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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

#231

Post by astrange »

charcircuit wrote: post #227
astrange wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 honor…

> Who uses (or doesn't use) which honorific with which people is important.

That's just a question of character voice. You can also say a translation is inaccurate because in the original the characters were speaking Japanese and now they're speaking English.

But as they say, it can't be helped. You just need to be sure readers can still distinguish who's speaking in the result by making people sound different.

> Says who?

Most language learning material and anime fan common knowledge? Even Wikipedia, though it has some caveats.

And of course there's real life situations where people call girls -kun as well.

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

#232

Post by awesomeMilou »

resonious wrote: post #194
steveBK123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

> People need to stop being so naive as to accept poorly paid jobs because they think the subject matter is 'funner'. Why? If I was really passionate about something, I would not mind low pay. For me, the blocker is that I'm not quite so passionate about anything. I suspect a lot of people think they're passionate about games but really are just addicted.

Congratulations, you just lowered wages for everyone involved across the board.

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

#233

Post by redwall_hp »

livueta wrote: post #71
echelon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s only going to get worse with AI now in the mix. s/worse/better Soon the creators and artists will be able to make full films without studio capital in the mix. This should start happening by the end of the year. The studio system exists because film and motion media is hard to make. It requires a lot of people, a lot of logistics, and a lot of capital. That's not going to be true for much longer. Soon the webc…

Agree. There's an example in democratization of music production tech: the market has become broader and deeper in direct proportion to the declining relevance of expensive hardware. In the context of Japanese culture, consider how many production/songwriting/instrumentalist/vocalist careers were launched by Vocaloid. The way it panned out has been the complete opposite of the death of the "real" vocalist industry; j…

Vocaloid is amazing for that. It's the final piece of the puzzle democratizing music creation. It's easily my favorite music scene for how fan-driven and collaborative it is. A few other major careers launched from that scene that come to mind:

Kenshi Yonezu started as the vocaloid producer Hachi, and went on to have numerous hits, including a few anime openings and recently the end credit songs for The Boy and the Heron and Final Fantasy XVI.

Yoasobi had one of the most popular music videos, globally, on YouTube last year and is playing Coachella this year. One half of Yoasobi is the (active) vocaloid producer Ayase. (Hatsune Miku is also on the list for Coachella, as well as a new North America tour...)

Ryo/Supercell has been big for awhile, Giga (who used to work with Reol) just did a Pokemon X Hatsune Miku collab and does work for Hololive songs occasionally...

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

#234

Post by hdnfofbrbt »

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…

No no and no.

Companies will find a way to make things work even if labour costs more. Every company and neo liberal says that same thing about regulation, employee wages, tax increases .... Funnily enough when those same regulations/wage increases/taxes come in they do not leave the market ... Strange.

Edit: clarity

Companies can and will adapt.

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

#235

Post by awesomeMilou »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #95
huytersd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But then by definition, that’s what their labor is worth. Unions can be a stopgap measure, but they can’t correct the underlying market forces. Or at least, I haven’t seen particularly persuasive evidence that unions can do more than make everyone collectively equal, which implies that everyone in X industry would be paid the same, or based on seniority rather than merit. Not my cup of tea, but I’m also privileged no…

which implies that everyone in X industry would be paid the same, or based on seniority rather than merit.

You're implying that being paid by seniority isn't already the case for most of the tech industry. Last time I checked, most job adverts are looking for "X years of experience in Y".

> Or at least, I haven’t seen particularly persuasive evidence that unions can do more than make everyone collectively equal

The work culture in europe is largely based on standardized work contracts, enforced by unions. For example, the entire railway industry in Germany is collectively unionized (~40k members) and is holding negotiations right now, to renew the terms of these standardized contracts.

The goal of a union is not to "make everyone equal", it is to enforce collective bargaining rights. This usually does lead to better employment conditions for everyone involved though.

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

#236

Post by awesomeMilou »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #114
vlovich123 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven’t seen particularly persuasive evidence that unions can do more than make everyone collectively equal, which implies that everyone in X industry would be paid the same, or based on seniority rather than merit. Not my cup of tea, but I’m also privileged not to have chosen a field suffering from a surplus of labor. It sounds like you actually have a wildly incorrect view of how unions can and do work. you may…

I’d be interested to learn. If there aren’t harmful effects to outliers (I.e. exceptional people can still earn a great deal) then that does give me pause. Possibly enough to change my mind. Thanks. If you have any references on where specifically to start reading, feel free to drop them here. Otherwise I’ll start at the acronyms you mentioned.

Most union contracts still allow for KPI's and bonuses, which can be customized and based on personal goals you set with your employer. So not sure what you mean?

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

#237

Post by jsemrau »

I believe that the movie industry is just before a major disruption.

1. Big movie studios have been overproducing content with reduced returns.

2. Business model change to direct-to-consumer (streaming).

3. Regulatory changes (DEI minority interests - Oscars).

4. Technological changes (generative AI).

5. Customer preferences (watch the review on Youtube).

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

#238

Post by charcircuit »

astrange wrote: post #231
charcircuit wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 honor…

> Who uses (or doesn't use) which honorific with which people is important. That's just a question of character voice. You can also say a translation is inaccurate because in the original the characters were speaking Japanese and now they're speaking English. But as they say, it can't be helped. You just need to be sure readers can still distinguish who's speaking in the result by making people sound different. > Say…

>That's just a question of character voice.

Fair, but I do feel that removing it is removing a social dynamic that can not simply be mapped just to the voice of a character.

>Most language learning material.

It happens in anime too, so that material is wrong and off topic from what was being discussed.

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

#239

Post by ff2400t »

dimgl wrote: post #182
autoexec wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like with movies/tv you can make a lot more progress with unions.

I don't think that necessarily applies. Over time movie stars tend to become their own products and movies sell because of their involvement. I just don't see the same thing happening with animators aside from the most prestigious.

I think that was reasonable thing to bet over a decade ago. But these days there are very few Big time movie star who can carry a movie on their back. The Last big movie star would be Tom Cruise and he also isn't a surefire way to success by how the latest Mission impossible Performed. The more reasonable thing to bet on these days is Recognizable IP which is what the Big studios have been milking for years. And that also gives more power to the Studio since people don't go to theater for Robert Pattison, they go there for Batman.

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

#240

Post by raincole »

hdnfofbrbt wrote: post #234
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…

No no and no. Companies will find a way to make things work even if labour costs more. Every company and neo liberal says that same thing about regulation, employee wages, tax increases .... Funnily enough when those same regulations/wage increases/taxes come in they do not leave the market ... Strange. Edit: clarity Companies can and will adapt.

> Companies will find a way to make things work even if labour costs more.

The way is to move / outsource to where it costs less. There is a reason that iPhones are mostly made in China.

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