Anime Is In Danger, Too Many Shows/Not Enough Animators

[The1gairon]

http://goboiano.com/anime-industry-faces-animator-shortage-crisis-that-could-damage-future-productions/

 

:'(

[PokeNirvash]

Congratulations, all it took was a hyperlink and an emoticon to make me think that you're overblowing things just a little.

[The1gairon]

Congratulations, all it took was a hyperlink and an emoticon to make me think that you're overblowing things just a little.

 

If anyone's overblowing things, it's the writer of this article.

[MasqueradeOverture]

Step 1: Cut down on making cutesy cheesecake shows just for the sake of pandering to horny weebs. You're not gonna make money by catering to such a small niche. Put your resources elsewhere.

 

Step 2: Don't make a series based on a manga unless you have enough material to adapt. You're spreading the current workforce thin by constantly making 12 episode seasons for a title every year instead of waiting until there's enough for 26 to 50 episodes and banging it all out at once.

 

Step 3: Set up a minimum wage / train staff. The reasons why there's not enough animators is because the idea of being a borderline-slave is totally unappealing. It'll be an investment at first, but set up a decent wage to lure potential employees in...and then properly train staff so they can work faster and more efficiently with less broadcast errors (which would otherwise take up man hours to fix for the Blu-Ray).

[The1gairon]

Step 1: Cut down on making cutesy cheesecake shows just for the sake of pandering to horny weebs. You're not gonna make money by catering to such a small niche. Put your resources elsewhere.

 

Step 2: Don't make a series based on a manga unless you have enough material to adapt. You're spreading the current workforce thin by constantly making 12 episode seasons for a title every year instead of waiting until there's enough for 26 to 50 episodes and banging it all out at once.

 

Step 3: Set up a minimum wage / train staff. The reasons why there's not enough animators is because the idea of being a borderline-slave is totally unappealing. It'll be an investment at first, but set up a decent wage to lure potential employees in...and then properly train staff so they can work faster and more efficiently with less broadcast errors (which would otherwise would take up man hours to fix for the Blu-Ray).

 

1.) ..... yeah that's definitely on them.  They chose to make anime that only caters to their own niche group. Japan has a ton of problems trying to make universal properties to begin with.

 

2.) I hated this from the beginning.  I know you want to adapt a source material while it's hot, but it's like using up the water in your new well in the first week and then suffering a drought.  You have to pace yourself and wait until there is enough source material to use!

 

3.) There have been strikes, but those never made any significant progress. I recall the famous Chinese Apple factory workers going on strike because too many of them were committing suicide.  Kyoto Animation is one of the few animation studios in Japan that still has an in-house institution for training animators in their style, but I fear it won't be long before THEY also close their school too.

[mochi]

http://goboiano.com/anime-industry-faces-animator-shortage-crisis-that-could-damage-future-productions/

 

:'(

as if first airing animation wasn't vomitastic enough already

[StarPanda]

Where do I sign up to help  I can draw some awesome stick people

[viperxmns]

From this and other things I've read, the industry needs to start paying animators a living wage, maybe then there will be more animators

[EyeOfPain]

Step 1: Cut down on making cutesy cheesecake shows just for the sake of pandering to horny weebs. You're not gonna make money by catering to such a small niche. Put your resources elsewhere.

Horny otaku pay the bills.

[The1gairon]

Horny otaku pay the bills.

 

Horny otaku also make the manga/light novels/games/anime now.

 

They got themselves trapped in a cycle that seems impossible to get out of.

[Ric]

Anime is doomed.

[Chapinator_X]

Horny otaku pay the bills.

 

This. Only Amerifats believe that anime will be profitable if they get rid of moe idol and fanservice in favor of gritty action shows or just an HD version of a long forgotten Toonami anime from the 90's. Look on Amazon.jp and everything that isn't Granblue Fantasy hype are idol shows. It's one of the few anime that's actually turning a profit and would ultimately be better to focus on if the idea is making enough to properly pay their workers. The GANGSTA. and Knights of Sidonia daikamura just won't sell.

[OwlChemist81]

The solution would appear to be the animators themselves learning how to handle the business side of the equation and running everything themselves. It's exactly the same paradox that happens with Wal-Mart in this country: record profits but crap wages because trickle-down economics is essentially a restriction owners of businesses place on their workers by having first dibs on profits and then paying them the least amount they can get away with. Worker-owned companies get around this restriction because THEY are the shareholders; there are no outside shareholders that demand the first cut of profits. They tend to operate democratically and not with a totalitarian "trickle down" scheme, and that might be the answer for the industry. For the animators to get together and form their own worker-owned companies on their terms might save the industry; the problem there is TV deals are less likely to go to the animation studios that don't play by the fat cats' rules. But I guess a strike, while a problem for us fans, might provide a glimmer of hope in the long run.

 

Also, I see the potential for an interesting counter-culture to develop here that would circumvent the "trickle-down" economics: instead of supporting the official releases, activist-consumers decide to pirate the actual anime works using BitTorrent and other such methods, but then turn around and support the individual animators' GoFundMe accounts and other such ways to directly donate to them. That way, the animators would in effect be well-paid while the greedy companies who don't pay them a living wage take a pay cut. As folks like Thomas Romain become more and more popular, the potential for them to make their living by fan donations instead of corporate wages becomes more and more plausible. However, fans of Toonami and dubbed anime are less likely to do that because the dubbed adaptations require some sort of company involvement, and most of these companies have the traditional "totalitarian" trickle-down structure. Nonetheless, the best chance the individual animators have to make ends meet is probably to make themselves known, then rely on fan donations rather than corporate wages.

[The1gairon]

The solution would appear to be the animators themselves learning how to handle the business side of the equation and running everything themselves.

 

Sooo... TRIGGER.

[Top Gun]

One of the biggest problems is the industry's byzantine production committee system, where a bunch of media companies and rights-holders form a separate entity for every single series under the sun and all get their own piece of the profits pie.  It's intimately connected with the current late-night infomercial model of broadcasting anime, which is equally fucked-up.  Honestly I feel like the entire industry is in dire need of a significant contraction/crash in order to wind up with something more sustainable over the long-term.

[Hidden]

someone said it.

 

now stop the recycled stories.

[The1gairon]

http://goboiano.com/naruto-animator-kazunori-mizuno-passes-away-from-overwork/

 

This is so common, the Japanese have a custom word for it.

[The1gairon]

A follow-up article from the same source:

 

http://goboiano.com/80-of-animators-quit-and-14th-studios-arent-making-money/

[ben0119]

This is disgusting.  All the animators are working hard to put out these series that wouldn't exist without them while most of the money goes to the big company.  Reminds me of how publishers screw over developers in the gaming industry.

 

Also, what MasqueradeOverture[/member] said.

[ben0119]

One of the biggest problems is the industry's byzantine production committee system, where a bunch of media companies and rights-holders form a separate entity for every single series under the sun and all get their own piece of the profits pie.  It's intimately connected with the current late-night infomercial model of broadcasting anime, which is equally fucked-up.  Honestly I feel like the entire industry is in dire need of a significant contraction/crash in order to wind up with something more sustainable over the long-term.

 

It already had a big crash though.