High-level anime professionals such as the animation directors of Kingdom, Bleach and Jujutsu Kaisen 0 have revealed how the industry gets away with paying its workers sub-minimum wages.
A post on The post also added: “Furthermore, poorly executed works will be unbearable for viewers, so it is understandable that their compensation rate will decrease. It’s a matter of ‘personal responsibility’, don’t you think?” This caught the attention of Kingdom animation director Jun Arai, who responded: “In cases where animators receive wages below the minimum hourly wage set by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government regulations are common, entertaining thoughts that flout the laws of such a country are likely to make money.” You are labeled as an individual who ‘disregards human rights’, don’t you think?”
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Animators in the Japanese anime industry, many of whom are freelancers, are typically paid a unit price — a set price per unit of completed work, of which That unit can be a storyboard or an original drawing. Especially in cases of poor production planning, this means that many animators can find themselves doing large amounts of work for wages that do not meet living costs or are below the minimum wage. minimal. While they could take on other jobs to supplement their income, if that meant anime would collapse, the sense of responsibility prevalent in the industry pushed animators to stick with their work. production regardless of low wages or harsh overtime.
Anime industry workers often work overtime while being paid ‘detention fees’
However, overtime often comes with little or no pay increase. An example of this is the case of Studio Bind freelancer Jia He Qiu (Mushoku Tensei Season 1 and 2), known on social media as Q Kawa, who recently revealed that he worked for over 20 hours straight in the post below sent to X. This comes as Mushoku Tensei Season 2 is set to premiere a little over a month away, in April 2024.
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Naturally, the high workload and general sense of responsibility will also prevent animators from taking on work elsewhere at the same time. As Bleach animation director Mizue Ogawa adds, even high-level animators can be put through this cycle with ‘detention fees’. These are fees paid to animators regardless of the work completed. However, they often come with the condition that one takes a discounted job or does not work for another employer. Likewise, these detention fees were not enough to meet living expenses, and when the calculations were done, animators found that the salary was not commensurate with skill or experience, something that Nishii Terumi, The main animation director of Ogawa and Jujutsu Kaisen 0 reflected below the article.
These conditions often make animators feel so stifled that Terumi recently likened it to slavery in a recent interview. She continues to speak out about improving the working conditions of animators and recent findings from the animators association she supports, NAFCA, have revealed that 40% of animators animators in Japan earn less than $16k annually. Given that the anime industry is worth nearly 3 trillion yen ($20 billion), she often questions where the money goes – criticizing Netflix in 2020 on this issue – and the government’s spending initiatives. how governments like Cool Japan mishandled funds. Some even suspect that the money was partly laundered.
Source: X (formerly Twitter)