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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

#311

Post by Ferret7446 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #212
idopmstuff wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If people were paid fairly, most productions would be untenable. >A similar argument was used in favor of perpetuating slavery prior to the civil war. I suspect the end result here will actually be fairly comparable to post-slavery agriculture, in that technology will eliminate a lot of these jobs. Tough to imagine that GenAI doesn't have an enormous impact on anime over the next few years.

>Tough to imagine that GenAI doesn't have an enormous impact on anime over the next few years. It depends a lot on the culture there. 1) there are actual labor laws in Japan, so they can't just cut off 90% of their workforce at the snap of the finger 2) there is a much stronger culture of conformity in Japan. So it is much easier to shame a company when getting negative PR in Japan and those complaints can overcome r…

> Also, tech wise AI is at least 5 years out from anything animated. What I've seen in motion so far is extremely crude.

I... think you are overestimating that by a lot. We went from nothing to AlphaGo to ChatGPT to Midjourney et al within a few years, with the timespan between each shortening.

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

#312

Post by Ferret7446 »

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…

An industry does not need to make profit at all. The only people who care about profit are the investors in that industry (the shareholders). Everyone working in the industry, from the bottom rungs to the top execs get paid compensation which is deducted as a cost.

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

#313

Post by Prickle »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #308
chasing wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of it is driven by demand and supply, always, except when regulations or external factors somehow break things. This is very much not true for worker salaries. For one thing, workers can not easily hop from area of expertise to area of expertise like capital can — and workers oftentimes lack the ability to take the high risk that might comes with quitting a job in search of another or attempting to switch caree…

> For one thing, workers can not easily hop from area of expertise to area of expertise like capital can Uh, last I checked, capital is not capable of hopping from area of expertise to area of expertise. A GPU cannot decide to become a burger flipping robot (much to the dismay of some crypto investors).

I thought capital in this context meant investment money. Not finished products.

A investor can quickly move capital from one industry to another, but the worker cannot.

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

#315

Post by numpad0 »

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…

IMO, this is becoming quickly into minor points thanks to VTuber explosion. I can't describe my shock when I first witnessed "the brat needs correction" cliche, used correctly, collecting upvotes on Reddit. Just few years ago it was at best off context ara-aras.

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

#316

Post by lotsofpulp »

tomcam wrote: post #298
lotsofpulp wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but we can at least start with the more fundamental resources that have to be shared amongst people and are in limited quantities, such as land. Driving giant pickup trucks for no productive reason also uses up a societal resource, and increases societal risks, so I would not mind seeing extra taxes on those compared to more reasonable methods of transport, and a case could be easily made that all personal veh…

Does property tax count in your scheme? Do you understand that for many people in the world, the car you or at least people in your peer group might drive would be the equivalent of a giant pickup truck to them? Who decides what a reasonable method of transportation is? For example, the bus system is terrible where I live. Am I allowed to have a giant pickup truck under your scheme or should that be taxed the same as…

Property tax is the same as a wealth tax.

> Do you understand that for many people in the world, the car you or at least people in your peer group might drive would be the equivalent of a giant pickup truck to them?

Yes, I am aware these schemes would require reducing consumption for quite a few people.

> Who decides what a reasonable method of transportation is?

Society? But it has to be planned with long term consequences in mind. Are we prioritizing pedestrians over individual car owners and detached single family home owners or not, because the two are wholly incompatible.

> For example, the bus system is terrible where I live. Am I allowed to have a giant pickup truck under your scheme or should that be taxed the same as if I had a better mass transit system near me?

You are allowed to have whatever you want, just like you can have a $10M home right now, but society does not need to give you the streets and parking lots to use the giant pickup truck.

The mass transit system will come about eventually, but probably will take decades of rezoning. I think voters making this kind of sacrifice is realistic at all, people’s priority at the polls is which politician will allow them to consume as much as possible.

> How would you monitor use of my giant pickup truck to be sure I was using it practically in a way that meets your requirements for proper pickup truck usage?

Again, high fossil fuel prices take care of this, especially at marginal tax rates. Use a little fuel? Less tax. Use more fuel? Higher taxes. At some tax rate, it will no longer make sense for 90% of people to use a pickup truck if they don’t need it.

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

#317

Post by jubulence »

Anime prioritises high production rates over quality. Anime looks largely samey. There's a few notable distinctions, like Attack on Titan, but the animators on that are getting paid better then what's being quoted in this article. This article is quoting the pay scales for the animators working on single season anime that get cancelled halfway through that are based on an obscure manga that has only been read because it was published in a major magazine, but was never particularly popular and actually got cancelled a month before the anime came out. Yeah, there's a lot of great anime, and the stuff we get in the West is the stuff that's popular, with proper studios putting time and effort in. The people getting paid $5 a day aren't working on the major productions. Sure, the people that did Fairy Tale probably can get paid more, but the guys working on Visual Prison, yeah, they're not priority. Why don't they unionise? Because the people who would most benefit are afraid they might lose their jobs in the industry they want to work in. Is this backed by studies? Nope, but you tell that to someone facing down the prospect of losing their chance at their dream. And the 15% average wage increase from unionisation, let's be honest, isn't going to do anything. The issue here is the output. If anime is going to be more humane, it needs to cut how much random noise they produce. Look at Western animation. You get a handful of shows a year. Anime you get 3 years of content every 3 months. Workers are the ones that bear the brunt of that schedule.

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

#318

Post by soulofmischief »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #295
soulofmischief wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people were paid fairly, most productions would be untenable. A similar argument was used in favor of perpetuating slavery prior to the civil war. > People just have to accept that means the industry will shrink dramatically. So many things will just never get made. I've accepted that. Now let's pay people fairly for their time and skill. > That also means far fewer people will get to become animators. They’ll h…

How is telling people to live off donations not just an end run around your wage rules? They don't apply if you're self employed?

My wage rules? You think fairly compensated labor is just some idea I came up with?

Most of the people whom I contribute to are able to work full-time on their passions through donations and make more than they would if they were traditionally employed.

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

#319

Post by mlrtime »

pjmlp wrote: post #309
ekianjo wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

japanese animators are not living in the streets, homeless and starving so I am not sure what this "if" is about

I bet they aren't living great either, when compared with western consumers with bookshelfs full of anime.

You just moved the goalposts.

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

#320

Post by mlrtime »

soulofmischief wrote: post #318
nvm0n2 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is telling people to live off donations not just an end run around your wage rules? They don't apply if you're self employed?

My wage rules? You think fairly compensated labor is just some idea I came up with? Most of the people whom I contribute to are able to work full-time on their passions through donations and make more than they would if they were traditionally employed.

There is no such thing as a fair wage, fair is subjective and this can be debated for hours by academics.

What we have (in some countries) is: 1) Minimum wage: defined as the least amount legal to pay someone. 2) Living wage: loosely defined as the wage needed for minimum living standards for a given region 3) Market wage: What the market determines your value is worth based on supply/demand.

None of these are "fair" and they aren't usualy the same but sometimes can be.

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