Japanese Animators “Earn $3/Hour”

This article fails to address one very important open question. Where does the money actually go? If a show is moderately successful and pulls in a fair amount of sponsor support, high ratings, live event ticket sales, promotional items sales, and eventually DVD and merchandise sales, you would expect the creators to get quite a bit of that money after operational expenses are paid. It's painfully obvious to me that someone in this chain is getting a very unbalanced portion of the earnings for a successful show.

I would love to know how the anime business is structured. It must be very, very different from the software business.

Animator in my country earn less then 3$ >_>

Realy suck right

In my country they even earn less than 3$ >_>

Piracy is not the problem. It's the studios. They're trying to squeeze too much work out of each animator, resulting in too much overtime.

Though speaking of piracy... It's a similar factor which contributes to low sales in other areas, trying to squeeze too much out of a market. In Japan, people can afford to buy a lot more manga for their dollar.

Don't believe me? Okay, let's put it this way. Walk into a bookstore like Chapters with, say, fifteen bucks. You'll walk out with a single volume and enough change to buy a small, overpriced coffee for three bucks. Walk into a bookstore in Japan with, say, fifteen hundred yen, and you're walking out of the store with three tankobon, the equivalent of a stateside volume.

As long there are plenty of retards willing to do the job for these wages it will stay that way...

Hopefully this situation will ease down a bit when TV become connected with internet.
When that happens, studios won't have to rely on those crappy importers to get their animes abroad as they all will have their own websites to stream those series.

These fucking idiots. There's an entire fucking WORLD of people that want your product, but you only worry about selling to other Japanese. The first company to throw off the xenophobic bullshit and *embrace* a world-wide audience via the internet will be richer than fuck. Let your fans know that you make animation for everybody-make people all over the world want to give you money for your product by establishing a relationship with them.

As an capitalist American it breaks my heart to see a product with such appeal so poorly marketed and distributed.

Haha, the guy directing the anime only earns 1.5x more than some guy who flips the burgers and wipes the tables.

Such crummy pay. I laugh at those who say, "But this is for the dream!" Yeah, right. Go work in a job that pays $3 per hour for a few years, then come back and talk about living the dream.

How the hell do those people survive the days with $3 an hour? That's saying everything in japan is becoming cheap which it isn't.
WE PROVIDE FULL HOTEL SERVICE FOR $2.95 FOR ONE PERSON. FAMILY PACKAGE IS A WHOPPING $3.00. COME STAY AT OUR HOTEL.

I wonder where all the money from DVDs, BDs, posters and so on flows.

Theres only one word coming to my mind: Slavedriver...

According to a blog I once read, this is caused by the fact that money paid per cell being static for both colourers and drawers- While computer colouring has made colouring easier, it has made drawing harder. Thus, colourers get decent pay and animators are grossly underpaid.

So where does all that money spent on DVDs and Blueray discs go?

Being overly xenophobic and having low replacement rates, i.e. less babies, will make japan a country where over two thirds of its populace is of retirement age in the decades to come. With such sad facts ahead of them, it's just normal for industries to start and favoring "seniority" over anything else...

Hooray for minimum wage!

here in mexico you get like 4$ for 8 ours of work, so i think this is a sweet deal

Working with that low minimum wages feels wrong, heck it is wrong. *sighs* I'm surprised most animators is pulling through with their love for drawing, even though they know its a bit unfair to be working with little wages they've been given. I just don't got much to say about this.

Wow in Europe we earn 6-10€(8-13$) per hour
3$...Couldnt even imagine how i should live with that..Oo

Well, one can see why some of the animators might be lacking motivation on quality of work...

Now I gotta wonder how much a miner or construction worker in a third-world country would make in a month?

Okay, so this is just stupid.

Getting $3 a hour is crap. When I was working, I got about $70 a day, about $9.50 a hour. Mind you, I was working in the IT industry.

I admit that I do torrent anime, but I would possibly stop doing that and actually help the companies recover lost profits if the companies that do the animation actually do English/Japanese subtitles. So, when I buy the DVD, I can pop it into my computer, load up MPlayer/Windows Media Player, set Subtitles to ON and in English, get some popcorn and watch a season of K-ON in English. Or they ship a English Dub for Western countries.

Yes, I know it's easy to say, but seriously, I would. If DVDs where $30 a pop, sure, I'd go out and buy DVD copies of K-ON, Lucky Star and Strike Witches. Heck, pop a season on Pay-TV western services like Foxtel and Austar if Japan's anime industry needs some cash in a hurry. I look at prices for getting DVDs imported from Japan and they are like $100 AUD. Too expensive IMO.

I assume all profits from the figmas and nenodroids don't go back to the artists/designers either?

I'd be mad if K-ON turned into some scribble.

In scandinavian countries like Denamrk and Sweden the minimum salary is around 2000Yen/hour ... more than 60 year anime director ...

in video game industry -in france- graphic artists are usually barely paid better than testers, though they are often here to compensate the project's lack of consistence.

because graphics are regarded as a lowly manual task that anybody could take up, describe or explain -from a manager point of view. like game design ("oh.. you just write down stuff, anybody could do that, after all")

plus it's a "dream job" and bosses like to assume you're willing to work only for glory. which isn't quite false, i admit :)

I got paid more working for my fucking mom. At age 11.

TV animation industry in general demands unpaid overtime, not just in japan but north america as well. Budgets are shrinking everywhere, and they have x amount of dollars to deliver a product. Don't blame the studios, blame the producers and the networks who pay to have these shows made.

if they do what the company that makes grand tarismo did (puting amenities like a awesome media center a kitchen showers and a laundromat) and letting them sleep under there desks $3 an hour would go a lot further

It's a labor of love. Nothing else could keep them in the business.

Most of animaters are women.

Even though we're all sympathetic, I doubt we can do anything to change the state of things. As a lot of people already mentioned, buying DVDs and ceasing fansubbing won't help. And there's the problem of animators actually WILLING to work with such low wages.

Seriously, they should all go on strike, like the writers of Hollywood.

damn it man this sux. i wish i could buy dvds but there so damn expensive and not worth it. also it takes like 2yrs to get anything over here, is k-on! season 1 even here yet?

by the time i get to go 2 japan anime will be dead or crap. -_-

Why the creators of Gintama said "Anime is hardwork and the pay is low"

Makes you wonder....where is all the Otaku allowances going when they buy DVD sets for hundreds of dollars?

Wow, 3 bucks an hour to do essentially nothing of value for society. Good deal. C:

same as i used to make on a liquor store in US believe it or not...and even got asked why i quit...

No wonder some animators take drugs ( cf. naruto shippuden)

QUICK, EVERYONE FEEL SYMPATHETIC NOW!!!

Nothing to do with pirating never!
Its all the evil companies fault they make no profit from people who dont spend a cent on their products.

QUICKLY EVERYONE! LET'S ALL FEEL SYMPATHETIC ALL AT ONCE!!!!! Really there are people who are paid less than that throughout the world hint hint 3rd world countries.

If you know how to save cash and cut costs then 1$ a day is sufficient for food already... though in the Philippines costs rose that we need $3 just to get by for a day....