Japanese animators and directors unionized

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by Pell14

if that happen, i could assume a drop in quality?! omg . . . . . . . . . .

they are already doing it

pay more attention to the credit when it it rolling.

[SGT.Mitsuki]

Originally Posted by Pell14

if that happen, i could assume a drop in quality?! omg . . . . . . . . . .

dont worry quality of animes isnt rly something to worry that much about i meen it cant be that bad

just look at animes like ouran high school host club, those character drawings sometimes realy realy suck yet the story is fun n there for fun to watch

besides if japans animes go down in quality other anime producing countries will just take the lead in anime and japan will loose its pride, which is something very important to japanese people which might result into a solution of the problem where the animes their quality gets better n the workers get paid accordingly


@Xellos-_^ tbh only thing i pay attention to in the credits is the name of the opening or ending song if i like it couse i cant read kanji anyways : p

[Tri-ring]

Originally Posted by aohige

The anime "budget" is actually not the real reason why animators get paid so little.
It's because the middle man, the sinister "Dentsuu", takes out insane chunks from the budget.

Here's a chart example.


Sponsor puts out $500k for the anime budget.
Dentsuu and the TV studio eats up chunks of it, leaving only $80k for the actual production budget. Workers pay comes out of this also.
The real problem is the middle man taking away majority of it and leaving nothing for the workers.

That chart example is getting old since production houses are taking more and more prominent roles within the industry.
It's called quality control and without it the advertisement agency can't do anything about it for sponsors want's rating and if the sponsors don't get what they ask they usually switch ad agencies.
As for Dentsu being a monopoly well actually they aren't, not in the anime genre time slots anyways since ad agency like ADK which was not able to procure the primetime time slots settled with these niche slots which they still hold to this day.
Watch the opening credits very last part, it shows which has the strongest voice within the decision making.
It use to be the production house and ad agency but now a days it is some kind of joint committee like XXXproject or YYY committee. This is proof theat ad agencies are losing it's grip and art production houses are gaining a bigger role in quality control. A bigger role means larger share. (which does not necessarily means large wage for the individual animators but that is another story)

[Aoie_Emesai]

I don't mind. Everyone deserve their fair share.

[solomon]

I think it's very important for the animators to be in a better barganing position for benifits. it just makes logical sense from a welfare point of view.

As for how it will affect anime, I don't know. I think if they really wanted to, the Studios would just export ALL the labor overseas, like they do here and in canada. But they haven't yet and they only now started a union so.

My gut tells me that there won't be any real change percievable to us, unless you have a source on the inside.


As for the whole profits thing....hmm that is interesting. The number of anime has exploded scince the 80s. But I wonder where budgets are? I know in the USA, theyre down due to the loss of terrestrial broadcast coverage (and consequently ad revenue). Like Aohige has pointed out is, a lot of it is in the contracting. I remember in newtype they talked with Hiroyuki Yamaga of Gainax and how they didnt make any money until eva. They only were contracted a fraction of the revenue from mech but the sheer buttloads of it lead them to have major bucks roll in.

For Sunrise, TMS and the 800 pound gorrila TOEI profits i don't see being a problem though, as theyre all owned by major corps. (I wonder what ever happened to Tatsunoko though)

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by SGT.Mitsuki

now i do wonder wa kinda dreams ur having NoSanninWa !

Dreams with commercial sponsorship obviously.

[Ziv]

Originally Posted by Ryougi Shiki

This is a good thing, actually. It forces people to think of quality rather than pump out shit shows.

Or it could mean poor quality shows and high production costs because the workers have guaranteed jobs and union benefits.

[CPOK]

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

Dreams with commercial sponsorship obviously.

An advertisers wet dream!

[solomon]

Originally Posted by Tri-ring

That chart example is getting old since production houses are taking more and more prominent roles within the industry.
It's called quality control and without it the advertisement agency can't do anything about it for sponsors want's rating and if the sponsors don't get what they ask they usually switch ad agencies.
As for Dentsu being a monopoly well actually they aren't, not in the anime genre time slots anyways since ad agency like ADK which was not able to procure the primetime time slots settled with these niche slots which they still hold to this day.
Watch the opening credits very last part, it shows which has the strongest voice within the decision making.
It use to be the production house and ad agency but now a days it is some kind of joint committee like XXXproject or YYY committee. This is proof theat ad agencies are losing it's grip and art production houses are gaining a bigger role in quality control. A bigger role means larger share. (which does not necessarily means large wage for the individual animators but that is another story)

So wait, the ad agency eats up all the money and then what, pushes the show? It really makes little sense to me. And like wao said, how can studios like Gainax or BONES stay afloat? I mean by that nature you can really only rely on the otaku market unless you have an Eva or a Hagaren to really make big bucks on.

In the US for example, I believe the sponsor gives the money to the network then it goes to the studio and the network pays fees to broadcast the show, which it recoups through ad revenue.

Apparently in Japan, anime companies PAY to have their show on the air.......wierd.

[SeijiSensei]

The economics of the anime industry have puzzled many of us here for quite some time now. One of the best discussions is in this thread.

But to respond to your comment, some anime shows, especially late-night shows targeting the otaku audience, are not paid for by commercial advertising. Rather the shows themselves are the advertisement, paid for by the production committee and designed to generate sales of the DVDs and related paraphernalia. That makes the economics of anime production rather different from traditional advertiser-supported television. For instance, DVD boxsets for American television programs are usually much cheaper on a per-hour basis than DVDs for anime in the US or in Japan. Largely* that's because the American DVDs represent "gravy" to the producers; the original production costs were covered by advertising revenues when the show was first televised. For anime, that's not always true.

___________________

*There are also the issues of market size and the "elasticity" of demand. The larger the market, the better you can amortize the costs of production over the number of units sold. For small-market products like anime, there are so many fewer sales that production costs necessarily consume a greater proportion of the revenues generated per unit. On top of that, the demand for anime has in the past been rather "inelastic," meaning that cutting prices does not expand total sales enough to generate higher overall revenues. Both these factors also play an important role in keeping prices for anime DVDs relatively high in comparison to mainstream television shows.

[Tri-ring]

One thing people need to realize is that anime is not a stand-alone product but part of a much larger franchise which includes the original book and/or manga, console games, character licensing, music promotion, CD sales and video sales.
The anime is developed as a catalyst to glue all the components together to sell coherently to achieve sales not possible when done seperately.

The stake holders are original license holders(publishers), music artists/management agencies/record labels, software houses, video labels, anime production houses and TV station. The ad agency is there to coodinate, manage and adjust each stake holder's share in accordance to their contribution.

The license holder lends the license at minimum price to the anime production house for it to be created to gain promotion of original content, music artists lends songs at again minimum price so to gain promotion time, publishers/software houses/record labels provides financial support through sponsorship of anime program on TV to make sure the anime gains coverage so that thier products achieves maximum sales, anime production companies creates the anime at minimum wage in exchange of video sales loyalty and derived licensing rights based on animed character.
The ad agency does the negotiation with the TV station, promotion for sponsorship of the anime itself and licensing of chracter, promotion of the music utilized, promotion of the DVDs and so on.

It is a more complex syndicate then most people realize.
The past when it was more of an ad agency centric system is gone with change in lifestyle when people started to look beyond the boobtube to gain all sort of information making it difficult to control propagation of information.
For example if you look at the TOP 10 music chart of Japan you'll find many songs that are anime intros but many people doesn't realize it originated from an anime.

[stormy001_M1A2]

One thing for sure, Japanese anime industry despite the types of output they generated which is very futuristic, their control is remarkably Tokugawa style oligarchic where workers were literally just peons driven to death for the "greater good". Somebody is making money, just not animators. Hence it is not surprising that things have come to this.

Question is, what future of this genre will be? More commercialized? More artsy? Or just crumble on its own weight?

[Nosauz]

looking at some of the current animes with kurokami being simlecasted dubbed and multi casted with subs shows that liscensing is not a viable industry, and once that elephant dissappears much like the gamestops of videogaming, then more of the money will trickle down to actual makers. Its just one too many chains in the link to feed all these people and you can't take out the anchor so something in the middle has to be cut thats just how the chain works. Unionizing would actually hurt more than just removing many of these groups that have little to no involvment in the actual production process of anime, which would mean a general shift toward the western system which I really do shudder at the thought of, because the reason why anime is so different from western tv franchises is because they don't really care about prolonging a series over its set course due to budget constraints and due to the fact that otaku do not spend their money like most westeners.