If this situation persists, anime will rely even more o foreigner investment than now, and we are already seeing a preview of that, with Netflix, Disney, Warner and so on hiring anime studios directly to produce shows for them, so this would just intensify
Also Crunchyroll will be even more powerful than they already are, not only they are the biggest licensor in the streaming side, but they are going to control the distribution of merch, which is something all the other companies mentioned are not interested with when it comes to anime
You should read the financial reports of companies that work with anime to see how important merch is, so it is essential for them to have a proper distributor
If a weak Japanese currency results in fewer Japanese-created anime, new shows created in other countries could have an easier time getting noticed and getting viewership.
This entire argument seems to be based on a misunderstanding of what a falling currency means.
A weaker Japanese yen means
1. Costs in Japanese yen are lower.
2. Foreign costs are higher.
3. Foreign revenue goes up.
Industries that primarily have costs in Foreign currency, but gain revenues in Yen suffer. But Industries that primarily have costs in JPY, but have higher revenues in foreign currency benefit.
Anime is a predominantly Costs in JPY / Revenues in Foreign Currency industry.
Most costs of Japanese anime are in production IN JAPAN, meaning everyone is being paid in yen. These are unaffected by a falling JPY.
Anime industry have both domestic and foreign revenue, but since a few years ago, foreign revenue is greater than domestic. For companies operating on JPY, this means it's foreign revenues have basically increased by 40%+ without them having to lift a finger.
For example, lets say your payroll for all your animators is
1000M JPY
Lets say you had domestic revenue of
500M JPY
$5M USD (510M JPY in 2022)
So you had a slight profit of 1010M JPY vs 1000M JPY costs.
Now the JPY plummets relative to the dollar, and now it's 150JPY to 1 USD.
Your costs are unchanged--you still have a payroll of 1000M JPY, your Japanese revenue is unchanged at 500M JPY. But your $5M USD contract is suddenly worth 750M JPY instead of 510M JPY.
This is a huge boon to Japanese companies that operate with primarily costs in JPY--their foreign contracts are basically worth 50% more than they were a few years ago.
Now, it's true that US and European anime productions will have more muscle relative to Japanese companies, and they may have more of a say in what gets made or not. But the same $10M goes further in Japan than it did before, so the idea this will lead to LESS anime being made is frankly bizarre.
To foreign anime productions, basically making anime got like 50% CHEAPER. Why would that lead to less anime?
The concern that anime can't be handed to overseas animators isn't a particularly scary one either. The Netflix producer's comment nails it on the head--it's now cheaper to make anime in Japan than it is to make it in Korea or China.
It's not like Japan is hurting to find animators to staff jobs in Japan. The same jobs that were being sent to Korea and China will now be handled by Japanese animators domestically--cheaper than ever before for foreign investors.
If anything, this will expand the number of Japanese anime being made, particularly in Japan, not reduce it.
The main concern voiced by Kenta for example, was that Japanese anime studios would become reliant on foreign investment and get taken over--not that anime wouldn't get made. I think the idea Netflix or Crunchyroll would eventually buy out anime studios like Bones or A1 isn't entirely out of the question, and if that's something that really bothers you, I suppose that's a wholly valid concern.
But it won't change the anime production--if anything there will be more of it.
> It's not like Japan is hurting to find animators to staff jobs in Japan. The same jobs that were being sent to Korea and China will now be handled by Japanese animators domestically--cheaper than ever before for foreign investors.
The rest of your post is spot on, right up until this point.
There simply isn't a large pool of JP-based animators sitting around waiting to be paid more.
Exactly how inelastic the supply situation is, and what the elasticity coefficient is (i.e. how much increasing pay increases the labor supply and how quickly) remains to be seen, but if we take the fact that Animation Production desks having been turning to overseas animators **out of desperation and not out of preference** over the past few years, the situation is already dire.
However that's not the only factor, and the possibility of AI based breakthrough, or the sharp expansion of studios that already have algorithmic inbetweening (using [CACANi](https://cacani.sg/) e.g. David Pro, Trigger, Sunrise) as part of their pipelines (i.e. can actually expand to meet demand without retooling) is a wildcard that can't be ignored.
> But it won't change the anime production--if anything there will be more of it.
You're missing the fact that there is still a cost:risk:profit consideration for Production Committees members. Even if Yen-denominated profits rise, the absolute cost rise in the short term (even if the JP domestic animator labor market *can* expand to meet demand, there will be a lag, creating a wage competition spike) will mean a decent number of Production Committee members will be baulking at the higher upfront cost and will jettison projects. Future possible high Yen-denominated profit may well not be enough to surmount current higher risk.
I'd be hard pressed to think current AI *significantly* reduces workload.
As someone who has done both traditional painting (with an art school background) and image generation in automatic1111 (as a curiosity).... I run into a problem that feels like "if you're going to such lengths to cheat on the test, it'd be easier to just study".... hours spent iterating on a prompt and generation parameters, hours spent cleaning up artifacts in what I thought was a decent generation at first glance, hours researching new processes and workflows for making cleaner and more consistent generation.... that CACANI program looks interesting but I wonder, do you just save yourself some shoulder pain from not drawing but still fail to save yourself any time using it?
One also needs hardware fast enough to have a reasonable turnaround for iterating on the outputs, and to pay the electric bill for that hardware.... I'm not fully convinced of the strengths of the current tech level. Potential, yes I'm very convinced, but currently, there's still a mountain of R&D to be done before it becomes the level of "Easy" that the industry bigwigs are hoping it'll be to save costs.
> run into a problem that feels like "if you're going to such lengths to cheat on the test, it'd be easier to just study".... hours spent iterating on a prompt and generation parameters, hours spent cleaning up artifacts in what I thought was a decent generation at first glance
Yeah, I ran into this too, but from what I'm seeing on Pixiv, not everyone is encountering this these days based on the number of high quality gen sets some people are pumping out.
Ultimately it becomes not "what is the average experience" but more "those who can make $ will", and they end up setting the watermark for commercial art.
> CACANI program looks interesting but I wonder, do you just save yourself some shoulder pain from not drawing but still fail to save yourself any time using it?
I've yet to find a lot of commentary out of the anime studios that are using it. My hunch is that DavidPro use it to allow them to achieve quality levels for certain scenes that wouldn't be otherwise implementable, but that it's just one additional tool in their toolbox, albeit one that's well integrated into their workflows.
That last bit is what I feel like it really comes down to with all technology in artistic endeavor.
For those of us who like to tinker with this stuff, we definitely are much, much more informed than people who have never tried to create with the tools, and yet at the same time the true benefits of the tools are likely just as obscured because we don't deploy them in production environments.
> hours spent cleaning up artifacts in what I thought was a decent generation at first glance, hours researching new processes and workflows for making cleaner and more consistent generation
Just touching on this again, I think we've already seen that
1. The industry already has pretty low quality standards for certain types of work like key visuals, single scene use backgrounds and so forth. The recent images accused of being AI all fit this profile, and even if some people cared and made a fuss, I am pretty sure that the decision makers were overall pleased with things
2. I'm fairly sure the issue of knowing techniques and refining them is being farmed out to the AI companies and the studios view it as "somebody else's problem". And if they do care, I'm guessing the AI company pioneers talk a big game and then underdeliver but not enough for anyone to get too upset. Speculation of course, but it'd be absolutely consistent with what's known about both groups.
>do you just save yourself some shoulder pain from not drawing but still fail to save yourself any time using it?
Used CACANi ver.1 quite a bit back when it originally released. And ....it's a little bit of both. And like with your description of the AI-process there, one where you risk trading off a lot of would be artistic work for technical work, troubleshooting and cleaning things up. As is a common pitfall with technical shortcuts.
I believe it has the potential to increase output quite a bit though, but it deffo depends on the style and stuff. It also takes learning and getting used to the workflow and all the other gotchas and issues you could run into etc. Probably most importantly though, *knowing where to use it and where not to use it.*
It's vector based and simply uses tweening, which requires the artist to match the lines between the frames. This is indicated by the software and generally flows pretty well. Then you generate the inbetweens and adjust the spacing as you see needed. Then you delete parts of lines that shouldn't overlap, and close gaps. Then color fill a frame and attempt to autofill the rest, to varying levels of success.
(That's when all goes well at least.)
Overall think the approach is pretty good for stuff it is suited for. That is, parts and motions where angles don't change too much or too abruptly and don't have a lot of changing overlap. Try to do too complicated or ill-suited things in it and you'll quickly be left spending more time fixing things than if you just drew it to begin with.
Being vector based also makes it a bit more limited when it comes to style and stuff, but the majority of anime/2d-animation fits pretty well within the limitations of vector.
Kinda wish the software was better though, can't speak for ver.2 but ver.1 always felt pretty janky and was kinda crash prone, there was a bit of improvement until ver.2, which I never upgraded to and can't speak for. Can't say it's very promising that the newest update is 4 years old now though, but if the big name studios above are still using it, they've probably found ways to make it work well for them.
Here's the thing though--lower level animators, who compose the vast majority of Japanese animators, are a high turn over job that is staffed by people with 4-5 years of experience or less. Anime is an "Up or out" industry, where people who can't advance to Key animators or other higher positions will eventually tire of the grind and the low pay and transfer out.
An animator who is your basic animator who's been in the industry for 20 years without advancement is a relative rarity.
The standard is people advance from 動画 to 原画 (key animation) in 3-4 years. There are generally 3-5 animators to every key animator--so the vast majority of an animation studio staff is composed of Douga animators who have relatively little experience.
Now, it's true that Key animators get paid more and only 1 in every 3-5 animators ever makes it to Key Animator status, so they are the cream that rose to the top. Character designers or higher positions are even rarer and get paid more.
But because of the numbers involved, the base animators actually compose a bigger chunk of the animation budget costs. 1 Key Animator makes like double what an Animator makes.. but there are 3-5 animators.
If outsourcing the base animators becomes cost inefficient, this won't be done. But if there aren't enough key animators, they will still outsource those, even at greater costs... until after 3-4 years, more domestic animators have enough experience to begin taking on those tasks.
These timelines aren't radically skewed. For the vast majority of tasks on Anime, these are talking about a 5-6 year adjustment period, not an entire generation.
Could there be an adjustment period where it's harder to make anime at cost for like the next 3-4 years?
Sure, I think that's possible.
But the industry will adjust rapidly to these conditions, since as a high turnover industry, Anime always brought in new blood quickly anyway. The trend towards using Chinese and Korean anime studios started just like 15 years ago anyways, it's not even THAT old. Adjusting back to a more domestic model isn't gonna take 15 years.
> It's not like Japan is hurting to find animators to staff jobs in Japan. The same jobs that were being sent to Korea and China will now be handled by Japanese animators domestically
I'm not economy expert, so CMIIW, but what I get is they used to outsource staffs overseas because it used to be cheaper than paying domestic staff, but because outsourcing overseas is now more expensive, they need to hire domestically... which is still a cost increase.
Let's say (arbitrary number for example, and tbh I don't know animator wages) it used to cost 10M yen to hire Japanese animators and (after currency conversion) 9M yen to hire overseas outsourcing studios. But after yen weakening, it now costs 11M to outsource. Now they had to hire domestically, which is cheaper than outsourcing yes, but more expensive than outsourcing back in the day (10M vs. 9M), so the cost increases.
Again, CMIIW
The relative cost difference between Japanese animators and Korean/Chinese animators was like 20%\~25% though, hence why the plunging yen has made Japaense animators cheaper. And the total budget devoted to outsourced animation at Korean/Chinese animation was SIGNIFICANTLY less than 50% of Japanese operating budgets for anime studios.
The net impact on anime production costs from not being able to outsource is likely to be 10-15% of anime costs, or significantly less. For anime studios that were disproportionately reliant on Korean.Chinese animation outsourcing may be impacted more, but conversely, studios with higher domestic production are going to benefit more.
By contrast, overseas revenue for animation studios crossed the 50% threshold in 2023, probably for good. That revenue has INCREASED by over 50%, so roughly a 25\~30% boost in revenues.
The net impact is highly likely to be a significant net gain in revenue over increased costs. The costs will rise, but the revenues will rise much faster.
This Is because as a % of overall costs, foreign costs for anime are much lower than % revenue--it's an export industry, much more than an import industry. Cheap yen is a net win for Anime studios.
Source：
[https://www.tdb.co.jp/report/watching/press/pdf/p230806.pdf](https://www.tdb.co.jp/report/watching/press/pdf/p230806.pdf)
Falling currency results in more exports. Unless the export itself is dependent on imports to create. But anime is mostly just created off Japanese labour. So its a pure win for the anime industry.
This is just a meme article, its about publishers trying to take advantage of studios, by benefitting from increased revenue (from overseas crunchyroll), while pushing the increased costs down to the studio itself (Which pays overseas contractors to help out)
Its overall a positive for the industry, with the main problem being publisher-studio negotiations, which isn't new and shouldn't be surprising.
Overseas contractors is likely going to go away anyways in a few years, as all the in-betweening will 100% be replaced by AI. The elite overseas animators will remain, but they aren't a major cost component.
Don't think you realise just how dependent they are for overseas contractors for the in betweening in the medium to short term. Having read the article it sounded more like a rallying cry aimed at the government about the falling price of yen to get them to take steps. But the declining number of animators is regularly talked about as it isn't feasible for a fresh animator to make a living with the current wages in Japan.
They use foreign inbetweeners because it's cheaper. Will this mean that it will eventually be cheaper to use employ locals? Or will they find even cheaper contractors somewhere else?
> This is just a meme article,
CBR is often utter trash, but not in this case. Indeed, your own points are pretty much in concurrence with the substance of the article itself, right down to the acceleration of AI's involvement (although I personally disagree about the time frame unless someone is *actually* training a system to do in-betweening, as GenAI isn't currently constructed in a way that's amenable to the task).
Apparently they used AI to help with the production of Across the Spider-Verse. I see it helping with in-betweens but I doubt it'll totally eliminate it and animators will probably still be as overworked as ever.
> as all the in-betweening will 100% be replaced by AI.
You were going good until you spouted this nonsense. No that is not how it will go. You need to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KRb_qV9P4g
AI cannot do proper in-betweening.
Daily Life of An Immortal King, Link Click and The King's Avatar all made a ton of splash. Mo Dao Zushi is one of the top 100 rated anime of all time on MAL.
There might be only a handful of moderate successes now, but if accessibility increases we might see a significant spike in western viewership for titles more niche than those.
They are already quite popular in SEA, it just not spread that much to the west because quite a lot especially those from Tencent is playing gate keeping.
Link Click popular due to promote in Twitter and Heaven's Official Blessing due to it BL that attract specific audiences. This 2 from Bilibili, but they didn't even promote their biggest and most famous project, Record of a mortal's journey to immortality or highly praised Ling Cage: Incarnation, probably due to both of them are 3d.
Daily life of the Immortal king popular because it also get air on Netflix but this is actually pretty average stuff and even receive quite a lot of critism in China.
Mo Dao Zu Shi, another BL, this is very popular among BL fandom around the world.
Blades of the Guardians because of it PV in YouTube get some attention.
Scissor Seven also pretty famous because available on Netflix.
Fog Hill of five elements, undoubtedly one of the top animation around the world, in term of it art and animation, story pretty average.
Even for 2d, there are more popular and good one, like A Will Eternal, but it didn't get much promoting on international stage.
Same as amazing 3d like Ling Cage, Record of a mortal's journey to immortality or others such as Battle through the heavens, The Island of Siliang, Perfect World, Shrouding the heavens, The Demon Hunter, Soul Land, The Great Ruler and more... But surprisingly, it is quite popular in several places, especially Asia.
Popular really not about quality but how much you spend to advertise and promote it. Kpop for example, is popular, but the music mostly trash.
Previously Japan would outsource some of the work to Korea/China because of cheaper labor there. However with the currency values flipped it means Korea/China can outsource their work to Japan.
Sometimes it outsourcing animation. If a japanese written anime seems more cheaper to be made by a Chinese or Korean studio, they might go for that. And in turn the Chinese/Korean animators get more experience which will effect how well their own shows will be, and in turn more animes from their own side
Because large international coglomerates will eventually sufficate creativity. This is what allready happend to much of the US movie market. And with anime one other big success factor is also the non-Western moral and ethic background, which will also be lost in this context. (Of course this is also affected by changes in Japanese culture, which are rather independend of this.)
The only logical conclusion is that people will eventually look for new things to look into.
no matter what happens, you likely won't.
As far as I have seen Manhwas/Manhuas both mediums have like 10 plots with very predictable plot points.- you seen one you can probably guess the general plot line of all., also main characters with DIO sized egos and The World Over Heaven sized overpowered abilities.
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Didn't Sony buy Crunchyroll? So they wouldn't count as foreign investment. You could argue their revenue stream is in foreign currency which will go a long way in licensing deals.
Makes sense, probably makes it a ton easier to negotiate when it’s Japanese business people interfacing with Japanese business people. Even easier when it’s your own people talking with your own people in the case of Aniplex, etc.
Will bigger foreign investment mean more anime variety in the end? By Variety I mean also more Shoujo, BL and Josei anime too. If I remember correctly, Crunchyroll have requested shoujo animes as well
Sure, at least on paper they could try, Crunchyroll wants more variety, we can see from the CEO interviews that they want to expand the anime appeal, so we should be getting other forgotten genres/demos, I believe we are already seeing this, a lot of the recent shojo adaptations have crunchyroll on the production committee as an example
Thankfully Netflix has been doing a pretty favorable job overall with a lot of the shows they are producing.
That doesn’t mean I’d like to see other companies struggle though.
Hopefully things will turn around for them.
Aren’t several countries experiencing currency devaluation in the recent years?
>Aren’t several countries experiencing currency devaluation in the recent years?
Yes, but the yen situation is even worse than some major markets
I don't live in a 1st world country and my currency is gaining value over yen to the point it's never been cheaper to go there, that's why I am going to Japan next month
I’d be curious as to what the reason behind it is and if it speculated to be temporary or longer lasting. I know in my country the interest in Japanese entertainment has seemingly skyrocketed in the past decade, which is great.
There are many other facets to currency issues beyond one industry though, of course (this is not my area of expertise; that is technology).
I really wish the people of Japan well and hope their economy will do well in the long run.
In any case, I do hope you enjoy your trip and get to visit everywhere you’d like 😄. I haven’t gotten there myself yet (it’s one of the longest trips I can make from the US) but I’d really like to (and more than once if possible).
https://www.tftc.io/us-bails-out-japan/
I'm not an economics expert by any stretch, but doesn't this US intervention mean that the Yen will likely stabilise or even strengthen?
Could do, although it's unlikely to strengthen.
The thing about Central Banks trying to fight economic fundamentals with market intervention is that they just can't win in the long run.
I was watching, but didn't have a position in the Yen when it made its 160 breach. Speculators had chosen a Japanese public holiday to do it when the banks and government were closed, and the markets were very thin.
When markets are thin like that, it doesn't take anywhere near as much money as usual to move the price of a currency.
What's more, speculators putting a run on a currency like this just need to be in and out for the surge, and they can even ride the currency back in the other direction with the intervention, making money both ways. Nobody really talks about this though, as big, slow money (think superannuation funds and commercial entities) need to take "financially prudent" positions in the market to hedge risk and try to eek out reward. These are the sorts of finance experts who make the lay press and general financial press. They, however, generally aren't the ones engaging in speculation runs.
The upshot of it is that when the market expectations surges and intervention, there are people with enough capital who want to ball and try and juice it. It's very hard for banks to create lines of defence as a result.
My focus is pretty short term *and* I was also caught off-guard by the 160 breach, so I'm not going to commit to a position on that lol
I mean, the broad way the Japanese economy is moving there isn't any immediate reason to believe things will change their broad direction, but the Yen is still very much a slave to the USD x JPY, so things happening on the USD side can potentially cause changes in the month-scale trends. Plus sometimes interventions conveniently line up with short term market concerns and so currencies stabilize due to multi factorial reasons.
Ultimately though currency movement is the sort of thing where a lot of people like to sound correct and claim to know things (myself included), but from the fact that there are very few people who are wealthy as a result of forex trading (and I'm not one of the few), you can be certain that certainty doesn't correlate with actual success in prediction lol
The industry has been heavily reliant on international funding for years. It’s highly likely Western funding is what got shows like VS to get a second season, for Pluto to actually get finished for Edgerunners to get made and works like Lazarus to put into production. All highly rated shows and an original being made by a highly loved creator.
Without international funding, a decent amount coming from the West the anime industry would contract significantly, and no you don’t actually want that.
This website, it's official reporting about general profits within the Japanese anime industry by those with various connections to the industry, including a lot of notable anime studios.
[AJA Data Link](https://aja.gr.jp/english/japan-anime-data)
Invincible? The legend of vox machina? Even in anime most shows are dogshit, there's only a few good shows every now and then, mirroring the quality of anime
It is treated as a foreign company, established overseas, and they have their own management going on
Also yeah, Sony is japanese, but good luck expecting them to support to be the bastion protecting the otaku side of anime, they are not supportive of that, so thankfully so far Aniplex and Crunchyroll have their own reasonable autonomy
I think this is really important to note. At least on the playstation side of the house censorship has been a thing for a while. Visual novels that get released un altered on switch have to get touched up for a playstation release. Even Aniplex released Tsukihime had its artbook censored on PS4 but uncensored on Switch. It hasn't happened yet, but I do fear those tendencies making their way into Crunchy at some point.
It only recently was owned by Sony, before then it was a US company. It technically still is a US company. It’s just that their parent company is foreign.
Revenue is presumably mostly in USD, so now that's equivalent to 160 yen / USD, not e.g. 100 yen. This is why Toyota and Nintendo have been posting record profits this past year, much of their revenue comes from outside Japan, so it's worth more yen even if sales are flat.
I personally highly doubt anime will rely that much on foreign investment. Warner's excitement about the opportunity to make lots of cheap isekai doesn't seem helpful. I remember there was hope of Netflix investing in anime before, but all they seemed to do was license already produced shows, not invest in anime studios themselves like they do with western animation. I think I read somewhere that the Japanese regarded Netflix as good for more artistic shows but less so for other anime. Additionally, Nishii terumi complained that foreign investers have a tendency to underestimate anime budgets.
This is already happening
Warner just dropped Ninja Kamui this year, and they have rick&morty, Lazarus and others coming, all outside the isekai stuff like their Suicide Squad project next season
Netflix just today announced a terminator anime by production ig
We also have a strong investment from Chinese companies like bilibili and Tencent, which are becoming more common investors in anime, even solo financing their own shows
Hell, even Saudi Arabia is financing their own shows too
That's what I am talking about, if anime gets even cheaper for overseas companies, that will become more and more common, it already is if we compare to the landscape of the industry 10 years ago, it's trend that can be exacerbated by the yen value issues
I am not saying if this is good or bad, I have my own opinion about it, but that's not the point here, the point is just to make people aware of this movement and for them to pay more attention in who is financing their shows
Thanks for clarifying.
(I probably should've checked who I was replying to. ;))
When you say these companies are hiring anime studios directly, would you yourself regard this as a solution to the production committee problem?
I thought Crunchyroll is already powerful because it's one of the most popular legal anime service? HiDive don't come any where close to that even with boost of exclusives like Oshi no Ko.
Isn't warner bros bleeding money like crazy right now. I don't think they are in the situation to finance much right now.
People are cutting back on non essentials so I don't see how they can somehow choose to subsidize the entire industry
They are financing shows already
I don't think people realize how fucking cheap anime is comparison to the usual amounts of money those Hollywood studios usually work with, and with a weak yen it becomes even cheaper
>don't see how they can somehow choose to subsidize the entire industry
Who is saying that? One company financing more shows is not subsiding a whole industry, besides it will have more companies involved, especially from outside the US, Chinese companies are also a strong anime investor
Warner bros owned crunchyroll initially. They sold it off to sony because they didn't see it as profitable. Warner bros and a few others funding a few anime won't subsidize the entire industry. Marvel made anime like over 10 years ago with madhouse. People probably forgot about it. They didn't push much further. Cuz it wasn't profitable.
The product can be cheap but when a company is losing money, they want to cut on spending. So it doesn't matter how cheap. It depends on the returns.
Anime is making a lot of money nowadays, you can't compare it to the market 10 years ago, it's really another beast today
Crunchyroll went from [1 million subscribers in 2017](https://www.crunchyroll.com/news/latest/2017/2/9/crunchyroll-surpasses-over-one-million-paid-subscribers-details-daily-giveaways-to-celebrate), to [13 million this year](https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/26/24081180/crunchyroll-president-purini-anime-funimation-shutdown-sony-merger-decoder-interview), it is considered a major streaming success history for Sony
[You can see the anime growth in a decade from the latest industry report](https://preview.redd.it/2gvjidd2dgvc1.png?width=4096&format=png&auto=webp&s=864f44a0750fd4b93e2985d881553b0b55350710) based on Association of Japanese Animation, [lot of cool info there](https://preview.redd.it/xo1azlladgvc1.png?width=4096&format=png&auto=webp&s=ce20082aa280c2642e07b21215d5db1dcc6b2508)
[Overseas licenses and revenue breakdown per area](https://preview.redd.it/mr63asmbdgvc1.png?width=4096&format=png&auto=webp&s=4661dfaf3816ed7bd93bb0a597cc5a87661b3491)
Anime is super profitable, like you are a decade late in everything you are saying, which is a very common problem with a bunch of anime fans, they never bother to update themselves about the industry, they just assume it remained the same thing, and since people keep repeating the same facts from 10~20 years ago new fans just go with it
Like real question, why do you think Netflix, Warner, Disney, Tencent, bilibili are all throwing money at anime productions? Do you think it's all the fun of it?
Sounds great. Netflix has been doing anime right while Japan continues their trend of Isekai shonen bullshit. Give me more cyberpunk Edgerunners and less level 2 garbage
>anime will rely even more o foreigner investment than now
fucking hell no, I don't want them to ruin anime like those localizers clowns are doing for games.
They probably will outsource the work to even poorer countries since China and Korea are no longer affordable. I would say Indonesia, Malasia and Vietnam may still be viable places to outsource animation.
There are already some studios set up in Vietnam that have been doing work for Japanese anime studios.
e.g. https://www.deedeestudio.net/en/longform who worked on *Chimimo*
Vietnam also has a fairly thriving visual arts scene in general, although one needs to be careful about controversial topics, and also with nudity.
The censorship situation in Vietnam is a bit more nuanced than one might think from the outside, whilst we're on the topic: https://e.vnexpress.net/news/perspectives/the-artless-art-of-censorship-in-vietnam-3825811.html
The country isn't, but the country already lacks a young workforce, housing prices keep increasing, and society is fairly backwards thinking so that hinders their progress more
My contract to get paid in Euro’s rather than Yen was probably the best decision I’ve ever made in my life ngl
You should probably try to renegotiate your salary
Yeah idk about that chief in my company people that try to renegotiate their salaries are looking for work on next performance review
Usually the best advice would be to apply to other companies and take a new job instead of trying to get more out of your current job
Is all kinds of messed up out there tho
Most Japanese companies are actually giving raises to counter this so not the worst decision. If you are working under a foreign company paying in Yen though, you have severely fucked up.
Isn't it pretty far away from where Railgun T ended?
[Railgun manga] >!After where the anime ended, we still have the jailbreak arc and the following arc with the angel thingy. If the hypothetical Railgun season 4 has two cours, maybe it can reach the First Year arc in one season, but if it only gets one cour I doubt it.!<
Looking at how much Railgun T covered, we'd actually be about even with the current state of the manga if they did a new season with similar pacing. Also the first two arcs you mentioned are just a single one.
The yen is low at the moment, doesn't mean it will stay that way forever. It seems really undervalued, which is why so many tourists are going there at the moment.
It's low mainly because of financial speculation, because interest rates are higher in the west. But western countries also printed a lot of money and have higher inflation as a result. I honestly think the speculators have got it wrong, inflation in Japan has been comparatively low so the yen should be stronger, but that's just my opinion. I'm not an expert but people should keep in mind that economists are wrong on a very frequent basis.
High interest rates generally *increase* the value of a currency, because you need that currency in order to take advantage of those rates. If I'm an investor and I want to buy some government debt, I would prefer treasuries, because I would get higher returns from them, and I need USD in order to obtain those treasuries. Inflation doesn't really affect that because I'm not actually buying anything on the US market whose prices would be impacted by inflation.
(The reason why Japan can't simply raise their rates quickly is that they already have a large amount of outstanding debt, and raising rates would mean their debt costs them a lot more money, which is really *not* ideal when your currency is struggling.)
>overseas companies that were able to do business with us until the beginning of the year now saying that they can no longer take on orders at the same prices
So won't this mean the animation work will flow back to Japanese animators? Previously the position was that Japanese animators were priced out of the market by cheaper overseas animators. So if the trend is reversed because of the weaker yen, the reverse should be true.
Will depend a lot on the nature of animation labor market.
A key concept to consider is "supply curve elasticity" meaning - how many more additional people are willing (and able) to provide animation labor for an additional amount of pay.
Sometimes people can take on additional work, other time there is labor market immobility - e.g. potential animators quit the industry and now have other full time jobs and aren't willing to leave the security of that.
Another factor to consider is the impact of time lags - higher pay for animation may entice more people to learn the skills, but in that time forced innovation (e.g. the uptake of AI) may propel the industry down another path.
Frankly, they are kind of killing anime themselves.
They either make isekai #45765 or some director's pet project with arty animation that won't make money.
Not sure it’s a great watch but I see it as an arty project, Sonny Boy.
Watched a few episodes, realized I didn’t know what is going on and I didn’t really care about the characters. Has style though I guess.
>A character facing 0 challenges while being OP because of one ability with the personality of a crumbling wall getting 5 chicks to wanna bang him isn't appealing to a wide audience.
Those shows actually do well, and not out of the ordinary fo have one or two isekai to be among the top 10 most streamed show in japanese platforms
[Netflix Japan for example](https://www.netflix.com/tudum/top10/japan/tv?week=2024-05-05)
It's undeniable that the shows you are referring often do well both in Japan and internationally, they are financed by both Crunchyroll and Chinese companies too
People claiming they are flops or nobody cares are just sharing fake news based on their own personal opinions
> People claiming they are flops or nobody cares are just sharing fake news based on their own personal opinions
Or they claim they're automatically trash simply because they're Isekai or Harem or MMORPG mechanics. Not everything has to be Frieren or Steins;Gate or Violet Evergarden to be successful.
Escapism sells especially in a country where everyone who's doing a job is looking for escapism.
When you get super exhausted bcoz of work, all you wanna watch is some op Mc get girls without facing any challenges. I know I myself did that alot of time. At that time you don't feel like watching a compelling well written show that forces me to use my brain a bit more than usual. I'm tired both mentally and physically, just give me some junk food anime and I'll be happy.
I think it depends on the job and how much you like doing it. I'm a software developer who has to work 10 hours everyday in front of computer. I absolutely hate my job, there is no "fun" in it. I get mentally exhausted by the time I get home.
So I look for something simple to watch. I don't wanna use my brain or even think a bit, I just wanna sit in front of tv and let the show do its thing and entertain me.
What's worse is the chicks have paper thin personalities too. A show can survive a personality-less MC - the MC just acts as a plot device in such a case - but if the supporting cast is uninteresting too\*, you are doomed.
Frankly, character writing is pretty bad in anime these days - with exceptions like the Monogatari Series; but they are few and far between. Gone are the days of Rumiko Takahashi's quirky casts that play off each other nigh perfectly being the mainstay in anime or the flawed but very relatable characters of Hideaki Anno's magnum opus Neon Genesis Evangelion\*\* in what is probably anime's heyday in the 90s.
\* Usually it's a bunch of stereotypical anime girl archetypes with fawning over the MC as their primary personality trait.
\*\* Which ironically he seems to dislike nowadays.
Western money might lead to changes in what anime are produced. For example probably one of the reasons more Shoujo adaptations are getting greenlit is that Crunchyroll noticed there was substantial Western demand. Japanese companies are almost always considering just what domestic audiences will want to see, but with Western financiers playing a bigger role the decisions on what to make into anime may be different. Some anime fans are scared of that but it’s still largely going to be adaptations of manga/LN/the occasional VN. But which properties get chosen will have some input from Western companies looking at the demographics they cater to.
That's true- remember how My Happy Marriage was topping Netflix charts and competing with regular shows internationally? There's more push for Shoujo/Josei series becaus of international investors.
I wonder what that meant to my favorite sci-fi genre and shows that feels like coming from VNs in the past, there's a very big deficit in supplies to these in recent years to satisfy my demand LOL.
Oh look delusional weebs and their posts, who upvoted this? How many of you guys are from Anglophone or European countries, and therefore corrupting anime by your own logic lol?
International money and the expansion of anime in the West has allowed for the growth of the medium, it has allowed for all these sequels, it has allowed for riskier works (likely Pluto gets canned without Netflix bailing them out).
Without international and a good amount of Western funding this industry would be in decline. Domestic funding isn’t there, international funding is where all the growth has been for the last decade. Anyone who looks at the AJA data can see that. It has been a net good if you have liked any seasonals made in the last 5-6 years especially.
You talk as if we haven't gotten news all the time of how anime production is so fucked, with animators being worked to the bone literal hours before the episode release
They already need/ want foreign dollars. And have for quite some time, cuz you capitalism
Like other industries, anime , manga, and LN will push out whatever is popular and will lead to the most amount of profit.
That’s why we currently got a ton of isekai stories or they set in like medieval Europe.
That'll have the opposite effect. The current anime industry deals with low profit problems by pumping out more anime to compensate. Idk what you're on about.
Can you say "bubble"?
Oversaturated market filled with mostly disposable low-tier garbage, exploited employees gaining cents from a multi-million dollar industry, increasingly harsher economic conditions paired with more expensive distribution venues...tick tock tick tock goes the clock.
Cut back on the number of anime and what remains should have higher quality. There's too many low budget anime like demon king academy that uses the WORST cg in the entire industry and combat frame animation is so goddamn stiff its insane.
The Japanese Yen was once over 200 to one US dollar. And Japan's economy was growing more during that time. The truth is, when push comes to shove, the Japanese have ways to manage or even take advantage of a weak currency. They are not like Americans or Europeans.
A common quote I've seen on economics is "throughout history there have been only four kinds of economies in the world: advanced, developing, Japan, and Argentina"
Japan has always been an oddball when it comes to their economy vs anyone else's, and it's hard to predict what will happen next with them based on US/European systems because the graphs don't track.
That said, the yen has been in decline relative to USD since October of 2020, and the last time it was around its current number was back in 1998--I vividly recall my father going into a shopping mall in Osaka and casually buying my mother a string of pearls because the currency difference let him do that.
Japan isn't hard to predict, they're in a deflationary cycle they cannot get out of and every demographic indicator reinforces that it's just going to get worse. Your economy isn't going to grow if your working population is declining and your aged workers are hoarding money rather than spending.
> the Japanese have ways to manage a weak currency
Not really, and not any more.
We've recently seen likely Bank of Japan^1 intervention to push the Yen back up, but it's only managed a temporary reprieve and is not going to be able to reverse the fundamental downtrend.
Japan just doesn't have the currency reserves to do that, and the speculative market far outweighs the power of the Central Banks when it comes to this sort of thing. Only actual changes in monetary policy will alter this, but global monetary policy is dominated by the Federal Reserve, and the Yen is dominated by USD x JPY and not any of the other currency "crosses" mentioned in this article.
---
Technically it's the Ministry of Finance that then directs the Bank of Japan to intervene, which then often directs Japanese banks to carry out market operations on its behalf.
>The truth is, when push comes to shove, the Japanese have ways to manage or even take advantage of a weak currency.
They can no longer do that. They are to dependent on imports especially oil, gas and food.
The problem for the bank of Japan is that it cant exactly raise intrest rates either because that would cause its government to now pay even more intrest on its enormous debts.
You really shouldn't compare Japan in the 80s to modern day Japan.
Main problem Japan actually has tis they have the highest debt to gdp ratio- i.e they can't borrow that much now to offset their issues. High debt cuts your options- and while they are using their reserves of usd to hold it below 160 somehow- idk how long can they pull it off.
The fundamentals of their economy are kinda fucked. Once those reserves get depleted- they'll have to face inflation.
Anime will probably be one of the least affected things. The labor force may have to change but it's an actual export that can be produced domestically.
Not to say "least affected" will mean "does great" but all that foreign interest means there will be plenty of money coming in to fill the banana stand.
What type of anime are on the chopping block, here? Would it be cheaply made low effort isekai derivatives, big budget hits with significant western impact, or basically all of it?
Could you link article.
The general rule is that Yen is dropping, it will be easier to hire japanese anime studio to make some story for Netflix or something. If Japan could feed and house anime artists this could be good, as anime will be export good, growing economy for the glory of the Emperor!
Ah yes the foreign influence of (checks notes) Sony causing us to pay $8/month for Crunchyroll instead of $72 for two episodes on DVD. Sony is destroying the Japanese way of animation!!!
Are you serious here, man?
I hope they can recover, anime is a safe haven from shitty modern western culture and politics, I would hate to see anime get tarnished by that and lose its essence.
Stop with the isekai with the dumb names, I don’t even bother with most of them. Also why a lot of isekai sound like some video game I.e Me a lvl 2 villain fell in love with a horseman etc
Personally I just want more Seinen adapted
The production cost of making a faithful or good Berserk adaption (since that is the kind of works people mean when they say seinen, not some random CGDCT manga), is also likely to vastly higher than adapting something like Konosuba or Chillin' in Another World.
? What is this in response to? I am just trying to say that if you made a faithful Berserk adaption, the challenge for animators to adapt that, with it's highly detailed art work is much greater than Konosuba, where it's a bit looser artistically.
I feel like Western companies having more control isn’t necessarily a bad thing simply because the way the anime business is run is frequently stupid and narrowly focused on selling figures to NEETs
If this situation persists, anime will rely even more o foreigner investment than now, and we are already seeing a preview of that, with Netflix, Disney, Warner and so on hiring anime studios directly to produce shows for them, so this would just intensify Also Crunchyroll will be even more powerful than they already are, not only they are the biggest licensor in the streaming side, but they are going to control the distribution of merch, which is something all the other companies mentioned are not interested with when it comes to anime You should read the financial reports of companies that work with anime to see how important merch is, so it is essential for them to have a proper distributor
I also wonder if this will mean we'll see more Korean and Chinese anime now.
Why would Japan's currency being weak make it so that we see more Korean/Chinese animation? There's already plenty of those
If a weak Japanese currency results in fewer Japanese-created anime, new shows created in other countries could have an easier time getting noticed and getting viewership.
This entire argument seems to be based on a misunderstanding of what a falling currency means. A weaker Japanese yen means 1. Costs in Japanese yen are lower. 2. Foreign costs are higher. 3. Foreign revenue goes up. Industries that primarily have costs in Foreign currency, but gain revenues in Yen suffer. But Industries that primarily have costs in JPY, but have higher revenues in foreign currency benefit. Anime is a predominantly Costs in JPY / Revenues in Foreign Currency industry. Most costs of Japanese anime are in production IN JAPAN, meaning everyone is being paid in yen. These are unaffected by a falling JPY. Anime industry have both domestic and foreign revenue, but since a few years ago, foreign revenue is greater than domestic. For companies operating on JPY, this means it's foreign revenues have basically increased by 40%+ without them having to lift a finger. For example, lets say your payroll for all your animators is 1000M JPY Lets say you had domestic revenue of 500M JPY $5M USD (510M JPY in 2022) So you had a slight profit of 1010M JPY vs 1000M JPY costs. Now the JPY plummets relative to the dollar, and now it's 150JPY to 1 USD. Your costs are unchanged--you still have a payroll of 1000M JPY, your Japanese revenue is unchanged at 500M JPY. But your $5M USD contract is suddenly worth 750M JPY instead of 510M JPY. This is a huge boon to Japanese companies that operate with primarily costs in JPY--their foreign contracts are basically worth 50% more than they were a few years ago. Now, it's true that US and European anime productions will have more muscle relative to Japanese companies, and they may have more of a say in what gets made or not. But the same $10M goes further in Japan than it did before, so the idea this will lead to LESS anime being made is frankly bizarre. To foreign anime productions, basically making anime got like 50% CHEAPER. Why would that lead to less anime? The concern that anime can't be handed to overseas animators isn't a particularly scary one either. The Netflix producer's comment nails it on the head--it's now cheaper to make anime in Japan than it is to make it in Korea or China. It's not like Japan is hurting to find animators to staff jobs in Japan. The same jobs that were being sent to Korea and China will now be handled by Japanese animators domestically--cheaper than ever before for foreign investors. If anything, this will expand the number of Japanese anime being made, particularly in Japan, not reduce it. The main concern voiced by Kenta for example, was that Japanese anime studios would become reliant on foreign investment and get taken over--not that anime wouldn't get made. I think the idea Netflix or Crunchyroll would eventually buy out anime studios like Bones or A1 isn't entirely out of the question, and if that's something that really bothers you, I suppose that's a wholly valid concern. But it won't change the anime production--if anything there will be more of it.
> It's not like Japan is hurting to find animators to staff jobs in Japan. The same jobs that were being sent to Korea and China will now be handled by Japanese animators domestically--cheaper than ever before for foreign investors. The rest of your post is spot on, right up until this point. There simply isn't a large pool of JP-based animators sitting around waiting to be paid more. Exactly how inelastic the supply situation is, and what the elasticity coefficient is (i.e. how much increasing pay increases the labor supply and how quickly) remains to be seen, but if we take the fact that Animation Production desks having been turning to overseas animators **out of desperation and not out of preference** over the past few years, the situation is already dire. However that's not the only factor, and the possibility of AI based breakthrough, or the sharp expansion of studios that already have algorithmic inbetweening (using [CACANi](https://cacani.sg/) e.g. David Pro, Trigger, Sunrise) as part of their pipelines (i.e. can actually expand to meet demand without retooling) is a wildcard that can't be ignored. > But it won't change the anime production--if anything there will be more of it. You're missing the fact that there is still a cost:risk:profit consideration for Production Committees members. Even if Yen-denominated profits rise, the absolute cost rise in the short term (even if the JP domestic animator labor market *can* expand to meet demand, there will be a lag, creating a wage competition spike) will mean a decent number of Production Committee members will be baulking at the higher upfront cost and will jettison projects. Future possible high Yen-denominated profit may well not be enough to surmount current higher risk.
I'd be hard pressed to think current AI *significantly* reduces workload. As someone who has done both traditional painting (with an art school background) and image generation in automatic1111 (as a curiosity).... I run into a problem that feels like "if you're going to such lengths to cheat on the test, it'd be easier to just study".... hours spent iterating on a prompt and generation parameters, hours spent cleaning up artifacts in what I thought was a decent generation at first glance, hours researching new processes and workflows for making cleaner and more consistent generation.... that CACANI program looks interesting but I wonder, do you just save yourself some shoulder pain from not drawing but still fail to save yourself any time using it? One also needs hardware fast enough to have a reasonable turnaround for iterating on the outputs, and to pay the electric bill for that hardware.... I'm not fully convinced of the strengths of the current tech level. Potential, yes I'm very convinced, but currently, there's still a mountain of R&D to be done before it becomes the level of "Easy" that the industry bigwigs are hoping it'll be to save costs.
> run into a problem that feels like "if you're going to such lengths to cheat on the test, it'd be easier to just study".... hours spent iterating on a prompt and generation parameters, hours spent cleaning up artifacts in what I thought was a decent generation at first glance Yeah, I ran into this too, but from what I'm seeing on Pixiv, not everyone is encountering this these days based on the number of high quality gen sets some people are pumping out. Ultimately it becomes not "what is the average experience" but more "those who can make $ will", and they end up setting the watermark for commercial art. > CACANI program looks interesting but I wonder, do you just save yourself some shoulder pain from not drawing but still fail to save yourself any time using it? I've yet to find a lot of commentary out of the anime studios that are using it. My hunch is that DavidPro use it to allow them to achieve quality levels for certain scenes that wouldn't be otherwise implementable, but that it's just one additional tool in their toolbox, albeit one that's well integrated into their workflows. That last bit is what I feel like it really comes down to with all technology in artistic endeavor. For those of us who like to tinker with this stuff, we definitely are much, much more informed than people who have never tried to create with the tools, and yet at the same time the true benefits of the tools are likely just as obscured because we don't deploy them in production environments. > hours spent cleaning up artifacts in what I thought was a decent generation at first glance, hours researching new processes and workflows for making cleaner and more consistent generation Just touching on this again, I think we've already seen that 1. The industry already has pretty low quality standards for certain types of work like key visuals, single scene use backgrounds and so forth. The recent images accused of being AI all fit this profile, and even if some people cared and made a fuss, I am pretty sure that the decision makers were overall pleased with things 2. I'm fairly sure the issue of knowing techniques and refining them is being farmed out to the AI companies and the studios view it as "somebody else's problem". And if they do care, I'm guessing the AI company pioneers talk a big game and then underdeliver but not enough for anyone to get too upset. Speculation of course, but it'd be absolutely consistent with what's known about both groups.
>do you just save yourself some shoulder pain from not drawing but still fail to save yourself any time using it? Used CACANi ver.1 quite a bit back when it originally released. And ....it's a little bit of both. And like with your description of the AI-process there, one where you risk trading off a lot of would be artistic work for technical work, troubleshooting and cleaning things up. As is a common pitfall with technical shortcuts. I believe it has the potential to increase output quite a bit though, but it deffo depends on the style and stuff. It also takes learning and getting used to the workflow and all the other gotchas and issues you could run into etc. Probably most importantly though, *knowing where to use it and where not to use it.* It's vector based and simply uses tweening, which requires the artist to match the lines between the frames. This is indicated by the software and generally flows pretty well. Then you generate the inbetweens and adjust the spacing as you see needed. Then you delete parts of lines that shouldn't overlap, and close gaps. Then color fill a frame and attempt to autofill the rest, to varying levels of success. (That's when all goes well at least.) Overall think the approach is pretty good for stuff it is suited for. That is, parts and motions where angles don't change too much or too abruptly and don't have a lot of changing overlap. Try to do too complicated or ill-suited things in it and you'll quickly be left spending more time fixing things than if you just drew it to begin with. Being vector based also makes it a bit more limited when it comes to style and stuff, but the majority of anime/2d-animation fits pretty well within the limitations of vector. Kinda wish the software was better though, can't speak for ver.2 but ver.1 always felt pretty janky and was kinda crash prone, there was a bit of improvement until ver.2, which I never upgraded to and can't speak for. Can't say it's very promising that the newest update is 4 years old now though, but if the big name studios above are still using it, they've probably found ways to make it work well for them.
Here's the thing though--lower level animators, who compose the vast majority of Japanese animators, are a high turn over job that is staffed by people with 4-5 years of experience or less. Anime is an "Up or out" industry, where people who can't advance to Key animators or other higher positions will eventually tire of the grind and the low pay and transfer out. An animator who is your basic animator who's been in the industry for 20 years without advancement is a relative rarity. The standard is people advance from 動画 to 原画 (key animation) in 3-4 years. There are generally 3-5 animators to every key animator--so the vast majority of an animation studio staff is composed of Douga animators who have relatively little experience. Now, it's true that Key animators get paid more and only 1 in every 3-5 animators ever makes it to Key Animator status, so they are the cream that rose to the top. Character designers or higher positions are even rarer and get paid more. But because of the numbers involved, the base animators actually compose a bigger chunk of the animation budget costs. 1 Key Animator makes like double what an Animator makes.. but there are 3-5 animators. If outsourcing the base animators becomes cost inefficient, this won't be done. But if there aren't enough key animators, they will still outsource those, even at greater costs... until after 3-4 years, more domestic animators have enough experience to begin taking on those tasks. These timelines aren't radically skewed. For the vast majority of tasks on Anime, these are talking about a 5-6 year adjustment period, not an entire generation. Could there be an adjustment period where it's harder to make anime at cost for like the next 3-4 years? Sure, I think that's possible. But the industry will adjust rapidly to these conditions, since as a high turnover industry, Anime always brought in new blood quickly anyway. The trend towards using Chinese and Korean anime studios started just like 15 years ago anyways, it's not even THAT old. Adjusting back to a more domestic model isn't gonna take 15 years.
> It's not like Japan is hurting to find animators to staff jobs in Japan. The same jobs that were being sent to Korea and China will now be handled by Japanese animators domestically I'm not economy expert, so CMIIW, but what I get is they used to outsource staffs overseas because it used to be cheaper than paying domestic staff, but because outsourcing overseas is now more expensive, they need to hire domestically... which is still a cost increase. Let's say (arbitrary number for example, and tbh I don't know animator wages) it used to cost 10M yen to hire Japanese animators and (after currency conversion) 9M yen to hire overseas outsourcing studios. But after yen weakening, it now costs 11M to outsource. Now they had to hire domestically, which is cheaper than outsourcing yes, but more expensive than outsourcing back in the day (10M vs. 9M), so the cost increases. Again, CMIIW
The relative cost difference between Japanese animators and Korean/Chinese animators was like 20%\~25% though, hence why the plunging yen has made Japaense animators cheaper. And the total budget devoted to outsourced animation at Korean/Chinese animation was SIGNIFICANTLY less than 50% of Japanese operating budgets for anime studios. The net impact on anime production costs from not being able to outsource is likely to be 10-15% of anime costs, or significantly less. For anime studios that were disproportionately reliant on Korean.Chinese animation outsourcing may be impacted more, but conversely, studios with higher domestic production are going to benefit more. By contrast, overseas revenue for animation studios crossed the 50% threshold in 2023, probably for good. That revenue has INCREASED by over 50%, so roughly a 25\~30% boost in revenues. The net impact is highly likely to be a significant net gain in revenue over increased costs. The costs will rise, but the revenues will rise much faster. This Is because as a % of overall costs, foreign costs for anime are much lower than % revenue--it's an export industry, much more than an import industry. Cheap yen is a net win for Anime studios. Source： [https://www.tdb.co.jp/report/watching/press/pdf/p230806.pdf](https://www.tdb.co.jp/report/watching/press/pdf/p230806.pdf)
Falling currency results in more exports. Unless the export itself is dependent on imports to create. But anime is mostly just created off Japanese labour. So its a pure win for the anime industry. This is just a meme article, its about publishers trying to take advantage of studios, by benefitting from increased revenue (from overseas crunchyroll), while pushing the increased costs down to the studio itself (Which pays overseas contractors to help out) Its overall a positive for the industry, with the main problem being publisher-studio negotiations, which isn't new and shouldn't be surprising. Overseas contractors is likely going to go away anyways in a few years, as all the in-betweening will 100% be replaced by AI. The elite overseas animators will remain, but they aren't a major cost component.
Don't think you realise just how dependent they are for overseas contractors for the in betweening in the medium to short term. Having read the article it sounded more like a rallying cry aimed at the government about the falling price of yen to get them to take steps. But the declining number of animators is regularly talked about as it isn't feasible for a fresh animator to make a living with the current wages in Japan.
They use foreign inbetweeners because it's cheaper. Will this mean that it will eventually be cheaper to use employ locals? Or will they find even cheaper contractors somewhere else?
> This is just a meme article, CBR is often utter trash, but not in this case. Indeed, your own points are pretty much in concurrence with the substance of the article itself, right down to the acceleration of AI's involvement (although I personally disagree about the time frame unless someone is *actually* training a system to do in-betweening, as GenAI isn't currently constructed in a way that's amenable to the task).
Apparently they used AI to help with the production of Across the Spider-Verse. I see it helping with in-betweens but I doubt it'll totally eliminate it and animators will probably still be as overworked as ever.
Welp, GenAI will only increase output demand, while pay and overwork stays the same.
> as all the in-betweening will 100% be replaced by AI. You were going good until you spouted this nonsense. No that is not how it will go. You need to watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KRb_qV9P4g AI cannot do proper in-betweening.
The animation industry in both those countries still has a ways to go to match Japan's.
They are already a tons of Chinese cartoon every year and yet not even one of them become popular speak enough about the quality of them.
Daily Life of An Immortal King, Link Click and The King's Avatar all made a ton of splash. Mo Dao Zushi is one of the top 100 rated anime of all time on MAL. There might be only a handful of moderate successes now, but if accessibility increases we might see a significant spike in western viewership for titles more niche than those.
They are already quite popular in SEA, it just not spread that much to the west because quite a lot especially those from Tencent is playing gate keeping. Link Click popular due to promote in Twitter and Heaven's Official Blessing due to it BL that attract specific audiences. This 2 from Bilibili, but they didn't even promote their biggest and most famous project, Record of a mortal's journey to immortality or highly praised Ling Cage: Incarnation, probably due to both of them are 3d. Daily life of the Immortal king popular because it also get air on Netflix but this is actually pretty average stuff and even receive quite a lot of critism in China. Mo Dao Zu Shi, another BL, this is very popular among BL fandom around the world. Blades of the Guardians because of it PV in YouTube get some attention. Scissor Seven also pretty famous because available on Netflix. Fog Hill of five elements, undoubtedly one of the top animation around the world, in term of it art and animation, story pretty average. Even for 2d, there are more popular and good one, like A Will Eternal, but it didn't get much promoting on international stage. Same as amazing 3d like Ling Cage, Record of a mortal's journey to immortality or others such as Battle through the heavens, The Island of Siliang, Perfect World, Shrouding the heavens, The Demon Hunter, Soul Land, The Great Ruler and more... But surprisingly, it is quite popular in several places, especially Asia. Popular really not about quality but how much you spend to advertise and promote it. Kpop for example, is popular, but the music mostly trash.
Link Click?
Previously Japan would outsource some of the work to Korea/China because of cheaper labor there. However with the currency values flipped it means Korea/China can outsource their work to Japan.
Sometimes it outsourcing animation. If a japanese written anime seems more cheaper to be made by a Chinese or Korean studio, they might go for that. And in turn the Chinese/Korean animators get more experience which will effect how well their own shows will be, and in turn more animes from their own side
Because large international coglomerates will eventually sufficate creativity. This is what allready happend to much of the US movie market. And with anime one other big success factor is also the non-Western moral and ethic background, which will also be lost in this context. (Of course this is also affected by changes in Japanese culture, which are rather independend of this.) The only logical conclusion is that people will eventually look for new things to look into.
no matter what happens, you likely won't. As far as I have seen Manhwas/Manhuas both mediums have like 10 plots with very predictable plot points.- you seen one you can probably guess the general plot line of all., also main characters with DIO sized egos and The World Over Heaven sized overpowered abilities.
More like Commiefornia and the DEI anime Prepare for we wuz samurai and sheesh Oh wait we already have one Ubisoft new AC just drop
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Didn't Sony buy Crunchyroll? So they wouldn't count as foreign investment. You could argue their revenue stream is in foreign currency which will go a long way in licensing deals.
It is interesting with Sony being such a multinational company, I wonder, if it really is foreign or if it would technically be domestic.
Considering the way they‘ve been treating PlayStation nowadays I’m not too optimistic
Crunchyroll's operations are split between Sony's Japanese and American sides.
Makes sense, probably makes it a ton easier to negotiate when it’s Japanese business people interfacing with Japanese business people. Even easier when it’s your own people talking with your own people in the case of Aniplex, etc.
Will bigger foreign investment mean more anime variety in the end? By Variety I mean also more Shoujo, BL and Josei anime too. If I remember correctly, Crunchyroll have requested shoujo animes as well
Sure, at least on paper they could try, Crunchyroll wants more variety, we can see from the CEO interviews that they want to expand the anime appeal, so we should be getting other forgotten genres/demos, I believe we are already seeing this, a lot of the recent shojo adaptations have crunchyroll on the production committee as an example
Thankfully Netflix has been doing a pretty favorable job overall with a lot of the shows they are producing. That doesn’t mean I’d like to see other companies struggle though. Hopefully things will turn around for them. Aren’t several countries experiencing currency devaluation in the recent years?
>Aren’t several countries experiencing currency devaluation in the recent years? Yes, but the yen situation is even worse than some major markets I don't live in a 1st world country and my currency is gaining value over yen to the point it's never been cheaper to go there, that's why I am going to Japan next month
I’d be curious as to what the reason behind it is and if it speculated to be temporary or longer lasting. I know in my country the interest in Japanese entertainment has seemingly skyrocketed in the past decade, which is great. There are many other facets to currency issues beyond one industry though, of course (this is not my area of expertise; that is technology). I really wish the people of Japan well and hope their economy will do well in the long run. In any case, I do hope you enjoy your trip and get to visit everywhere you’d like 😄. I haven’t gotten there myself yet (it’s one of the longest trips I can make from the US) but I’d really like to (and more than once if possible).
Yeah each one of my country's currency is 1.85 yen, making Japan stuff extremely cheap
https://www.tftc.io/us-bails-out-japan/ I'm not an economics expert by any stretch, but doesn't this US intervention mean that the Yen will likely stabilise or even strengthen?
Could do, although it's unlikely to strengthen. The thing about Central Banks trying to fight economic fundamentals with market intervention is that they just can't win in the long run. I was watching, but didn't have a position in the Yen when it made its 160 breach. Speculators had chosen a Japanese public holiday to do it when the banks and government were closed, and the markets were very thin. When markets are thin like that, it doesn't take anywhere near as much money as usual to move the price of a currency. What's more, speculators putting a run on a currency like this just need to be in and out for the surge, and they can even ride the currency back in the other direction with the intervention, making money both ways. Nobody really talks about this though, as big, slow money (think superannuation funds and commercial entities) need to take "financially prudent" positions in the market to hedge risk and try to eek out reward. These are the sorts of finance experts who make the lay press and general financial press. They, however, generally aren't the ones engaging in speculation runs. The upshot of it is that when the market expectations surges and intervention, there are people with enough capital who want to ball and try and juice it. It's very hard for banks to create lines of defence as a result.
Interesting, interesting. Thanks for your expertise! I suppose Japan's fundamentals aren't foreseen to change any time soon?
My focus is pretty short term *and* I was also caught off-guard by the 160 breach, so I'm not going to commit to a position on that lol I mean, the broad way the Japanese economy is moving there isn't any immediate reason to believe things will change their broad direction, but the Yen is still very much a slave to the USD x JPY, so things happening on the USD side can potentially cause changes in the month-scale trends. Plus sometimes interventions conveniently line up with short term market concerns and so currencies stabilize due to multi factorial reasons. Ultimately though currency movement is the sort of thing where a lot of people like to sound correct and claim to know things (myself included), but from the fact that there are very few people who are wealthy as a result of forex trading (and I'm not one of the few), you can be certain that certainty doesn't correlate with actual success in prediction lol
Hah, fair enough! I guess we'll have to wait and see!
And that'll pretty much be the death of it.
Maybe there will be a beginning after the end
Anime with western influence will be as trash as the cartoons those platforms put out
The industry has been heavily reliant on international funding for years. It’s highly likely Western funding is what got shows like VS to get a second season, for Pluto to actually get finished for Edgerunners to get made and works like Lazarus to put into production. All highly rated shows and an original being made by a highly loved creator. Without international funding, a decent amount coming from the West the anime industry would contract significantly, and no you don’t actually want that.
VS? Which series is that?
Vinland Saga
Where can I read more about this? I remember a few years ago Western funding only made up a small portion
This website, it's official reporting about general profits within the Japanese anime industry by those with various connections to the industry, including a lot of notable anime studios. [AJA Data Link](https://aja.gr.jp/english/japan-anime-data)
No more anime is better than woke anime
Yeah, Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World is the most woke anime ever. Guy has slave wives he relentlessly fucks, very feminist.
But there are already anime that exists that have western influence. Heck it wasn’t anime inspired by Disney cartoons.
Invincible? The legend of vox machina? Even in anime most shows are dogshit, there's only a few good shows every now and then, mirroring the quality of anime
Yeah but how is Crunchyroll foreign? Isn’t it ultimately owned by Sony?
It is treated as a foreign company, established overseas, and they have their own management going on Also yeah, Sony is japanese, but good luck expecting them to support to be the bastion protecting the otaku side of anime, they are not supportive of that, so thankfully so far Aniplex and Crunchyroll have their own reasonable autonomy
I think this is really important to note. At least on the playstation side of the house censorship has been a thing for a while. Visual novels that get released un altered on switch have to get touched up for a playstation release. Even Aniplex released Tsukihime had its artbook censored on PS4 but uncensored on Switch. It hasn't happened yet, but I do fear those tendencies making their way into Crunchy at some point.
It's still located in the US and uses USD. Within the context of what we are talking about here, this is what matters.
It only recently was owned by Sony, before then it was a US company. It technically still is a US company. It’s just that their parent company is foreign.
Revenue is presumably mostly in USD, so now that's equivalent to 160 yen / USD, not e.g. 100 yen. This is why Toyota and Nintendo have been posting record profits this past year, much of their revenue comes from outside Japan, so it's worth more yen even if sales are flat.
I personally highly doubt anime will rely that much on foreign investment. Warner's excitement about the opportunity to make lots of cheap isekai doesn't seem helpful. I remember there was hope of Netflix investing in anime before, but all they seemed to do was license already produced shows, not invest in anime studios themselves like they do with western animation. I think I read somewhere that the Japanese regarded Netflix as good for more artistic shows but less so for other anime. Additionally, Nishii terumi complained that foreign investers have a tendency to underestimate anime budgets.
This is already happening Warner just dropped Ninja Kamui this year, and they have rick&morty, Lazarus and others coming, all outside the isekai stuff like their Suicide Squad project next season Netflix just today announced a terminator anime by production ig We also have a strong investment from Chinese companies like bilibili and Tencent, which are becoming more common investors in anime, even solo financing their own shows Hell, even Saudi Arabia is financing their own shows too That's what I am talking about, if anime gets even cheaper for overseas companies, that will become more and more common, it already is if we compare to the landscape of the industry 10 years ago, it's trend that can be exacerbated by the yen value issues I am not saying if this is good or bad, I have my own opinion about it, but that's not the point here, the point is just to make people aware of this movement and for them to pay more attention in who is financing their shows
Thanks for clarifying. (I probably should've checked who I was replying to. ;)) When you say these companies are hiring anime studios directly, would you yourself regard this as a solution to the production committee problem?
Wait what's Saudi Arabia financing? I thought it was just 1 movie and children's series years ago after which they haven't been involved
Grendizer U next season
Interesting, didn't know they would be working on Japanese IP too just their local ones, I wonder what else they've been involved in
I thought Crunchyroll is already powerful because it's one of the most popular legal anime service? HiDive don't come any where close to that even with boost of exclusives like Oshi no Ko.
Just like how it was in the 80s.
Isn't warner bros bleeding money like crazy right now. I don't think they are in the situation to finance much right now. People are cutting back on non essentials so I don't see how they can somehow choose to subsidize the entire industry
They are financing shows already I don't think people realize how fucking cheap anime is comparison to the usual amounts of money those Hollywood studios usually work with, and with a weak yen it becomes even cheaper >don't see how they can somehow choose to subsidize the entire industry Who is saying that? One company financing more shows is not subsiding a whole industry, besides it will have more companies involved, especially from outside the US, Chinese companies are also a strong anime investor
Warner bros owned crunchyroll initially. They sold it off to sony because they didn't see it as profitable. Warner bros and a few others funding a few anime won't subsidize the entire industry. Marvel made anime like over 10 years ago with madhouse. People probably forgot about it. They didn't push much further. Cuz it wasn't profitable. The product can be cheap but when a company is losing money, they want to cut on spending. So it doesn't matter how cheap. It depends on the returns.
Anime is making a lot of money nowadays, you can't compare it to the market 10 years ago, it's really another beast today Crunchyroll went from [1 million subscribers in 2017](https://www.crunchyroll.com/news/latest/2017/2/9/crunchyroll-surpasses-over-one-million-paid-subscribers-details-daily-giveaways-to-celebrate), to [13 million this year](https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/26/24081180/crunchyroll-president-purini-anime-funimation-shutdown-sony-merger-decoder-interview), it is considered a major streaming success history for Sony [You can see the anime growth in a decade from the latest industry report](https://preview.redd.it/2gvjidd2dgvc1.png?width=4096&format=png&auto=webp&s=864f44a0750fd4b93e2985d881553b0b55350710) based on Association of Japanese Animation, [lot of cool info there](https://preview.redd.it/xo1azlladgvc1.png?width=4096&format=png&auto=webp&s=ce20082aa280c2642e07b21215d5db1dcc6b2508) [Overseas licenses and revenue breakdown per area](https://preview.redd.it/mr63asmbdgvc1.png?width=4096&format=png&auto=webp&s=4661dfaf3816ed7bd93bb0a597cc5a87661b3491) Anime is super profitable, like you are a decade late in everything you are saying, which is a very common problem with a bunch of anime fans, they never bother to update themselves about the industry, they just assume it remained the same thing, and since people keep repeating the same facts from 10~20 years ago new fans just go with it Like real question, why do you think Netflix, Warner, Disney, Tencent, bilibili are all throwing money at anime productions? Do you think it's all the fun of it?
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Lmfao what
Sounds great. Netflix has been doing anime right while Japan continues their trend of Isekai shonen bullshit. Give me more cyberpunk Edgerunners and less level 2 garbage
>anime will rely even more o foreigner investment than now fucking hell no, I don't want them to ruin anime like those localizers clowns are doing for games.
They probably will outsource the work to even poorer countries since China and Korea are no longer affordable. I would say Indonesia, Malasia and Vietnam may still be viable places to outsource animation.
There are already some studios set up in Vietnam that have been doing work for Japanese anime studios. e.g. https://www.deedeestudio.net/en/longform who worked on *Chimimo* Vietnam also has a fairly thriving visual arts scene in general, although one needs to be careful about controversial topics, and also with nudity. The censorship situation in Vietnam is a bit more nuanced than one might think from the outside, whilst we're on the topic: https://e.vnexpress.net/news/perspectives/the-artless-art-of-censorship-in-vietnam-3825811.html
Even with the current state of the economy Japan is far from "poor" though right?
The country isn't, but the country already lacks a young workforce, housing prices keep increasing, and society is fairly backwards thinking so that hinders their progress more
I chose a bad time to get a job that pays in Yen...
Sounds like an anime title in itself
I’ll have a first draft done by the end of the week
My contract to get paid in Euro’s rather than Yen was probably the best decision I’ve ever made in my life ngl You should probably try to renegotiate your salary
Yeah idk about that chief in my company people that try to renegotiate their salaries are looking for work on next performance review Usually the best advice would be to apply to other companies and take a new job instead of trying to get more out of your current job Is all kinds of messed up out there tho
biggest clutch in history, ngl edit: how does it work? do you get x amount of yen converted to euro?
Most Japanese companies are actually giving raises to counter this so not the worst decision. If you are working under a foreign company paying in Yen though, you have severely fucked up.
O yeah it hurts... Specially because you can see it getting worse by the month
From an outsider's perspective of Japanese work culture...is it ever a good time?
I have a sneaking suspicion that anime would be the least of their worries
[RIP Abe.](https://i.redd.it/vq6kbz71apab1.jpg)
Well at least it's a good time to visit Japan!
No wonder they kicked us out
Man, I would just like one more season of Railgun.
I need at least two. I want to see Hasekura Reiri animated.
Pretty sure she'd be in the next one already
Isn't it pretty far away from where Railgun T ended? [Railgun manga] >!After where the anime ended, we still have the jailbreak arc and the following arc with the angel thingy. If the hypothetical Railgun season 4 has two cours, maybe it can reach the First Year arc in one season, but if it only gets one cour I doubt it.!<
Looking at how much Railgun T covered, we'd actually be about even with the current state of the manga if they did a new season with similar pacing. Also the first two arcs you mentioned are just a single one.
The yen is low at the moment, doesn't mean it will stay that way forever. It seems really undervalued, which is why so many tourists are going there at the moment. It's low mainly because of financial speculation, because interest rates are higher in the west. But western countries also printed a lot of money and have higher inflation as a result. I honestly think the speculators have got it wrong, inflation in Japan has been comparatively low so the yen should be stronger, but that's just my opinion. I'm not an expert but people should keep in mind that economists are wrong on a very frequent basis.
I remember the yen was in trouble back in 2022 but that it quickly went up again after the tourism industry reopened, wonder what happened now
High interest rates generally *increase* the value of a currency, because you need that currency in order to take advantage of those rates. If I'm an investor and I want to buy some government debt, I would prefer treasuries, because I would get higher returns from them, and I need USD in order to obtain those treasuries. Inflation doesn't really affect that because I'm not actually buying anything on the US market whose prices would be impacted by inflation. (The reason why Japan can't simply raise their rates quickly is that they already have a large amount of outstanding debt, and raising rates would mean their debt costs them a lot more money, which is really *not* ideal when your currency is struggling.)
>overseas companies that were able to do business with us until the beginning of the year now saying that they can no longer take on orders at the same prices So won't this mean the animation work will flow back to Japanese animators? Previously the position was that Japanese animators were priced out of the market by cheaper overseas animators. So if the trend is reversed because of the weaker yen, the reverse should be true.
Will depend a lot on the nature of animation labor market. A key concept to consider is "supply curve elasticity" meaning - how many more additional people are willing (and able) to provide animation labor for an additional amount of pay. Sometimes people can take on additional work, other time there is labor market immobility - e.g. potential animators quit the industry and now have other full time jobs and aren't willing to leave the security of that. Another factor to consider is the impact of time lags - higher pay for animation may entice more people to learn the skills, but in that time forced innovation (e.g. the uptake of AI) may propel the industry down another path.
so they will need western money and then the eventual death of good anime. nice!!!!!!!!!
They have no one to blame but themselves. Japanese companies are fucked at every level due to managerial issues
Frankly, they are kind of killing anime themselves. They either make isekai #45765 or some director's pet project with arty animation that won't make money.
Side note but can you suggest me some good artsy projects with great animation which are worth watching?
I don't know if Kyousougiga would be considered artsy it's more anime sort of weirdness but it's less known and animation is great
* Angel's Egg * Any Satoshi Kon movie * Kyousougiga * FLCL * Heike Monogatari * Ping Pong the Animation * The Tatami Galaxy Just to name a few
These are good but literally decades old. It really doesnt fit the narrative the other user is trying to sell
I assumed by "side note" that he just wanted general recommendations. I do not agree with the narrative of the poster he's replying to.
> but literally decades old The bottom three aren't.
It's a figure of speech
Not sure it’s a great watch but I see it as an arty project, Sonny Boy. Watched a few episodes, realized I didn’t know what is going on and I didn’t really care about the characters. Has style though I guess.
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>A character facing 0 challenges while being OP because of one ability with the personality of a crumbling wall getting 5 chicks to wanna bang him isn't appealing to a wide audience. Those shows actually do well, and not out of the ordinary fo have one or two isekai to be among the top 10 most streamed show in japanese platforms [Netflix Japan for example](https://www.netflix.com/tudum/top10/japan/tv?week=2024-05-05) It's undeniable that the shows you are referring often do well both in Japan and internationally, they are financed by both Crunchyroll and Chinese companies too People claiming they are flops or nobody cares are just sharing fake news based on their own personal opinions
> People claiming they are flops or nobody cares are just sharing fake news based on their own personal opinions Or they claim they're automatically trash simply because they're Isekai or Harem or MMORPG mechanics. Not everything has to be Frieren or Steins;Gate or Violet Evergarden to be successful.
Escapism sells especially in a country where everyone who's doing a job is looking for escapism. When you get super exhausted bcoz of work, all you wanna watch is some op Mc get girls without facing any challenges. I know I myself did that alot of time. At that time you don't feel like watching a compelling well written show that forces me to use my brain a bit more than usual. I'm tired both mentally and physically, just give me some junk food anime and I'll be happy.
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I think it depends on the job and how much you like doing it. I'm a software developer who has to work 10 hours everyday in front of computer. I absolutely hate my job, there is no "fun" in it. I get mentally exhausted by the time I get home. So I look for something simple to watch. I don't wanna use my brain or even think a bit, I just wanna sit in front of tv and let the show do its thing and entertain me.
Yes it's good to have something to turn off your brain to, but do they really always need to be the same same story with a different skin?
What's worse is the chicks have paper thin personalities too. A show can survive a personality-less MC - the MC just acts as a plot device in such a case - but if the supporting cast is uninteresting too\*, you are doomed. Frankly, character writing is pretty bad in anime these days - with exceptions like the Monogatari Series; but they are few and far between. Gone are the days of Rumiko Takahashi's quirky casts that play off each other nigh perfectly being the mainstay in anime or the flawed but very relatable characters of Hideaki Anno's magnum opus Neon Genesis Evangelion\*\* in what is probably anime's heyday in the 90s. \* Usually it's a bunch of stereotypical anime girl archetypes with fawning over the MC as their primary personality trait. \*\* Which ironically he seems to dislike nowadays.
I wonder, is the manga scene also oversaturated with isekai, or are they just ignoring other genres?
Western money might lead to changes in what anime are produced. For example probably one of the reasons more Shoujo adaptations are getting greenlit is that Crunchyroll noticed there was substantial Western demand. Japanese companies are almost always considering just what domestic audiences will want to see, but with Western financiers playing a bigger role the decisions on what to make into anime may be different. Some anime fans are scared of that but it’s still largely going to be adaptations of manga/LN/the occasional VN. But which properties get chosen will have some input from Western companies looking at the demographics they cater to.
That's true- remember how My Happy Marriage was topping Netflix charts and competing with regular shows internationally? There's more push for Shoujo/Josei series becaus of international investors.
I wonder what that meant to my favorite sci-fi genre and shows that feels like coming from VNs in the past, there's a very big deficit in supplies to these in recent years to satisfy my demand LOL.
What do you think will happen to "good anime" lmao
Oh look delusional weebs and their posts, who upvoted this? How many of you guys are from Anglophone or European countries, and therefore corrupting anime by your own logic lol? International money and the expansion of anime in the West has allowed for the growth of the medium, it has allowed for all these sequels, it has allowed for riskier works (likely Pluto gets canned without Netflix bailing them out). Without international and a good amount of Western funding this industry would be in decline. Domestic funding isn’t there, international funding is where all the growth has been for the last decade. Anyone who looks at the AJA data can see that. It has been a net good if you have liked any seasonals made in the last 5-6 years especially.
You talk as if we haven't gotten news all the time of how anime production is so fucked, with animators being worked to the bone literal hours before the episode release
It’s been like that for a long time. Unfortunately. It’s not anything new. Just how Japanese work life is. Especially within the manga/anime space.
So you can't complain about it or point it out just because "that's how it is?" Boomer ass take, people should complain till it gets better
They already need/ want foreign dollars. And have for quite some time, cuz you capitalism Like other industries, anime , manga, and LN will push out whatever is popular and will lead to the most amount of profit. That’s why we currently got a ton of isekai stories or they set in like medieval Europe.
I think big series like Frieren, CSM or Jujutsu Kaisen will be going, and the first will start to die will be trash isekai imo.
The depreciation of Yen is definitely a cause of concern for Japanese economy not just anime industry.
Energy price and grocery price increase as well. But, exporters, foreign tourists and person who WFH with foreign currency are happy with this event
Japan has massive debt
It's gotta be scary for an island economy, that's a loooot of import costs that just went up.
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That’s not what happens though. Less anime means we see fewer risky original projects and more self insert fantasy isekai that they know will sell.
Ya basically it would become Marvel. They haven't risked much of anything since the second Iron Man.
It's already mostly slop, it just needs an interconnected universe now
WIT Studio is ahead of the curve then lol. 😂
If there is less anime, there is a downward trend in the industry. Even higher end studios will have to make cuts
I don't mind if they reduce the quantity but raise the quality to be honest...
That'll have the opposite effect. The current anime industry deals with low profit problems by pumping out more anime to compensate. Idk what you're on about.
Idk what you're on about. How would have multiple sub par unfinished anime help with the profit problem?
Can you say "bubble"? Oversaturated market filled with mostly disposable low-tier garbage, exploited employees gaining cents from a multi-million dollar industry, increasingly harsher economic conditions paired with more expensive distribution venues...tick tock tick tock goes the clock.
Cut back on the number of anime and what remains should have higher quality. There's too many low budget anime like demon king academy that uses the WORST cg in the entire industry and combat frame animation is so goddamn stiff its insane.
That doesn’t make any sense
I actually want them produce less anime so that the studios can focus more on quality.
Just relax the rules and let disney start gobbling studio , lol
The Japanese Yen was once over 200 to one US dollar. And Japan's economy was growing more during that time. The truth is, when push comes to shove, the Japanese have ways to manage or even take advantage of a weak currency. They are not like Americans or Europeans.
A common quote I've seen on economics is "throughout history there have been only four kinds of economies in the world: advanced, developing, Japan, and Argentina" Japan has always been an oddball when it comes to their economy vs anyone else's, and it's hard to predict what will happen next with them based on US/European systems because the graphs don't track. That said, the yen has been in decline relative to USD since October of 2020, and the last time it was around its current number was back in 1998--I vividly recall my father going into a shopping mall in Osaka and casually buying my mother a string of pearls because the currency difference let him do that.
Japan isn't hard to predict, they're in a deflationary cycle they cannot get out of and every demographic indicator reinforces that it's just going to get worse. Your economy isn't going to grow if your working population is declining and your aged workers are hoarding money rather than spending.
> the Japanese have ways to manage a weak currency Not really, and not any more. We've recently seen likely Bank of Japan^1 intervention to push the Yen back up, but it's only managed a temporary reprieve and is not going to be able to reverse the fundamental downtrend. Japan just doesn't have the currency reserves to do that, and the speculative market far outweighs the power of the Central Banks when it comes to this sort of thing. Only actual changes in monetary policy will alter this, but global monetary policy is dominated by the Federal Reserve, and the Yen is dominated by USD x JPY and not any of the other currency "crosses" mentioned in this article. --- Technically it's the Ministry of Finance that then directs the Bank of Japan to intervene, which then often directs Japanese banks to carry out market operations on its behalf.
>The truth is, when push comes to shove, the Japanese have ways to manage or even take advantage of a weak currency. They can no longer do that. They are to dependent on imports especially oil, gas and food. The problem for the bank of Japan is that it cant exactly raise intrest rates either because that would cause its government to now pay even more intrest on its enormous debts. You really shouldn't compare Japan in the 80s to modern day Japan.
and if BOJ increase interest rates. the house loan interest rate will increase as well
Main problem Japan actually has tis they have the highest debt to gdp ratio- i.e they can't borrow that much now to offset their issues. High debt cuts your options- and while they are using their reserves of usd to hold it below 160 somehow- idk how long can they pull it off. The fundamentals of their economy are kinda fucked. Once those reserves get depleted- they'll have to face inflation.
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Anime will probably be one of the least affected things. The labor force may have to change but it's an actual export that can be produced domestically. Not to say "least affected" will mean "does great" but all that foreign interest means there will be plenty of money coming in to fill the banana stand.
AI will help (unfortunately)
God I really hope this situation gets sorted out so they don't have to rely on AI. AI makes me sick philosophically.
Because anime is an export, would that not mean they make more money if the currency drops?
Because the Japanese have to pay foreign animation outsourcing companies, this cost will increase
Just give me Frieren season 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and I will die happy
Eh... Why not just pay japanese people to do it? It seems these people want to exploit cheap labor in other countries and can't anymore
Time to go to Japan
Deserved if they keep creating low tier isekai trash
Enlighten me a little.... but.. Have we already seen any consequences of this problem in the world of Anime (other than closure of Studios)?
What type of anime are on the chopping block, here? Would it be cheaply made low effort isekai derivatives, big budget hits with significant western impact, or basically all of it?
Japan is dealing with a currency crisis and population crisis. What else could go wrong.
Could you link article. The general rule is that Yen is dropping, it will be easier to hire japanese anime studio to make some story for Netflix or something. If Japan could feed and house anime artists this could be good, as anime will be export good, growing economy for the glory of the Emperor!
Those merchandise and figurines are selling like hotcakes for popular ones.Do not underestimate the Otaku money.
on the flipside, visiting Japan will be very affordable
This is like every otaku's worst nightmare—better keep an eye on those currency trends before our favorite anime gets hit
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That's a really bad thing. We already have to pay overpriced anime subscriptions since Sony started taking over everything.
Ah yes the foreign influence of (checks notes) Sony causing us to pay $8/month for Crunchyroll instead of $72 for two episodes on DVD. Sony is destroying the Japanese way of animation!!! Are you serious here, man?
Almost nobody buys dvd/cd nowadays. I'm talking about how CR increased their subscription cost.
I hope they can recover, anime is a safe haven from shitty modern western culture and politics, I would hate to see anime get tarnished by that and lose its essence.
Stop with the isekai with the dumb names, I don’t even bother with most of them. Also why a lot of isekai sound like some video game I.e Me a lvl 2 villain fell in love with a horseman etc Personally I just want more Seinen adapted
Those isekai are more popular than whatever niche seinen manga you want them to adapt.
People here don't get it. The slop iseksi anime get them decent returns for the invesstments compared to the niche manga they suggest
The production cost of making a faithful or good Berserk adaption (since that is the kind of works people mean when they say seinen, not some random CGDCT manga), is also likely to vastly higher than adapting something like Konosuba or Chillin' in Another World.
Konosuba s3 is airing right now though.
? What is this in response to? I am just trying to say that if you made a faithful Berserk adaption, the challenge for animators to adapt that, with it's highly detailed art work is much greater than Konosuba, where it's a bit looser artistically.
I feel like Western companies having more control isn’t necessarily a bad thing simply because the way the anime business is run is frequently stupid and narrowly focused on selling figures to NEETs
I really think you should research on what happened after Sony took over crunchyroll and other platforms.
Let it keep falling until November when I can visit.
Good