| Though I'm extremely busy right now, I decided to write this so that you all get an idea of what everyone here seems to not know anything about, though it should really come as the foundation of all anime works there are. For the record, I used to be a pirate, but I think I've paid back ten-fold of what I had downloaded without knowing how disparaging pirating was. The following is a translation of a blog article posted on July 12th. Disregard typos and weird phrasings please; it's long, and I'm not perfect. I quit working at an anime company. My position was production assistant. The company I quit is probably one of the top-ten companies in the anime industry. I will choose to write about only the bad side of things for the sake of expressing why I quit. The biggest reason would be the following. In every single aspect, there just isn't enough money. The anime industry in general has terrible financial circulation. The entire business is run on a hand-to-mouth basis, meaning most, if not all, income goes right back to the production budget. Even the biggest anime companies have only as much money flowing as a general middle-class/lower-class company. Naturally, the income of an employee is small. The annual income of my first year was a little over 2,000,000 yen. The basic income did increase proportionately as I continued to work there year after year, but around the 3rd year, the increase flattened at 3,000,000 yen annual income. If you were to include seasonal/year-end bonuses, you can say that the basic income actually decreased after the 3rd year as the total annual income stayed put. When production is at max, a production assistant would be working from 12 to 14 hours a day (including stand-by), and as the anime work goes into the climax of the story, we lose the time to go home or sleep. This work is not worth the money. Social insurance is unavailable (though I do hear there are some companies that provide it), and companies generally are uninterested in retaining employees. To the managers, it has become common sense for employees to go in and out. That is primarily due to risk circumvention with respect to the high leaving rates. The studio is not anything as extraordinary as a company building, but rather just one floor within a rented mansion. The desks and floor were littered with personal belongings, and it was just a mess. As a matter of fact, there were no permanent or regular employees. The production staff members were comprised of temporary contract employees only. They were probably all working on an operating agreement. "Make a contract with a company and become a horse carriage horse! (Madoka Magica style)" I am not aware of how administrators and executives are treated. The animators, directors, color finishers, and the like that work in the studio are not even employees. They are freelancers that are temporarily borrowing the workspace. Their salaries are per episode, or unit price per cut or per frame quality. However, there are a few that receive a stable salary under the name of "directing fees" or "restriction fees". Art, photography, and editing are done by separate companies or specialized factions within the company. There are a few animators who are sent from a different illustration company, but because most are freelancers, these animators are also treated indifferently, meaning their annual income could go as low as less than 1,000,000 yen. In any case, there are many who suffer from mental stress mainly caused by lack of money. Most don't have the mental leisure to relax, and because the top members of the company are like that to begin with, we get a chain reaction to the bottom of the social grapevine. In fact, there are workers who have been diagnosed with some kind of mental disorder. I don't know about the percentage, but I have never felt such a situation to be so close to me. Anime is made by the workers' love for anime and their varying levels of resolve towards responsibility. There is no person worth respecting. Once an anime is complete and airing, there is only beauty in it. I wonder how many people, aside from those that have experienced anime production, even imagine the production process? Unfortunately, the anime industry has very low standards. There are many people with low motives. There are many people who I would feel are like children when I'm talking to them. The workers are rotting. It's a level in which you can barely continue living even if you work without giving it a single thought. The administrators are pulling each other down. It is required for the creators to have "capability backed by experience and effort, or godly talents". They need to have luck, chance, and stamina to climb up, and even if they reach the top, they still wouldn't be able to survive anyway, or so it seems to me. There is no "As long as I keep trying, it'll pay off in the end." To be blunt, there are many anime otakus here who have simply watched anime all their lives and don't know how to properly communicate with others. Regardless of gender, there are workers who can easily be mistaken for homeless people, and emit terrible odors. They don't (can't?) do even simple greetings. If the garbage pale is full, they stack garbage on top of it. They don't work even though they're at the studio. They don't clarify things they don't understand. It makes me sad to see female workers conversing about male anime characters when they themselves seem to not even have a clue about what makeup and attire is. It make me want to cry when I see workers complaining about compensation thinking they're working as briskly and efficiently as when they were younger, when in fact their quality and speed of work has obviously been declining as they would for anyone in their 40s. I believe the core of anime production lies in the animators. Frames must be drawn for production to progress. Therefore, I must wait, even if it's for the animator's self-satisfaction or just pure laziness. The work site is very loose. Although there is a final deadline for broadcasts and delivery, most workers couldn't care less about being overdue for lesser deadlines during the process. Why? Because the responsibility over the entire production until the product is aired lies in the production staff members and not the animators themselves. If the animators fail to do their work, they just lose that money. However, the unfinished work must be done by someone else. (The production staff members must hire new people, distribute workload, basically restart the whole thing.) Not being able to reach workers, both by phone or email, is default. Although reputation would obviously plummet, it would be better to have such workers than face a chronic shortage of workers. The job is perfect for a person who wants to sleep whenever he/she wants to, come to the studio whenever he/she wants to, answer the phone whenever he/she wants to, and can survive as long as there is anime and a neighboring convenience store (sarcasm intended, with the emphasis that it places a huge stress on the production team). It is ironic how it's these kinds of people, that allow the anime industry to continue to be operational. However, I could not stand these attitudes. Their ties with others were loose. They couldn't care less about how others saw them. As long as they had one aspect they were highly talented in, everything other aspect could be missing. I can't become someone like that, nor would I want to, and therefore I couldn't come to respect them neither. I felt that you can perhaps survive by dreaming on, but you could never achieve happiness. (For the record, there are "normal" social people and those who have the attitude of a professional, as well as amazing workers who churn out finished products like a one-man assembly line. However, most are as I explained above.) I had thought I was an otaku before, but I realized that I don't like anime to the extent I would forget eating and sleeping, and that I'm a normal person who knows how to enjoy having a girlfriend or boyfriend in the real world. There were many times I thought I was the weird one. When I would meet long-time-no-see colleagues at a marriage ceremony, no one would be watching anime. I have never met anyone who has ever watched an anime I had been involved in the production of, let alone on-time every week. From now "Anime is amazing! It is the ultimate form of motion picture media! I don't need money! I'm going to live with anime, and die with anime! It's fantastic, to be able to gain experience and get money for it!" Or so I thought when I joined the company. The standard income of the anime industry is dependent on the sales of DVDs and related merchandise. Therefore, the production is directed towards the buying customers. However, there are as many wills of production as there are staff members. At least, I was producing anime for myself. I thought hard, incorporated ideas, put forth all of my effort to make the anime even slightly better, went around lowering my head everywhere, just to make an anime that everyone would enjoy and that I myself would be satisfied with. Commercial anime production is a work process divided amongst an enormous group of people. The process flows systematically and mechanically. The sectors that place orders never even see the face of workers working at the front. The given storyboards are blueprints that determine 80% of the finished product. There are some storyboards that make no sense. There are many times when the storyboards come late, and we would be churning episodes running along a schedule that would inevitably fail. How much of my feelings were represented by the finished product? If I watch the episodes that I was in charge of, I can still clearly remember the moments of hardship, the difficult cuts, and the faces of members I dislike. However, who would think about that when watching anime? Had I only been in charge of the production that were framed as inconsistent episodes of shit anime, that had terrible DVD sales, and that wouldn't remain in anyone's memories? I suddenly realized that I had lost even my sense of accomplishment for achieving a finished anime episode through working hard to retain a decent level of quality. I suddenly realized that I was not necessary here anymore. I couldn't think about continuing, about moving forward in this industry anymore. All I had acquired was some normal driving techniques. I currently have no other licenses or degrees. If I hadn't joined the company as a fresh college graduate, I would have regretted joining. It was a good thing I joined. It was a good thing I quit. So, how should I go about living now? Well, I will leave putting feelings into anime up to the workers still working for sure. Source: Anonymous Diary My comments. I don't exactly sympathize or empathize with everything here, but there are a few key things I would like to pick up. Note that I work my butt off to pay at least 200,000 yen to the anime industry every year, and that I am against your kind of piracy as a whole. I'm not exactly rich, so I only use 1,500 yen on food per week, which is a fourth of the average expenditures. You can compare and contrast this with other "terrible companies" all you want as if this was normal, but there is no denying that staff members are literally sacrificing their lives for the sake of making anime. It is a wonder why anime still exists when you think of it that way, but it's truly all because there are devoted otaku in Japan. For those of you who haven't worked before, 2,000,000 yen is as much as a part-timer who works at a convenience store for a whole year. If you were living alone, a moderate minimalist living would cost 1,500,000 yen per year per person in Tokyo. If you had a 4-person family, you would need at least 3,000,000 yen to barely survive. 90 yen = 1 U.S. dollar about. You have to think about this in Japanese standards, as there is no point in circumventing the situation by saying "Oh but it only costs this much to live where I am." As stated, the anime industry is financially garbage. This certainly isn't the only personal account I've seen of the battlefront, and it is easy to understand why blu-rays cost 9,000 yen on average per 2 30-minute episodes in Japan. This person mentions related merchandise, but most of that money goes to the merchandise manufacturers and not the anime company itself. You all like to criticize Funimation and Crunchyroll etc., but what they're doing is amazing, buying licenses for anime that get sold at such ridiculously expensive prices within the country of origin, so that they could be streamed for absolutely free, and sold at 3% of the original price. Yet you all still don't buy, and there are even some who frikin complain about their existence. It really makes no sense to me. These staff members have no obligation to continue working like slaves to churn out anime so they get pillaged by the world. I certainly have no obligation to continue paying for all of you pirates. If deficits caused by worldwide piracy, based on the number of torrents and fileshare downloads, was converted to Japanese blu-ray/manga/hentai game/doujin costs, it wouldn't be wrong to make an estimate of about 1,000,000,000,000,000 yen, which is greater than the Japanese national debt. (It would probably be around 400,000,000,000,000 yen by anime alone.) So it wouldn't be surprising if even 1% of you all paid even at the very low price of Funimation and Crunchyroll, it would make a huge difference. Feel free to retaliate with actual numbers (as if it's actually possible to get a summation of torrent files, downloads, and illegit streams) if you'd like, because I don't think I'm too far off in my estimates. There is also no point in saying, "Well Hollywood movies and American dramas are pirated too." Great, you can financially support them too. I've stated this in a couple of other threads too, but there is concrete proof that not buying DVDs damages the industry. Bandai Entertainment of America used to have an anime faction that held licenses to super-popular anime like Suzumiya Haruhi and K-ON. However, no one bought, even at the ridiculously cheap prices they had to offer. As a result, the faction went bankrupt and now Bandai Entertainment of America does not have an anime faction. This set a record for not making any company or country want to really promote a localization effort, because it simply wouldn't pay off. Former employees were crying when they saw the "Where can I download this movie?" on the K-ON movie trailers of youtube. Many mention making better use of the internet. However, piracy is unstoppable by any technological means. This is a given. It's just a property of the internet. Therefore, regardless of whatever online marketing methods they may use on the international front, it would be easy to assume that products wouldn't sell anyway, because piracy would still be rampant. Piracy is concrete proof of human nature; there will always be people who pirate without payment, proudly and without hesitation. Look at all of the localization factions that have virtually self-destructed. Online licenses simply won't sell as much as selling blu-rays. Note that the current money is barely enough to keep the industry active, meaning the current financial income is the bare minimum. If BD production was stopped, CR/Funimation licenses would have to be acquired in par with the BD prices of Japan, meaning CR and Funimation couldn't possibly stream or sell the way they currently do, which in turn means no one would join or buy at those ridiculously expensive prices. Even trying to promote localization or international online distribution from the anime industry side would just be too costly for the risks involved. Yes, there are many obstacles such as international trade regulations and import taxes. And as you can see from the above, they can't possibly afford risks at the moment. Though I'm not exactly in favor of banning piracy as a whole, the logic behind banning piracy is as follows. Let's say 1,000 people pirate anime for free without paying. Then, piracy is banned. 900 people would cut their ties with anime, but you can expect 100 more people to pay. Yeah, the loss on popularity isn't exactly nice, but right now, as I stated, the economic status is devastating, to the extent popularity would mean nothing if the whole industry collapsed. In terms of the working environment itself, Japanese companies generally have terrible working environments. They evaluate customs and manners more than actual capability and workload, much more extremely than you can ever imagine in the United States. You rarely ever get "your own feelings" represented by the work you do. I believe it's naive to think that you should be needed by the company, and that you should be represented by whatever work you do in general. However, I do find it special to an animation studio that the environment lacks sanitation at an extreme level, and that workers lack proper communication skills. You all have probably never encountered a real otaku, who you would all think has some mental or lingual disorders in terms of communication and social interaction. I couldn't bare working with those kinds of people, and I can imagine how impossible it is to come to a group consensus or create a group effort. It is ironic that the Japanese social style of honne and tatemae is supposed to make a virtual group consensus on the surface, but these kinds of otaku-ish people haven't a clue on reading the atmosphere, so honne and tatemae become defunct, making it very uneasy for the average Japanese person. Note that this article in particular only comes from the perspective of a production assistant. He complains about the happy-go-lucky attitude of the animators in terms of doing whatever whenever he/she wants to. However, according to other accounts from the animators' perspective, most wouldn't be able to deal with these terrible conditions if they didn't resort to these happy-go-lucky attitudes. It's not that these animators don't have a sense of responsibility; it's just that the work is so gruesome, animators can't retain the mentality to deal with every minute detail so diligently. As a result, you get these whatever whenever attitudes the production assistant is talking about. "Production is directed towards buying customers." What sells? Anime like Infinite Stratos and Highschool DxD, those that place a heavy emphasis on hentai and moeblob. I don't know if this is necessarily the case for you all, but I would like less hentai and moe in anime. However, those kinds of anime just don't sell as much. If they had money, they wouldn't need to worry so much about incorporating hentai and moe anymore. One of the top ten companies. Wouldn't be surprised if this was AIC. From what I know, at least Kyoto Animation, Shaft, Sunrise, A1 Pictures, IG Productions, ufotable and Satelight have their own company building. You all might want to read about the Japanese Law on the Punishment of Illegal Downloading/Uploading, which will go into effect starting October 1st. j0x was nice enough to promote my posts on his OP. My posts are here, here, and here. The kind of people who defend piracy without paying (excluding those who really face extreme poverty and destitution) are all delightful criminals who exploit the situation on the basis that the exploited are too stupid to do anything about it. Then the anime industry will die, those pirates all won't get penalized, and only those who worked so hard to keep the whole thing going will be lying dead on the battlefield. Now that would give anyone reason to start complaining. Even if the industry didn't collapse, there'd still be much reason to complain given that it's impossible to stop piracy and that there will still be pirates who say "Great, keep up the good work." to a diligent supporter of the industry, like some 15th century aristocrat talking to a slave. |
ap19Jul 13, 2012 6:10 PM
| http://www.nicovideo.jp/user/5040721 I'm Japanese, so if you have any questions regarding Japan, feel free to ask. アメリカ育ちなので、なんか英語に関して質問があれば気軽にどうぞ。  |
| Excellent read! Thanks a ton for translating all that, as well as all the insight and advice, ap19. Honestly, I don't spend much time reading about the industry, though I really should considering that anime is one of my more favorite hobbies. Bakuman was pretty much my first wake-up call, and this is my second, I'm ashamed to admit. Hmm, I didn't realize how effective Funimation and Crunchyroll are to the industry. I torrent my anime to get the best possible quality, but I've still been buying anime and merch — even if I have absolutely no use for them — simply to pay something back for all that I'm watching, all this hard work I'm freely downloading. Sounds like buying a Funimation and Crunchyroll subscription might be a more effective and time-efficient method. Obviously, I'll still torrent for quality and won't bother actually using Funi / CR; just buying them to support. |
FauxAznJul 12, 2012 8:18 PM
FauxAzn said: Hmm, I didn't realize how effective Funimation and Crunchyroll are to the industry. I torrent my anime to get the best possible quality, but I've still been buying anime and merch, even if I have absolutely no use for them, simply to pay back for all that I'm watching. Sounds like buying a Funimation and Crunchyroll subscription might be a more effective and time-efficient method. Obviously, I'll still torrent for quality, but the subscriptions are merely for compensation. Thanks a ton for translating all that, and the insight and advice ap19. Thank you for reading. I bet a great deal of the users would just tl;dr this. I am not aware of the price at which these companies sell distributing licenses. However, I wouldn't believe them to be so high, at least not compared to the Japanese blu-ray prices, because otherwise, Funimation and Crunchyroll and the like would need much more money. In the end, it is just a matter of the majority showing financial support, because that gives all companies involved in the industry greater opportunity. |
| http://www.nicovideo.jp/user/5040721 I'm Japanese, so if you have any questions regarding Japan, feel free to ask. アメリカ育ちなので、なんか英語に関して質問があれば気軽にどうぞ。 |
As stated, the anime industry is financially garbage. This is why I buy the DVDs after downloading them. If I like the anime (or studio) I will support them. The artists are way underpaid and it really bothers me when people don't think about it. |
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| Well, if this came 4-5 months earlier, I could've put it in my research report. (It's in my sig) Regardless, I kinda already knew about all this, and I'm not surprised that this worker quit due to harsh working conditions. IDK if any of you know this, but around 1/2 (if not 3/4) of the people who work on anime are below the poverty line when it comes to the Japanese economy. It is no understatement when he said that they get about as much money as a convenient store worker. Of course, I think I'm just restating what's in the article, though. I find it kind of surprising that the anime industry is surviving right now. But that profit is mostly coming from merchandise, overpriced DVDs, and American licensing. It's not a whole lot either, only enough to break even in most cases. And even then, it takes around a year or two to break even, much less profit. It's just amazing to see an industry like that stay afloat. Of course, most of it goes to the fans. In this case, we can see how piracy is possibly affecting an industry here. |
KuranoJul 12, 2012 8:25 PM
| Signature removed. Please follow the signature rules, as defined in the Site & Forum Guidelines. |
| Thanks for the blog translation. I already knew they had intense work and were paid peanuts for the amount of work they did, but I never made the connection to why they would stick around, so...Wow. The anime industry really does live off of the love and enthusiasm of not only fans, but the people working on the anime itself. It's easy to make fun of or look down on otaku, but it makes me wonder what would happen if they weren't around. |
| Fantastic read. Bolsters every opinion I have of the industry in the modern day. |
| My first novel, Kardia has been published! Click here to read! |
| Makes me feel bad about torrenting, but not enough to stop. |
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| Wow, if this is truly accurate about the working environment of anime companies... I had no idea how unprofessional it can be and also how necessary it is for anime to survive. I wish I had more money to spend on anime. |
| makes me wonder why japanese animation companies are not maximizing the potential of the internet they should have created a crunchyroll site in the first place but foreigners (americans?) are the ones who created crunchyroll they should have created a kickstarter site too for anime, in that way they could at least guaranteed a break-even profit when the anime sales fail, but foreigners like americans are the ones who are starting to maximize kickstarter to make anime like this one http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/729054704/the-new-kind/ i feel guilt for this since im poor (living in third world and on 6 dollars per day pay only) and cannot support the anime industry that is enterntaining me but would just like to point out that if money is the main problem for the anime industry, since from what i read here is that anime making is like "gambling", then the process of making/managing/profiting anime should change for the better too like maximizing the use of the internet for profit |
j0x said: the process of making/managing/profiting anime should change for the better too like maximizing the use of the internet for profit Japanese people are stupid. My research is primarily on applied linguistics with a focus on cognitive science and education, and yeah I have a hell lot to say on how stupid the Japanese population is. Concerning the internet, Japanese people don't know how to use a computer properly until they enter college. Moreover, they are not taught anything about the internet throughout their entire educational career. Hence, Japanese people don't have a clue about what the internet is, and how they should interact with it. That is why the lead is overrun by the United States. That is also why you get stupid laws that make Japan commit suicide (ie the illegal use of internet punishment law). Before that though, throughout history, Japan was never enthusiastic about international cultural diffusion. Japan never wanted its own culture to go outside its own border, but other countries just one-sidedly took interest in Japanese culture. Hence, Japan wouldn't readily come up with the idea about considering foreign countries or the foreign market. Given that anime and the subculture of Japan used to be generally looked down upon, it was very unlikely that Japan would even think of regarding anime as something with potential on the global market. However, that is old-style traditional thinking, and along with many other political policies, should be rectified for Japan to adapt to 21st century thinking. As I stated in your thread too, the stupidity and conservatism of Japan are huge factors that account for much of why the anime industry continues to suffer. There is a lot that probably could be done from the Japanese side concerning this at an international scale, even if the Japanese government didn't have much influence over international policies. The problem with licenses, as it is with rental stores, is that they are a one-time payment deal that last for whatever period of time. As I stated in your thread, local distribution companies only lose out, so creators are forced to be satisfied with a generally low sum of money for the license contract because it would be better than not receiving money at all. Users will watch the anime illegally anyway regardless of license or not. In other words, the amount of money local distributors currently pay to the anime industry precisely represents how much money you are all willing to pay at the national level. When it comes down to whether you want the anime industry to stay existent or not, some large force has to act, and in this case it would be easier for instance to make a donation effort on MAL than to start a revolution in Japan, especially in terms of what MAL users can do. Otherwise, the anime industry will simply just disappear. The ideal would be to show that the world cares by gathering enough money to influence the situation, so that piracy can be proven to be financially beneficial in addition to just spreading popularity. That would enable third-world users to continue pirating while the creators earn what they deserve for sufficient living. |
ap19Jul 13, 2012 1:28 AM
| http://www.nicovideo.jp/user/5040721 I'm Japanese, so if you have any questions regarding Japan, feel free to ask. アメリカ育ちなので、なんか英語に関して質問があれば気軽にどうぞ。 |
SuWern said: Thanks for this! I've had a rough idea on how the anime industry works but this is really in-depth. A good read :) Yeah, I had heard some things about the industry, but this really was an enlightening read. +1 OP. |
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ap19 said: Japanese people are stupid. My research is primarily on applied linguistics with a focus on cognitive science and education, and yeah I have a hell lot to say on how stupid the Japanese population is. Concerning the internet, Japanese people don't know how to use a computer properly until they enter college. Moreover, they are not taught anything about the internet throughout their entire educational career. Hence, Japanese people don't have a clue about what the internet is, and how they should interact with it. That is why the lead is overrun by the United States. That is also why you get stupid laws that make Japan commit suicide (ie the illegal use of internet punishment law). this is a shocker to me, since most people all over the world relate japan to hi-tech lifestyle and gadgets, and now you told me that more people in japan are not even internet savvy but ill be sure to spread this matter too so that awareness of this will increase |
j0x said: this is a shocker to me, since most people all over the world relate japan to hi-tech lifestyle and gadgets, and now you told me that more people in japan are not even internet savvy I bet most people think that way too. Honestly, I may have reconsidered coming here if I knew beforehand that Japanese people had the mental capacity of an American middle school student. |
| http://www.nicovideo.jp/user/5040721 I'm Japanese, so if you have any questions regarding Japan, feel free to ask. アメリカ育ちなので、なんか英語に関して質問があれば気軽にどうぞ。 |
| Feel bad for your upcoming future, Bahi JD :( J/K In all of seriousness the best thing that you can got if working in anime business is if they enjoying that they make, sadly. Most of those animator are otaku too, some of them even admit the only reason take the job, because they like to draw cute girl, mecha, n stuff. "Production is directed towards buying customers." What sells? Anime like Infinite Stratos and Highschool DxD, those that place a heavy emphasis on hentai and moeblob. I don't know if this is necessarily the case for you all, but I would like less hentai and moe in anime. However, those kinds of anime just don't sell as much. If they had money, they wouldn't need to worry so much about incorporating hentai and moe anymore. I won't argue about it but this part really unnecessary. |
fertygoJul 13, 2012 3:12 AM
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| This problem exists pretty much in any entertainment industry, music, movies, anime, etc. I wish the content creators realize there's this thing called the internet where they can produce and distribute their contents directly to their fans, worldwide, instead of relying on the traditional channels and bureaucracy. Sure, easy for me to say, but come on, restricting how people can buy your product is just stupid, and the Japanese entertainment industry (anime included) is notorious for this. Imagine if the content creators collaborate with fansubber, distributing their stuff direct in channels like Amazon, Hulu Plus, or iTunes store for worldwide distribution. |
| Thanks for sharing. It's actually quite disheartening to read this, and even more so, to know that I am partially responsible for it. Guess this only gives me reason to "just say yes" when buying anime related merchandise. What's worse is that from the looks of things, the situation can only deteriorate Low sales ---> despite measures to generate profit ---> increase of hentai/moe and price of episodes ---> unsatisfied fans ---> low sales. |
pika2000 said: Imagine if the content creators collaborate with fansubber, distributing their stuff direct in channels like Amazon, Hulu Plus, or iTunes store for worldwide distribution. The video game industry is doing grand. Especially Nintendo recently. Emulators are ineffective in terms of the most recent games, even though there are Wii emulators already, and emulators would become even more defunct when Miiverse strikes with WiiU. As for online distribution services, the problem here is international regulation and the existence of import taxes and such. Licenses exist to circumvent that. Unless if Japanese merchandise were to become exempt from these international trade regulations, paid international online distribution would be hard to come by. AzureBlues said: Low sales ---> despite measures to generate profit ---> increase of hentai/moe and price of episodes ---> unsatisfied fans ---> low sales. Moe and hentai sell well in Japan. Rather, it's one of the only few things that guarantee good BD sales from the otaku fandom. The majority of the unsatisfied are generally people who don't pay from the start. In fact, I think those people who buy animes like Infinite Stratos and Highschool DxD are the ones who support the anime industry most, with far greater expenditures than me. In normal situations, the cycle would be more like this: low sales → higher prices → low sales → higher prices However, given that there is a stable otaku customer base, the cycle stabilizes at 9,000 yen per 2eps, which is apparently the max price a stable number of otakus can afford. It doesn't get any less, but it doesn't get any more. In the event they need to make it higher, you can assume it's the end of the anime industry. The international front is disregarded because of international trade regulations and the dominance of piracy. |
ap19Jul 13, 2012 5:18 AM
| http://www.nicovideo.jp/user/5040721 I'm Japanese, so if you have any questions regarding Japan, feel free to ask. アメリカ育ちなので、なんか英語に関して質問があれば気軽にどうぞ。 |
| When I was little, I remember watching an episode of the show "Hoshi no Kirby/Kirby! Right Back At Ya" where the characters all decided to start making an animated series together. Talk about breaking the fourth wall. I think it was probably the most sugar-coated way of telling the audience that animators in the anime industry are being overworked and solely run on their love for the medium. Reading this has confirmed any suspicions I've had about the industry up to this point. For the past few years, I've either been only streaming anime from sites like Crunchyroll and FUNimation or buying shows I really like that I've downloaded. This is definitely an eye-opener, and I've always wondered if stories like this were ever published. Thank you for sharing. |
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pika2000 said: Imagine if the content creators collaborate with fansubber, distributing their stuff direct in channels like Amazon, Hulu Plus, or iTunes store for worldwide distribution. Imagine how many people would download the re-encoded stream rips like many currently do with Crunchyroll's anime. |
| After reading this, I'd definitely try to buy as much as I could in terms of anime in order to help out, considering I download. I'll be buying a few DVDs when I get money for a holiday or a birthday or something, but other than that, I have zero dollars and zero cents and probably will until I get out of college and get a job. Of course I'd like to give them money that I don't have, but unfortunately, I can't. I would never pay for Funimation though; from what I've seen, their subs are usually the worst possible option. Crunchyroll is pretty good, but I download my anime. No point in paying for something I won't use. So I'll buy some BDs/DVDs instead. I've had my eye on that Lucky Star DVD ever since I finished watching the anime. |
 "In both love and octopus-hunting, you have to take the initiative!" - Gintoki Sakata |
| Great read. Thanks, ap19! My take: I feel this all boils down to Japan and their culture preventing the industry from breaking the status quo. You said it yourself that a lot of people in Japan barely know how to use the internet ( Which really surprises me. Guess I got the wrong idea of how Japan truly is ). Their culture prevents them from giving proper work conditions like here in the states. I'm not saying piracy has no effect here, but I believe piracy is just an excuse for companies. A lot of companies even here in the states struggle to move on to the digital world. Blockbuster and best buy for example were huge retail stores, but as the internet grew their business started dying because they couldn't adapt to the internet. As a result, companies like Netflix and Amazon/Newegg are the place to go to nowadays. I believe the same thing applies to the anime industry. Japan needs to embrace the internet and learn how to slowly move away from their customs/manners in the work environment. There will always be piracy. It can't be stopped. It's been here since before the internet/cassettes/vcrs/dvds/etc. Companies have to learn to adapt and change their business models. That's the real issue here. One way of improving the industry would be to create websites that cater to anime viewers. IE, combine an online anime shop that sells merchandise, dvds/bds, etc, and put anime streaming and advertisements all on the same site. The streams would have a monthly cost like CR does and you could watch the latest eps any time you want. As a bonus, subscribers would get a discount on DVDs/BDs and get special offers on merchandise. The monthly cost could be something like 7-800 yen which shouldn't be much ( Correct me if I'm wrong ) Stuff like that is what Japan needs to do. Companies/industries need to stop blaming piracy and blame themselves for not adapting. Japan is just as much at fault here with their refusal to move away from customs in the work environment and refusal to accept foreigners, all while blaming piracy and using outdated business models. |
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| Interesting read, though I have spent a numerous amount on anime over the past few years, I still feel like the industry will probably die in a few years anyway. I wonder exactly how Funimation is doing on the foreign side of things. I have a gut feeling they aren't even profiting at all considering the huge amount of ecchi shows they picked up over the past few years. |
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| Mind if I throw in my two cents? ap19 said: As stated, the anime industry is financially garbage. This certainly isn't the only personal account I've seen of the battlefront, and it is easy to understand why blu-rays cost 9,000 yen on average per 2 30-minute episodes in Japan. This person mentions related merchandise, but most of that money goes to the merchandise manufacturers and not the anime company itself. You all like to criticize Funimation and Crunchyroll etc., but what they're doing is amazing, buying licenses for anime that get sold at such ridiculously expensive prices within the country of origin, so that they could be streamed for absolutely free, and sold at 3% of the original price. Yet you all still don't buy, and there are even some who frikin complain about their existence. Maybe so, but have you ever thought that these people (or at least some of them) may be right to complain? Bad video quality, questionable translation (as far as they can tell), ugly fonts, those are all legitimate complaints. And in some occasions, it seems that the companies don't even care, as long as we buy their junk. I know a lot of people merely complain because others do and I tend to give everything a second chance (even CR, which I too criticized before), but sometimes, people are right. I'm not saying they're always right, just that there's always context you need to take into account before you start generalizing. It really makes no sense to me. These staff members have no obligation to continue working like slaves to churn out anime so they get pillaged by the world. I certainly have no obligation to continue paying for all of you pirates. If deficits caused by worldwide piracy, based on the number of torrents and fileshare downloads, was converted to Japanese blu-ray/manga/hentai game/doujin costs, it wouldn't be wrong to make an estimate of about 1,000,000,000,000,000 yen, which is greater than the Japanese national debt. (It would probably be around 400,000,000,000,000 yen by anime alone.) So it wouldn't be surprising if even 1% of you all paid even at the very low price of Funimation and Crunchyroll, it would make a huge difference. Feel free to retaliate with actual numbers (as if it's actually possible to get a summation of torrent files, downloads, and illegit streams) if you'd like, because I don't think I'm too far off in my estimates. There is also no point in saying, "Well Hollywood movies and American dramas are pirated too." Great, you can financially support them too. Now you're making the exact same claim the music industry is making: "Every downloaded song costs us x amount of money". This is bullshit. A lot of people who download for free and don't pay would most likely never have bought it in the first place. They only do it because they can. They're not lost customers you can held liable for any financial loss you make. And yet, that is what the industry is doing right now. Bottom line: you're NOT paying for everyone else, you're only made to beleive that. But do tell me, how do you know how well a show should do? What mystical powers do you have that enable you to see into the fuure and say without doubt that Show X should sell Y amount copies? Simple, you can't. Let's look at it from another view now. Suppose a show sells 10,000 copies and gets downloaded by 100,000 people. How many of these 100,000 would buy the actual discs? All of them? No, that's wishful thinking. But that is what you are claiming here: that every download means x yen lost. The thing is, though, you have a fairly stable group of buying customers that the industry relies on. They are the ones who make or break a show, and everyone else is merely an added bonus. Let's say that from the 100,000 downloaders, 1,000 people went out to buy the discsand that each disc costs ¥7,000. With the 10,000 paying customers, the producers have made ¥70,000,000 (not including the manufacturing costs and other costs). Let's then assume that all the 1,000 additional buyers are Japanese, or at least people who imported the Japanese discs. They net the producers with an extra ¥7,000,000, which I'm sure is far more than they expected. So, how can there be a lost sale, if downloading has only increased their earnings? And what about other factors that prevents a show from selling? Like lack of good plot, too much ecchi, moe, etc. Is piracy the only factor you can come up with that is supposedly devastating for the industry? According to you, everyone can pay for it it they want to. However, it doesn't always work that way. People have expenses to cover, and anime is not just a luxury product, but an expensive luxury product. Maybe they would like to buy it, but can't, because else they wouldn't have enough money to pay for food, or even the rent. You apparently make enough money to pay for everything, with a little extra to buy anime with. Good for you, keep up the good work. But, there are people who aren't as fortunate. The article already showed that there are people who are working for scraps and some of those quit their jobs because they don't find the reward to be worth the effort anymore. How may of these people do you think could be otnetial buyers, but are holding off in hopes of better (financial) times? Then you say: "people just want it for free, no matter what". This is an urban myth. There are plenty of people who download and buy. They may do so because of guilt, but they pay nonetheless, but from your statement, you seem to think as them as non-existent and just throw everyone onto one pile. These people are the extras the industry needs to focus more on, but the fact is that they don't do that, and instead alienate them more and more with the myriad laws against piracy and the various lawsuits for insane amounts of money, more than these 'criminals' have or can ever make (and which only cost the industry more than it can recoup). the money they lose from all of this could easily have been used on simple research into alternative distribution methods and a 'miracle cure' might have been found by now. Instead, the industry is in trouble, and the people involved have only themselves to blame. But, since no one likes to be held responsible, they shift the problem to an easy scapegoat: the 'pirates' and ignore the basic question of how to reach out to their potential customers and increase their profits. I've stated this in a couple of other threads too, but there is concrete proof that not buying DVDs damages the industry. Bandai Entertainment of America used to have an anime faction that held licenses to super-popular anime like Suzumiya Haruhi and K-ON. However, no one bought, even at the ridiculously cheap prices they had to offer. As a result, the faction went bankrupt and now Bandai Entertainment of America does not have an anime faction. This set a record for not making any company or country want to really promote a localization effort, because it simply wouldn't pay off. Former employees were crying when they saw the "Where can I download this movie?" on the K-ON movie trailers of youtube. This should have been proof for the company that they should have found other ways to sell their stuff, rather than just sit back and expect the money to roll in. Times are changing, people are losing interest in buying physical products in favor of digital downloads. They could have seen this coming years ago, yet they did nothing. Had they done so, it might not have come this far and the company might still have been healthy today, but they didn't, and the article mentions why: because most of the people involved weren't up to date with the latest technology, or even knew how a computer works, let alone the internet and couldn't figure out what to do with the massive online market that was lying in front of them. They thought that just selling some high-ranked and popular titles would give them all the money they wanted. And then they acted surprised when the plan failed. So, whose fault is it again that they didn't see this coming? Not the pirates', I'll tell you that. I'm pretty sure this goes for the Japanese anime industry as well, hence why they need to sell the discs are ridiculous prices. With services like Crunchyroll and English subtitled DVDs/BDs, they're making a step in the right direction, but by the time they see the potential and exploit the market more, it may already be too late, because people will have found other, cheaper ways to get what they want. If the industry wants to get a grip on the situation, it has to do it NOW. Don't go on the defense by suing the deaf, blind, dumb, dead and unborn, but use the technology you have to your advantage. And if you can't do it, find someone who can, and try and make some sort of arrangement, or even a partnership. Some anime producers managed to find such a partner in Crunchyroll, why aren't more doing similar things (for example, as pika2000 suggested, by recruiting fansubbers)? If you can't beat them, join them. "Production is directed towards buying customers." What sells? Anime like Infinite Stratos and Highschool DxD, those that place a heavy emphasis on hentai and moeblob. I don't know if this is necessarily the case for you all, but I would like less hentai and moe in anime. However, those kinds of anime just don't sell as much. If they had money, they wouldn't need to worry so much about incorporating hentai and moe anymore. You're talking an awful lot like so many other users here, who think they know it all. Yeah, a lot of shows that sold well had 'moe' elements or a lot of T&A in then, but that doesn't mean that for an anime to sell, you NEED those two factors. Generally speaking, people do like some substance to go with their 'generic crap' (to use a popular phrase that gets thrown around a lot), and I'm pretty sure there wetre hnits that didn't rely on the 'moe factor' or showing as much T&A as possible. Still, even if you want less of it, if it still sells so much, that means there's still a demand for it and studios will make more of it if the demand is there, especislyl if it's all they can do to stay alive. I'm sure it will eventually come to a point where people want something else, and sales of these type of shows will start declining in favor of others. By that ti,e the market will probably shift in a different direction again. However, complaining about it will not help you. Maybe you'll feel better if you do, but ultimately, it won't help you. Just sit it out and wait for better times. If you can't do that, why are you still watching? |
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| First of all, thanks ap19 for the translation. It was an excellent read. AO968 said: Now you're making the exact same claim the music industry is making: "Every downloaded song costs us x amount of money". This is bullshit. A lot of people who download for free and don't pay would most likely never have bought it in the first place. They only do it because they can. They're not lost customers you can held liable for any financial loss you make. And yet, that is what the industry is doing right now. Bottom line: you're NOT paying for everyone else, you're only made to beleive that. The biggest problem is that more and more people are getting tired of having to expend a lot on Anime and just move to the torrent downloading experience. I was talking a few months ago with a Japanese music producer and they told me that they were really worried by the decrease of legitimate sales of the physical and virtual products lately. It seems they had seen a continuous decrease in the last 10 years and even though they have tried a lot of different ideas, none seems to be working. The truth to be told is that if you didn't had it for free always, you would have to choose between two paths: you either drop it or you start buying it. And I think is this kind of thinking that ap19 is trying to state. In my humble opinion the business' model and the "fans" have their share in this problem, the whole blame doesn't reside in one side or the other. AO968 said: According to you, everyone can pay for it it they want to. However, it doesn't always work that way. People have expenses to cover, and anime is not just a luxury product, but an expensive luxury product. Maybe they would like to buy it, but can't, because else they wouldn't have enough money to pay for food, or even the rent. You apparently make enough money to pay for everything, with a little extra to buy anime with. I have always disagree with this kind of thinking, because according to you if I can afford to buy a car (which is a luxury product, compared to other options like bicycles, bikes or bus/train) it would be fine for me to just grab one for free. And let's not start the physical vs virtual product discussion over this please. A product is a product, it doesn't mind which format is it. And I'm also from a struggling country where the minimum daily salary is as low as 4 dollars per day. You just have to put your priorities in any order you like. If you say Anime is the thing you love the most, then try to save a bit of money for it and prove that it is the thing you most love. I have always thought that the biggest problem with piracy nowadays, specially Internet piracy, is that it reduces the value of a product to 0. Because you can enjoy it the same way you would enjoy it if you buy it, but without paying a cent for it. Sure, Anime and a lot of other content properties wouldn't be as popular as they are now, but I'm pretty sure that with a lot less piracy there could be better business opportunities and revenues for the companies making it. As an example, CR seems to be struggling here in my country, even though is just 6 dollars per month. Common more cheap than that it can't be, but the "fans" just don't value Anime anymore as a product that has to be purchased. |
| Otaku no naka no Otaku, Otaking ni narimasu -- Otaku no Video, Gainax, 1992. |
| Although I have a firm grasp on Economics and I would like to join in on the conversation, this is one of those things where I can honestly say it's over my head. Both in terms of the relative amount of time I have spent watching anime compared to some of you, and my relative lack of knowledge of Japan and the anime industry as a whole. Given this, all I can really say is thank you for the read OP, and that for the past couple of months I have begun purchasing anime that I deem to have a high "rewatch" value. Whether or not that money finds its way back to the anime industry is unfortunately something that I can do little about. |
| well capitalism does require infinite growth quite a shame to say it but industries like this will die pretty soon, same as for videogames and music |
| ~"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands." (Pirsig) |
AO968 said: have you ever thought that these people (or at least some of them) may be right to complain? Bad video quality, questionable translation (as far as they can tell), ugly fonts, those are all legitimate complaints. And in some occasions, it seems that the companies don't even care, as long as we buy their junk. I know a lot of people merely complain because others do and I tend to give everything a second chance (even CR, which I too criticized before), but sometimes, people are right. I'm not saying they're always right, just that there's always context you need to take into account before you start generalizing. I see these complaints often where Funimation and CR staff members wouldn't see them. Moreover, it's not hard to imagine them dropping quality to a certain extent within the contract of buying licenses, because they make it available some for free, others at a super cheap price. There has to be some reason why these distributors can sell at such a ridiculously cheap price compared to the Japanese market. AO968 said: Now you're making the exact same claim the music industry is making: "Every downloaded song costs us x amount of money". This is bullshit. A lot of people who download for free and don't pay would most likely never have bought it in the first place. They only do it because they can. They're not lost customers you can held liable for any financial loss you make. And yet, that is what the industry is doing right now. Bottom line: you're NOT paying for everyone else, you're only made to beleive that. Let's say 1,000 people pirate anime for free without paying. Then, piracy is banned. 900 people would cut their ties with anime, but you can expect 100 more people to pay. Yeah, the loss on popularity isn't exactly nice, but right now, as I stated, the economic status is devastating, to the extent popularity would mean nothing if the whole industry collapsed. AO968 said: how do you know how well a show should do? What mystical powers do you have that enable you to see into the fuure and say without doubt that Show X should sell Y amount copies? Simple, you can't. We don't need to. That's why there's a whole subject of economy and finance; to predict on an empirical basis. And, what I said above pulls through, meaning although 900 of 1000 would leave, 100 of 1000 more would pay. Results would finally be as it should be, without the option of free downloading. AO968 said: how can there be a lost sale, if downloading has only increased their earnings? Downloading may increase earnings, but only at the initiation stage of a product by way of a form of illegitimate advertisement, which can easily be substituted by simple news (ie ANN, MAL news, w.e.). After the popularity has settled, it's all downhill from there, when everyone would be satisfied with their downloads. AO968 said: And what about other factors that prevents a show from selling? Like lack of good plot, too much ecchi, moe, etc. Is piracy the only factor you can come up with that is supposedly devastating for the industry? Like I said, moe and ecchi rake in cash, at least in Japan. Most who complain about moe and ecchi generally don't buy in the first place. Everything in the world has its own minor problems. Piracy gets picked up in terms of anime, because it's definitely the most major problem. AO968 said: According to you, everyone can pay for it it they want to. However, it doesn't always work that way. People have expenses to cover, and anime is not just a luxury product, but an expensive luxury product. Maybe they would like to buy it, but can't, because else they wouldn't have enough money to pay for food, or even the rent. You apparently make enough money to pay for everything, with a little extra to buy anime with. Good for you, keep up the good work. But, there are people who aren't as fortunate. The article already showed that there are people who are working for scraps and some of those quit their jobs because they don't find the reward to be worth the effort anymore. How may of these people do you think could be otnetial buyers, but are holding off in hopes of better (financial) times? This is bullshit. cat_clan has got this one down fine. You're supposed to work for what you want, and if you can't afford it, you're not supposed to be able to get it. Well, I wouldn't mind paying an extra sum for people who are working diligently to earn a living, but that's not the kind of people I'm talking to here. AO968 said: Good for you, keep up the good work. I don't know if you pay, but I wouldn't believe you if you said so, because no one in the right mind would say this to anyone who is diligently paying. Do you have any idea how enraging this statement is? What do you think you are? My boss, who orders me around to eat mud to keep the anime industry alive for you? It's people like you that make me mad. AO968 said: Then you say: "people just want it for free, no matter what". This is an urban myth. There are plenty of people who download and buy. They may do so because of guilt, but they pay nonetheless, but from your statement, you seem to think as them as non-existent and just throw everyone onto one pile. I know enough people who download and buy to know they exist thanks. However, reading other threads about piracy proves to show most do not. Rather, many are prevaricators who promote piracy on behalf of the bullshit you state above. AO968 said: These people are the extras the industry needs to focus more on, but the fact is that they don't do that, and instead alienate them more and more with the myriad laws against piracy and the various lawsuits for insane amounts of money, more than these 'criminals' have or can ever make (and which only cost the industry more than it can recoup). the money they lose from all of this could easily have been used on simple research into alternative distribution methods and a 'miracle cure' might have been found by now. Instead, the industry is in trouble, and the people involved have only themselves to blame. But, since no one likes to be held responsible, they shift the problem to an easy scapegoat: the 'pirates' and ignore the basic question of how to reach out to their potential customers and increase their profits. Piracy is unstoppable by any technological means. This is a given. It's just a property of the internet. Therefore, regardless of whatever marketing methods they may use on the international front, it would be easy to assume that products wouldn't sell anyway, because piracy would still be rampant. Piracy is concrete proof of human nature. Like I said in other threads, most wouldn't care if the anime industry collapsed as long as they don't get financially penalized for it and they get a replacing source of entertainment. Look at all of the localization factions that have virtually self-destructed. Online licenses simply won't sell as much as selling blu-rays, and even trying to promote localization or international online distribution from the anime industry side would just be too costly for the risks involved. Yes, there are many obstacles such as international trade regulations and import taxes. And as you can see from the OP, they can't possibly afford risks at the moment. AO968 said: And then they acted surprised when the plan failed. So, whose fault is it again that they didn't see this coming? Not the pirates', I'll tell you that. The smart aren't privileged to exploit the stupid. That boils down to a sense of morality, which isn't anything worth discussing. AO968 said: I'm pretty sure this goes for the Japanese anime industry as well, hence why they need to sell the discs are ridiculous prices. With services like Crunchyroll and English subtitled DVDs/BDs, they're making a step in the right direction, but by the time they see the potential and exploit the market more, it may already be too late, because people will have found other, cheaper ways to get what they want. If the industry wants to get a grip on the situation, it has to do it NOW. Don't go on the defense by suing the deaf, blind, dumb, dead and unborn, but use the technology you have to your advantage. And if you can't do it, find someone who can, and try and make some sort of arrangement, or even a partnership. Some anime producers managed to find such a partner in Crunchyroll, why aren't more doing similar things (for example, as pika2000 suggested, by recruiting fansubbers)? If you can't beat them, join them. As I've repeatedly stated, online distribution couldn't get nearly even half the money the current BD sales are getting, and as I've repeatedly stated, even the current amount of money flowing is barely enough to keep the anime industry active. CR and Funimation can sell at such a ridiculously low price, because the license contracts are made available at relatively low prices. If CR and Funimation became ridiculously expensive enough to compensate for abolishing BD production, no one would join CR or Funimation anymore. AO968 said: You're talking an awful lot like so many other users here, who think they know it all. Yeah, a lot of shows that sold well had 'moe' elements or a lot of T&A in then, but that doesn't mean that for an anime to sell, you NEED those two factors. Generally speaking, people do like some substance to go with their 'generic crap' (to use a popular phrase that gets thrown around a lot), and I'm pretty sure there wetre hnits that didn't rely on the 'moe factor' or showing as much T&A as possible. Oh you NEED those factors generally. For instance, if all of the animes had superb content without moe/t&a, only the best out of those superb would sell. However, if all of the animes had moe/t&a, you can expect all of them to sell as equally well as the other. The statistics behind the BD sales pretty much proves most of this. AO968 said: Still, even if you want less of it, if it still sells so much, that means there's still a demand for it and studios will make more of it if the demand is there, especislyl if it's all they can do to stay alive. I'm sure it will eventually come to a point where people want something else, and sales of these type of shows will start declining in favor of others. By that ti,e the market will probably shift in a different direction again. However, complaining about it will not help you. Maybe you'll feel better if you do, but ultimately, it won't help you. Just sit it out and wait for better times. If you can't do that, why are you still watching? You all don't have to complain. Of course, you're not losing anything out of the current situation. Yeah, just sit back and chillax, wait for time to move on, make this a past event, and act as if you all done nothing bad. Course, yeah great. The only thing I'm complaining about is your kind of attitude towards the situation. I don't need help, the anime industry does. I'm asking for people to become aware of the diabolical situation for the anime industry, and perhaps even make a slight effort towards making it better. My impression of most of you is that you don't care if the anime industry dies as long as you don't get financially penalized for it and get a replacing source of entertainment. Your kind of people are all delightful criminals who exploit the situation on the basis that the exploited are too stupid to do anything about it. Then the anime industry will die, you all won't get penalized, and only those who worked so hard to keep the whole thing going will be lying dead on the battlefield. Now that would give anyone reason to start complaining. Even if the industry didn't collapse, there'd still be much reason to complain given that it's impossible to stop piracy and that there will still be people like you who say "Great, keep up the good work." like some 15th century aristocrat talking to a slave. |
ap19Jul 13, 2012 6:17 PM
| http://www.nicovideo.jp/user/5040721 I'm Japanese, so if you have any questions regarding Japan, feel free to ask. アメリカ育ちなので、なんか英語に関して質問があれば気軽にどうぞ。 |
| Very long, so I have to comment by parts. I won't comment about the original writing, as it's emotive and I can't connect well enough to comment. Rather, I'll comment on ap19's comments. ap19 said: 3 USD a day is just 2 dollars greater than the poverty line. In Japan, That would mean an incredible level of standard of living. My own expenses would break off 4k+ Yen per week. And I live in a less-rich-than-Tokyo place. Granted, local inflation has been ridiculous, but no local here is able to afford 70+USD fruits for sale here.Rather than blame piracy, I still believe in blaming Capitalism, as I will detail below. ap19 said: Tokyo is not a good measure. It is a city area as good as comparison as New York, London, etc... If one was minimalist, one should not stay in Tokyo. I know how bad times are, and the Eurozone will affect lives negatively, without a doubt. This will cause animators, as part of everyone, to suffer.My question: do you believe that an animator's work is to be respected, and how much should it differ from a 'konbini' clerk's salary? ap19 said: Japanese goods have inflated prices. This is the first thing to consider when considering prices. Piracy damages are also difficult to determine. All electronic data can be 'pirated.' Anyway, nothing is absolutely free. And the fact is that the presence of distributors disrupts piracy (No distributor = No legal cases, no 'copyright' as there is nobody who complains) but in the process also makes it difficult for legal payers to access things as well. There's nothing amazing about your existence if you don't help me, and there's clearly nothing amazing about your existence if you hinder me. Same logic. Since you want actual numbers, I'll give you some. Not just anime: Your math, literally, is copyright math. About demonoid: From Wiki:The site had over 377,990 torrents indexed as of May 26, 2012 (torrents uploaded prior to August 4, 2005 were removed to free server resources). It would not be unsafe to assume the 377k are not copyleft material. An instant check puts us at 446,367 torrents. This gives us a starting point. We assume that ~500 'completed' on average, and that each torrent is worth USD30(since it varies). Price loss calculation: Google gives me 500 billion yen. It is a factor of 2000 less than your estimate. In any case, even if I improved my answer using normal distributions, and setting a range of 1 standard deviation, it just won't be accurate. Piracy damages are difficult to determine. ap19 said: Well, wouldn't it be odd if not buying DVDs does not damage the industry?Again, a lack of localisation promotes piracy. And the rational behaviour is to download if there are no repercussions. Piracy is just different. I think Notch's stance on piracy should be famous, and the fact that he is an indie developer puts him in shoes of something not dissimilar to anime producers. I do not deny the clear inequality in outcome, but perhaps that should be pointed against the ills of capitalism, and let's not bring the discussion here. ap19 said: The Internet is stoppable. There exists a Great Firewall of China, and there exists an even Greater Firewall of North Korea. I will put my opinion on this straightly: I believe in full rights of Individuals to the extent as they do not infringe on the rights on others.ap19 said: Oh, and so your logic is well supported by Game Theory? You know, I will just LINK whatever I want herehttp://www.princeton.edu/mudd/news/faq/topics/Non-Cooperative_Games_Nash.pdf For starters, my mathematics is bad. But I know that of the 1000, 0 will pay. A non-paying demographic makes up a huge portion of pirates. People who will pay, will have paid. It simply isn't rational to switch strategy just because someone denied it from you. The logical alternative is to pirate, or call for copylefting. In short, banning piracy is heavily not recommended. ap19 said: It would be naive to believe so in an East Asian country of clear East Asian custom dominance, yes. I agree. As for sanitation... Let me just put it this way: Scientists are underfunded even though we 'play' with a huge tunnel and toys we 'can't deal with.' I've been to real physics labs. It's a mess. Sanitation never lowers beyond levels like that of India, but it's simple: it's always a mess.I hope I don't offend anyone, but Aspergers Central(my favourite term for this place) [To be obvious I refer to www.google.com. This stems from the job interviews, the environment, etc... More of a historic term now possibly] seems to contradict the lack of team work for 'otaku.' Clearly, it is difficult to equate them and the difference in outcome is even clearer (Market Cap: 187.95B) Perhaps this is just a 'simple' difference between East and West. ap19 said: And so I should pity these people instead of the children at sweat shops. If you haven't noticed, I love extremities. If the problem lies with the working environment, it simply has to be changed. If it can't be changed:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikata_ga_nai ap19 said: I tried googling the amount of money the AV Industry in Japan is supposed to represent. I couldn't find it. Well, all I can conclude that it is a big industry, although I'm not even sure what 'big' means.Because this is a question of taste, I can only ask you, what kind of a taste do you have? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Black_Ops On August 3, 2011, Activision confirmed that the game had sold over 25 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling game of all time in the US, UK and Europe.[16][17][18] Not sure about you, but I would like less CoD in my industry. Please help. I mean, I played MW2 without OMA/Noob-Tubing, and it was pretty fun. But really, CoD start in 2003! SEVEN MAIN TITLES IN NINE YEARS. Compare that to Starcraft II. Hell, even Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II had 2 years difference of development! Not sure about you, but Call Me Maybe is the top in Billboard Hot 100. I'm fine with Western Music, really, since it does constitute a significant portion of my playlist. But really, here's not my money, because I'm not paying for this, so don't ever bother me~ ... [Insert 'Arts' Industry Here. Visual Arts, Musicals, Dance Performances, Books, PARTS of Industries, ...] ap19 said: Sure, personally attack pirates if you wish, but I'm voting for the Piratpartiet any time I become part of Konungariket Sverige I am a full supporter of Copyleft material by which Science is advanced. The very fact that Nature, a 36.280(2011) journal is still not public, frustrates me. Are you telling me that my personal subscription pays for State Lab Research!? RUBBISH! |
ZmffkskemJul 14, 2012 8:34 PM
 「みんながいるからだ。」 － 棗鈴 |
Meddigo said: Imagine how many people would download the re-encoded stream rips like many currently do with Crunchyroll's anime. Err... so? People are going to pirate no matter what. So why make it even more difficult for people that actually want to buy the content/support the content creators? The US music industry has learned this, somewhat. Now music are available legally in high quality without any DRM (where the industry used to be so paranoid on how people were supposedly going to share that single non-DRMed track). Do people still pirate music? Yes. Do people record streamed music from Pandora? I bet. But punishing legit customers won't help your business, and only push them to the other route. The worse thing you can do in fighting against piracy is making you content even less accessible. |
frivolity said: Your example of 1000 pirates reducing to 100 customers is inaccurate in practice. I wasn't sure about what I wrote up there on the OP, and I also wrote that I'm not entirely against piracy. I find it difficult to delineate the exact financial merits and demerits of stopping piracy, but yeah, I know both having piracy and not having piracy would have both merits and demerits. That 100 thing isn't what I believe, but rather what most higher-ups believe here. frivolity said: Unlike in Japan, anime culture does not carry negative connotations here. Anime doesn't carry as negative of a connotation as it used to in Japan either. The problem now is the focus on moe and hentai for financial stability, which is being attacked by things like the Tokyo Youth Ordinance Law (though this one in particular has proven to be defunct, letting manga like ToLoveRu Darkness slide). I believe when the next generation of government officials come to power, the whole traditional bias against anime would disappear, and ideas, the like of which former prime minister Aso Taro had about the international expansion of the anime industry, would be passed more easily. frivolity said: As such, the key to profiting internationally is to maintain this popularity and make a push towards converting anime into a mainstream interest rather than stifling its popularity and forcing it into a dying niche. Making the streams available for free could actually be beneficial towards this. Yeah I wholeheartedly agree with most of your explanation about the F2P deal. However, this costs money to start, and it is no doubt a risk for the industry itself. As you can see from the OP, they're not in a position to take any risks, especially if they involve a huge down payment. The industry needs money first. frivolity said: Technology allows virtual items to be duplicated at no cost. I hope your considering the expensive prices that we have to pay, as damage to us. frivolity said: The industry has to change and adapt in response to this technology. The music industry has done this through making individual songs assessable online at low prices rather than insisting on selling full albums as they have in the past. The anime industry has to adapt as well. I wholeheartedly agree with this too. I don't remember where I posted this, but Japan is pretty much a stupid country. Over-conservative, over-traditionalist, oblivious and ignorant of the modern world. The law penalizing illegal uploads/downloads is a paragon of this, and it was started by CD companies that blamed illegit streams of full versions of music on video sites, when in fact the plummeting CD sales had only to do with people buying from legitimate rental stores. The anime industry certainly has to adapt, but they don't know how, let alone the money to act on whatever how they come up with. frivolity said: We are 21st century consumers and they also need to be 21st century retailers. I like this quote. I wish Japanese people could read English. frivolity said: If MAL does decide to organise a donation drive, then I'll start saving up some money of course. But maybe it should also be accompanied with a petition that brings up ideas about how the anime companies in Japan can improve their services to adapt themselves to the times and turn this piracy into a driving force that revitalises the whole industry. Maybe (a petition)? No, more like definitely. However, there needs to be a bridge between the pirating fandom and the anime industry, that demonstrates the concern for the industry as well as the idea that pirates aren't necessarily entirely evil in nature. Otherwise, they would only get the impression that the pirates are being one-sided. @Zmffkskem Because I had been surrounded by people who were actually stupider than I am for the past few years or so, I had forgotten that I'm not exactly a smart guy either. I don't know if it's the English or the terminology or because I'm reading your text instead of listening to you speak, I find it difficult to follow, which is why I can't really be confident when I respond. I don't think people have much choice in where they live. It wouldn't make much difference if a Tokyo resident moved to Saitama or Chiba or Kanagawa. If he/she moved any further, they'd have to look for a new job in a place that could just as well be considered a different country that uses Japanese. I only stated "minimalist", because my expenditures are much lower than the average college student here, perhaps the lowest even, but that is because I have the option to be minimalist. I would assume most of these kinds of destitute people don't, but just inevitably are extreme minimalists forced to live in their given environment. I believe that an animator should get the working environment and living leisure of your average Japanese citizen. What I explained above most certainly is not the Japanese norm, and I don't feel it just for them to be no different from the homeless littering the urban streets. Well, perhaps it's a dream that 100 out of the 1000 will pay then. However, to the anime industry, that dream is all they've really got left in their position. They don't have the money or the leisure to do anything else, and this whole piracy banning wasn't started or promoted by them in the first place. The anime industry is just being helplessly tossed around by other powerful entities, hoping things will change for the better. I'm not into extremities, but rather into loyalty concerning whatever has granted me what I wanted. In my case, a part of it happens not to be the human species as a whole nor children at sweat shops, but those involved in the anime industry. No one could be concerned about every problem the world has, but you can't blame me for assuming people on MyAnimeList would probably show some concern about what makes their anime. I simply didn't get the game part. Piratpartiet was interesting, if I understood it correctly. I agree with the transparency of the state over cybernetic activity, especially regarding the Japanese government and its brainlessness. In the end, I can't tell if you care if the anime industry collapses or whether you think it will collapse or not. It just seems you're blandly stating facts. That's not a bad thing of course, and I'm not really smart enough to keep up with everything you say, the way you say it. However, what I said is based on the idea that MAL users can actually do something, regardless of how slight its effect may be, to ameliorate the situation, pretty much in the way frivolity phrased it; donation/petition. If MAL users are what I said above, ie people who couldn't care less if anime disappeared as long as they didn't get punished and got a substitute, then end discussion; at least I got the few people who read it aware. That's just about what one person can manage to do. |
| http://www.nicovideo.jp/user/5040721 I'm Japanese, so if you have any questions regarding Japan, feel free to ask. アメリカ育ちなので、なんか英語に関して質問があれば気軽にどうぞ。 |
| The company this person worked at obviously had an extremely poor business design. It would make much more sense to look back in the past over various decades to see if its always been like this or not. However still correlation is not causation. Its silly to think the internet is whats destroying it when there are people in command doing all this management poorly. It is honorable someone would put up with that stuff just make some animation for shitty pay. If they spent more time on a smaller number of good shows and less on mass amounts of garbage then they would turn better profits most likely. This guy was a little more judgmental than he needed to be of others but he at least got the point across at the poor conditions. Also to say that torrenting and streaming for free has a negative effect is not fully thought out. Let me put it this way. If i had lots of money would i pay? Yes. Do I have lots of money? No. How much money would I have spent based on the length of my watched list? Well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars? I THINK NOT! I would never have spent that much money no matter what even if i was well payed because its not reasonable to pay that much money for that kind of hobby at least for me. There is a limit to how money someone can pay for something. People who can afford it should pay for anime but in all realism pirating is like free advertising. If i couldnt watch pirated things would I still be watching anime? The answer is no because I do not have the money. If i was not watching anime i would not be recemending shows to others and some of these people are the kinds of people who do have money and do pay. You can just as easily argue that outlawing and banning pirating actually causes a loss of financial gain for the industry same as you can say it causes a loss for piratings existence. If i cant afford it anyways you cant say there is a loss because i couldnt or wouldnt have bought it myself even if i wanted to. People should just stop encouraging pirating with "you dont have to buy it you can watch it for free" to people who can afford to pay but if you cant pay its no drop in the bucket no matter what they do. |
| Interesting read, but come on, when will people understand that one torrent does not equate to one sale, or that perhaps pirating does not equate to loss of sales at all? There's weak logic there, and it still gets used as an argument time and time again. Piracy exists, we get it. The thing is, no matter how much anyone complains the consumer isn't going to change, you have to change the consumer's choice set. Business models are in need of serious updating, and they need not look further than a lot of American companies. |
JoshJul 14, 2012 6:20 PM
LoneWolf said: @Josh makes me sad to call myself Canadian. |
| TL;DR Translation My thoughts- It's the same old shit. |
NEETs (No Employment Education Training) are the least desirable people anybody would want to hire and yet they are the first choice to become moderators/admins around the internet. They have yet to have established a sense of responsibility or role in society and many are plain leeches (with minor exceptions). They are given "authority" to police sections of the internet with the powers of The Judge, Jury, and Executioner. Isn't that weird? -Migrating to another site- Update 11/9/2016 - Inactive Over a Year. Logged in to laugh at elections. |
| this was an awesome read. it's quite sad to see the conditions these people work in. |
| I'm just some opinionated asshole on the internet |
ap19 said: It's problematic if you consider the 'average' Japanese citizen. How will non-payers pay? About the games: If anyone can't catch what I said, then it's simply the fault of not enough Googling or Wikipedia searching. I am a fan of anime, but just like any other media, I do not have the ability to, nor do I think I will gain the ability to any time soon, spend my money on it. Simply speaking, I'd buy the full bluray set for my favourite anime, but it would cost more than a thousand lunches. In short: unaffordable. |
「みんながいるからだ。」 － 棗鈴 |
Zmffkskem said: In short: unaffordable. I get what you said now. As for this, yeah it costs a thousand lunches, so I pay a thousand lunches. As a result, I don't eat lunch, nor have any meals to compensate. From October 1st, residents from Japan will in somewhat shape or form be forced to pay a thousand lunches, or otherwise risk paying ten thousand lunches to the government (or perhaps pay nothing at all and let the anime industry collapse). The recent vector of Japanese government is at least indirectly the fault of piracy, regardless of how stupid the government or business may be in terms of dealing with its actuality, and for some reason, the Japanese residents and animators, who have already been working hard enough as it is on the battlefront, are the only ones getting penalized further for it. Yeah, perhaps I am indeed just ranting in an irrelevant direction. From what you say, piracy certainly may not have as much damage as most anti-pirates see it to have. Therefore, you all can just blame Japan for its internal corruption while you stay the onlookers leeching away. Certainly. I mean, it is Japan's problem, not anywhere else's. You all don't care enough to feel any concern. It's just a "matter-of-fact" deal. There is an unfairness behind the fact that we pay and work the extra sum while you do not. I believe there's something wrong when you're just watching something die without trying to help it, especially if that something has given you so much. It simply boils down to what I have said a few times, about you people not doing anything to help the situation despite all that you have received. I might as well add making fun of us "brainless fools" who are trying to help, only to miserably commit suicide, too. Well, if the majority of the world doesn't care enough to do anything about it, then I guess nothing will be done about it. There'd be no harm done from its disappearance or the anguish of the formerly involved. I'll just wait to grow old enough to not care about anime anymore too, like you guys. Then I'll be able to eat lunch again. |
| http://www.nicovideo.jp/user/5040721 I'm Japanese, so if you have any questions regarding Japan, feel free to ask. アメリカ育ちなので、なんか英語に関して質問があれば気軽にどうぞ。 |
ap19 said: You do understand onlookers won't be of any help if the industry and country as a whole remains opposed to evolving right? It's not just Japan who's having issues here, but other industries have their own crises and are finding ways out of them. At the moment it seems less a situation of "if we give them a lot of money it will resolve itself" and more about the whole industry having to rethink itself, something they are failing at, very badly at that.Zmffkskem said: In short: unaffordable. I get what you said now. As for this, yeah it costs a thousand lunches, so I pay a thousand lunches. As a result, I don't eat lunch, nor have any meals to compensate. From October 1st, residents from Japan will in somewhat shape or form be forced to pay a thousand lunches, or otherwise risk paying ten thousand lunches to the government (or perhaps pay nothing at all and let the anime industry collapse). The recent vector of Japanese government is at least indirectly the fault of piracy, regardless of how stupid the government or business may be in terms of dealing with its actuality, and for some reason, the Japanese residents and animators, who have already been working hard enough as it is on the battlefront, are the only ones getting penalized further for it. Yeah, perhaps I am indeed just ranting in an irrelevant direction. From what you say, piracy certainly may not have as much damage as most anti-pirates see it to have. Therefore, you all can just blame Japan for its internal corruption while you stay the onlookers leeching away. Certainly. I mean, it is Japan's problem, not anywhere else's. You all don't care enough to feel any concern. It's just a "matter-of-fact" deal. There is an unfairness behind the fact that we pay and work the extra sum while you do not. I believe there's something wrong when you're just watching something die without trying to help it, especially if that something has given you so much. It simply boils down to what I have said a few times, about you people not doing anything to help the situation despite all that you have received. I might as well add making fun of us "brainless fools" who are trying to help, only to miserably commit suicide, too. Well, if the majority of the world doesn't care enough to do anything about it, then I guess nothing will be done about it. There'd be no harm done from its disappearance or the anguish of the formerly involved. I'll just wait to grow old enough to not care about anime anymore too, like you guys. Then I'll be able to eat lunch again. |
 |
| Interesting read... you can't expect everyone to be satisfied with their work. The piracy rant was completely unnecessary. |
 |
| I want to see a chart that shows how much money is being distributed from top to bottom before I believe this. I don't doubt this guy probably made low wages. I have a hard time believing this or any other entertainment industry is keeping its head barely above water though. If money is an issue, then perhaps breaking the chain to hire out freelancers keeps the higher ups with fat paychecks so they can't communicate the issue up the proper channels. Either way, I bet if I ran a search it would amount to billions of dollars world wide for Anime, t-shirts, and toys generated from stuff they create. Right now, virtually every industry is paying low wages and hiring unskilled workers across the planet to save money. I have a friend with a masters degree in electrical engineering that makes as much as people who change out oil in cars. Outsourcing jobs, breaking up tasks so the right hand can't communicate with the left seems more of an issue here. Someone is making money, and a lot of it. |
| I buy all the shit I like. For stuff that I consider to be cancer I wont buy. I will just wait for it to die of lack of funds. And I actually did a research paper on piracy and even went out and did a census. Apparently price is as much of an issue as convenience and accessibility. |
| As a child, I was told that society is a melting pot of talents; knowledge and experience combined to form important alloys that will contribute to mankind. When I got to highschool, however, I thought that it's more like a river in which the water represents our peers while we ourselves are the stones in the river. Constant erosion by mindless majority sheeping has made us lose our unique edge. After I hit the age of 18, I realized that I've been wrong all along. Society is no melting pot. Society is no river. Society is a person, a very skilled rapist, and he has fucked us all. |
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