It's not discrimination, it just goes to show anime does not have a fan base large enough to justify the costs of investing in broadcasting and distribution,. It's simply not a profitable enough.
The Japanese fear anime is a dieing industry.
Can 'anime palace' save a crumbling industry?Many animators work freelance, meaning paying health insurance and other bills becomes a constant worry. (Mainichi)
As the foundations of the anime industry begin to crumble, thanks to savagely decreasing pay for artists and animators, insiders are casting a skeptical eye at the government's plans for the provisionally-titled National Center for Media Arts. While aimed at promoting Japanese anime and games to ever-hungry foreign markets, critics wonder: Can an "anime palace" save an increasingly unstable industry?
"Since last year, the number of productions and their budgets have been falling," says Junichi Takagi, 35, a producer for anime production studio Gonzo. "A contract for a 30-minute TV episode used to be around 18 million yen, but now it's around 13 million yen."
Although the amount of time spent on hand-drawing fine detail has increased, labor costs have remained the same, and Takagi says that "weaker companies started falling out of the running last year."
The anime industry in Japan has shrunk since its peak in 2005 and 2006, with DVD sales slumping and online distribution services still in development, and the crunch is being felt at every level.
"There's no money to waste. Even if I found a girlfriend, I don't know if I could get married or anything," says a tired-looking 24-year-old animator. After a year in the industry, he's now on an average wage of 70,000 yen a month.
A study by the Japan Animation Creators Association (JAniCA) shows that for an animator in their 20s, the average yearly salary is around 1.1 million yen. Staff turnover is somewhere between 80 and 90 percent; and a failure to nurture young workers partly because production is often outsourced to Asian companies, has led to what critics call a "hollowing out" of the Japanese industry.
So, are the plans for the new National Center for Media Arts failing to address the real cause of this crisis?
"Smaller producers need financial assistance," says Nobuyuki Tsugata, 40, an associate professor of animation history at Kyoto Seika University, who while agreeing that the center's mandate for collecting historic anime materials for posterity is an important one, argues that this can be done without public funds.
"It's good for nothing," says veteran animator Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, 61, who worked on the classic Mobile Suit Gundam.
"Anime's as tough as a weed. They should just leave it alone. I worry that along with this help, the state will start to police its forms of expression."
However, JAniCA has chosen to throw its weight behind the project, submitting a proposal to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to turn it into a training center for anime industry professionals.
"We could also allow tourists to see the actual process of creating anime," says project audit director Daisuke Okeda, 33.
And, despite the skepticism, it could prove an opportunity to draw attention to the problem facing Japan's anime world. However, as for the collection, archiving and exhibition of anime material, the Agency for Cultural Affairs has little in the way of concrete proposals. Game producer Tsunekazu Ishihara, 51, a member of the project's investigative commission, wonders exactly how much it can actually deliver.
"The estimated budget is 11.7 billion yen. That's about the same as a theme park attraction, so we can't expect too much from it."
While there are many issues under consideration, the prevailing hope among anime industry workers is not to let the project turn into empty gesture.
"In five or 10 more years, training the next generation will be impossible," says Okeda. And with little time left, the sense of gloom is palpable.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/features/news/20090704p2a00m0na020000c.html
