Japanese Anime Industry In Danger Of Fragmentation

ChibiOne writes "The Asahi Shinbun has a story about the critical state that the Japanese animation industry currently faces, claiming: 'As merchandisers grow rich, the animation industry is losing jobs to cheaper labor abroad.' The article quotes Oh Production President Koichi Murata as saying: 'Unless something is done, Japanese anime will be ruined.' An animator, toiling away on cels in a tiny Tokyo studio, might be fortunate to pull in just 50,000 yen [about $500 USD] a month."

Anime outsourced?

Didn't know Indians could do anime, too...

Re:Anime outsourced?

Not India, but most certain South Korea. Quite a great deal of Japanese animation is done in Korea; though many North Americans would like to think that anime is strictly from Japan. High profile projects such as Macross Zero, Naruto, amongst many others have benefit from foreign collaborations.

In fact, many of the smaller animation studios must look for partners internationally due to limited local resources, lack of funding, tight schedules, and a host of other issues.

Even the high budget North American fare uses animation studios in Korea; as many already know, the Simpson's is animated in South Korea.

Re:Anime outsourced?

Seth makes a comment about how the bible that appears at the end of the episode is 'backwards' - that is, it reads right to left - apparently because "the show is animated in South Korea".

Unfortunately it's just American writers' ignorance - Korean is read left to right and (unlike in Japan) the books have the spine on the same side as we're used to.

It's been that way for a very long time

Even the high budget North American fare uses animation studios in Korea; as many already know, the Simpson's is animated in South Korea.

A lot of our favorite toon-shows were animated in Korea. If I'm correct, these included the original G.I. Joe series, Gem, He-Man, the Snorks, and pretty much most of what was aired on Saturdays in the 80's. When I was in elementary school, I recall having wondered why there were goofy names sporadically mentioned in the credits of such cartoons. Then I realized I was Korean and that my name was goofy too.

Re:Anime outsourced?

Seoul is more technologically advanced than any US city, kind of like a more traditional Tokyo.

It's not really that expensive - many daily things like eating out at restaurants, cell phone bills, internet (I get 50Mbps for $US30 a month), taxis, subway are cheap.

Accomodation is expensive only because they have the "key money" deposit system where you give a landlord $50,000-$150,000 to live rent free for 2 years, after which time they give you all of that money back again (with no interest). There is a hybrid system with a reduced deposit amount ($15K->$80K) and a low monthly rent. But if you've got some cash you don't mind tying up for a while, it's very cheap.

Korea is beginning to feel the outsourcing pinch from its neighbours, notibly China - where they're beginning to make things for cheaper than the Koreans can at comparable quality.

Re:Anime outsourced?

I hope Bush and his gang get voted out of the office, and replaced by people who objectively weigh advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing for american citizens

Unfortunately, nobody who fits that description is running for office.

Re:Anime outsourced?

like rising unemployment because of outsourcing

Um... you don't think that little dot-bomb bust we had 4 years might have been responsible for the jump in unemployment we had then? Besides, unemployment in the USA has been going down, not up [bls.gov] for the past few months now. And to put it in an even better perspective, it is at the same rate now that it was when Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, but of course no one complained about "high" unemployment back then.

And if you think Kerry is going to do anything about outsourcing, then perhaps he should demonstrate some leadership on that issue by selling all of his stock in the Heinz company, which rakes in millions of dollars a year due to outsourced labor abroad. Or he should reject all contributions from the Hollywood Left, which has been outsourcing jobs to Canada for many years now.

Re:Anime outsourced?

If you're sensitive about the whole outsourcing thing, you'd best not read this. I know it sounds like flaming, but anyway. read on if you want.

Bush didn't suddenly start outsourcing. I hate the guy as much as the next level-headed person, but let's not blame him for this one. Outsourcing isn't a good thing. It's not a bad thing, either. It's economic ebb and flow. At the moment, the jobs are going away from the US. Before, they've been going to the US. Give it a few more years, and the jobs will be coming back.

Complaining about this, as fashionable as it is, underlines the lack of objectivity when discussing this issue. How someone can defend themselves and their friends being paid vastly overblown salaries (and yes, US salaries are high, even when compared to cost of living) when people in these countries are just as able (which they are - India has schools too, yet Indian society places more emphasis on the importance of studies than American society - which favors athletic prowess), and more needing of the salary. It's being selfish.

Want to get jobs back to the US? Lower the wages. For US IT professionals to demand comparatively high salaries almost demands their jobs are sent elsewhere, especially when we're dealing with one of the most "footloose" industries present. If you want to keep your job, make sure you're the only one who can do it. Get special knowledge. Make yourself irreplacable. If you just sit at your desk all day, hammering out code anyone could do, you are replacable. It's not just IT this principle works for. Almost every single labor market out there works this way. If the workforce demands a higher salary than an alternative workforce, guess what? The work goes somewhere else.

Please folks, I can understand exactly where you're coming from on this one, but no-one moaned when this same phenomenon was working the other way round, and it's just plain immature (and selfish) to complain now.

Re:Anime outsourced?

I hate the guy as much as the next level-headed person

"Hate" is level-headed now?

Re:Anime outsourced?

At the moment, the jobs are going away from the US. Before, they've been going to the US. Give it a few more years, and the jobs will be coming back.

If by "before", you're talking about the 1960s or something, then yes, you would be correct, but America has been running trade deficits for an extremely long time--jobs have, for my entire lifetime, always flowed out of the United States. The countries they flow to change, the direction does not. There is no ebb, there is only flow.

How someone can defend themselves and their friends being paid vastly overblown salaries (and yes, US salaries are high, even when compared to cost of living) when people in these countries are just as able (which they are - India has schools too, yet Indian society places more emphasis on the importance of studies than American society - which favors athletic prowess), and more needing of the salary. It's being selfish.

I don't defend the level of my salary--I defend the fact that I have a job at all. After all, the problem isn't that wages are falling, the problem is that people are losing jobs. Being unemployed in America doesn't suck much less than being unemployed in India. Not being able to afford food or medical bills sucks wherever you are.

I don't mind so much if U.S. wages fall if it means otherwise starving countries like India will actually have food. What makes me angry is that the profits of outsourcing aren't going to just Indians--they're going to the super-rich Americans at the top of the economic ladder--the people who no longer have to work for a living, if they ever did. The free-traders chant how selfish we Americans are and how we should sacrifice for poorer workers abroad--yet they say nothing about the people in America who benefit from outsourcing. In other words, the particular Americans who are richest and sacrificing the most, end up being the ones who sacrifice nothing!

If we are going to have fiscal and monetary policies that force the worst-off Americans to sacrifice to help the rest of the world, then we need redistribute incomes in this country. Otherwise, your complaints about the selfishness of American workers are very deceitful.

Want to get jobs back to the US? Lower the wages.

Or subsidize health care and education like Europe and Canada. Or eliminate regressive Social Security taxes. Or make regular income taxes more progressive. Or have the government stop borrowing so much money from Asia. Basically, have the goverment stop doing everything it possibly can to make sure Americans don't have jobs.

Get special knowledge. Make yourself irreplacable. If you just sit at your desk all day, hammering out code anyone could do, you are replacable. It's not just IT this principle works for.

Who's just talking about IT? How do you expect 250 million people to find "special knowledge"? If you want to make sure there's no place in society for unskilled American labor, fine, just don't complain when unemployed factory workers start mugging you--it's the only job left them, now.

Please folks, I can understand exactly where you're coming from on this one, but no-one moaned when this same phenomenon was working the other way round, and it's just plain immature (and selfish) to complain now.

I wasn't alive to moan when the phenomenon was working the other direction. Were you? [globalpolicy.org] The only selfishness I see are those at the top of the American pyramid stealing the last few scraps of bread from those at the bottom.

Re:Anime outsourced?

Do you really think you can keep everyone believing that lie until the election? That's hardly the only headline like that, and the Kerry campaign has to comeup with some awfully convaluted metrics to portray otherwise.

That article admits that payroll figures have still fallen--and that fact is surely in far more headlines than your lies. Fewer people are working (payroll), more people have been born. No one disputes these two facts. Is that too convoluted for you? That an apparently illiterate fellow like you is apparently making such great money is a sign that something is amiss. So there is a shortage of one particular category of worker in the labor force--workers who have already been trained in the specific machinery mentioned in your article. Not a big deal--and indeed, why should workers retrain to operate it, when if past history is any guide their jobs will be sent overseas as soon as they graduate from their technical school?

And how will it help a damn thing to redistribute income in this country, at least anymore than it already has? I don't know about other people, but I work hard so I'm rewarded.

Umm...if you don't know about other people, let me fill you in. Other people have spent a whole lot of money on their own education, only to be earning nearly nothing as their jobs were shipped overseas. Other people have been working damn hard their entire lives only to die with nothing. (You were asking where Bill Gates's and your money came from? That's where the fuck you stole it from, you fucking leech.). Other people are either working three jobs without health insurance or lost their job because the company moved to Canada where businesses don't have to pay for their worker's health insurance.

If I don't get the fruits of my labor, why should I work hard at all? If the government took more and more of my money as my paycheck increased, that would greatly lessen my motivation to increase it. Work twice as hard for only 1/4 more pay after your wealth redistribution scheme takes the rest?

Why not? Plenty of people work twice as hard for only 1/4 your pay. Of course, taxes were raised under Clinton, and plenty of people found incentive to work then--because there were actually jobs for people to work at.

Incentives for labor is what I'm all about. That's why I'd like to see capital gains taxes raised, and taxes for the working poor eliminated--how can you expect them to work themselves out of poverty if you insist on stealing the bread from their mouths?

Their socialized health care systems are swirling down the drains of decay since they implemented the system you think is so wonderful. When you seperate the decision to pay for services so far from the decision to seek services, you raise demand while restricting supply, and everything goes to shit. Really, look into it. Socialized health care is an abject failure.

Are you even a fucking American, or are you some sort of Frenchman conspiring to destroy our economy? How am I supposed to believe that you've ever actually worked in America, when you appear to be completely ignorant of the fact that health care costs are rising at double-digit rates, and the fact that tge decision to pay for services has been seperated from the decision to seek services ever since the Great Depression, when health insurance became linked to employment? Your complaint says more about our system then theirs--our health-care system is like a strange bizzarro-socialism, neither egalitarian nor utilitarian.

Have you ever stopped to consider how even those who rate as 'poor' in the united states typically have a TV, plenty to eat (obesity is the number one health problem of the poor), and a car?

Obesity and malnutrition sometimes mix. So the poor have plenty of subsidized sugared processed grains, cheap imported consumer goods, and a powerful military that guarantees they can fill their ancient clunkers with cheap gas. They still can't afford fruits and veget

does this require...

Does this require an obligatory slashdot kudos of:

"Anime is dying!"
"In Soviet Russia, anime fragments YOU!"

Or something else?

* Caimlas misses the old trolls (OOG)

New business model?

Considering the enormous quantity of anime which can be downloaded for free on the internet, sometimes including very high quality fanmade subtitles.Maybe the independant Japanese animator could try to find a business model similar to that of the RIAA ?

Something like selling anime directly to the masses who can't wait to see the next episode, using the internet. Maybe he could make a small company with some of the fan translator.

The interest here would be once more to shorten the chain between producer and consumer. For everything which can be stored and transmitted on electronic medias, the internet still seems to be the best solution.

Re:Fansubs? HA!

Have you seen recent fansubs? I started collecting the fansubs of Ghost in the Shell - SAC after trying to follow the absymal DVD subs. I just watched an episode where they color-coded the personal pronouns to elaborate the fact that a character had multiple personalities and specify which pronoun refered to which personality.

While I don't know Japanese, that doesn't strike me as low quality. The community has moved way beyond bootleg VHS tapes. I'd rather have a fansub than an offical sub.

Re:New business model?

You know, I honestly don't see how the fansubbing groups are any less professional skill wise for translations. Now, obviously they aren't a company, but the translations of the better groups out there put those of the "professionals" to shame. They include informative notes, often times translate onscreen text, and I have yet to see any "professionals" give kanji/kana, romaji, and english karaoki for the beginning and end themes of anime.

Seriously, I wish groups like ANBU & Aone would become an actual company because they have the talent and the quality, and they have the full support of the fan community.

Re:New business model?

The major thing that will separate a fansub from what a pro translation can do is that fansubbers do not have access to the original scripts, and there are some Japanese translations that are just impossible to do correctly unless you can see what kanji are being used to write a particular phrase.

I have seven words for you: all your base are belong to us.. Just because they have access to the original script doesn't mean the subs will come out worth a crap. Sure that's a video game but it's the same process.

I've seen anime where the fansubbed version is superior to the eventually licensed and translated version. You frankly do not need the script if the anime is any good because A> you can tell what the characters are up to and B> typically speaking they have a native japanese speaker doing a transcription or even transliteration and then they clean it up such that it looks more or less like proper conversational english.

For an example of a really confusing sub, check out tenchi muyo oav. There's an episode where a character says (in the subtitles) "It's muffin!" instead of "It's nothin'" but nothing she said sounded like either one, so it must be a translation. Now, I don't know japanese so I suppose nothing and muffin might have similar sounds in that language as they do in English, but it would be a staggering coincidence. One of the better fansub groups would add an explanation as to what the hell is being said and if I paused there I could read it and be enlightened. I don't see Anime as a road to learning Japanese (at least not by itself) but nonetheless I find those little cultural anecdotes both amusing and informative.

There are many very crappy pro translations. There are many very good fansubs. You can reverse these statements and they will still be true but some of my favorite subs are fansubs. Even if they're not accurate to me they're still better because they seem to match what the hell is going on on the screen. A good sub would accurately match what is going on in the anime and be an accurate translation, but sometimes that just doesn't seem to work and forcing it is not the answer.

We call it translation for a reason. Having the script is really only going to make a difference in quality in the case of transliteration.

No surprise there.

Anyone notice that a lot of the AMERICAN cartoons we like (Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, Clerks, and I believe Invader Zim) are all animated primarily by Korean animation farms? Also, I will take this opportunity to interject my worthless 2 cents about current anime: It sucks. I haven't seen a decent anime made after 1998.

Re:Spirited Away too mainstream?

I still can't believe that thing was in a double-bill with Totoro when first released. Watching Grave for the first time I couldn't help but see Mei in Setsuko...

And that was correct! The reason of the "double-bill" release of both features was that they were the first major acts in Japanese culture to acknowledge the enormous suffering of Japanese civilians in 1940's due to American air raids. Until then, it was a sortof taboo subject ("now we have communists to worry about, so we should hush hush all our grievances about our powerful occupant-cum-ally"). "Totoro" talks about the same topic - why do you think the whole family moved to the countryside in the first place? They escaped from air raids. Obviously, Miyazaki (in his typical style) tells the story in much more subtle way, putting the whole suffering in a bracket metahpor of daughters-missing-their-parents etc., but it's the same story, after all. Setsuko's suffering IS Mei's suffering.

Re:No surprise there.

This is because, quite frankly, you must be making valiant efforts to ignore recent releases.

A short list of currently running (or recently concluded) anime series which are of excellent caliber:

• Macross Zero
• Yukikaze
• Gilgamesh
• One Piece
• Full Metal Alchemist
• PLANETES
• Monster

I could go on and on. But anyway -- what I'm more concerned about:

I'm a big fan of anime licensing, as it allows me to obtain high-quality DVDs of said anime, but that sentiment is dependent on the assumption that these animators toiling away benefit from this indulgence on my part... It would be nice if the article had gone into some more detail, such as:

How do the really successful studios do? I'm thinking of places like Production IG, Studio Ghibli, Bones, etc. Are my hard-earned dollars reaching these guys, or is it getting absorbed somewhere along the way by the equivalent of the RIAA? That's a rather disheartening thought... As it is, I'm not sure what to think of the article since it's written based on the perspective of a small outfit, and the world being as it is, small outfits tend to get stepped on regardless of the industry...

- Fromage

Re:No surprise there.

Exchange "anime" -> "books", "making" -> "writing", "Adult Swim" -> "Amazon" and you have a nice description of the fiction market. Do the same for music and it fits there as well. Ditto sculpture, photography and so on.

Most of anything creative is bad, almost by definition. As a poster pointed out elsewhere, you have a situation with millions of people willing to do the craft, with an inverse exponential talent distribution - and subjective criteria for what constitutes a good instance, so you can not reliably actually separate the wheat from the chaff. You will end up with mostly crap no matter how you do it. Today you may have a thousand releases, 950 of which are no good (in your eyes, of course). If you allowed only twenty releases a year, you would end up with 19 lousy examples and one good one.

Hollywood is no different. Most of it is bad. What is not bad for everyone is good for some people, but bad for others. Very, very few movies (Hollywood or other) are actually good for a large majority of recpients. You can even argue with some plausibility that Hollywood is streamlining its process to such a degree that they increase its hitrate for one audience segment (male, european/american, 15-30) at the cost of losing most other demographics altogether.

Re:No surprise there.

I don't think that the overall quality of anime is particularly different from what it was five years ago. At that time, I was actually trading VHS tapes with a physician in Osaka. I mailed him the American dub of Sailor Moon and he sent me Evangelion (what a deal that was), and other programs taped off of Japanese TV.

One of the tapes he mailed me was his annual opening title/end credits tape of virtually all anime that was broadcast new that year. After watching about twenty minutes of this, I came to the conclusion that Sturgeon's law (90% of everything is crap) applies to Anime. By the end of the tape, I was even singing my own theme song, "Another f*cking show about a bunch of f*cking kids, f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck".

And by the way, Edward rocks. She provided much-needed comic relief in Cowboy Beebop, until she was removed just prior to the last few episodes which were all chock full of angsty torture (and which were also very good).

Re:No surprise there.

I'm not trying to start a flamewar here, but my main issue with anime is the extremely low signal to noise ratio. Whoever is making most of the crap I see on Adult Swim doesn't deserve more than $500/month. There is SO much junk anime out there that it simply isn't worth my time to look for good stuff, and in fact it's not even worth my time to consider the genre worthwhile.

so don't watch CN. the stuff CN shows appeals to the majority of their audience. that's what people watch, so that's what they show.

as another post mentions, Noir is a good adult show. some others from my collection:

• Serial Experiments Lain - a very dark techno-drama. the ending is something most kids couldn't handle psychologically.
• Noir - assassins seeking answers about their past. quite bloody and violent.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion - also a violent series. they make a concerted effort to make it light-hearted about half-way through, but the end quickly becomes quite intense, and "End of Evangelion" could not get any ratign other than R. it's too bloody, too violent, and too psychologically intense.
• Grave of the Fireflies - post-WWII story of orphans in Japan. no kiddie stuff here, either. from the get-go, you deal with the fire-bombings and a lot of death.
• Ghost in the Shell - another intensely violent movie. an action thriller.
• Millennium Actress - purely a psychological trip. too confusing for kids to enjoy, but light-hearted enough to get a PG.
• Perfect Blue - from the same guy that did Millennium Actress, but it's more psychologically intense. some violence, and featuring a non-x-rated sex scene (she's an actress) and nudity (a photo shoot).
• Mahoromatic - a great deal of nudity and only one quite perverted character. very fun and light-hearted, but the constant titties and Shikijou-sensei's constant and overly lewd comments make it inappropriate for children. it's not pr0n.
• Gunslinger Girl - recently aired on Japanese TV. very violent series about cybernetically enhanced schoolgirls.
• Voices of a Distant Star - short sci-fi movie dealing with distant relationships from a whole new perspective.

there are Anime for every genre, and some that cover so many genres that they can't be called anything but unique. Ranma 1/2, for example (by the same lady that brought us Inu Yasha), is what i call an "action drama romantic comedy". there's a lot of nudity in it, but the pure wittiness of it brings no end to the fun. (what's not funny about a boy that turns into a girl when wet and has to deal with a dozen people that literally both love and hate him? it's a love polygon so complex it would give soap opera directors brain hemorrages.)

there's the unusual movies (Metropolis), and the shows so odd they're fun (Those Who Hunt Elves). and there are non-pr0n shows that appeal to the perverts in us (Steel Angel Kurumi).

look around and give something a chance. there are several Anime databases out there that have all the information you need to learn about shows. and there are a lot of Anime out there that you might enjoy. read summaries and find something that appeals to you. then rent it or download it and see it for yourself.

please don't judge all Anime because of a dozen or so sour series.

Re:No surprise there.

I haven't seen a decent anime made after 1998.

Then you haven't seen Lain, FLCL, Spirited Away, Cowboy Bebop, or any number of other series I could name.

I always see this criticism that "anime sucks" now, that it was better in the good old days. Well, as with most things, there really was no "good old days" and you're probably just remembering anime as you first encountered it, when it was new and different to you. But anime itself is not very old (the 1950's, really, was the start of it), it generally wasn't really much better than the level of American Saturday morning cartoons until at least the mid 1980's (and even then the good stuff was mostly confined to guys like Miyazaki and Leiji Matsumoto), and it's actually diversified since then. Yes, there's a lot of crap, but there was *always* a lot of crap... there's also some good stuff too these days, in a variety of styles that didn't even exist a decade or so ago.

It's true, though, that the money has run out on a lot of studios, and it shows in many cases. Series are shorter than they used to be - there are fewer long-running TV series now, and OVA's (straight-to-video releases) now usually run just a few episodes. But a series like FLCL demonstrates just how much you can do with a short series and not much money - it's a brilliant satire/parody of anime cliches, and one of the most energetic, fun, funny, and in the end seriously well-written series I've ever seen. As in, actually somewhat profound.

I don't necessarily think financial hard times are always a bad thing in art and entertainment. The appetite for anime in Japan is insatiable - it's everywhere, and it's not dying anytime soon. If producers are forced to work on shoestring budgets with compacted storylines, maybe they'll focus a bit more on plot, character, and *interesting* animation rather than just overblown Hollywood-style productions. FLCL showed the way, we'll see if others can pick up where it left off.

Re:No surprise there.

I haven't seen a decent anime made after 1998.

Then you haven't seen Lain, FLCL, Spirited Away, Cowboy Bebop, or any number of other series I could name.

Half of those were not made after 1998. Lain and Cowboy Bebop were 1998. FLCL was 2000, and Spirited Away (which I didn't particularly like) was 2001.

I disagree that there are no decent anime being made (in any of a number of various genres from serious drama to silly comedy), but, just like any other medium (television, film, stage), the good stuff only comes along every once in awhile. Anime is not a genre; it's a medium. The medium has certain common styles whose popularity come and go (although not all works have those common styles), but then so do stage musicals.

--
Evan

hark

When business wins over talent, the business fails and the talent eventually pops up again. Just remember what happened with Atari and its developer relations. Games were mass produced, programmers paid poorly, and cheap products were rushed to launch. This isn't so much of a danger to the anime industry as the landfills. Fortunately, anime merchandise is easier to dump than 4 million ET carts.

How about this...

Have a system similar to the old patronage system. Where artists (read: animator, recording artist, film director) set up websites where people can "donate" money to their next project. Once a predefined amount has been raised they go away an make the film/track/album/cartoon and put it up on the Internet for anyone to download. Those who don't have Internet access can buy a copied version from anyone willing to provide that service.

Those wishing to break into the industry need to make a name and fan base for themselves so that people will be happy to donate money.

I think this better exploits the tenants of capitalism than the current system of falsifying scarcity.

Re:How about this...

An average person is greedy and couldn't care less about the aspirations of a random artist on the internet. People believe something is popular largely because corporations make them popular and get lots of money to pay their artists (outsourced or not). This is reality.

As long as Hayao Miyazaki exists.... Anime will

Anime die? HAHAHAH never.

As long as wonderful talents like Hayao Miyazaki exist, great anime will exist.

No one does Anime like Japan (DUH)

I simply do not see it being outsourced to indians.

Look raise the prices of the stuff. Export it to other countries... bring more money in... and dont censor it :)

extra extra!

advocates use of outsourcing, begins downward spiral. Outsourcing is the exploitation of cheap labour. If the job is being done as well then the same wages are deserved, not just what the outsourcer can get away with. Meanwhile a fine entertainment media begins a not-so-slow death.

50K yen? Can that be right?

Where the hell can you live in Japan on 50K yen a month? When I lived in Okinawa, I think the cheapest rent on the island was about three times that.

Some Facts

50,000.00 JPY = 451.859 USD, about 5422.30 USD per year
per capita GDP is $28,700 (2002 est.)
factbook on japan [cia.gov]
Matsumoto said one U.S. toy manufacturer offered his company about $10 million (about 1.1 billion yen) for the rights to market merchandise featuring the characters of an animated cartoon his company hadn't even completed. The figure was particularly eye-popping for Matsumoto because it was 100 times what animated films earn on average from broadcasting rights in Japan. - One has to wonder why their aren't any regulations regarding corperate responsibility and minimun wage laws on this matter.

Animation field

It's worth pointing out that the people interviewed in the article who are complaining about the death of anime, are employed by production houses who work on the very family-friendly anime - and with specific reference to "Chibi Maruko-chan" there was a well-known legal case from the voice-actors last year, as they weren't being paid residuals. I suspect that the situation is rather different for companies which make otaku-friendly anime - and I [i]KNOW[/i] it's different for companies who work with NHK. Actually, it's the otaku-friendly anime, and bishoujo anime specifically, which is powering Japan's anime boom.

Saw on Japanese TV

I saw a program about this on Japanese TV not so long ago.

The main problems with outsourcing animation is that the Koreans and Filipinos doing the animations are going to get better in these industries and create more competition for the Japanese animators themselves later on.

Even though this is the case, from what I've seen from Japanese schoolchildren with no formal art training in comic animation, there's no danger of Japan running out of creative talent.

Re:Saw on Japanese TV

I may be biased 'cause I'm originally from Japan... but does it really suprise you that Japanese kids do anime drawings better than other nation's kids?

I remember when I was in Japan, the kids drew their favorite characters from anime all the time, and the constant drawing was probobly good practice. One kid in 5th grade or so made a good drawing of one the guys from Dragonball, and the other kids were making fun of him for having traced it instead of drawing it, as if he was expected to draw that well without tracing.

It's kinda like the association of Americans with rock n' roll, or black people with rap. Race does not confer talent, but being immersed in a culture does help shape your talents.

not new...

This is not all that new. Japanese animation work (esp. inbetweening, cel painting) has always been outsourced to Korean and Chinese studios. Some of the threat has come from the fact that there are a shortage of _good_ animators and keyframers in Japan, and there is more demand for new Japanese animation right now that what Japan has the ability to output.

Also, Japanese animators have always been underpaid. Osamu Tezuka (the "father of manga") started his influencial animation studio within the ideal of producing cheap limited animation via underpaid animators. And it worked, and the industry was born.

Additional ranting:
Right now there are 130 (!!) new TV episodes airing in Japan every month. There are just not enough employees to produce that much animation w/o outsourcing some of the labor. But 90% of it is crap anyway (naruto, inuyasha, etc.etc). Who cares if that gets outsourced more and more. We'll still have quality animated works from studios such as Production-IG (Innocence) and Madhouse (Satoshi Kon movies) so what's the worry if those fast-made 100+ episode franchise series gets outsourced? Were they worth that much to begin with?

sound like US tech jobs

If animation is cheaper in Korea or China as the article suggests then Japanese animators will either have to compete at global prices or be out of jobs. It's a global market for jobs now and I'd suspect $500 a month is a pretty decent salary in China.

too bad

There is very little awesome anime compared to the junk. Perhaps now there will be more of a focus on getting good scripts and stories before letting some clone "demon warrior princess vs mechanical mega modrons of combined force" run.

We want more ghost in the shell and akira quality film and we want more ghost in the shell SAC quality TV series. For this I am willing to pay more money than I would for hollywood movies, so I am sure they will be able to support themselves finacially.

For the rest of the "awww" blushing cutesy anime, I couldn't care less if it was all flushed away except if it blocked the toilet.

As always, good scripts are the more important than anything else.

Who cares?

Are any of us Japanese? Why should we care about the Japanese Anime industry? So now China is making labor cheaper? Great. We get more Anime.

For industries like this outsourcing is good, outsourcing is only bad for high tech / high skill industries. Manual labor should be outsourced.

I don't get Anime

Can someone please explain what it is about Anime that makes people go ga-ga?

I just don't get it -- what am I missing?

It just looks like a caricatured cartoon to me.

Help!

It's because of their Arogance!!

Those d@mn over paid arogant japanese, with their big SUVs! Serves them right!

Oh wait...

(can you taste the sarcasm?)

Japan Anime Industry sounds like US animation prob

All of the money goes to the suits and none of the hardworking artists.

Thats the problem. Its that simple. Pay the artists what they are worth, and stop ripping them off.

This problem has been happening forever here in America. It happens in teh game industry too. The voice talent get all of the money, the profits go to all of the suits, and the real talent behind the picture get pennies. The director is generally well paid but they dont make Mike Myres money folks.

So much for that trickle down economic bullshit if you ask me. When the rich make more profits... They simply make more profits :) The workers dont see it.

fragmentation?

no problem, if they're running windows, they can run "dfrg.msc" in the command prompt. Just be sure to run it on a regular basis to avoid disk fragmentation.

Read the article? say wha?

Well done slashdot

As inaccurate as ever :)

Alot of aniem if not pretty much all of it has moved onto being done by PCs, it's much cheaper then cels and farfar easier. :P

The economics of genius

If you are a genius, and by that I mean an actual creator of fine art, you will always be in demand. Simply put anyone can rip off one idea, but if people want more, they'll come crawling back.

This article sounds more like the whining of an executive not getting his cut than the plight of the animator itself. I'm not saying that animators aren't being treated unfairly. I'm saying that the president of any company generally cares more about what's in his wallet than some paeon animator's.

Anyone following baseball should know the senario. If George Steinbrenner wants the city of New York to give anything to the Yankees he says, "Oh, if I don't get it, the cost of business will increase SO much that I'll have to move the team to New Jersey." Then he goes back to sleep on his bed of mint $10,000 bills.

Let's take a look at a key sentence in this article.

"Yet an animator, toiling away on cels in a tiny Tokyo studio, might be fortunate to pull in just 50,000 yen a month."

The important word here is "might." This implies that the author does not know what an animator makes. Without any sources for that figure other than a nameless 26 year-old animator, you have to conclude that the statement is at best suspect, at worst a lie.

From what I have read and heard about Japan, they face the same problem we have here. The cost of living is higher in Japan than in nearby countries. However, has cheap Mexican labor ruined CARS? No. Even the Fords made in the good old US of A will flip over and explode.

If Japanese production companies are so important to Anime, they can demand more money. Anime is far too lucrative to die out. What is more likely, however, is that these are Anime stripmines, churning out series like Harlequin churns out romance novels, or that these are just a bunch of guys who have a knack for tracing.

Like I said, maybe I'm wrong about the "Oh Productions" that the article speaks of, but you can't have it both ways. If you are the genius behind the anime, than you will be able to command the money. If you are just some guys who copy and color, then you are probably a dime a dozen in Japan and a dime for 2 dozen in Korea.

Either way, Anime itself is not ruined. At least, not by ink and paint jobs leaving Japan.

SW

Gee, how awful...

Before you know it, their cartoon characters will start having lips and noses...oh, the horror.

Is that why anime is so lazy?

Is budget cuts the reason why we have 30-second-long scenes where the only thing moving on the screen is the lips of the character?

Or the reason why Rurouni Kenshin spends 5 episodes doing "powering up discussions" and then another 5 episodes jumping towards his enemy while exciting music plays in the background, and in the end you don't even see him slashing the ****ing opponent, because conveniently, "KENSHIN IS 2 FAST A SWORDSMAN 4 U 2 C!"

WTF!?

Hand painted cels?

... the wallets of the animators who piece the cartoons together are as thin as the cels they painstakingly paint.

I was surprised to hear anime makers still do this. Disney started scanning inked sketches, then coloring them on computers, maybe a decade ago. The only hand colored cels Disney makes these days are those specifically for sale to collectors and tourists.

This move has a clear downside: it eliminates a whole class of entry-level jobs available to those who want to enter the industry.

Any thoughts on the disadvantages (or advantages) in terms of quality?

Good deal

An animator, toiling away on cels in a tiny Tokyo studio, might be fortunate to pull in just 50,000 yen [about $500 USD] a month.

Seems like a good deal to me. With Anime, that's $250 per cel!

How ironic

The article is saying artists' pay is decreasing at exactly the same time the films are making more money from merchandising.

oh no

This is very bad..
I mean-500 USD? What is that? nothing! It's like a million slashdot pages! nothing again!
Gross...

Offshoring

This is a good. Let the grunt work go, then maybe keep some of the story design and character development.

Beats the alternative of completely offshore anime.

Face it, if the same basic product costs 1/10th if it is produced in a cheap country, people will likley buy that version. Many goods can't cover a cost difference of this magnitude. My only hope is that the market will adjust and this spread is something that we (expensive countries) can compete with.

Cels?

Isn't it strange that the article spends a lot of time bemoaning the plight of the cel painter? Cel's are obsolete in modern anime, only a few companies (extremely cheap ones and Studio Ghibli) still use them. Almost all companies do their coloring on computer these days. It's possible they just kept the old terms for whatever reason, but somehow I wonder if this article isn't similar to one bemoaning the number of buggy whip manufactuerers going "overseas".

Outsourcing is generally good.

With respect to those people that have lost jobs due to outsourcing, it is generally considered good, because it will bring an economic balance between developed and under-developed economies. Of course, it will take many decades for this to happen, and the people that lost their jobs will suffer.

Of course globalization will work only if it has no real constraints. If a government puts taxes on imported goods, then globalization will not work.

Another important point is the price of goods. For example, an Anime product should cost less when produced in Korea instead of Japan. If the company that produces it does not lower the price for the domestic market though, globalization (and outsourcing) will not work.

Anime is a great entertainment and it gives unprecedented freedom over live action filming, with much less cost. It's helps turning one's fantasies to images without any limitations. I hope that the current and past Anime's quality is not lowered because of outsourcing.

Drama CDs and games

I think that anime is losing out to two things besides what was pointed out in the article. First, the decline in anime has coincided with the rise in the number of drama CDs which are spoken dramatisations of a manga or novel (and are not well known in the West for the obvious reasons that they are just spoken Japanese with a bit of music). Often they will act out the manga word for word. For niche series that in previous years would have been made into OAVs (direct to video) anime releases, many of them are made into drama CDs. Drama CDs are much cheaper than anime to make. Mangaka (manga authors) have been known to fund them out of their own pocket, even being able to hire big name seiyuu (voice actors). They are cheap and popular amongst the series' (Japanese) fanbase. I think seiyuu like them better than anime as well as they have more chance to actually act without worrying about things like timing.

The second thing is gaming. One thing I heard is that the anime industry is losing a lot of young artists to the gaming industry. I don't find that surprising as judging from their freetalks, a lot of mangaka at least seem to be big gamers, including the females (amongst females, Squaresoft games and RPGs seem to be esp. big). I imagine in the anime side this trend would be even more pronounced.

ugh

Japanese anime will be ruined.

Good God. I've heard some stupid claims before, but this one's just the icing on the cake. I don't even want to acknowledge that I just read an article quoting some complete moron bitching about how anime will lose its hideous industrial manufactured look because other more intelligent companies have realized "wait, you mean there are artists outside of Japan that are at least as good?"

It's a clear ploy, if I ever saw one, to pretend this guy's little company has some sort of place as a pioneer. But here's the painful reality dude: If you stick with the sucky artists you have right now and pretend nobody exists outside your general area, you were doomed from the start, and posing as the holder of a meaningless 20-year tradition of Japanese animation (which was begun by artists using American techniques) is not, by a long-shot, going to save your dead-end company. I bid you a good pre-riddance.

I have a question.

It's been a long while since I've watched any Anime. I was just glancing at the comments though. From what I remember about Anime that I liked the most: funny simple plots, big gaint robots, naked girls, organic super weapons and lots of violence. Which of those do you think the US audience really cares about?

On a side note, now that I'm married with 2 young kids, I can't fit a good time after they are asleep to watch any Anime. It'd have to be something that my wife would approve of, which means living out the naked girls and most likely the violence. This would live a movie very much like Spirited Away. I own that movie and hate it. The kids seem to like it though. I'm not going to buy movies like Spirited Away. I'll spend my money on Shrek and Finding Nemo, thank you very much.

Reason for This

There's a very good reason for this that I haven't seen mentioned so far...

Hand-drawn animation has, largely, gone the way of the dodo in Japan. Its no surprise that those that do work on it exclusively are now getting paid peanuts, because their skills simply aren't in demand anymore. Most modern anime is mostly CG, and anything with a lot of action effects is going to be almost entirely CG.

CG artists, naturally, can pull down a hell of a lot more cash than animators specializing in hand-drawn cels. But they also tend to gravitate towards more "mature" animation, as that's where the money is these days - that's what American companies will pay big bucks for.

Right...

"...toiling away on cels..." Please. There's a REASON you can't make any money doing that anymore. Most anime is digitally animated. Sure, maybe most of the lineart is hand drawn, but then it goes into the computer, gets digitally 'inked' then colored... Hell, most anime these days contain insane amounts of CG (Most of which, contrary to the popular response of "Pfft....cg" YOU CAN NOT TELL IS CG.) I mean...damn. Something on the order of 1 out of 5 currently running shows is animated by Gonzo|Digimation anyway....

No one uses cels anymore

The anime industry in Japan has mostly moved away from cels to to computer-based animation. Only a few legacy shows, like Chibi Maruko-chan or Sazae-san (which has been running since the 60s, I think) still use cels. Most new shows are of the digital ink-and-paint variety and many also feature a lot of 3D CGI assist. 5 years ago this was not so true, but practically every show made in the last 2 years is almost entirely digital.

This has stemmed the flood of outsourcing to a small leak. Almost any show you watch has a batch of Korean names in the end credits, but it's still mostly japanese. And all the top jobs are still held by japanese animators.

I know someone who was a former animator, ran a small studio in the late 90s, and was later a consultant for a DIP software company (Animo). One thing he said sparked the changeover was this: In order to make sure that work farmed out to studio XYZ in Korea matched the next scene farmed out to studio ABC in Thailand, the industry created a standard set of colors for cel paint. Being a relatively small industry, this led to one company making all the cel paint for everyone. A small, old, established company that had been doing it forever. And an old man who had been doing the job of master pigment mixer forever, having things his way, etc. Well, one day he, the only guy who really knew how to mix all the colors, had a heart attack and the industry realized their livlihood rested on the health of some crotchety old man at the paint company. Most studios switched over to digital within a year. ^_^

They could study the U.S. auto industry

...to get some tips on surviving, if not thriving, in the face of foreign competition. :-/

BTW, notice that this tends to support the old argument that the business climates of trading partners tend to equalize in the long run. That doesn't help you buy bread in the short run but it's something to think about while shouting that dirty foreigners are stealing our jobs.

I miss space dramas like Macross

There have been no space dramas for a long time. I mean, things like the original Macross series, Legend of Galactic Heroes, etc.

critical state

A critical state is always percieved as a collapse, when it's usually more of a change, from one state to another.

This sort of change is painful and alarming to be sure, but rarely turns out to be as destructive or harmful as first imagined to be by those clinging to the first state and bracing for the impact of the second state.

The Japanese will always be the trend-setter in terms of quality storytelling in anime. It's now up to them to keep raising the bar higher, forcing others to follow. If they stay true to their original vision, they'll be fine.

What's the world coming to?

Are the giant fighting robots finally going to get along?

Going to be? Isn't it already?

I'd have to say that Japanese anime has been on a downward track for quite a while. A few dedicated artists are maintaining the high road, but much of what gets played on TVTokyo is slapped together art with so-so dialogue and a few formulas (robots, girls in school uniforms, that kind of thing). The demand, both in Japan, in the US, and throughout the world, for anime has created a market that will buy drivel -- making it much harder to find the real quality pieces.

BTW, that artist making 50,000 yen is like the artists at Disney - he is typically not the one who originated the characters, setting, or story. He simply draws and fills in based on original art. These are the slightly better than minimum wage drudges. The scripter and original artist do make better money.

Not suprising

Its like any other media endeavour. The talent that is actually most directly responsible for creating the product gets a very small chunk of the pie.

For animation, the publishers get the money.
For videogames, the publishers get the money.
For books, the publishers get the money.
For music, the publishers get the money most of the time.

The only exception is for movies and for music, where the stars get a big chunk of money. But that is because a singer is always directly associated with the song, and can choose not to sing so no one gets any money.

TV and Movies (moreso for TV though), a particular actor usually comes to be known for the character and can destroy the endeavour by not co-operating.

And the same happens with authors, though they need to hit it big before they can get a reasonable deal.

Animation and videogames are more collaborative though, and one person is not able to just pull the plug on the deal as above.

You will not get paid adequately for your services if your reasonably replaceible, or of the publisher can do the deal without you.

END COMMUNICATION

Would some one please

think of the Tentacle Rape Demons!

Fragmentation?

They should use HFS+ [kernelthread.com].

Seen Naruto?

I think you know what I'm talking about.
There have been 3 really really poorly done
ones, and those were done in cheap knockoff studios.

People see the quality and they REALLY hate it.
So I don't think the industry is in danger, unless
foreign competition gets better, which will be a while.

Join the club.

As an American animator, all I can really say to this is "Welcome to the club, guys."

There was a period in the post-Lion King boom when animators were being paid like movie stars, Dreamworks and Warners and Fox were opening feature studios and creating competition for wages and lots of jobs. Things were good. Then everyone, including the Mouse, sabotaged themselves by just trying to duplicate Lion King over and over.

There are next to no feature animation jobs any more. There's Pixar's new 2D studio and there's Legacy. I think Dreamworks still has something in the pipe. 2D has been claimed dead by the executives because they killed it with endless meddling and second-guessing. 3D isn't the salvation - does anyone remember Disney's all-3D Dinosaur? - it's just the medium Pixar used to bring their well-crafted stories to life.

The only drawn animation jobs in the States are in TV cartoons, and it's only about 20 people per show - directors, character designers, storyboarders. The show goes out to who-knows-where. Canada, if you're lucky.

Flash production was a hope for about one year. It was going to let us make shows in-house, let animators actually pay their bills doing something like what they loved, because "flash is cheaper". Well... no. Now you just have the option of making an even cheaper show by shipping the work out of the States, to a place that uses Flash. Again, if you're lucky, you get a Canadian house to do the work - less communication problems, a common culture of what's seen as "good animation". It probably goes out to the Phillippines in most cases.

Programmers aren't the only people being fucked up the ass by "globalization". Animators have been screwed by it since, oh, the late sixties, before the fields most Slashdotters work in even existed.

Re:Westernisation?

No, it's a result of it following a number of other industries. It beggars belief that outsourcing have even been given a chance past its infancy to ruin so many corporations reputation.

Re:Westernisation?

Heh, you think that anime isn't a result of western culture? Everything in Japan after WWII was essentially the result of western culture. So yes, it would follow that anime and its production approaches are a result of western culture.

Re:Westernisation?

I didn't think greed was limited to western cultures.

Seems the even though the animators are barely earning anything and all the money goes to the TV stations, that the managment still wants more and so will move the animation to where its even cheaper. Really does sound like yet another case of the artists getting screwed while the businessmen get richer.

Not exactly...

More like an Americanization of the once-legendary Japanese business ethic.

Re:Who cares?

Crapanime sucks anyway.

That's very clever. You've concatenated "crap" and "anime" to form a new word which displays your distaste. What would've been more clever, of course, would've been to combine "crap" with "animation" to form "crapanimation," which sounds like Japanimation, a term which is already thought of as mildly derogatory by anime fans.

Good effort, though.