Anime Artists In Japan Work For Peanuts!

[isamu]

SHOCKING L.A. Times article about animators in Japan. Even talented 10-year veterans often only make the equivalent of $20,000 a year?

The Hard Realities of Make-Believe

In anime, the hours are long and the pay paltry. But for many Japanese, it's still a dream job.

By Colin Joyce, Special to The Times

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TOKYO — The starting pay can be less than $500 a month in this, the world's most expensive city, but becoming an illustrator in Japan's famed anime industry remains the fantasy of thousands of young Japanese.

In scores of cramped studios, largely clustered in two small districts of western Tokyo, young illustrators lean over desks, producing page after page of drawings that eventually will be turned into cartoons for broadcast in Japan and, increasingly, overseas.

Despite the huge popularity of the industry and its growing cachet internationally, even big studios typically pay recruits between $1,200 and $1,800 a month. Their counterparts in Tokyo office jobs earn up to twice as much, including benefits such as subsidized accommodation and train passes. Even convenience-store work pays $8 an hour.

Although "anime" simply means animation, the product differs from U.S. cartoons and animated films in that it is not geared mostly to children. Like its printed counterpart, manga comics, anime is a diverse field, producing everything from cute children's programs such as "Sailor Moon" — a superhero schoolgirl with impossibly long legs and big eyes — to violent and sexual images for Japan's otaku, or "nerd," subculture.

Many foreign fans have been won over by the imagination and intelligent story lines in the genre's most celebrated works. Others are drawn in simply by the vivid colors, fantastic characters and surreal landscapes common in anime.

Masaru Muto, a 20-year-old student, is among those willing to accept low pay to be part of the phenomenon. He will start as an intern at a Tokyo television animation company this month.

"Of course, my parents would prefer me to find a regular job, but I wanted to draw since childhood, and my fascination with animated films became deeper and deeper as I went through school," he said. "I decided that whatever happened, I wanted to give it a try."

Like many anime devotees, Muto is an admirer of director Hayao Miyazaki, who created the acclaimed films "Spirited Away" and "Princess Mononoke."

"To become so great, Miyazaki had to work hard," Muto said, "so I think I will have to fight and to suffer even more than him to become famous."

But many of the young enthusiasts quickly become disillusioned with the long hours and meager salaries. Yoshitake Ogata of the Anime Union, which represents freelance illustrators, said: "However keen they are when they come in, the reality is that they cannot live on the pay. There are animators with 10 years' experience earning less than $20,000 a year. In the end, they have to quit."

The union's informal surveys suggest that 10% of the animators have no health insurance and that as many as one-quarter haven't joined the state pension program, although it is meant to be compulsory. Often, anxious parents pay for their children's health insurance and, in some cases, lodging.

The main factor holding down pay is the availability of cheap labor in East Asia. Japanese production companies now rely on illustrators in South Korea, the Philippines and China to do much of their routine work. Ironically, just as Japanese anime is becoming more famous overseas, it is becoming less Japanese.

Nippon Engineering College in Tokyo is one of several high-tech institutions in Japan that train aspiring animators, including Muto. The school attracts technically gifted students who spend two years learning the art of creating anime and character-based computer games. Most graduates go on to work in the industry.

But teachers stress that talent alone is not enough.

"Of course students need strong powers of observation and have to be good drawers, but they also need to have passion," teacher Masataka Kawai said. "To stick it out in anime, you can't just like drawing, you have to love it."

Kawai worked for eight years in one of Japan's most famous studios. During deadline periods, he would barely leave it for nearly three weeks on end, sleeping under his desk. It is widely believed that most animators work 12 hours a day or more, often working weekends as well.

A 30-minute cartoon typically requires 3,500 pages of drawings. New illustrators usually draw the movements in between the "key frames" done by their seniors. A team of illustrators typically produces a cartoon in about three months. The contribution of any one illustrator might last just 10 seconds for an action scene or as long as 10 minutes when movement is limited, as in a conversation scene.

Despite the long hours, Kawai has happy memories of his days as an illustrator.

"There's no doubt it is hard work, but when you see one of your cuts and it goes well, that is real happiness," he said. "Personally, I felt happy when a small girl from my neighborhood said she enjoyed a cartoon I had worked on."

Many illustrators say they want to give children the same joy they experienced watching cartoons such as "Doraemon," featuring a talking cat who looks after his hapless schoolboy owner, and "Gatchaman," about spaceship superheroes. Today, cartoons such as "Pokemon" reach a worldwide audience.

Tokyo's Suginami ward, where 71 of Japan's estimated 430 anime studios are based, has expressed concern about the damage the working conditions could do to its most famous industry. The ward recently launched a program to sponsor apprentices to work for six months as animators.

But many in the industry say anime's crisis lies not in hiring talent, but in retaining it.

"All the famous directors, including Miyazaki, developed their skills working on anime for television. But now the industry isn't rearing animators with the talent to create new characters or the experienced hands to draw the crucial key frames," Ogata said. "The conditions are so poor that the next generation is not coming through."

Rie Sasaki in The Times' Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.

I am absolutely SHOCKED!!!! This is an outrage! To think that my favorite anime artists like Shoji Kawamori and Kizuki Akane are only making 20 grand a year absolutely disgusts me! What are we going to do?

L.A. Times

[ewilen]

It is somewhat shocking, but Kawamori probably makes more than that since he isn't an animator--he's a director and mecha designer.

[Jolly Rogers]

Kawamori is not an animator, he's way up the food chain directing shows when he's not designing mecha.

The animators in Japan are lucky compared to American ones - at least they still have the option of a low-paying job. Read this past Sunday's L.A. Times calendar section and see how Disney's shutting down their cel animation studios has sent animators packing. Some took a job at Trader Joe's, while some contemplated suicide as computers took over their jobs.

Edit in:

I'd also take L.A. Times' report with a grain of salt - last summer they had a big feature article on the anime scene (using Animatrix as a springboard) and the so-called experts they quoted were wrong on so many accounts they made the read laughable. They can be pretty biased. One need not look further than their smear campaign style reporting and during Schwarzenegger's campaign and how they wouldn't stop writing negatively about him even after he's in office.

Edited March 25, 2004 by Jolly Rogers

[Eternal_D]

uh, nothing...that's life.

[Shin Densetsu Kai 7.0]

IM an art majo here at VCU and the thing is, art is a hard job to get rich at. IM not surprised to here animators getting only that much in japan. Theres nothing reallly that fans can do. Thats jsut the life. If you are planning to b an artist dont expect to get rich and succesful at first you gotta work hard.

nothing in life comwes easy.

[Angel's Fury]

IM an art majo here at VCU and the thing is, art is a hard job to get rich at. IM not surprised to here animators getting only that much in japan. Theres nothing reallly that fans can do. Thats jsut the life. If you are planning to b an artist dont expect to get rich and succesful at first you gotta work hard.

nothing in life comwes easy.

Very true.

[yellowlightman]

Seeing as how most of the bulk of the animation in Japanese animation is being animated in Korea and other south east asian countries, it's kind of irrelevant.

[Beware of Blast]

Seeing as how most of the bulk of the animation in Japanese animation is being animated in Korea and other south east asian countries, it's kind of irrelevant.

Actually, it is very relevant. Bulk of the jobs that help the sustain the Japanese animation industry largely at the entry levels, are leaving for much cheaper shores - Despite the fact that the Japanese animation studios are contracting the overseas hands to draw these shows, to cut costs, they STILL depend largely on making Japanese money first, before distributing them back overseas, and that, also depends on how wildly successful it is debuting in Japan. If not, ROI will take many more years and studios are not given years of finance cooling-off periods to make the wait worthwhile.

The thing is, the very bosses who run the major studios in Japan, are depending on the Japanese anime-watching masses (and in part, quite a number of them, the very same young people who make up the animation work force) for business. The bosses should help by channelling back some money into the industry; if not outright nuture it.

This is a classic story of individual selfishness guys, padding one's pocket first without an idea of the long-term consequences. I'm afraid bosses like Miyazaki, Kawamori or many other huge names, might have a hand in this deed.

Edited March 26, 2004 by Beware of Blast

[LePoseur]

Grunt work, such as animators and Manga "assistants" all make peanuts. The reason it is accepted is because each one of them dreams of becoming a "top-tier" producer/Manga artist. But the entry level is just that, entry... much akin to a play testers at a video game company.

To me the more "shocking" discovery was from a co-worker who also worked as a bottom-tier manga assistant, who mentioned that even though his boss was making a bundle per page, the boss actually did almost none of the actual art - relying instead on his assistants to draw everything from his thumbnail sketches while he worked on the story. I mean, I knew they had background and tone assistants, but I at least expected them to be doing the main characters. Oh well, such is the real world as they say.

[Jolly Rogers]

This is a classic story of individual selfishness guys, padding one's pocket first without an idea of the long-term consequences. I'm afraid bosses like Miyazaki, Kawamori or many other huge names, might have a hand in this deed.

This is nothing new, Japanese anime productions have been using Korean animators for decades. in fact, wasnt' the last decade plagued by a trend of reduced frame count in most anime produced as the anime studios tried cutting corners to reduce cost? Now with the trend of going digital, even the Korean animators might soon find themselves out of a job.

As for work being exported, hello developing countries, this is what you have to look forward to when your country joins the ranks of "developed nations".

[Akilae]

Grunt work, such as animators and Manga "assistants" all make peanuts. The reason it is accepted is because each one of them dreams of becoming a "top-tier" producer/Manga artist. But the entry level is just that, entry... much akin to a play testers at a video game company.

To me the more "shocking" discovery was from a co-worker who also worked as a bottom-tier manga assistant, who mentioned that even though his boss was making a bundle per page, the boss actually did almost none of the actual art - relying instead on his assistants to draw everything from his thumbnail sketches while he worked on the story. I mean, I knew they had background and tone assistants, but I at least expected them to be doing the main characters. Oh well, such is the real world as they say.

No need to be shocked... if you've been reading manga by any of the more famous artists, you'll immediately notice that the artwork can vary wildly from volume to volume, depending on who the assistant was at the time.

Take Ah! My Goddess... while the artwork improves as the manga progress (Vol. 1 anybody?), later on as it stablizes, you can start catching up on who did which volumes. The much acclaimed TV series designs (also the most famous designs) draw from Volumes 15~18 I think. Vol. 20 onwards was done by a new assistant, since some proportions were really simply not drawn to previous designs. I don't think you'd get that kind of variation if the artist himself was doing the actual work. In fact, I believe for Ah! My Goddess in the latter volumes, artwork is done entirely by assistants.

Disclaimer: Volume statements might be off by one or two... or ten :-p I'm only making rough estimations, haven't read the manga in a long time.

[Jawjaw]

Something else to consider is what the average Japanese salary is. In my work, we have another main office in Scotland and the people there get paid much less and end up paying more in taxes. They have more benefits and holidays so that helps.

[Angel's Fury]

This is a classic story of individual selfishness guys, padding one's pocket first without an idea of the long-term consequences. I'm afraid bosses like Miyazaki, Kawamori or many other huge names, might have a hand in this deed.

This is nothing new, Japanese anime productions have been using Korean animators for decades. in fact, wasnt' the last decade plagued by a trend of reduced frame count in most anime produced as the anime studios tried cutting corners to reduce cost? Now with the trend of going digital, even the Korean animators might soon find themselves out of a job.

As for work being exported, hello developing countries, this is what you have to look forward to when your country joins the ranks of "developed nations".

I guess you can call that the effect of globalization.

[LePoseur]

Something else to consider is what the average Japanese salary is. In my work, we have another main office in Scotland and the people there get paid much less and end up paying more in taxes. They have more benefits and holidays so that helps.

Actually, taking that into consideration only makes it worse. The starting salary for just about any entry level job is 150,000 (or just under $1,500) a month. But that's not really enough to live on, at least without living like a poor college student. By comparison the minimum wage allowed for foreigners in Japan is 250,000 a month. Now that's enough to live on and still be able to go out once and a while. The company I used to work for had a real funky system of determining salaries, they used to pay 10,000/year old + 10,000. So at 31 years old, I would make 320,000 a month. Now a little bit of quick math would also tell you what my 50+ year boss was making.

On a side note, this is really not limited to anime, or even computer games. Comedians, for example, often go through really, and I mean really, lean times as set up by the system. Stories of newcomers making less than 1,000 (about nine dollars) a month are not unheard of. And that's while keeping a semi-full schedule, or at least full enough to prevent them from having another job. If you look at it in a positive light, perhaps this suffering is built into the system to weed out those who aren't really dedicated. The negative reality that someone else up the food chain is making a wad of cash off your hard work is always there too.

I should mention though that, in the entertainment industry, as the comic example above, the management companies are all powerful. They control their workers on a level you'd never see in America. Young actors don't get a choice about what roles they get, many singers (as in idol singers) songs/dance/clothes are picked for them. You also can't leave. Once your in with one management company, you're in for life, and if you leave, especially on bad terms, your blacklisted from all others. The one up side of this is job security I guess. The young worker's money is used to support older, not-so-popular-anymore talents. As bad as this might sound though, I don't think the animation/manga industry has anything like it.

[Beltane70]

Now, I can be wrong about this, but I'm fairly sure that the directors/producers, ie, Kawamori, Miyazaki, aren't the ones setting the salaries that the animators make. I'm sure most animators in Japan are also well aware of what they cam expect to make when entering their profession.

[Blaine23]

I hear that the guy who made my fries at McDonald's doesn't make much money either. What a shock.

[EXO]

I hear that the guy who made my fries at McDonald's doesn't make much money either. What a shock.

But Boss... nothing suck more nuts than working in Fantasy Island. My fantasy was having my penus hang down to my knees, but I didn't get exactly what I wanted. Just like the rest of the people's fantasies.

[Radd]

The average american animator right now is makeing approximately $0 an hour, $0 a month, for a whopping total of $0 a year!

More and more I'm becoming a believer in laws that protect domestic jobs from being farmed out to foreign labor.