Even in a country with a sometimes fatal devotion to the office, the anime industry is notorious for its brutal demands on employees, and animators speak with a perverse sense of pride about such acts of devotion as sleeping at their studios for weeks on end to complete a project. The same is true of the punishing nature of the work. “Everyone knows it’s a problem, but unfortunately it’s so systemic that no one really knows what to do about it.” “By the time they’re done, they have very possibly lost money on the project,” he said. Studios are typically run by “creatives who want to make something really good,” and “they’ll try to bite off way too much and be way too ambitious,” said Justin Sevakis, the founder of Anime News Network and chief executive of MediaOCD, a company that produces anime for release in the United States. As a result, production costs for shows, which have long been well below those for projects in the United States, have remained low even as profits rise. Rather than negotiate higher rates or profit-sharing with the production committees, many studios have continued to squeeze animators, lowering costs by hiring them as freelancers. While the system protects the studios from the risk of a flop, it also cuts them out of the windfalls created by hits. They typically pay animation studios a set fee and reserve royalties for themselves. These committees are ad hoc coalitions of toy manufacturers, comic book publishers and other companies that are created to finance each project. Netflix said the number of households that watched anime on its streaming service in 2020 increased by half over the previous year.īut many studios have been shut out of the bonanza by an outmoded production system that directs nearly all of the industry’s profits to so-called production committees. And in December, Sony - whose entertainment division has fallen badly behind in the race to put content online - paid nearly $1.2 billion to buy the anime video site Crunchyroll from AT&T.īusiness is so good that nearly every animation studio in Japan is booked solid years in advance. Chinese production companies have paid Japanese studios large premiums to produce films for its domestic market. Vast wealth has flooded the anime market in recent years. Akutsu, a freelancer who bounces around Japan’s many animation studios, earns enough to eat and to rent a postage stamp of a studio apartment in a Tokyo suburb. These animators are known in Japanese as “genga-man,” the term for those who draw what are called key frames. Median annual earnings for key illustrators and other top-line talent increased to about $36,000 in 2019 from around $29,000 in 2015, according to statistics gathered by the Japan Animation Creators Association, a labor organization. That’s happening to some extent at the business’s highest levels. Normally, surging demand would, at least in theory, spur competition for talent, driving up pay for existing workers and attracting new ones. The low wages and abysmal working conditions - hospitalization from overwork can be a badge of honor in Japan - have confounded the usual laws of the business world. “I know it’s impossible to get married and to raise a child.” But as he prepares to start a family, he feels intense financial pressure to leave. Akutsu, 29, said during a telephone interview. “I want to work in the anime industry for the rest of my life,” Mr. Rather than rewarding them, the industry’s explosive growth has only widened the gap between the profits they help generate and their paltry wages, leaving many to wonder whether they can afford to continue following their passion. And he is one of the lucky ones: Thousands of lower-rung illustrators do grueling piecework for as little as $200 a month.
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