ago
        I'd argue yes it is paternalistic, actually
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        >Who are you to tell them that their career choice is wrong? I mean, in this scenario they wouldn't get a job, or it'd be an evergreen job that they shouldn't expect to get early in their careers. They wouldn't just laze around if they can't get paid as an animator (especially not in Japanese culture). At best they'd try to be their own entrepreneur and make money that way, while gathering experience for these now-evergreen studios. At worst they give up or try another career. Paternalistic or not, almost every first world country has labor laws precisely so a job can't pay pennies to sustain its business. And governments do that because they don't want income hoarded by the managers and stifling the middle/low class economy.
      - kmeisthax 3y ago
        The animators themselves are saying they hate their working conditions and their dream job has become a nightmare.
        Ferret7446 3y ago
        Why don't they quit?
- ericd 3y ago
  There's a big difference between unpopular and low-value. And it takes time to get really good at something, it can be helpful to be able to work for less, if your skills aren't yet good enough to command a high value.
- numlock86 3y ago
  > 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. That is how (modern) society works already on a global scale. I am not saying it's good, but it's the way things are.
  - Retric 3y ago
    The worlds economy isn’t underpinned by an underpaid underclass. Every major commodity cobalt, shoes, cellphones etc has large scale automated production. What’s going on is essentially a parallel system where people making almost nothing can barely out complete automation. However, because both are occurring at the same time consumers wouldn’t notice a significant change if 100% of that production was automated. Granted without infrastructure and a skilled workforce you can’t instantly swap to automation, but that’s a different question.
    - chii 3y ago
      > Every major commodity ... etc has large scale automated production. the automate-able industries have done it, leaving behind the ones that aren't as automatable. This is why there's still many developing countries that export cheap labour. You can think of those as the "underpaid" class. Not necessarily bad, since i believe they are not being forced under lock and chain in slavery. They are merely economically incentivized.
      - Retric 3y ago
        I don’t think there are low value non automate-able industries right now. Try and name some. That’s not to say nobody is making subsistence wages making shoes, just that there’s robots making shoes in another factory. It may not be 1:1 in every niche as a train isn’t a drop in replacement for a long haul trucker, but they are still in competition.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  First, there is no such thing as a "fair pay". All of it is driven by demand and supply, always, except when regulations or external factors somehow break things. Second, of course increased costs of production lead to consequences for end users or people who buy the content. We see that all of the time in every industry.
  - Arainach 3y ago
    Businesses do not have an inherent right to exist. If you can't pay a living wage, comply with regulations, and be profitable, your business model is not valid and your business should fail and close. Predictions of dire consequences rarely pan out. Fast food employees in Seattle are earning $15-20/+ per hour and prices did not double - in fact they're not significantly higher than in neighboring counties with lower wages. It turns out that labor costs are only a small fraction of overall costs.
    - imgabe 3y ago
      Employees also do not have a right to any particular career. That's nice that people have a dream to make anime for a living. I hope they get to realize it. But the world does not owe them a particular wage for what they want to do just because it's a job that they want. If you can't make enough money doing a certain job, maybe go get a different job then.
      - Goronmon 3y ago
        I'm not convinced that workers shouldn't have any rights or protections. That sounds like a pretty extreme viewpoint. Or just one coming from an employer's perspective where I can see why you might desire no limits on treatments of workers.
        ekianjo 3y ago
        [flagged]
        3y ago
- jandrese 3y ago
  I always like when small business complain that "payroll is the majority of our expenses", but when you look at the expenses it is something like: Income: $100,000/month Expenses: $50,000/month Payroll: Cashier: $290/month Cashier: $290/month Cashier: $290/month Janitor: $290/month Security: $290/month Manager: $1,000/month Owner: $45,000/month "How can I keep my business afloat? We've already cut the staff down to the bare minimum and we're barely getting by!"
  - jxf 3y ago
    $290/month? If those cashiers are working 100 hours a month they're making about a third of (US federal) minimum wage.
    - stevenwoo 3y ago
      There’s data comparing EU prices for equal fast food like MacDonalds and the pay for workers and the cost of the final product appears to bear little relationship to worker pay, i.e. corporations crying poor at the usa minimum wage are full of it. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-workers-denmark/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-workers-denmark/
    - jandrese 3y ago
      They're working 39.5 hours a week to make sure they aren't in danger of getting benefits.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    That isn't remotely the type of breakdown of any business I've never seen. Not even close. I understand the point you're trying to make, but you'd be better off using real numbers to do it. I've never come across a business owner taking 45% of total income. Competition ensures those kinds of profit levels generally don't exist.
- charlieyu1 3y ago
  People do like their work and would rather be paid less than to see the industry fold.
- threatofrain 3y ago
  No, if anything, the above comment is saying the opposite by advocating the bitter but moral vision of a smaller economy with fewer seats, and in this case less anime. We can say that the anime might be better, and that maybe the anime which dies is shitty anyway so good riddance, but we can also say that we're envisioning a smaller economy with fewer artists and less art. Similarly, maybe we should have fewer musicians and less music, but at least we have an absence of the slave economy you mention. Maybe the medical profession is doing something right by limiting the flow of the pipeline.
Osmose 3y ago
They would be untenable at current profit margins. Significant profits could still be made while also paying a living wage if current profit margin expectations were reduced and viewed across a property as a whole (i.e. merch sales, ongoing streaming rights, etc.), but production committees are in a position of power and choose not to.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
soulofmischief 3y ago
> If people were paid fairly, most productions would be untenable. A similar argument was used in favor of perpetuating slavery prior to the civil war. > People just have to accept that means the industry will shrink dramatically. So many things will just never get made. I've accepted that. Now let's pay people fairly for their time and skill. > 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. The online independent animator community is thriving. If people create something that has appeal, they are able to at least partially subsist from subscriptions and donations. I contribute to several animators' Patreon accounts (though Patreon takes far too much out of it). If there isn't enough appeal, well... I'm sorry. Either everyone agrees to a fair wage based on these market conditions, independent efforts raise money through crowdsourcing, or... people find other ways to sustain themselves. That's just a healthy economy in action.
- pubby 3y ago
  Slavery ended as industrialized agriculture was taking off. While farmers are paid better now, there are a lot fewer of them. Perhaps we will see the same with animation; there will be a few well-paid and highly-skilled artists that are automating with a bunch of AI. I doubt that will be the solution to equality though.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    US and other first world countries such as S.Korea still have slave labor agriculture, it's a fact and it's still economical
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    It does not seem outside the bounds of reason that all the ‘in-between’ stuff gets done with AI. At that point you only still need your keyframes. Doesn’t really make things much cheaper because the people drawing those in-between frames are already paid peanuts :/
- archgoon 3y ago
  Why are you accusing the parent poster, who mostly agrees with you, of making an argument comparable to perpetuating slavery?
RockRobotRock 3y ago
That's a great point. Niche anime is likely subsidized by merchandise and people addicted to gacha and pachinko gambling that use their most popular IPs.
tw04 3y ago
> 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. So give the artists their current meager salaries and bolster it with a percentage of profits? Seems really easy to fairly compensate the artists.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > Seems really easy to fairly compensate the artists. they want just the upside, not the downside as well.
dclowd9901 3y ago
Unionization sounds like the answer here. What does Japanese culture think about unionization?
- charlieyu1 3y ago
  Any left-leaning politics is not going to sell in Japan.
madrox 3y ago
This is, basically, what happened to movies. Because of that, you'll see very few risks, and the people who get to be creative tend to be the ones who have an established track record. People have been complaining that the theater is full of sequels and superhero movies for decades.
- toast0 3y ago
  > People have been complaining that the theater is full of sequels and superhero movies for decades. Yeah, but the thing is people go to see superhero movies and sequels and remakes. And have been for a long time. When people stop going to superhero movies, they'll stop getting made. Except for Spider-Man; Sony is going to keep rebooting that and doing another series of three movies until they are bought by Disney; if they lose that license by not making a film in time, they'll never get it back.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    The fact is that most people aren't enthusiasts for every thing they participate in. And things like big super hero movies aren't targeting the cinemaphiles to begin with. It's always unfortunate hearing commentors thinking "people are tired of Marvel" when seeing low sales for The Marvel's, when the reality is much more boring external factors like Disney+ cannabalizing sales and cinemas still not truly recovering from the pandemic.
  - fbdab103 3y ago
    Planet Money did an episode about this, The Spiderman Problem: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1076531156/the-spider-man-problem https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1076531156/the-spider-man-pro... Short story is that Marvel licensed Spiderman for cheap with a clause that Sony could keep the license so long as they produced a movie every N years.
  - madrox 3y ago
    This is my point. People go to see these at scale, so they are what get made. The more experimental ideas don't get made, because the budget and ROI is too risky. This is what happens to manga and anime if production costs for even small projects go too high. You'll see that industry become the equivalent of sequels and superheroes.
bane 3y ago
It's a supply/demand problem. There's an endless number of of people who want to be animators, but relatively few positions. So the pay is crap. This further reduces the budget of productions so that all kinds of junk can be produced at rock bottom prices and still have a chance at making money. And let's be honest, the vast vast majority of anime is utter crap. If things were different however, anime might end up as a more hit-driven industry the way Hollywood productions (or heck even startups) are.
napierzaza 3y ago
[dead]
lettergram 3y ago
People are paid fairly, they accept the wages they’re being paid. In the alternative world you describe, many/most wouldn’t have a job (at least not doing what they enjoy).
- wyre 3y ago
  Ha. There’s already a large cohort of people that are not being paid fairly and/or working a job they don’t enjoy and/or don’t have a job.
hdnfofbrbt 3y ago
No no and no. Companies will find a way to make things work even if labour costs more. Every company and neo liberal says that same thing about regulation, employee wages, tax increases .... Funnily enough when those same regulations/wage increases/taxes come in they do not leave the market ... Strange. Edit: clarity Companies can and will adapt.
- raincole 3y ago
  > Companies will find a way to make things work even if labour costs more. The way is to move / outsource to where it costs less. There is a reason that iPhones are mostly made in China.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    > There is a reason that iPhones are mostly made in China. If they were made in the US and cost $2000 instead of $1000 people would still buy them.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  They do leave the market. Where did you get that idea from? My parents have extreme difficulty travelling now because they have a dog, but their local dog kennels have been closing down. When the last one went my mother talked to the owner. He said the rise in minimum wage was killing the business. People were willing to work there for lower than the new minimum because they love dogs basically, but customers weren't able to pay the new higher prices. So he had to fold and was quite bitter about it because the government had basically killed his business that he'd spent years building, in the name of "fairness". So all the workers lost their jobs and of course there's a knock on effect on the wider economy because that particular service made it easier to do leisure spending. But socialists never think about this stuff. They just pretend there are no downsides to central control of prices.
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    Agree with your post but sort of offtopic: We have the same problem, "dog hotels" are too expensive. We just pay someone to come to our house a few times a day. A kid we know in the neighborhood, don't tell the government but they charge less than minimum wage! shock
MrVitaliy 3y ago
Japan has a fascinating culture. Wouldn't you say the same thing about video games? Which studio can sustain 6-7 years of active game development (The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild) exclusive for one console?

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.
  - jstarks 3y ago
    > As for animators having to find new work... good? Isn’t this a paternalistic point of view? Why do you know better than the animators who are accepting these jobs? Who are you to tell them that their career choice is wrong?
    - kiba 3y ago
      We have regulations like minimum wages and other labor regulation rules to prevent abuse. Unless you want to say that getting paid a minimum wage paternalistic?
      - smabie 3y ago
        I'd argue yes it is paternalistic, actually
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      >Who are you to tell them that their career choice is wrong? I mean, in this scenario they wouldn't get a job, or it'd be an evergreen job that they shouldn't expect to get early in their careers. They wouldn't just laze around if they can't get paid as an animator (especially not in Japanese culture). At best they'd try to be their own entrepreneur and make money that way, while gathering experience for these now-evergreen studios. At worst they give up or try another career. Paternalistic or not, almost every first world country has labor laws precisely so a job can't pay pennies to sustain its business. And governments do that because they don't want income hoarded by the managers and stifling the middle/low class economy.
    - kmeisthax 3y ago
      The animators themselves are saying they hate their working conditions and their dream job has become a nightmare.
      - Ferret7446 3y ago
        Why don't they quit?
ericd 3y ago
There's a big difference between unpopular and low-value. And it takes time to get really good at something, it can be helpful to be able to work for less, if your skills aren't yet good enough to command a high value.
numlock86 3y ago
> 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. That is how (modern) society works already on a global scale. I am not saying it's good, but it's the way things are.
- Retric 3y ago
  The worlds economy isn’t underpinned by an underpaid underclass. Every major commodity cobalt, shoes, cellphones etc has large scale automated production. What’s going on is essentially a parallel system where people making almost nothing can barely out complete automation. However, because both are occurring at the same time consumers wouldn’t notice a significant change if 100% of that production was automated. Granted without infrastructure and a skilled workforce you can’t instantly swap to automation, but that’s a different question.
  - chii 3y ago
    > Every major commodity ... etc has large scale automated production. the automate-able industries have done it, leaving behind the ones that aren't as automatable. This is why there's still many developing countries that export cheap labour. You can think of those as the "underpaid" class. Not necessarily bad, since i believe they are not being forced under lock and chain in slavery. They are merely economically incentivized.
    - Retric 3y ago
      I don’t think there are low value non automate-able industries right now. Try and name some. That’s not to say nobody is making subsistence wages making shoes, just that there’s robots making shoes in another factory. It may not be 1:1 in every niche as a train isn’t a drop in replacement for a long haul trucker, but they are still in competition.
ekianjo 3y ago
First, there is no such thing as a "fair pay". All of it is driven by demand and supply, always, except when regulations or external factors somehow break things. Second, of course increased costs of production lead to consequences for end users or people who buy the content. We see that all of the time in every industry.
- Arainach 3y ago
  Businesses do not have an inherent right to exist. If you can't pay a living wage, comply with regulations, and be profitable, your business model is not valid and your business should fail and close. Predictions of dire consequences rarely pan out. Fast food employees in Seattle are earning $15-20/+ per hour and prices did not double - in fact they're not significantly higher than in neighboring counties with lower wages. It turns out that labor costs are only a small fraction of overall costs.
  - imgabe 3y ago
    Employees also do not have a right to any particular career. That's nice that people have a dream to make anime for a living. I hope they get to realize it. But the world does not owe them a particular wage for what they want to do just because it's a job that they want. If you can't make enough money doing a certain job, maybe go get a different job then.
    - Goronmon 3y ago
      I'm not convinced that workers shouldn't have any rights or protections. That sounds like a pretty extreme viewpoint. Or just one coming from an employer's perspective where I can see why you might desire no limits on treatments of workers.
      - ekianjo 3y ago
        [flagged]
        3y ago
jandrese 3y ago
I always like when small business complain that "payroll is the majority of our expenses", but when you look at the expenses it is something like: Income: $100,000/month Expenses: $50,000/month Payroll: Cashier: $290/month Cashier: $290/month Cashier: $290/month Janitor: $290/month Security: $290/month Manager: $1,000/month Owner: $45,000/month "How can I keep my business afloat? We've already cut the staff down to the bare minimum and we're barely getting by!"
- jxf 3y ago
  $290/month? If those cashiers are working 100 hours a month they're making about a third of (US federal) minimum wage.
  - stevenwoo 3y ago
    There’s data comparing EU prices for equal fast food like MacDonalds and the pay for workers and the cost of the final product appears to bear little relationship to worker pay, i.e. corporations crying poor at the usa minimum wage are full of it. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-workers-denmark/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-workers-denmark/
  - jandrese 3y ago
    They're working 39.5 hours a week to make sure they aren't in danger of getting benefits.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  That isn't remotely the type of breakdown of any business I've never seen. Not even close. I understand the point you're trying to make, but you'd be better off using real numbers to do it. I've never come across a business owner taking 45% of total income. Competition ensures those kinds of profit levels generally don't exist.
charlieyu1 3y ago
People do like their work and would rather be paid less than to see the industry fold.
threatofrain 3y ago
No, if anything, the above comment is saying the opposite by advocating the bitter but moral vision of a smaller economy with fewer seats, and in this case less anime. We can say that the anime might be better, and that maybe the anime which dies is shitty anyway so good riddance, but we can also say that we're envisioning a smaller economy with fewer artists and less art. Similarly, maybe we should have fewer musicians and less music, but at least we have an absence of the slave economy you mention. Maybe the medical profession is doing something right by limiting the flow of the pipeline.

Osmose 3y ago

They would be untenable at current profit margins. Significant profits could still be made while also paying a living wage if current profit margin expectations were reduced and viewed across a property as a whole (i.e. merch sales, ongoing streaming rights, etc.), but production committees are in a position of power and choose not to.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

soulofmischief 3y ago

> If people were paid fairly, most productions would be untenable. A similar argument was used in favor of perpetuating slavery prior to the civil war. > People just have to accept that means the industry will shrink dramatically. So many things will just never get made. I've accepted that. Now let's pay people fairly for their time and skill. > 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. The online independent animator community is thriving. If people create something that has appeal, they are able to at least partially subsist from subscriptions and donations. I contribute to several animators' Patreon accounts (though Patreon takes far too much out of it). If there isn't enough appeal, well... I'm sorry. Either everyone agrees to a fair wage based on these market conditions, independent efforts raise money through crowdsourcing, or... people find other ways to sustain themselves. That's just a healthy economy in action.

pubby 3y ago
Slavery ended as industrialized agriculture was taking off. While farmers are paid better now, there are a lot fewer of them. Perhaps we will see the same with animation; there will be a few well-paid and highly-skilled artists that are automating with a bunch of AI. I doubt that will be the solution to equality though.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  US and other first world countries such as S.Korea still have slave labor agriculture, it's a fact and it's still economical
- Aeolun 3y ago
  It does not seem outside the bounds of reason that all the ‘in-between’ stuff gets done with AI. At that point you only still need your keyframes. Doesn’t really make things much cheaper because the people drawing those in-between frames are already paid peanuts :/
archgoon 3y ago
Why are you accusing the parent poster, who mostly agrees with you, of making an argument comparable to perpetuating slavery?

RockRobotRock 3y ago

That's a great point. Niche anime is likely subsidized by merchandise and people addicted to gacha and pachinko gambling that use their most popular IPs.

tw04 3y ago

> 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. So give the artists their current meager salaries and bolster it with a percentage of profits? Seems really easy to fairly compensate the artists.

andsoitis 3y ago
> Seems really easy to fairly compensate the artists. they want just the upside, not the downside as well.

dclowd9901 3y ago

Unionization sounds like the answer here. What does Japanese culture think about unionization?

charlieyu1 3y ago
Any left-leaning politics is not going to sell in Japan.

madrox 3y ago

This is, basically, what happened to movies. Because of that, you'll see very few risks, and the people who get to be creative tend to be the ones who have an established track record. People have been complaining that the theater is full of sequels and superhero movies for decades.

toast0 3y ago
> People have been complaining that the theater is full of sequels and superhero movies for decades. Yeah, but the thing is people go to see superhero movies and sequels and remakes. And have been for a long time. When people stop going to superhero movies, they'll stop getting made. Except for Spider-Man; Sony is going to keep rebooting that and doing another series of three movies until they are bought by Disney; if they lose that license by not making a film in time, they'll never get it back.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  The fact is that most people aren't enthusiasts for every thing they participate in. And things like big super hero movies aren't targeting the cinemaphiles to begin with. It's always unfortunate hearing commentors thinking "people are tired of Marvel" when seeing low sales for The Marvel's, when the reality is much more boring external factors like Disney+ cannabalizing sales and cinemas still not truly recovering from the pandemic.
- fbdab103 3y ago
  Planet Money did an episode about this, The Spiderman Problem: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1076531156/the-spider-man-problem https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1076531156/the-spider-man-pro... Short story is that Marvel licensed Spiderman for cheap with a clause that Sony could keep the license so long as they produced a movie every N years.
- madrox 3y ago
  This is my point. People go to see these at scale, so they are what get made. The more experimental ideas don't get made, because the budget and ROI is too risky. This is what happens to manga and anime if production costs for even small projects go too high. You'll see that industry become the equivalent of sequels and superheroes.

bane 3y ago

It's a supply/demand problem. There's an endless number of of people who want to be animators, but relatively few positions. So the pay is crap. This further reduces the budget of productions so that all kinds of junk can be produced at rock bottom prices and still have a chance at making money. And let's be honest, the vast vast majority of anime is utter crap. If things were different however, anime might end up as a more hit-driven industry the way Hollywood productions (or heck even startups) are.

napierzaza 3y ago

[dead]

lettergram 3y ago

People are paid fairly, they accept the wages they’re being paid. In the alternative world you describe, many/most wouldn’t have a job (at least not doing what they enjoy).

wyre 3y ago
Ha. There’s already a large cohort of people that are not being paid fairly and/or working a job they don’t enjoy and/or don’t have a job.

hdnfofbrbt 3y ago

No no and no. Companies will find a way to make things work even if labour costs more. Every company and neo liberal says that same thing about regulation, employee wages, tax increases .... Funnily enough when those same regulations/wage increases/taxes come in they do not leave the market ... Strange. Edit: clarity Companies can and will adapt.

raincole 3y ago
> Companies will find a way to make things work even if labour costs more. The way is to move / outsource to where it costs less. There is a reason that iPhones are mostly made in China.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  > There is a reason that iPhones are mostly made in China. If they were made in the US and cost $2000 instead of $1000 people would still buy them.
nvm0n2 3y ago
They do leave the market. Where did you get that idea from? My parents have extreme difficulty travelling now because they have a dog, but their local dog kennels have been closing down. When the last one went my mother talked to the owner. He said the rise in minimum wage was killing the business. People were willing to work there for lower than the new minimum because they love dogs basically, but customers weren't able to pay the new higher prices. So he had to fold and was quite bitter about it because the government had basically killed his business that he'd spent years building, in the name of "fairness". So all the workers lost their jobs and of course there's a knock on effect on the wider economy because that particular service made it easier to do leisure spending. But socialists never think about this stuff. They just pretend there are no downsides to central control of prices.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  Agree with your post but sort of offtopic: We have the same problem, "dog hotels" are too expensive. We just pay someone to come to our house a few times a day. A kid we know in the neighborhood, don't tell the government but they charge less than minimum wage! shock

MrVitaliy 3y ago

Japan has a fascinating culture. Wouldn't you say the same thing about video games? Which studio can sustain 6-7 years of active game development (The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild) exclusive for one console?