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Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

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Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#31

Post by huytersd »

steveBK123 wrote: post #20
sillysaurusx wrote: post #6

Then by definition, that’s what their time is worth. It should alarm animators that they’re paid so little. It alarmed me as a gamedev when I saw how much webdevs earned in comparison. It’s partly why I left, and I was much happier for it. No amount of legislation or shame articles will change the reality that market forces have profound effects, and these effects are difficult to break. Unions try. To my knowledge,…

This is like a collective action problem. Any industry with enthusiasts or which is itself a hobby is subject to this behavior. People need to stop being so naive as to accept poorly paid jobs because they think the subject matter is 'funner'. Game Devs are the first example I thought of here. If you love games, that's great.. but why not go work in literally any other software dev work for maybe 2x the pay and/or 1/…

That’s never going to happen unless they unionize. People are not going to voluntarily turn down jobs as a collective everywhere at the same time in mass numbers.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#32

Post by bugglebeetle »

debacle wrote: post #15
egypturnash wrote: post #8

searches for "union" hahaha yep, this word exists in this article but entirely in the context of how Japanese animators have absolutely no union. I ain't saying the US animation union is perfect but at least there is one; if I hear that some big production like Spiderverse2 is at a non-union shop then it's off my list to bother seeing, even via piracy. I trained to be in this industry and burnt right the fuck out fro…

Does Japan have a labor movement? I would expect not a strong one.

Japan had a very strong labor movement that was systematically dismantled in the 80s, as it was in the U.S. Miyazaki Hayao was a union leader at Toei early in his career and quite famously criticized Tezuka for establishing the exploitation and underpayment of animators as industry practice with his studio, Mushi Production.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#33

Post by kelnos »

DANmode wrote: post #18
dymk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I might be missing some context due to your curt response. Are you implying that mines were once considered a high-class "cool" job to have, like working at Google, Uber, SpaceX, or Twitter was a decade+ ago (and still is today for many?)? What is the connection here, exactly?

It was sarcasm. The poster was referring to child-labor laws, that prohibit children from working in many conditions. Many of these laws are rooted in times when children would work in factories, mines, etc. in order to help their families make enough to survive, but, being children, were of course exploited.

"The children yearn for the mines!" is a hyperbolic response that a caricature of a human might give if they were against the elimination of (legal) child labor.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#34

Post by chasing »

Apreche wrote: post #9

While the industry as a whole makes a lot, the majority of individual anime and manga make next to nothing. It’s a few very popular properties that make all the dough. If people were paid fairly, most productions would be untenable. There would be just a few anime per year instead of many. But also, how would the popular ones come to be? Every new property would be a huge gamble. As an anime and manga fan, I actually…

The "if we paid people fairly things would be prohibitively expensive" argument is a terrible one, just to note. First, it rarely seems to actually be the case since the requirement that employees be paid fairly mostly just drives away low-value efforts. It's also an attitude that, if taken to its logical extreme, demands society have an underpaid underclass that suffers so the rest of us can have nice things.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#35

Post by vvanders »

madrox wrote: post #3

When I read things like this, I think back on my experience in games and entertainment. I believe that the more generally prestigious the industry is, the more likely it is to see worker exploitation. Part of your pay is wrapped up in getting to brag that you work in industry X on product Y. Almost by definition, that means young, passionate labor. Industry leaders quickly learn how to exploit the young and passionat…

I generally agree, that said we had a number of our animators move into gamedev from traditional VFX roles and from they way they told it gamedev was significantly better, uf da.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#36

Post by Moru »

savanaly wrote: post #5
madrox wrote: post #3

When I read things like this, I think back on my experience in games and entertainment. I believe that the more generally prestigious the industry is, the more likely it is to see worker exploitation. Part of your pay is wrapped up in getting to brag that you work in industry X on product Y. Almost by definition, that means young, passionate labor. Industry leaders quickly learn how to exploit the young and passionat…

I totally agree with your diagnosis, but I don’t see why it’s considered to be a problem. Why shouldn’t people be free to trade off salary against other desirable traits in a job? Even at the extremes?

Because it's a very uneven power balance. Big company using young inexperienced workers that just want a foot in the door on a childhood dream and have no idea how much their work is worth. Most companies knows to exploit this to the full. Especially known in arts, music and game industry. Less so with (metal) industry jobs where there are old unions helping the workers to a healthier power balance. Except for Musk that seems to be a strange new coin behaving like the industry did 200 years ago.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#37

Post by [deleted] »

egypturnash wrote: post #8

searches for "union" hahaha yep, this word exists in this article but entirely in the context of how Japanese animators have absolutely no union. I ain't saying the US animation union is perfect but at least there is one; if I hear that some big production like Spiderverse2 is at a non-union shop then it's off my list to bother seeing, even via piracy. I trained to be in this industry and burnt right the fuck out fro…

[deleted]

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#38

Post by financypants »

Andrex wrote: post #22
savanaly wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with your diagnosis, but I don’t see why it’s considered to be a problem. Why shouldn’t people be free to trade off salary against other desirable traits in a job? Even at the extremes?

If unionization were endemic to the global economy, that might work. Lacking that, power dynamics are such that workers need protections enshrined in legislation. If salaries are a race-to-the-bottom, nobody benefits except the ones doing the hiring. You may have a "job," but the market salary average would be depressed while the companies enjoy a large talent pool of replaceable workers. If I didn't know history too…

When would candidates compete to work for less? I haven’t seen that demonstrated anywhere. I have seen firms compete on pay.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#39

Post by chasing »

dsugarman wrote: post #13

People have free will; market rate is driven by supply, demand and economics of production and revenue. It's similar to people in the US willing to forfeit their financial future to see taylor swift live and the reseller market understanding and exploiting the market dynamics. Are the resellers the problem? or is it inevitable when people value the financial security of the rest of their lives less than seeing taylor…

They do have free will, but large groups of people are at an extreme negotiating disadvantage versus individuals or small groups that can more easily plan and coordinate -- and who happen to control the resources. This is why we need things like unions and government regulations: Not to unbalance things in favor of workers but to help achieve some amount of balance between owners and employees.
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