Anime & Manga TIL: Underpaid Anime Animators

[Fable]

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A YT channel I subscribe to yet don't watch very often did a piece on underpaid and overworked animators in Japan. They earn on average $300-$500 a month which is even less than a part-time high school worker. Rookie/Newbie animators have to depend on crowdfunding to pay for their needs, such as living in a dormitory with others to cut on costs for rent and utilities.

It's actually quite shocking to me because even those given a monthly salary only make around $500-$600/month. The reason is explained in that there is a low, set budget for animation projects which a majority of is taken by advertisers. It's also apparently affecting those who want to be in the industry, but due to being unable to sustain themselves even working 15+ hours per day most quit or just don't enter into an animator career.

Honestly, I didn't think they would be pay so low that even a high school worker would get more per month which says a lot about the state of the anime industry right now.

 

[ashwynne]

This is so horrifying??? I wonder if crowdfunding is going to be the way to make it work as a career for them, or if the industry itself is going to have to break first. Either way I can't believe they have to survive on so very little. It even sounds like the lady they interviewed is one of the luckier ones... can't even imagine that. Or the old guys in their 50's and 60's who don't even have time to bathe and are sleeping in the offices.

 

[Crayons]

Animation is notorious for slave wages everywhere in the world, and Japan isn't even the worst of it. A lot of animation is farmed out to North Korea and it's much worse there as you can imagine. Even in the us animation has crappy wages and high burnout rate. No that's sure what we can do about it except to try to always watch anime through official channels and not pirate it. But ultimately it's a systemic issue and consumer power ain't gonna do much.

 

[Idea]

No that's sure what we can do about it except to try to always watch anime through official channels and not pirate it

Does that really help though? Right now, a good chunk of the anime-watching community pirates, I thin it was 68% or something on one poll? So, yeah, there would be a lot of inflow money if all of those people were to watch their anime through legitimate channels- especially if they had to take the several different subscriptions needed to actually pull that off, and even then they'd be blocked a good chunk of anime- but I don't think that would actually help the industry that much. The reason for that is that these legitimate means of watching anime don't seem to actually care about said industry as much as they say they do.

Take Crunchyroll's latest announcement on youtube for instance:
"We're THRILLED to announce that we've teamed up with LINE WEBTOON to produce new animated content!!!"

There are plenty of people that are very happy about this, but you know what webtoon isn't? An anime company like the ones they claim to support. Add to that things like paying money to host events get celebrities on show, produce their own animated atrocity.... it's not like they don't give any money to the anime industry, but clearly they aren't giving them their full support, yet they are one of the few legitimate exclusively anime platforms, the one you'd first think of when you think of a legitimate distributor with interest in supporting the anime industry. There are others like Hulu and Netflix but...let's be honest they are just cashing in on the thing, the only money that goes into the industry from them is the one they use to buy the rights.

Plus, and without trying to advocate piracy here, but I don't think anime would've grown quite as much as it has without it. That's obviously not fair, nor something that justifies it, but the reality is that piracy is undoubtebly the only reason why many even can watch anime, and were it not for it, many would just not watch it at all and the community would take a big hit. Licencing is the bane of anyone who wants to have the full anime-watching experience legitimately.

Just to be clear here Crayons I'm trying to add my two cents here, and while I used your post as a jumping off point, this ain't necessarily fully a response to it.

Honestly, the ideal situation would be for conditions to be met that could bring all people watching for free to actually pay for it. A more reasonable model, of either a full bundle of everything like with something like youtube, or where one could pick and pay for individual shows like the movie industry, and or where one could pay for groups that were more within a certain type, the way one can pay for a TV channel and expect a certain type of content from it. In such a situation fans would also be willing to give out more money, maybe just a bit, and it would be more socially acceptable to like these things thus making the industry less reliant on "whales". Lastly, Japanese law and culture would adjust better to the needs of employees.

Such a situation is super idealized though (a fantasy, honestly), and honesty the much more realistic solution is just to try to give them money directly through whatever means possible. Sometimes this will mean gofund me or patreon pages, other times it will mean buying merch which isn't direct admitedly, but at least a bigger percentage of what you're paying for is actually going to the studios and the like. One also should try to be aware of what kind of production they are promoting. For instance, the reason why so many of one genre of anime keep getting produced (used to be harems, now isekais) is because the people most contributing to the industry are precisely the people throwing money at those kinds of anime, who buy tons of merch and spend entire wages on that... it's a very heavy weight on the industry, and it ends up promoting the bad business practices that exploit these trends (and tends to coincide with the exploitation of employees, by what I hear).

Either this is an absolutely deplorable situation and I hope it gets fixed. I won't wish it happens soon, because that's honestly impossible, but I do hope it happens one day, and soon enough to save the industry from imploding.

 

[Crayons]

Welp, like I said, consumer power isn't going to fix this. It has to be systemic change from within the society: Minimum wage laws, unionisation, in some cases full on toppling the political hierarchy. If you are in a country with bad practices use your rights as a citizen to petition or write to your elected representatives.

Also, re pirating, yeah its fine to make excuses about why we pirate stuff, and I've been as guilty as everyone watching fansubs and the like, but what I am saying is: IF the anime is legally available un your country, you SHOULD watch it legally IF you can. And there are far more ways to do that now than there was when I started watching anime.

 

[Idea]

Welp, like I said, consumer power isn't going to fix this. It has to be systemic change from within the society: Minimum wage laws, unionisation, in some cases full on toppling the political hierarchy. If you are in a country with bad practices use your rights as a citizen to petition or write to your elected representatives.

Doing a quick research, minimum wage actually seems to be higher in Japan than, say, America (8.20$ to 7.25$ /hour). Now it may just be that the immediate information is wrong, but it seems to be like these people are being underpaid unlawfully or under some sort of loophole to the law. Japan changing their whole cultural framework is also not happening anytime soon, so consumer power-specifically consumer power directed at companies with good over bad practices- seems like a more effective solution. Especially when you consider just how neck deep politians would be shoving their hands into entertainment to adequately adjust these things. Probaby not enough to let them coerce certain content but... certain just a few steps away from that.

Either way this is just speculation, and naturally both the politicial and economical angles will have to work together to solve an issue of this magnitude.

 

[Crayons]

Then stop pirating your anime XD

 

[Idea]

No comment.

 

[Fable]

Idea The way they get paid is "per cut" so it's almost like out commission system here in USA. If you only sell so much furniture from a furniture store here that affects how much your paycheck is. For them it's how much they manage to draw. It apparently only got this bad in the couple of decades in link with the anime renaissance where foreign interest increased drastically. It's only a theory, but since so much is spent on advertisement you could assume with having to hire marketing teams in foreign countries, additional translators, etc that the costs increased to cover that aspect of the industry but the budgets themselves haven't really changed to accommodate this. Just a thought.

 

[Idea]

Idea The way they get paid is "per cut" so it's almost like out commission system here in USA. If you only sell so much furniture from a furniture store here that affects how much your paycheck is. For them it's how much they manage to draw. It apparently only got this bad in the couple of decades in link with the anime renaissance where foreign interest increased drastically. It's only a theory, but since so much is spent on advertisement you could assume with having to hire marketing teams in foreign countries, additional translators, etc that the costs increased to cover that aspect of the industry but the budgets themselves haven't really changed to accommodate this. Just a thought.

An interesting theory, but it doesn't seem like the majority of anime are really advertised in the west? Like at all? Which doesn't discret the theory completely, as surely even a few exagerated campaigns can imbalance things, but at the same time intuitively the impact seems disproportional there... Just an opinion of course, to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

[ashwynne]

It's said in the video itself that a large chunk of the project budget goes towards advertisement--which does make sense. Banners on instagram, trailers on youtube, ad space on streaming services like funimation (or other "cartoon" channels), etc. would all require substantial cash. Considering how many anime are also competing for your attention and I can see why a large chunk of budget would be spent on that. Doesn't really excuse the lack of fair compensation to animators, but I do understand the dilemma. The solution seems to be giving the projects themselves a bigger budget and requiring a specific higher commission rate for the artists, but that's easier said than done. Paying for legitimate streaming services and buying merchandise directly from the studios/studio affiliated shop seems like the most logical way to contribute apart from direct crowdfunding for the animators.

A complicated issue. I have a feeling it would take a sort of workers strike for there to be real change... but if the market is as saturated with animators as the video implied (and many of them have a passion for it and don't want to risk their jobs, even for a better wage) then that isn't going to be beneficial either.

 

[The One Eyed Bandit]

One of the big issues with the anime industry stems from the pay model the Fyuri mentioned, and the reason why most anime is produced. By far and large, anime itself is a advertisement. It wants you to buy the manga, the toys, the dvds, the wall scrolls, etc and so on. Producers want to pump this stuff out as fast as possible and as cheap as possible, to raise awareness of another product. The issue then comes in that the vast majority of these things don't have anything to do with the animation studio, and even those that do don't necessarily benefit the animators themselves. Buying the dvds and paying your Crunchyroll subscription might help a little, put most of the bread it puts out is going onto their bosses' tables, not theirs. If anything, you're supporting the business model by telling these companies that if they keep doing things the way they are, they're going to keep making money. Hell, it's even worse for a lot of them, as a ton of animators are freelancers who aren't even connected to the company to produced your favourite hit anime after the production is finished. It's just something nice on their portfolio.

It's why programs like the young animator dorm (I forgot the actual name) exists, to support animations via fronts that don't see your support being scooped up by their overseers. As the last post mentioned, the only real way things are going to change fast is if the animators themselves take up arms in a large enough movement to make the higher ups sweat. There are probably a few sparks of hope in the next generation of studios, which are often being founded by people involved in and passionate about the industry, but that's a fire that is going to take a long time to build.

 

[Fable]

The One Eyed Bandit I was curious and actually looked up how much seiyuu's are paid and it's crazy. A 2014 post mentioned something along the lines for around $450/30 min episode and that certain ranks can set their own price and lower ranks get paid much less.

A voice actor for the Simpsons gets about $300,000 per episode. One of the top seiyuu's got $630,000 in 2017. Lowest ranked get about $200 per 30 min episode (no matter how many lines they actually have).

I also found this chart that was made comparing salaries.

Many discussions I've read on the matter have mentioned basically the "age of anime" explosion, where suddenly there were a ton of schools geared towards these careers which created a large workforce of people with these skills. It's like how there were those schools that popped up here in the USA about "become a graphic designer today!" I had a friend whose father was a freelance graphic designer and due to the sudden boom of students fresh out of places like the Art Institute the workforce became overly saturated and they would take cheaper pay for projects resulting in an overall decline of income for those who freelanced and had no contract with a salary guarantee.

It seems to fit with the timeline of the 10-20 years ago comment that the anime industry was different since there is the anime boom popularity in foreign countries around this time.

 

[The One Eyed Bandit]

The One Eyed Bandit I was curious and actually looked up how much seiyuu's are paid and it's crazy. A 2014 post mentioned something along the lines for around $450/30 min episode and that certain ranks can set their own price and lower ranks get paid much less.

A voice actor for the Simpsons gets about $300,000 per episode. One of the top seiyuu's got $630,000 in 2017. Lowest ranked get about $200 per 30 min episode (no matter how many lines they actually have).

I also found this chart that was made comparing salaries.

Many discussions I've read on the matter have mentioned basically the "age of anime" explosion, where suddenly there were a ton of schools geared towards these careers which created a large workforce of people with these skills. It's like how there were those schools that popped up here in the USA about "become a graphic designer today!" I had a friend whose father was a freelance graphic designer and due to the sudden boom of students fresh out of places like the Art Institute the workforce became overly saturated and they would take cheaper pay for projects resulting in an overall decline of income for those who freelanced and had no contract with a salary guarantee.

It seems to fit with the timeline of the 10-20 years ago comment that the anime industry was different since there is the anime boom popularity in foreign countries around this time.

It's a star power thing. Just having a popular voice actor attached to your project can net a huge audience over there, it's kind of like having DiCaprio in your film. It's nuts. It's to the point where there's a pretty decent following behind these... Podcasts, I guess? Where the actors from a show will just chat about stuff. Saturation of the market is definitely part of why animators get paid so little, as well as the commission loophole mentioned earlier. It's easy to underpay someone when there's a million people to replace them I guess.

 

[Fable]

It's a star power thing. Just having a popular voice actor attached to your project can net a huge audience over there, it's kind of like having DiCaprio in your film. It's nuts. It's to the point where there's a pretty decent following behind these... Podcasts, I guess? Where the actors from a show will just chat about stuff. Saturation of the market is definitely part of why animators get paid so little, as well as the commission loophole mentioned earlier. It's easy to underpay someone when there's a million people to replace them I guess.

Yeah, I just though that if people were getting paid poorly that the voice actors were suffering as well, but apparently only the lower ranked ones are compared to the A-listers. As a person who doesn't go to see a movie because of just who is cast in it I can't really fathom that type of fandom. I'm more a "I don't like this actor's acting style so I'll avoid this movie" rather than "Oh look who the lead is I have to go see it now!" A-list actors bomb in movies at times; The Mummy with Tom Cruise for example. I'm not a Tom Cruise fan and I sorta see him as a big reason the movie failed so badly it brought down the whole Dark Universe project.

Like I don't know who voices what in anime at all so I don't specifically support one anime more than another over anything except my enjoyment of it. It just sucks that the biggest aspect - the animation which without it it's just be like a podcast - isn't getting paid justly for their work.

 

[Hige]

Japan's always had a toxic work culture but I never realized it was that bad for some of their artistic skilled sectors.