How Many Animators Work on an Anime Series

The nighttime side of Nippon'south anime industry

Anime brings in more than than $19 billion a year. Its artists are earning barely enough to survive.

By Jul ii, 2022, 8:30am EDT

Pikachu'south thunderbolt struck America in 1998 and changed the lives of a generation.

The United states of america anime craze started at the turn of the century with Crewman Moon'south center-school magical girls out to salve faraway planets; One Piece's pirates, cyborgs, and fish people seeking a legendary treasure; and Pokémon's Ash Ketchum on a noble quest to "grab 'em all."

These classic shows and many others led the accuse; between 2002 and 2017, the Japanese animation industry doubled in size to more than $nineteen billion annually. One of the nearly influential and renowned anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion, finally debuted on Netflix this month, marker the end of years of anticipation and a new height in anime's global accomplish.

Only anime's outward success conceals a disturbing underlying economic reality: Many of the animators behind the onscreen magic are broke and face working atmospheric condition that tin can atomic number 82 to burnout and even suicide.

The tension betwixt a ruthless industry construction and anime's artistic idealism forces animators to suffer exploitation for the sake of art, with no solution in sight.

Anime's slave labor trouble

Anime is well-nigh entirely drawn by manus. Information technology takes skill to create hand-drawn animation and experience to practise information technology speedily.

Shingo Adachi, an animator and grapheme designer for Sword Art Online, a popular anime TV series, said the talent shortage is a serious ongoing problem — with nearly 200 animated TV series solitary fabricated in Nippon each year, there aren't plenty skilled animators to go around. Instead, studios rely on a large pool of essentially unpaid freelancers who are passionate near anime.

At the entry level are "in-betwixt animators," who are usually freelancers. They're the ones who make all the individual drawings later the height-level directors come up with the storyboards and the middle-tier "primal animators" draw the important frames in each scene.

In-between animators earn around 200 yen per drawing — less than $2. That wouldn't be so bad if each artist could crank out 200 drawings a day, but a unmarried cartoon tin have more than an 60 minutes. That's not to mention anime's meticulous attention to details that are generally ignored by animation in the West, similar food, architecture, and landscape, which can take four or five times longer than average to draw.

"Even if you movement upwardly the ladder and become a primal-frame animator, you won't earn much," Adachi said. "And even if your title is a huge hitting, similar Attack on Titan, you won't make whatsoever of it. … It's a structural problem in the anime industry. There'due south no dream [chore every bit an animator]."

Working weather are grim. Animators oft fall asleep at their desks. Henry Thurlow, an American animator living and working in Japan, told BuzzFeed News he has been hospitalized multiple times due to illness brought on by burnout.

One studio, Madhouse, was recently accused of violating labor code: Employees were working nearly 400 hours per month and went 37 sequent days without a single day off. A male animator's 2014 suicide was classified every bit a work-related incident after investigators found he had worked more than 600 hours in the calendar month leading up to his death.

Part of the reason studios use freelancers is and so they don't need to worry most the labor lawmaking. Since freelancers are contained contractors, companies can enforce grueling deadlines while saving money by not providing benefits.

"The problem with anime is that it just takes style besides long to make," Zakoani, an animator at Studio Yuraki and Douga Kobo, said. "It'due south extremely meticulous. One cut — one scene — would have iii to four animators working on it. I make the crude drawings, so two other people would cheque it, a more senior animator and the manager. And then it gets sent dorsum to me and I make clean it up. And so information technology gets sent to another person, the in-betweener, and they brand the final drawings."

According to the Japanese Blitheness Creators Clan, an animator in Japan earns on average ¥i.one 1000000 (~$10,000) per yr in their 20s, ¥2.1 one thousand thousand (~$19,000) in their 30s, and a livable but still meager ¥three.5 million (~$31,000) in their 40s and 50s. The poverty line is Japan is ¥2.2 million.

Animators make ends meet any way they can. Terumi Nishii, a freelance animator and game designer, earns nigh of her income from video game animation because she has to take care of her parents. On an animator'south salary, she would have trivial take a chance of feeding herself.

"When I was immature, I honestly suffered," said C.Yard., an animator and character designer who didn't wish to exist named. "Luckily, my family is from Tokyo, so I could live with my parents and somehow get by. As an in-between animator, I was making ¥70,000 yen (~$650) a month."

Anime'south structural iniquities stem dorsum to Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Male child and the "god of manga." Tezuka was responsible for an endless itemize of innovations and precedents in manga, Japanese comics, and anime, onscreen animation. In the early 1960s, with networks unwilling to take the risk on an animated serial, Tezuka massively undersold his show to go it on air.

"Basically, Tezuka and his company were going to accept a loss for the bodily show," said Michael Crandol, an assistant professor of Japanese studies at Leiden University. "They planned to make upwardly for the loss with Astro Boy toys and figures and merchandise, branded candy. … Merely because that detail scenario worked for Tezuka and the broadcasters, it became the status quo."

An Astro Boy exhibit at Shanghai IAPM shopping mall on July 29, 2015, in Shanghai, China. — An Astro Male child exhibit at Shanghai IAPM shopping mall on July 29, 2015, in Shanghai, China.

Tezuka's visitor made up the deficit and the testify was a success, but he unknowingly set a dangerous precedent: making it impossible for those who followed in his footsteps to earn a living wage. Diane Wei Lewis points out in a recent study that women, who often worked on animation from home, were especially vulnerable to exploitation and paid even less.

Nowadays, when production committees set the budget for shows, in that location is a long-established precedent to keep costs depression. The revenue is divided up among the television networks, manga publishers, and toy companies. "The parent companies make money from the merchandising necktie-ins," Crandol said, "simply the upkeep for the rank-and-file animators is separate."

"These prices are then ridiculous because they're nonetheless based on what Tezuka came upwardly with," said Thurlow. "And dorsum so, the drawings were very unproblematic … you lot had a circumvolve head and dot eyes, and possibly y'all can draw an in-between in 10 minutes. I could earn some money at that pace … simply Japanese anime, [now] i drawing is so detailed. You've worked for an hour for ii bucks."

Thurlow added that at that place is an expectation that y'all quit when you get married. "Because if y'all're married, you need to spend some time with your spouse. You lot can't work all the time and earn cipher."

The toll of fine art

The creative results do not disappoint. The 2016 anime film Your Name , a mannerly trunk-swap romance that became anime'southward biggest box office success, features a catalog of gorgeously rendered landscapes worthy of an art gallery.

The depictions of the food alone are worthy of a "Pinnacle 10 Foods in Tokyo" listicle: oily ramen with pork and boiled egg; fluffy pancakes drizzled with syrup and generously topped with pineapple and peach; a handmade bento box full of neatly rolled sweet Japanese omelette, sausages, ripe cherry tomatoes, and pickled plum.

A screenshot from the 2016 anime film Your Name shows beautifully rendered fluffy blueberry pancakes dripping with butter and syrup. — A screenshot from the 2016 anime film *Your Name* shows beautifully rendered fluffy blueberry pancakes dripping with butter and syrup.

Crandol pointed out that you can identify every background in Your Name as an actual building or place in Tokyo.

Artistry is ane appeal of anime. Ian Condry identifies several others in his book The Soul of Anime : developed themes, graphic content, innovative genreless fusion such as Samurai Champloo's samurai-hip-hop remix, and anime's democratic spirit, where fans participate in making art through fan subtitles, fan art, and fanfiction.

Historically, merchandising created more than revenue than TV or movies, but as the popularity of anime has skyrocketed overseas, anime itself makes up a much larger portion of the revenue. Overseas video lone accounted for well-nigh half of global revenue in 2017. Nevertheless the stingy budgets and unlivable wages remain.

When Western companies similar Netflix enter the market, they get to pay the dirt-cheap, long-established Japanese prices. TV stations, trade companies, and foreign streaming services walk away with the profits, leaving not merely individual animators struggling just entire studios scraping by on shoestring budgets.

The solution is not as simple equally animators demanding higher salaries. A 2016 Teikoku Databank report revealed that revenue is downward 40 percentage over 10 years for 230 mainstay Japanese animation studios. "In order to accomplish further development of the animation manufacture, in that location is an urgent need to amend the economical base of animators and radically reform the profit structure of the entire industry," the report stated.

As the founder of a small studio, D'art Shtajio, Thurlow explained that mandating higher salaries without a greater modify in manufacture structure would cause his and virtually other studios to get bankrupt due to budgetary constraints. The industry would consolidate into "Big Anime," a globe where a few mega-studios produce Hollywood-style hits, with mass marketing and generic content tailored to the lowest common denominator.

With depression-level animators pushed out of work, the creative, passionate spirit of anime would rot away. Afterward all, there is no reason to become an animator other than because you dearest it.

"It's a passion," Zakoani said. "Because in that location'south not whatever returns [from] working. It's only considering I really enjoy doing it. I just feel like I need to do it. Considering when y'all see your evidence being broadcast, and you know you worked on it, information technology'due south the greatest feeling e'er."

Thurlow dropped everything to come to Nihon to depict the shows he loved. The feel proved a far cry from his life as an American animator, where he had worked on shows that lacked the same complication in art, story, and themes: Dora the Explorer and Beavis and Barrel-Caput if he was lucky. "Artists are busting their ass for the dream," he said.

Nishii spoke out on Twitter with a firm recommendation:

No matter how much you like anime, it is not advisable to come to Japan and participate in anime piece of work. Because the animation industry is unremarkably overworked
— NISHII_terumi (@Nishiiterumi1) April 22, 2022

Adachi agreed. "Honestly, I would non recommend information technology … it'due south a pyramid structure, where many at the bottom work to back up a few at the top. I don't see a bright future."

The contend over the industry'due south economic science rages on, often on Twitter. A partial solution could be for international studios to buck the established cultural norm and provide anime studios the aforementioned budgets as Western studios. Some other model could be allowing animators to retain the rights to their drawings and earn royalties.

One organization, New Anime Making Organisation Project, raises money to provide a safety net and reduce burnout for up-and-coming animators. The project has provided affordable housing for animators who accept gone on to straight parts of Naruto, Attack on Titan, and other meridian-of-the-line anime.

Jun Sugawara, the founder of the projection, said he started the projection every bit a graphic designer who wanted to back up fellow artists. "It takes genius to create cute mitt-drawn animation, and animators' skills are not valued," he said. The system is expanding with the "Anime K Prix," a competition for crowdfunded short anime films and music videos commissioned on a living wage.

Animators are bearing a nearly intolerable burden for the sake of beautifully hand-drawn tv. For the sake of fluffy pancakes, lush sunset landscapes, and adventures across time, space, genre, and civilization. For everything you lot sentry and love, animators pay the price.

Even so they describe on.

A storyboard from director Shinji Higuchi's film Attack on Titan is pictured in Toho Studios on July 11, 2014, in Tokyo, Japan. — A storyboard from director Shinji Higuchi'southward motion-picture show *Set on on Titan* is pictured in Toho Studios on July 11, 2014, in Tokyo.

C.Thousand. spent a few years growing up in England due to his father'southward job. With no English to speak of, he spent his days drawing manga, flipping the pages in his notebook between his forefinger and thumb, watching the drawings come up alive.

"I could never forget that feeling," he said. "When you breathing a even so character on a page, you lot can run across them motility, laugh, cry, get aroused … that's the amuse of animation. When I see my paw-drawn work shared and seen non merely in my country but around the earth, I feel happiness."

Eric Margolis is a freelance author and translator from Japanese based in New York. You can follow his work on Twitter @EricMargolis1 . And check out the animators who participated in this story and support their work: Shingo Adachi , Henry Thurlow , Terumi Nishii , and Zakoani .