Another entry in the anime is a broken industry series of articles.
This source article linked has a lot of detail, so I encourage you to read it if you are interested in more. I have tried my best to highlight what I think are the most important bits below.
Firstly, it seems that the world can’t get enough anime, driving up demand rapidly in international (ex-Japan) markets.
According to the statistics quoted in the report, the overseas anime industry market grew sixfold (from 0.2 to 1.5 trillion yen) in the last ten years compared to the domestic market which only grew around 1.3 times in the same period.
However, the report notes that there are a couple issues that are limiting the industry from meeting this demand. There are a lot more details in the article, but the quick highlights are (slight editing for clarity)
- Low wages for animators
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an animator in the anime industry between the ages of 20 to 24 earned 1.23 million yen (~$8500 USD) less on average than a person from another industry
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- Lack of benefits and job security
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it was found that there was a high chance that they will fall into poverty in case their health deteriorates or if they had other problems
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- Bad (but getting better) working hours
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in 2017, approximately 30 percent of animators worked 260 hours or more in a month (more than 100 hours of overtime). This number reduced to just 10 percent in 2022.
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- Lack of on-the-job training
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The report noted that there was currently very little incentive to improve the on job training facilities
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- Poor revenue opportunities for studios to rectify any of the above
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The studios currently only earn 6 percent of overall overseas sales of the works they are involved in, and 16 percent of the domestic sales.
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There are a couple proposed solutions in the report:
- Creation of industry specific labor unions
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Creation of labor specific unions…would not just guarantee the minimum wages, but also the working hours, sick leave, holidays, health benefits and other factors.
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- Increased share of revenue given to animation studios
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the report suggested that…anime production studios be given a 30 percent share of the IPs they are working on regardless of whether they are part of production committees or not
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- Government intervention to push back against distribution companies
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Considering that such a move might see opposition from the distribution companies involved, government intervention was urged [by the report]
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I had initially written out way more thoughts than I included above, but realized what was the point if my summary ended up longer than the source article to begin with. So, it took a lot of effort, but I cut it down quite a bit to what I think are the most important parts.
If you are interested in the source report from the think tank, it is a pdf in Japanese you can find here. I tried to find an English version of this report on JRI’s English site, but I couldn’t find it. So, I suspect that this report isn’t translated yet.
So, it took a lot of effort, but I cut it down quite a bit to what I think are the most important parts.
I related to this on a visceral level. Brevity is hard.
it is not just anime industry. But, this is common practice for local companies in Japan
It seems like the problem constantly gets stated, but then nothing happens. At least this report has some proposals, but we’ve been getting reports and articles about how bad the anime industry is for years, yet no steps to solve it have been taken.
Instead we get bandaid solutions like the Animator Dormitory, which is great, don’t get me wrong, but doesn’t actually address the problem. Or a high profile artist or director gets fed up and starts a new studio, only to end up exactly the same way as where they came from.
The production committees don’t seem to care that the life is being drained out of the studio and its staff and the government also doesn’t seem to care much.
Agreed. It is hard to envision government intervention happening anytime soon either given the absolute crisis that the ruling party is in right now. With the staggering unpopularity of the LDP and the lack of any meaningful opposition party, expect more government paralysis and infighting to continue except in areas where there is consensus agreement (such as recent defense initiatives meant to counter Chinese aggression).
The rest of the article behind a paywall, but this
which involves hidden slush funds and has ensnared multiple lawmakers
is pretty reminiscent of Akumetsu haha
That’s weird, it wasn’t paywalled on my end. Here is an archive link for those interested.
I feel like Japanese companies could license better deals with American companies like they did with video games in the 90s.
Sounds like a cool civilization mod… add in the city state specific “Anime” resource for imports.
Maybe anime could be a technology you research to increase cultural output of your cities? It is certainly one of Japan’s largest cultural exports (if not the largest).
