Anime

Another entry in the anime is a broken industry series of articles.

This source article linked has a lot of detail, so I encourage you to read it if you are interested in more. I have tried my best to highlight what I think are the most important bits below.

Firstly, it seems that the world can't get enough anime, driving up demand rapidly in international (ex-Japan) markets.

According to the statistics quoted in the report, the overseas anime industry market grew sixfold (from 0.2 to 1.5 trillion yen) in the last ten years compared to the domestic market which only grew around 1.3 times in the same period.

However, the report notes that there are a couple issues that are limiting the industry from meeting this demand. There are a lot more details in the article, but the quick highlights are (slight editing for clarity)

• Low wages for animators

  • an animator in the anime industry between the ages of 20 to 24 earned 1.23 million yen (~$8500 USD) less on average than a person from another industry

• Lack of benefits and job security

  • it was found that there was a high chance that they will fall into poverty in case their health deteriorates or if they had other problems

• Bad (but getting better) working hours

  • in 2017, approximately 30 percent of animators worked 260 hours or more in a month (more than 100 hours of overtime). This number reduced to just 10 percent in 2022.

• Lack of on-the-job training

  • The report noted that there was currently very little incentive to improve the on job training facilities

• Poor revenue opportunities for studios to rectify any of the above

  • The studios currently only earn 6 percent of overall overseas sales of the works they are involved in, and 16 percent of the domestic sales.

There are a couple proposed solutions in the report:

• Creation of industry specific labor unions

  • Creation of labor specific unions...would not just guarantee the minimum wages, but also the working hours, sick leave, holidays, health benefits and other factors.

• Increased share of revenue given to animation studios

  • the report suggested that...anime production studios be given a 30 percent share of the IPs they are working on regardless of whether they are part of production committees or not

• Government intervention to push back against distribution companies

  • Considering that such a move might see opposition from the distribution companies involved, government intervention was urged [by the report]