Japanese Anime Industry In Danger Of Fragmentation 435
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? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anime outsourced? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
It's been that way for a very long time (Score:4, Funny)
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? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Anime outsourced? (Score:3, Informative)
This is not really anything unusual, the 'Simpsons' has been drawn in korea for quite a long time now.
And anyone who thinks South Korean is some kind of 3rd world low-wage country wants to go and try and live there! Seoul is the most expensive citys in the world to visit according to at least one study.
I guess they just do a good job for a resonable fee.
International competition is just part of the reality now, and if someone else
Re:Anime outsourced? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:2, Insightful)
The worst thing is t
Re:Anime outsourced? (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately, nobody who fits that description is running for office.
Re:Anime outsourced? (Score:4, Insightful)
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? (Score:3, Interesting)
Two things the unemployment numbers don't address - Folks who have had their unemployment benefits run out on them before being able to find work, and "underemployment" - folks who have taken low-wage jobs (food service, retail sales, etc...) in an attempt to make ends meet, while they
Re:Anime outsourced? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dean showed a little bit too much personality, and lost all credibility for it. The American (and Canadian, for that matter) political system discourages personality, as it might offend people. Like mainstream beer - it's had all the flavours removed, in case someone doesn't like one of them.
Re:Anime outsourced? (Score:2)
"Welfare" is the accurate word, but it's dirty too; better to call it a "living wage", or a "'fair' dividend from the fruits of collectively-owned AUTOMATED production", or just a $25G stipend [marshallbrain.com].
Offshoring is just the beginning of the increasing "screw everyone else" trend...
--
Re:Anime outsourced? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because a) You don't want to see sick and dying people when you go for a walk, b) cheaper than fighting crime, revolts and disease, c) it could happen to you someday, so think of it as an insurance and d) they might have had job or food if you didn't take it by outcompeting them.
And communism- hey, communism has only killed 100 million people so far, so let's give it another shot. Must not have been the right people in charge, eh?
Yes, actuall
Re:Anime outsourced? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hate" is level-headed now?
Re:Anime outsourced? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:Anime outsourced? (Score:2)
You mean like John Kerry, who voted for NAFTA?
Re:Anime outsourced? (Score:2)
does this require... (Score:2, Funny)
"Anime is dying!"
"In Soviet Russia, anime fragments YOU!"
Or something else?
* Caimlas misses the old trolls (OOG)
Re:does this require... (Score:2)
New business model? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:New business model? (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean, a business model like extortion, press releases, and whining to Congress?
If, instead, you mean that artists should sell directly to consumers, that is a model that the RIAA dreads because they are the middlemen that are to be cut out.
Re:New business model? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:New business model? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:New business model? (Score:3, Informative)
1) A lot of kanji subtitles for opening/closing songs are actually part of the original broadcast.
2) If it's "impossible" to do proper translation without the written script in front of you, then how do Japanese speakers understand what the audiotrack means?
I've done professional translation (J-E/E-J) for nearly ten years now, including some video work, and while it can be tricky for business videos, anime is generally scripted in such a way that you don't have to have a written transc
Re:New business model? Curse of Creative Business (Score:2)
Re:New business model? (Score:2)
In addition. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Fansubs? HA! (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Fansubs? HA! (Score:2)
No surprise there. (Score:4, Interesting)
Spirited Away too mainstream? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, that's part of the problem. Animation is a very painstaking and laborious process and - popular though it is among some groups - Anime is a niche market outside Japan. Perhaps there is a need for films that reach out more to a mainstream demographic?
Re:Spirited Away too mainstream? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep, probably. They're queuing up right now to beat the crap out of you with cuddly toy catbuses.
The only work Miyazaki or his studio have done that I've liked is Graveyard of the Fireflies, and I don't think Miyazaki himself had hardly anything to do with it, oddly enough.
Nope, that was one of Takahata's. Bloody good film... I still can't believe that thing was in a double-bill wi
Re:Spirited Away too mainstream? (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Spirited Away too mainstream? (Score:2)
1) That's a big room to give exclusively to one recovering patient, when you have thousands of horribly burned firebomb victims to deal with... even if she is the heroines' mother.
2) If you've fled the city to avoid air raids, commuting back to the university there to research (IIRC) archaeology is a terrifically strange thing to do.
It looks like late fifties to me. Old-fashioned phones, but pylons beginning to take over the countryside and motor vehicles starting to
Re:No surprise there. (Score:5, Interesting)
A short list of currently running (or recently concluded) anime series which are of excellent caliber:
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. (Score:2)
I don't know the specifics about these companies, but from what the parent article says, the issue is not the money reaching the studios, the problem is the money from the studios reaching the actual cel painters. Besides which, as far as I can remember, Ghibli doesn't use actual cels any more anyway, it's all done on computer. I may be wrong on th
Re:No surprise there. (Score:3)
Re:No surprise there. (Score:4, Insightful)
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. (Score:4, Insightful)
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. (Score:4, Informative)
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:
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. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No surprise there. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:2)
Re:No surprise there. (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hark (Score:2)
And Disney, which is still in a creative black hole when it comes to animation.
Talent vs. labor-intensive production (Score:3, Insightful)
How about this... (Score:2)
Those wishing to break into the industry need to make a name and fan bas
Re:How about this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How about this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Granted, I wrote the program because I thought it was a good idea and said myself the tips are optional, so as for myself I am happy I got a nice dinner for two
Re:How about this... (Score:2)
Quite a refreshing idea I think. If the person doing it is talented/well known enough, it could work.
Re:How about this... (Score:2)
Re:How about this... (Score:2)
Patronage is a bad analogy (Score:2)
I'm not saying that donations from the many can't work (although they probably won't, unless they are for
As long as Hayao Miyazaki exists.... Anime will (Score:2, Insightful)
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
50K yen? Can that be right? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:50K yen? Can that be right? (Score:2)
though, if you would make more working at mcdonalds whats the fucking point of being a cel paint slave for that price? especially when besides outsourcing computers are drastically making the job less labor taking???????
Re:50K yen? Can that be right? (Score:3, Interesting)
And here I was thinking that Tokyo was expensive.
As for where they can live, the cheapest rent I could find on chintai.co.jp in Tokyo itself was 13,000 yen (about $120). So it is possible.
1 man yen = 10,000 yen. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm going to assume that you all know what "sqm" means.
Some Facts (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Some Facts (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some Facts (Score:2)
Because one of the responsibilities of government is to manage the national economy. When you have massive unemployment due to outsourcing to other countries, your economy suffers.
A responsible government would offer incentives to keep manufacturing jobs in the country without actually passing laws to force it.
Animation field (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Saw on Japanese TV (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Saw on Japanese TV (Score:2, Interesting)
not new... (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
too bad (Score:2, Insightful)
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 "a
I don't get Anime (Score:2, Insightful)
I just don't get it -- what am I missing?
It just looks like a caricatured cartoon to me.
Help!
Re:I don't get Anime (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't get Anime (Score:3, Insightful)
I just don't get it -- what am I missing?
Well, for one thing, that which gets censored outside of Japan.
Meaning besides the beautiful artwork, the openmindedness the Japanese culture permits the artists to express. You won't see that much anywhere else than in Anime.
zRe:I don't get Anime (Score:2)
Is that what we're calling it these days? Openmindedness, eh? Ecchi!
It's because of their Arogance!! (Score:3, Funny)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
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
The economics of genius (Score:4, Insightful)
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... (Score:4, Funny)
Is that why anime is so lazy? (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Funny)
Seems like a good deal to me. With Anime, that's $250 per cel!
How ironic (Score:2)
Offshoring (Score:2)
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? (Score:3, Informative)
ugh (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
No one uses cels anymore (Score:4, Interesting)
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. ^_^
Going to be? Isn't it already? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Re:Westernisation? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Westernisation? (Score:2)
Yea, making millions while the artists have to live with their parents. Now I'm no communist, but when businesses are so greedy, yes GREEDY, that the people who do work for them cannot survive by themselves with the money they make, then something is wrong.
Now I'm sure even the original creators (those true visionaries) are not CEO/Owner of any of these.
Possibly thoug
Not exactly... (Score:2)
Re:Not exactly... (Score:3)
Re:Westernisation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Since when is there anything disreputable about offering good quality at the lowest prices? And since when is there anything disreputable about contributing to the economic development of some of the neediest nations in the world?
Why don't they just move to the USA or China? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
To upper management, everyone, regardless of their industry, looks like manual labor. It's easy to talk smack when it's not your problem.
Re:Wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides the simple ability to observe the world around me and see that Japanese, not Chinese, stories with good animations are being sought after, I also live in Osaka.
I am currently applying for a venture capital business incubator contest wh
Re:Who cares? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Who cares? (Score:2)
Re:Outsourcing is good, stop whining (Score:2)
S'right. If this goes on, the days of high-quality anime like Pokémon, Beyblade, Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh will be long gone. All we'll get will be trash cooked up solely in order to sell trading cards and cheap plastic crap.
Oh, wait...