Ask John: Why Is So Little Money Put Into Anime Production?

Question:
Why are anime artist paid so little? Also why do most anime have less frames of animation than American animation? While the notion of low frame rates doesn’t bother me, sometimes it looks horribly choppy, usually in most TV anime. Is it that these companies just don’t have as much money as an American animation company?

Answer:
Unfortunately, it’s the nature of art for it to be often under appreciated. Gauguin, van Gogh, Rembrandt, and countless more of the world’s most beloved artists died as paupers. Although within the past few years the Japanese government has begun to recognize anime as a significant cultural and artistic commodity that should be valued and encouraged, anime in Japan is predominantly considered disposable entertainment. Japan’s anime industry is controlled not by artists and studios but by corporate sponsors and distributors. Obviously Japanese artists, on the whole, are paid enough to make anime a career, otherwise there wouldn’t be an anime industry. But Japanese animators aren’t rich; they work on anime out of love for the art form, not to earn fame or fortune. Mainstream Japanese culture has always considered anime a luxury, a non-essential industry, so anime isn’t given the same respect and priority that other fields of employment in Japan receive. In keeping with that philosophy, there’s traditionally less money invested in the anime industry.

Even in America, anime fans are guilty of contributing to the perception that anime is a commodity and not an art. American anime fans often complain about the cost of anime, and search out the cheapest methods of acquiring anime. That strategy runs contrary to the appreciation and support of art. Buying legitimate anime videos and merchandise is the one and only way that fans can quantifiably express their gratitude to the artists that create anime. Fan letters and websites may be gratifying for Japanese artists, but they don’t pay the bills. I’ve heard American fans rationalize their desire for cheap anime, or their outrage over the price of anime, with the statement that none or only a tiny fraction of the price of anime in America actually funnels back to Japanese animators. I find this justification shortsighted and moreover rude. Regardless of what percentage of the cost of anime in America goes to Japanese animators, buying legitimate anime conveys more support for anime than not buying legitimate anime. But I digress.

The artists that work on anime do so as a labor of love, but the sponsors that invest in anime do so as an investment. The foundation of investing is to earn as much profit as possible from the smallest possible initial investment. While American viewers have come to expect and demand a certain level of technical quality from animation, Japanese viewers have been indoctrinated to have different expectations of animation. These cultural expectations are now so established that they’re virtually immutable and somewhat culturally exclusive. Mainstream America doesn’t widely embrace Japanese animation, and clearly, native Japanese animation is more popular in Japan than imported American animation is. American animation generally seems to move with more fluidity because American studios spend more to create animation than Japanese studios. American viewers expect animation to move smoothly, and expect mouths to match spoken dialogue. On the other hand, Japanese animation, which has smaller budgets, is more stylized and more visually dynamic to offset and draw attention away from its inferior animation quality. It’s exactly that stylization which attracts many fans to anime.