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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

#281

Post by Arainach »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #268
Arainach wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Federal Minimum Wage was last updated in 2009. Since then, costs for food have gone significantly up and costs for rent have skyrocketed.

Sure, the US federal minimum wage. That's definitely an issue but one mitigated by states raising their own minimum wage. But the topic here is on Japan. They did increase their minimum wage last year, after the pandemic caused inflation in the Japanese economy for the first time in 30 years. Their economic situation is extremely different from the US which exploded (then receded, then kept rising) in those decades.

And yet the compensation and quality of life are very poor in this industry, as described in this article.

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

#282

Post by Auracle »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #216
Osmose wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code for America's union ratified their first contract last year. Kickstarter United ratified their first contract in 2022. I myself was in the Glitch union when we won voluntary recognition several years ago. (We had layoffs unrelated to the union and more related to a bad monetization scheme and high costs, during which the union negotiated increased severance and health insurance coverage vs we were initially offe…

Just wanted to say thank you, this is interesting to hear. Is there really no downside to unionizing? It seems too good to be true, or that it must come with some kind of catch. But enough people here have said nope, no catch, that I’m starting to reconsider whether it’s possible.

Unions can cause industries/companies to stagnate if they make it too hard to fire people or if they squeeze their respective companies out of too much money.

For union members pay, layoffs, etc. are often decided by seniority and not by ability or how hard you work.

Whether or not that's worth it is up to you.

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

#283

Post by astrange »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #261
astrange wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're not "fake anime style." A bunch of WB properties outsource their animation to Japanese anime studios.

But I'm not talking about those, I'm talking about one specific currently airing show. Though even if you outsource to Japan, it still depends who does the animation direction and storyboards.

(And coloring. I feel like it's easy to spot American attempts in particular because all the colors are too contrasty and oversaturated, and then they put glowy neon effects on top.)

Note, fake anime in other Asian countries is getting really good these days, and in fact is starting to take over Japan because other countries don't use the Japanese industry strategy of "never change anything and never try to make any money". Was just there and all the ads were for Blue Archive/Azur Lane/Honkai, which are Korean and Chinese.

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

#284

Post by astrange »

nemothekid wrote: post #247
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…

> but since non Japanese streaming platforms want to constantly expand their business no matter what This exact same conversation was happening on anime forum boards 20-30 years ago before Japanese streaming platforms knew they were people interested in watching their content overseas. There are gigabytes of forum posts of_fan produced content_ arguing over whether honorifics should be included, if puns should be exp…

There's a TV show translation group called TV-Nihon that actually does try to preserve everything as hard as possible. Everyone makes fun of them because their subtitles have random Japanese words scattered all over. And since Kamen Rider is written for small children it's not like the story is actually hard to understand.

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

#285

Post by Dalewyn »

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. Honorifics are not actually important or meaning-bearing.

As a Japanese man, you are dead wrong.

Using the wrong honorific or inappropriately not using one at all can be tantamount to shouting "fuck you" to someone here in the Anglosphere, an insult and offence of among the highest order.

>I heard a woman call a boy "Haru-chan", something that supposedly never happens.

That is mundane to a fault.

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

#286

Post by nitwit005 »

astrange wrote: post #280
nitwit005 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a quick search, that's probably "My Adventures with Superman", which is animated in South Korea: > My Adventures with Superman is an American animated superhero television series based on the DC Comics character Superman. The series is developed by Jake Wyatt, produced by Warner Bros. Animation and animated by Studio Mir in South Korea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Adventures_with_Superman

It is, but the style and production methods are controlled by Americans, unless they have direction and storyboarding being done in Korea as well. I'm not sure how payscales work for Korean outsourcing vs Western animation, though I guess I'd like to know.

You claimed the quality issues were due to the cost of Western animators, not because of American management.

South Korea has long been a place to outsource animation to to cut costs. Plenty of Japanese animated works with Korean names in the credits as well.

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

#287

Post by astrange »

Dalewyn wrote: post #285
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. Honorifics are not actually important or meaning-bearing. As a Japanese man, you are dead wrong. Using the wrong honorific or inappropriately not using one at all can be tantamount to shouting "fuck you" to someone here in the Anglosphere, an insult and offence of among the highest order. >I heard a woman call a boy "Haru-chan", something that supposedly never happens. Th…

> Using the wrong honorific or inappropriately not using one at all can be tantamount to shouting "fuck you" to someone here in the Anglosphere, an insult and offence of among the highest order.

I didn't mean it like that! I meant when they're being used normally and not meant to stand out. They're normal pleasantries and a bit of character voice, and both those things can be represented in English.

America isn't a honorific-heavy society, but there are certainly people who get offended if you don't call them Dr., etc, but this is rarely a plot point in a TV show and I don't think it's used that often in manga/anime either.

Though I don't find it that bad. My English copy of Count of Monte Cristo does have French honorifics (it uses M/Mme instead of Mr/Mrs) and that doesn't look weird. Japanese stories set in Britain also seem to like using British titles like "Milord" although, um, they don't really do it right.

Meanwhile I've seen subtitles for clips of Japanese vtubers where they don't put /enough/ swearing in. First one I ever saw had Pekora saying something was 気狂い, which they definitely didn't translate right. (Means "crazy" but it's a really bad word, kind of like "retarded".)

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

#288

Post by lchen_hn »

dylan604 wrote: post #260
HALtheWise wrote: post #243

Anime is a $25B industry in terms of revenue , but that doesn't actually imply anything in particular about whether there's any profit in it. I see people make this sort of mistake all the time, and it bugs me. In this particular case, I think the appropriate reaction is very different if the anime industry is wildly profitable vs losing money as a whole, but the article is happy to throw revenue numbers around in th…

If your industry is making $25B and there's no profit, your industry is not very efficient. I've been part of working with licensed content, so not actually in the production side from actually animating. However, just from the interaction with them in that manner, you can tell they are not working in anything that would make you think they are doing things efficiently at all. It only seems that would percolate throu…

That’s just not true. There are many industry that runs efficient but generate little profit. In general, the more competition, the less profit. Warren Buffett sold the airline business for this reason. Many businesses are simply too hard.

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

#289

Post by echelon »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #273
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…

Gamedev is close to this. I can assure you that indies will not get the better end of the deal here. Companies with money will out-advertise you, will out-produce you, and still hold onto valuable copyright despite the narrative here about signaling the end of copyright. And that's all before discussing how this will affect monetization. Indies already feel soft capped at $20/work and almost hard capped at $30. Will…

Gamedev is nothing like media. It's much easier to become a YouTuber or non-game indie creator.

Gamedev takes too damned long. You can't experiment and rapidly try new things.

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

#290

Post by astrange »

nitwit005 wrote: post #286
astrange wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, but the style and production methods are controlled by Americans, unless they have direction and storyboarding being done in Korea as well. I'm not sure how payscales work for Korean outsourcing vs Western animation, though I guess I'd like to know.

You claimed the quality issues were due to the cost of Western animators, not because of American management. South Korea has long been a place to outsource animation to to cut costs. Plenty of Japanese animated works with Korean names in the credits as well.

I mean that they can afford to pay the animators better because they're more productive with the production methods they use for the project. Or in other words, the management cuts costs more. I've seen animators talking about how they'll only use one line weight when drawing a character to save time or things like that as well.

That's not the entire reason of course, they also have larger budgets.

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