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The entire anime industry is built on labor that is not compensated well, from many sources: This whole substack, but in particular: https://news.animenomics.c

by zdw 2y ago

The entire anime industry is built on labor that is not compensated well, from many sources: This whole substack, but in particular: https://news.animenomics.com/p/nafca-anime-worker-survey-long-hours-low-pay https://news.animenomics.com/p/nafca-anime-worker-survey-lon... NHK video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5AR2X6R4TM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5AR2X6R4TM From what I can tell, the production does a lot of Hollywood-style accounting where the production companies take most of the profits and most of the actual work is contracted out.

CuriousCosmic 2y ago
An good video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDEIPa9b3OU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDEIPa9b3OU However in this case with Gainax, the failure isn't due to anime production committee style accounting or anything like that. It's entirely because gainax hemorrhaged all their talent to offshoot studios and then gainax has done effectively nothing other than contract work out and milk IP in the ~15-20 years since then.
Levitz 2y ago
I think this happens when people have a dream of doing a specific job. As you mentioned, Hollywood does the same thing, as does the videogame industry in general. One could also look at a certain company which name starts with "T" and ends with "esla". In a way, the work itself turns into part of the compensation so people are willing to have a worse everything else as long as they do the thing.
kvemkon 2y ago
Previous discussion on HN: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39074062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39074062
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  What is the distribution bottleneck that keeps artists from self organising?
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Burning passion?
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    What prevents any group of workers from self organizing?
    - whoknowsidont 2y ago
      rent
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > What prevents any group of workers from self organizing? Some combination of skill, capital and ambition. Running a company is hard, and a specialised skill. Just look at restaurants to see how unevenly distributed administrative skills are.
  - rincebrain 2y ago
    Sort of the same problem as game testers. If there are so many people willing to work for pennies _for the sake of working there_ that even a significant fraction of you organizing a stop-work won't make a dent other than a one-off blip if you arrange so much disruption it hiccups production visibly, there's only so much leverage to exert, since you have nothing they can't just source elsewhere.
    - imtringued 2y ago
      What I have noticed is that very often the problem with these "fun" jobs isn't that there is limited demand for them on the employer's side, rather the problem is that the profession of a game tester requires game developers. Some of the jobs are more popular than others. If you need two testers for every software developer working on a game and game testing is far more popular than game development, then game testing becomes a sweatshop activity because there aren't enough game developers to absorb all the people willing to become game testers.
    - 2y ago
slillibri 2y ago
Not the entire industry. Kyoto Animation, for example, pays its animators a salary rather than the piece rate many houses do. Sadly, they are the exception not the rule.
- Andrex 2y ago
  And sadly, we lost many of them a few years ago.
segasaturn 2y ago
When you look at the end credits for a lot of anime series, you'll see many Thai, Vietnamese and Cambodian names credited for animation. Most animation that doesn't come from a "prestige" studio like Kyoto, Ghibli etc. is outsourced to Southeast Asia.

by zdw 2y ago

CuriousCosmic 2y ago

An good video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDEIPa9b3OU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDEIPa9b3OU However in this case with Gainax, the failure isn't due to anime production committee style accounting or anything like that. It's entirely because gainax hemorrhaged all their talent to offshoot studios and then gainax has done effectively nothing other than contract work out and milk IP in the ~15-20 years since then.

Levitz 2y ago

I think this happens when people have a dream of doing a specific job. As you mentioned, Hollywood does the same thing, as does the videogame industry in general. One could also look at a certain company which name starts with "T" and ends with "esla". In a way, the work itself turns into part of the compensation so people are willing to have a worse everything else as long as they do the thing.

kvemkon 2y ago

Previous discussion on HN: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39074062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39074062

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
What is the distribution bottleneck that keeps artists from self organising?
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Burning passion?
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  What prevents any group of workers from self organizing?
  - whoknowsidont 2y ago
    rent
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > What prevents any group of workers from self organizing? Some combination of skill, capital and ambition. Running a company is hard, and a specialised skill. Just look at restaurants to see how unevenly distributed administrative skills are.
- rincebrain 2y ago
  Sort of the same problem as game testers. If there are so many people willing to work for pennies _for the sake of working there_ that even a significant fraction of you organizing a stop-work won't make a dent other than a one-off blip if you arrange so much disruption it hiccups production visibly, there's only so much leverage to exert, since you have nothing they can't just source elsewhere.
  - imtringued 2y ago
    What I have noticed is that very often the problem with these "fun" jobs isn't that there is limited demand for them on the employer's side, rather the problem is that the profession of a game tester requires game developers. Some of the jobs are more popular than others. If you need two testers for every software developer working on a game and game testing is far more popular than game development, then game testing becomes a sweatshop activity because there aren't enough game developers to absorb all the people willing to become game testers.
  - 2y ago

slillibri 2y ago

Not the entire industry. Kyoto Animation, for example, pays its animators a salary rather than the piece rate many houses do. Sadly, they are the exception not the rule.

Andrex 2y ago
And sadly, we lost many of them a few years ago.

segasaturn 2y ago

When you look at the end credits for a lot of anime series, you'll see many Thai, Vietnamese and Cambodian names credited for animation. Most animation that doesn't come from a "prestige" studio like Kyoto, Ghibli etc. is outsourced to Southeast Asia.