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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

#221

Post by wyre »

lettergram wrote: post #214
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…

People are paid fairly, they accept the wages they’re being paid. In the alternative world you describe, many/most wouldn’t have a job (at least not doing what they enjoy).

Ha. There’s already a large cohort of people that are not being paid fairly and/or working a job they don’t enjoy and/or don’t have a job.

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

#222

Post by crazygringo »

jandrese wrote: post #178
chasing wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I always like when small business complain that "payroll is the majority of our expenses", but when you look at the expenses it is something like: Income: $100,000/month Expenses: $50,000/month Payroll: Cashier: $290/month Cashier: $290/month Cashier: $290/month Janitor: $290/month Security: $290/month Manager: $1,000/month Owner: $45,000/month "How can I keep my business afloat? We've already cut the staff down to t…

That isn't remotely the type of breakdown of any business I've never seen. Not even close.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but you'd be better off using real numbers to do it. I've never come across a business owner taking 45% of total income. Competition ensures those kinds of profit levels generally don't exist.

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

#223

Post by fbdab103 »

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/…

Really hard to dissuade people from passion.

From a different perspective: teachers. From most absolute criteria, teaching is a horrible profession. Significant credential requirements, lousy pay, hard hours, dealing with occasional rotten child/parent. Yet millions agree to do it because they want to impact the next generation.

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

#224

Post by michaelmrose »

ekianjo wrote: post #120
chasing wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

First, there is no such thing as a "fair pay". All of it is driven by demand and supply, always, except when regulations or external factors somehow break things. Second, of course increased costs of production lead to consequences for end users or people who buy the content. We see that all of the time in every industry.

One could reasonably define fair in terms of a nations minimum wage while discarding any nonsensical carve outs designed to appease particular industries, you could define it in turns of what it costs to live a reasonable life in the nation in question, and you could define it in turns of ratio of gross profit to income of average employee.

There are so many ways to define fair we could write essays on which method was most accurate and useful.

Free markets only exist in economics textbooks. Real markets unconstrained are always hopelessly broken. Bereft of rules most of the work would end up owned by a tiny number of companies who would agree what wages should be and agree not to hire each others workers. They would make access to all the most desirable work they control contingent on rules designed to strangle up and coming competitors in the cradle and gradually increase price to the absolute most the market would bear. Impoverishing the people who actually do the work would poison the pool of workers gradually destroying quality of content while companies increased prices to make up for lost profit and blamed piracy.

Capitalism is a toddler left on a rug with a cocked gun. The kid always finds the gun.

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

#225

Post by [deleted] »

astrange wrote: post #142
nitwit005 wrote: post #78

> because people just don't particularly care enough to look through the glass. No, I suspect absolutely everyone with any knowledge of animation knows animators are paid terribly. The article itself has a meme image about the pay.

Western animators aren't paid that terribly, just anime animators, and only some of them. But part of the compromise that Western animation does to be more productive is that it all looks bad. There's a fake-anime style Superman cartoon on I saw that has the artistic quality of maybe a Japanese elementary schooler. And then Netflix makes animated sex comedies that look like old Flash cartoons.

[deleted]

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

#226

Post by Thaxll »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #131
nextworddev wrote: post #65

Then who’s making money?

Maybe no one. There is no rule that says someone has to get rich out of every industry. You don't see a lot of agriculture billionaires. Nor airline billionaires. Some industries just kind of suck.

Food compagny buy from agriculture industry. They're the one getting the biggest cut.

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

#227

Post by charcircuit »

astrange wrote: post #199
charcircuit wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even so, it is true and does happen. Though I suspect it is less about pushing an ideology and more for trying to appeal to an audience of the localizer's peers. Either way the end result is that it repulsed a demographic of the distribution platform's target audience. Beyond that official translations often don't come with honorific, don't bother explaining puns, are not literal translations, try to replace a Japane…

> more for trying to appeal to an audience of the localizer's peers Or for people who aren't already familiar with the culture. For instance if you're translating a romance novel or otome game (romance game for women) you'd want to localize the body language it describes men using, because what Japanese women like, American women think is offputting and rapey, and a romance story doesn't work as a romance if it turns…

>This is a giveaway you don't speak Japanese.

I can, but believe what you want. I don't have a need to prove it to others.

>Honorifics are not actually important or meaning-bearing.

This is plain wrong as there are scenes where honorifics are significant. Who uses (or doesn't use) which honorific with which people is important. Characters change the honorific they use with each other. Characters talk about what honorifics people are using.

>something that supposedly never happens.

Says who?

>if audiences expect this it means translators have to start translating some honorifics

Personally, I don't think they need to translate them. The actual meaning of it is usually not important and if it is it could be left up to the viewer or put in a TL note. An exception to this is certain usages of 殿, but this is usually handled by changing the phrasing of the rest of the sentence.

>You probably know さん but not 氏 or ちゃま

I do know them.

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

#228

Post by Arainach »

ekianjo wrote: post #166
Arainach wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses do not have an inherent right to exist. If you can't pay a living wage, comply with regulations, and be profitable, your business model is not valid and your business should fail and close. Predictions of dire consequences rarely pan out. Fast food employees in Seattle are earning $15-20/+ per hour and prices did not double - in fact they're not significantly higher than in neighboring counties with lower…

Are you inherently saying that the Japanese anime industry is not following regulations? Because they are, and they have been surviving this way for decades and have no problem finding people who want to work there.

You skipped over the first clause of the sentence: "If you can't pay a living wage"

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

#229

Post by mistrial9 »

ycdxvjp wrote: post #115
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…

It can be fixed. People need to learn some basic finance if they want to influence how creator economy businesses run. If you can't do that make friends with business experience who you can trust and rely on. If you can't do either, don't get into a creative field. Most of the time creatives just hand over all financial decisions completely to some one else. And then guess what, the financial engineers gain much more…

> You will not find a single sucess story

certainly depends on the definition of success..

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

#230

Post by ff2400t »

astrange wrote: post #202
Der_Einzige wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, all western animation looks bad? Such sweeping generalizations, and so wrong. Exhibit A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_NIMH Exhibit B. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince_of_Egypt Exhibit C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Into_the_Spider-Ve...

Two of those three are over 30 years old and the other is a movie with a $90M budget. I was talking about TV shows. Though I've heard things like Castlevania are good, haven't seen it though.

You should also give Arcane a shot, it's one of the beautifully animated and written series I have seen.
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