Japanese animation industry

[Brad Gerst]

This article was sent to me and I thought I would post it here for others to read. Any thoughts or opinions on this developing trend?



QUICK DISSOLVE: Spirited away: As merchandisers grow rich, the animation industry is losing jobs to cheaper labor abroad.

By YUZURU TAKANO and KIYOHIDE INADA: The Asahi Shimbun

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`Unless something is done, Japanese anime will be ruined.' KOICHI MURATA President of animation company Oh Production
For all the fat profits that Japanese animation generates from merchandise these days, the wallets of the animators who piece the cartoons together are as thin as the cels they painstakingly paint.

To take one example, the worldwide market for the video games and merchandise related to the late-1990s cartoon series Pokemon is worth some 3 trillion yen.

Yet an animator, toiling away on cels in a tiny Tokyo studio, might be fortunate to pull in just 50,000 yen a month.

Much of the recent interest in, and the money for, Japanese animation, popularly known as anime, comes from abroad, notes Kiyokazu Matsumoto, president of Dream Ranch Inc., a Sony Music Group company.

Matsumoto said one U.S. toy manufacturer offered his company about $10 million (about 1.1 billion yen) for the rights to market merchandise featuring the characters of an animated cartoon his company hadn't even completed. The figure was particularly eye-popping for Matsumoto because it was 100 times what animated films earn on average from broadcasting rights in Japan.

The offer came just as Matsumoto and his company were starting to map out an animation based on illustrations by an artist whose works often appear on comic book covers.

Dream Ranch has since neared a deal with a Hollywood company to turn the story into a full-length animation.

In recent years, the trend has been to turn cartoon characters into merchandise and video games as quickly as possible.

It was the Pokemon series in the late 1990s that revolutionized the conventional notion that animation was first and foremost for the domestic market and the overseas market a mere side business.

Pokemon video games, stuffed dolls and other merchandise proved an instant success when they hit the U.S. market. About 120 million Pokemon video games have so far been shipped around the world. The Pokemon cartoon has aired in 68 nations.

The Tokyo-based company that manages the Pokemon copyright has licensing contracts with about 200 companies overseas and about 70 in Japan. About 2,000 items, including stationery and toys, now feature Pokemon characters.

Of course, international acclaim for Japanese animation is nothing new, having started with ``Astro Boy'' in the early 1960s.

More recently, Hayao Miyazaki's ``Spirited Away'' won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival in 2002 and then won Best Animated Feature Film at the Academy Awards the following year.

Mamoru Oshii's ``Innocence'' was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May and will open at theaters in 10 major U.S. cities this fall.

The creators of ``Innocence'' are also fully aware of the ripeness of the overseas market for Japanese animation. In part to channel the animation toward the American mainstream, they spent about 2 billion yen making the film, an enormous amount in Japan for an animated feature. A sum of a similar level was also spent to make ``Spirited Away.'' Still, this is nowhere near what Hollywood spends on animated films, which cost the equivalent of about 10 billion yen each.

The sponsors of ``Innocence'' include major Japanese companies as well as the Disney group.

The producer of ``Innocence,'' Katsuji Morishita of the studio Production I.G., notes, ``Unlike conventional anime, we aimed for Hollywood from the beginning.''

Because Japanese animation creators have nowhere near the funds of Disney animators, they must make do with fewer frames and instead concentrate on creating appealing story lines. They also have at their disposal perhaps the largest number of comic books in the world to tap into for inspiration.

``Japanese animations tell good stories and are popular overseas, too,'' says Yasuki Hamano, a media professor at the University of Tokyo. ``They have a lot of potential to be competitive overseas.''

At the same time, however, the small subcontractors that have made Japanese animation such a big success are now fast losing out to competitors in South Korea and China, where labor costs are lower.

Many of the 70 or so subcontractors clustered in Tokyo's Suginami Ward are in a bind. Even as the cost of rent and paying animators rises, there has been no corresponding rise in production budgets.

One of those feeling the pinch is Oh Production, which created the cels for popular animations like ``Arupusu no Shojo Haiji'' and ``Chibi Maruko-chan.''

Disheartened by a monthly salary that tops out at 50,000 yen, a 26-year-old animator who joined the production team a year ago said, ``Sometimes I want to give up-I never imagined it would be like this.'' Only with parental financial support can the animator make ends meet. A single cel earns an animator 200 yen, yet might, if the image is complicated, take a whole day to make.

Of the approximately 440 animation production companies in the country, about 70 percent are small, with 30 workers or fewer, according to one estimate.

Such companies receive around 10 million yen for a single job from advertisers and sponsors. Sometimes, it isn't enough to cover costs.

The real money comes from broadcast rights, which are usually held by TV stations, publishers and major animation production companies. Consequently, the small subcontractors do not share in the windfall from thriving sales of merchandise featuring animated characters.

Many young animators, fed up with the low pay, quit in a few years. And with more and more cels getting painted in South Korea and China, many in the domestic industry worry about the ``hollowing out'' of the animation industry.

``Unless something is done, Japanese anime will be ruined,'' laments Oh Production President Koichi Murata. (IHT/Asahi: June 2,2004) (06/02)

[Shany]

actually animes has no resonable story lines what so ever.
iv seen lotsa anime movies and none of them made any sense and were just hell boring till i gave up on them [last ones were: 'princes moko'..something, 'spirited away'..etc.
animation was always beautiful thats for sure, but no story line..

well, the pokemon story as mentioned above was at first a video game -> turned into anime only to sell the video game -> movies (to sell the dolls) -> new video games.

its not the first time animation is created in order to market th toy line, it also happened in the 80's with cartoons like: transformers/gijoe..etc where hasbro always created new toy and featured it in the animation just to sell it.

anime suffers from what we call 'mass animation productions', there are too mabye anime movies, too mabye cartoons, too manue hentais..
so there fore the market is tight with allot of pressure, so no wonder animator gets low payment.

[Danimation]

It's scary to think about making so little working in those studios. 50,000 yen roughly converts to about $614 CAD, or $456. I know there is no way I could survive on that wage per month! Isn't Japan one of the most expensive places in the world to live as well? Crazy stuff. I guess there is no stopping the the studios getting work done outside of Japan, look what happened to North America's animation industry. (Insert game over noise here)

[Wade K]

Originally Posted by Shany

actually animes has no resonable story lines what so ever.
iv seen lotsa anime movies and none of them made any sense and were just hell boring till i gave up on them [last ones were: 'princes moko'..something, 'spirited away'..etc.
animation was always beautiful thats for sure, but no story line...

Carefull with comments such as this, Shany, as they will probably spark outrage on the forum, and believe me, it is damned frustrating. As much as some of us hate Japanimation, there are many more who absolutely love it. I am with you though on your opinion... I think the stories and animation are absolutely LUDICROUS, but we have to be careful to mention that this is OUR PERSONAL opinion. And don't even get me STARTED on their ORIGINAL (?) character designs! I to wish the stuff would just go away, or stay in Japan, but too many over here like it. (I am in no way trying to cause an arguement on this...)

Originally Posted by Shany

its not the first time animation is created in order to market th toy line, it also happened in the 80's with cartoons like: transformers/gijoe..etc where hasbro always created new toy and featured it in the animation just to sell it.

Lets not forget "Les Schtroumpfs" (did I spell that right?). The smurfs were a HUGE success due to their high-priced commercials. I hate to say it, but I really kind of liked the smurfs' series though. But then, back then I was young and knew nothing about animation, and I have not seen it since. Who knows what I would think of it now, now that I know more?

Cheers

[cybercyst]

Originally Posted by Danimation

It's scary to think about making so little working in those studios. 50,000 yen roughly converts to about $614 CAD, or $456.

...I just think it's funny that they make less than us, and yet their animation is still ten times as better.

[cybercyst]

By the way Shany...is your avatar not Ryu, from Capcom's 'Street Fighter' (made into an anime once)...? Whaddya dissin' on anime for?

[grega]

Not a big fan of anime, I thought Spirited Away was over rated. However check out 'Metropolis' there's a kind of anime meets Tintin thing going on. A very cool film.

Saying all that I'm not a big fan of American animation either.

[Brad Gerst]

I agree, the Japanese do produce a lot of garbage animation, but occasionally you can find something decent that is worth watching. The article had me looking at the similarities between the situation here in the US and there in Japan. Studios here in the States went from producing all of their animations in house to sending some work out to other studios to sending most of the work to overseas studios to keep production costs down. The Japanese, who probably produce and watch more animation than any other nation in this world, seem to be following the trend. How long will it be before they are completely reliant upon South Korea, Philippines, India, China, etc. for nearly all of their animation production needs? Won’t this increase the cost of productions in those countries? As the cost of production in those countries increase, what effects does it have on the state of the industry here? Will it increase the job opportunities in North America? Slow down the production of animation? Or does it mean that another country will set up an industry to help meet everyone’s needs?

[pwassink]

Originally Posted by Shany

actually animes has no resonable story lines what so ever.

this must be the single most silly remark i have ever seen on the awn forum.
and then this one:

Originally Posted by Shany

iv seen lotsa anime movies and none of them made any sense and were just hell boring till i gave up on them [last ones were: 'princes moko'..something, 'spirited away'..etc.
animation was always beautiful thats for sure, but no story line....

i mean.....no storyline in princess Mononoke!?

o.k Shane it worked you managed to get a reaction on your post and i'm not even an anime fan.
i think a discussion on the difference approach to storytelling, between American and japanese films would be very interesting
but why put it so extremely provocative (because i assume you were not being serious)

[Shany]

Originally Posted by cybercyst

By the way Shany...is your avatar not Ryu, from Capcom's 'Street Fighter' (made into an anime once)...? Whaddya dissin' on anime for?

yeah its ryu, the avatar is not from the anime movies, its from the ex3 game series.
i like the street fighter series as a 2d fighting game, it had 2 anime movies though, the first had a simple and folowing story line where there is no need to think.. just fighting each other, it is ridicules anyway, the art was pretty good compare to most extreme anime as we see today, the first movie was out around 1994 i think, so the anime wasn't that extreme at that time,

the second movie however is a complete waste of time to see & draw, there si no plot what so ever [even if they fight] the art is really awfull.
see the picture you put, not only the colors are dead, the character looks awfull as well.

capcom made really fine 2d games back than, it summerise with sf3:3rd strike , no game ever matched this one.

btw, as wade said, it is my PERSONAL ideas, other may think US animation [disney alike] is bad and anime is cool.
i didn't type to start a flame of war, just poiting out about my thoughs on anime.

@pwassink:
the whole point of my thread was to show that allot of anime movies/shows are created with no sense plot (ie: ghost in the shell, akira..and more) with fairly good animation, we do know japan ppl has good and wasted talent, just to produce what we call 'fast flick' to gain more money.
behold, most of those animes has fighting/blood/death and uncencored parts to keep the audience 'focused' while the story still has no sense.
i don't even count poor kids who watch those .