Was surfing ard and found a piece of article on 'behind the scenes of anime'.Read on DMDians,this won't suprise you especially if you've done FYP. =)



Animators are Slaves


The discussion starts with the pay and working hours of animators.

Lets start with a Survey detailing the salaries earned by Japanese animators.

Working an average of 10.2 hours a day, 49.5% of them reported that they feel that their salaries are not sufficient for the work they do and 90% of them feel that the benefits and pensions are insufficient.

26.8% earn less than 1 million yen (US$8,500 approx.) annually, 19.6% earn between 1 million yen and 2 million yen (US$17,000 approx.) annually, 18.6% earn between 2 million yen and 3 million yen (US$25,700 approx.) annually. 65% of Japanese animators earn less than 3 million yen annually.

One category of animators, the storyboard animators who are responsible for drawing up outlines and sketches of how the animation will run, earns even less. They are often paid on a "per frame" basis, earning an average of 187 yen (US$1.60 approx.) per frame. 73.7% of these animators earn less than 1 million yen per year and the highest paid storyboard animators earn at most 80% of what other types of animators make.

Kj1980 has quite the facts to add."Animators (gengaka) here are viewed as the bottom rung of society - people who work close to 20+ hours a day, have to sleep at their office, who gets paid less than the people flipping burgers at McDonald’s, and never see a single yen from the profits from the sales. The head honcho (they can be the chief writer, the director, the original character designer, etc.) are the ones who bring up the idea, who do all the dealings with sponsors and TV studios, who are the brainchild of the series, stories, and whatnot. Hence, they reap in all the royalties and percentage of the profits. That’s why you have people like Akahori Satoru (main writer for many successful anime and games) who owns a Centurion American Express card, who lavishes around in expensive bars ordering $5,000+ bottles of wine, driving around in exotic cars and getting all the ladies. On the other hand, you have slaving low level animators who gets paid meager amounts in which they can’t pay their electric bills and are kicked out from their apartments for not being able to pay their rent.

If you persevere you might get a chance to be responsible for the chief animation director. And if you are able to get through that, you might make connections along the way to move up to become a director or a writer. But out of a pool of thousands of low level animators, the chances are slim."

Dafool, who is in the Filipino animation industry, gives some insight into hellish working conditions.


Do you want to sleep and bathe in the animation studio, going home (if at all) only during the weekends? (Sounds like the few weeks/months of my life.)

Do you want a steady diet of coffee, coke, Ministop fried chicken, 7-Eleven hotdogs, and cigarettes? (I live on coffee and instant noodles.Oh,and wedges too.)


Do you want to work very hard on a scene, only to have to redo it because someone down the pipeline thinks it sucks? Or worse, because some idiot accidentally deleted it. (i feel your pain...oh god)


Do you want to be assured that after the current project is over, you have no guarantee of your next work? (lol freelancer.)


Do you just love to bask in the condescending attitudes of the expats who make no effort to mask the fact that they dislike you because you are doing their job for cheap and who blame all bad quality on the outsourcing and subcontractors, and yet at the same time change their minds at the last minute to redo some scenes worse than they were to begin with? (hey wait this sounds painfully familiar!)


Do you like to work with people who did not have a good education, or who were involved in drugs at some point in their lives? (lol wut?)


Yes, it is still possible to be richer being a freelance animator than a salaryman. If you are superman and can pump out twenty feet a day, that is.(I CAN!)

Eggplant, who is living in Japan, notes the reasons behind the working conditions."This atrocious working environment is not only tolerated, it is legal. These animators are not employed by their respective studios, but instead are servicing their skills under a contractual agreement, with remuneration based on output (i.e., number of pages penciled/painted). In essence, they are not subject to labor laws, including the application of minimum wages and maximum hours of labor per week. Despite being technically immune to corporate regulations such as working hours, studios bind them to their desks until the quota is fulfilled, hinting that the slightest sign of insubordinance will lead to his/her firing, as animators are literally disposable, replaced by the next flock of unwitting wannabes.

But the majority of young animators are at the mercy of studios, to be exploited at will, and those that manage to stay on board will eventually encounter a reality check in the form of their services no longer being necessary. Then again, how can an average digital artist make ends meet at a per page rate of under 200 yen, when the maximum number of pages one can physically complete is 20 per day?

The anime industry is extremely closed and it is so for a reason. In comparison to other forms of entertainment, production costs for anime are extremely expensive, mainly to cover labor costs for the immense amount of hand drawn artwork. A thrity minute late night episode averages around US$200K, which is rather unpractical considering the resources needed to re-collect the money (primarily by DVD sales).

This was already an issue from the dawning ages of anime. Mushi Productions, the first Japanese anime studio, led by the legendary Tezuka Osamu, realized that cutting production costs was essential in the survival of future anime. All other studios followed suit, and eventually horrible working conditions became synonymous with anime production. This remained tacit knowledge for a long time, as if competetive studios were working in collusion in order to cover up the dark side of the indsutry.

Tezuka is praised for his work, as his contributions to the industry surpass any of his vices. However, he is also the center of controversy within the anime industry, and high profile people such as director Miyazaki Hayao has been known to criticize the late Tezuka of setting a precedent."



LOL.