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INTEREST: Animator Ippei Ichii Says Netflix Anime Produced at MAPPA Paid Bottom Rates (Updated)

What does a "per cut" mean?

Richmyster84 wrote:

What does a "per cut" mean?

A cut refers to a scene. One episode usually contains around 300+ cuts.

We have heard about the bad condition of the animators several times in the past months. Please let's change this situation.
One of the main reasons why animators get paid so little is that anime studios focus only on the limited domestic market and therefore cannot earn enough money and do not know that anime is very popular outside of Japan. And people are already paying to watch anime, so streaming services like Netflix take advantage of this and pay a small fee for the right to play anime.
Let's create a situation where instead of paying for streaming services to watch anime, we pay this directly to anime studios.

(The rest of the text is some non-sense virtue signalling BS)

It's not really surprising, people keep saying that Netflix is going to improve pay for animators, but why would they when the cheap costs benefit them.

r4737 wrote:

We have heard about the bad condition of the animators several times in the past months. Please let's change this situation. One of the main reasons why animators get paid so little is that anime studios focus only on the limited domestic market and therefore cannot earn enough money and do not know that anime is very popular outside of Japan. And people are already paying to watch anime, so streaming services like Netflix take advantage of this and pay a small fee for the right to play anime. Let's create a situation where instead of paying for streaming services to watch anime, we pay this directly to anime studios. (The rest of the text is some non-sense virtue signalling BS)

A patreon for anime studios literally won't work. A lot of animators are freelancers, there are also a lot of studios who are doing mostly in-betweens. The bulk of people will just donate to the most well-known studios like KyoAni, Trigger (which has a patreon BTW), Ufotable, MAPPA and Madhouse. Lesser studios and studios who have never produced anime (yet do important tasks like in-betweens, key animation, etc.) won't benefit from that suggestion of yours.

MarshalBanana wrote:

It's not really surprising, people keep saying that Netflix is going to improve pay for animators, but why would they when the cheap costs benefit them.

Exactly. I think a lot of people are under the mistaken assumption that because a company can pay better that it will. Like any business, Netflix will pay as little as it can where it can. That tends to be especially true for entertainment companies where they make a bunch of content and hope something works, and with the the hits basically subsidizing the misses.

I've seen from time-to-time that Netflix isn't currently profitable, and we know that it is very tight-lipped about its numbers. At some point, they may have to confront that issue, and as much as it sucks to say, a business probably isn't going to pay better if it means burning through the money they have that much faster.

I guess my point is that expecting deeper pockets to mean better pay was pretty wishful.

There are surely workarounds to make this a viable solution that make this worth considering though. Like, instead of a recurring payment, a way to make one-off payments on particular projects, which would help keep contract freelance animators in the loop, as long as it's kept track of who worked on what, which I'm sure they do already. Any kind of direct funding would serve the animation industry better than any second-hand way through a streaming service or physical media. I can at least speak of myself that I'd much prefer to pay a small lump sum and pirate it when a studio puts out something I enjoy, than pay an exorbitant amount to get it physically (both because I'm not a collector and a fair portion of that money isn't going back to the people who made the anime), or pay to see it on a streaming platform, as barely any of that subscription fee makes its way back to the people who actually made the media.

There are surely workarounds to make this a viable solution that make this worth considering though. Like, instead of a recurring payment, a way to make one-off payments on particular projects, which would help keep contract freelance animators in the loop, as long as it's kept track of who worked on what, which I'm sure they do already. Any kind of direct funding would serve the animation industry better than any second-hand way through a streaming service or physical media. I can at least speak of myself that I'd much prefer to pay a small lump sum and pirate it when a studio puts out something I enjoy, than pay an exorbitant amount to get it physically (both because I'm not a collector and a fair portion of that money isn't going back to the people who made the anime), or pay to see it on a streaming platform, as barely any of that subscription fee makes its way back to the people who actually made the media.

We have heard about the bad condition of the animators several times in the past months. Please let's change this situation.
One of the main reasons why animators get paid so little is that anime studios focus only on the limited domestic market and therefore cannot earn enough money and do not know that anime is very popular outside of Japan. And people are already paying to watch anime, so streaming services like Netflix take advantage of this and pay a small fee for the right to play anime.
Let's create a situation where instead of paying for streaming services to watch anime, we pay this directly to anime studios.
We anime fans need to change this situation
when the chainsaw man anime trailer aired and chainsaw man became a trend on Twitter Japanese studios were stunned.
Japanese studios and animators should definitely realize that they have a lot of fans outside of Japan and in the world.
Please let's trend the word "#Support Japanese Anime Animator" on Twitter to let Japanese anime studios know that anime is popular in the world and the status of animators is important to fans.
This may be a small step, but rest assured it will change the situation in the future
I ask everyone, especially those who have a YouTube channel or site or Twitter account, to share this message with others.
The world of anime is a world we all love, so please let's protect anime and change the bad situation of the animators who make anime for our enjoyment.
Please let's trend the word "#SupportJapaneseAnimeAnimator" on Twitter

#SupportJapaneseAnimeAnimator

PS:
The use of the word "Japanese" is important because in Japanese both "anime" and "animation" word are called anime.

Alistair Durston wrote:

There are surely workarounds to make this a viable solution that make this worth considering though. Like, instead of a recurring payment, a way to make one-off payments on particular projects, which would help keep contract freelance animators in the loop, as long as it's kept track of who worked on what, which I'm sure they do already. Any kind of direct funding would serve the animation industry better than any second-hand way through a streaming service or physical media. I can at least speak of myself that I'd much prefer to pay a small lump sum and pirate it when a studio puts out something I enjoy, than pay an exorbitant amount to get it physically (both because I'm not a collector and a fair portion of that money isn't going back to the people who made the anime), or pay to see it on a streaming platform, as barely any of that subscription fee makes its way back to the people who actually made the media.

Dude, when did pirating helped in something?

I think most people agree that we'd rather have animators be paid a living wage even if it results in less anime. We don't need 50 new shows every season. Quality over quantity etc.
But how do we fix this? Someone already mentioned that piracy is not a solution and I agree, but how do we show production comitees that we'd rather have them pay people than ten new "reincarnated in another world but there's a gimmick!" four times a year?
I hate this. I hate living in capitalist hell.

I think most people agree that we'd rather have animators be paid a living wage even if it results in less anime. We don't need 50 new shows every season. Quality over quantity etc