November 2016 Interview 17

-They say that people who worked on anime in the past were quite unique, but did they still gather together in the anime industry? Was that due to the unique atmosphere of the time?

H: Yes.
But recently, issues like the shortage of anime workers have been periodically resurfacing. Recently on social media.

-Yes, it seems like a big movement is happening again.

H: What is the origin of this problem? My union's blog (Anime Report) is also accessed and retweeted by people I don't know.

-Companies in the industry have managed to get by up until now, but I think they all realize that if things continue as they are, it will become seriously dangerous.

H: So even if you outsource all the drawing work for "2原/Nigen" overseas, it's still so hard on the ground that you can't meet the schedule?　　*1

-That's right. There are several cases now where the work wasn't completed in time for broadcast, causing a gap in the broadcast.
So I think the companies are starting to think that things aren't going well if they continue like this.

H: There are so many detailed instructions for anime these days. They don't get done in time for broadcast.

-Is it true that the unit price for anime hasn't changed since the old days?

H: It hasn't changed.

-The price for one piece of TV anime I used to work on was 220 or 240 yen for Doga. The key animation and layout together were 4,000 yen.

H: Yes. The last work I worked on was the same price.
Anyway, since the era of digitalization of anime, the workload of Doga has increased a lot.
First, you draw the Doga, then you have to draw all the lines so they don't break, you have to add shadows from the back, the type of pencil is specified, the paper is specified, and once you draw the layout, you suddenly have to make excessively detailed corrections.
Even though the work has become so dense, the unit price remains low and the same as before.

-Even in key animation, companies and other organizations began to request that we draw a lot of pictures.

H: That also started when we started working on ”Doshi (subcontracting entirely to overseas companies)”.
That was in the 2000s.
The company was sending everything overseas, so the president and production desk ordered the site to include a lot of reference pictures and key animations to ensure there were no mistakes overseas.
At the time, Ghibli was drawing key animations with very detailed movements and a lot of reference pictures, and that style became even more established.

-When was that?

H: During "Princess Mononoke." This was introduced in the making-of video for "Princess Mononoke."
In the past, key animators would draw casually and leave it to the Doga(animator, in-betweeners).
However, in recent years, key animators have started drawing in detail, but the unit price hasn't increased accordingly. There's no schedule.
And the number of character parts has increased in detail.

The style that companies leave everything to overseas staff who don't even have any meetings with us and don't even know the faces, and the drawings that are returned to Japan are then corrected by Japanese staff, has become established in the anime industry.
When that happens, the work of anime workers becomes nothing but a pain. *2

*1　Voice actors performing without pictures. Akahata reports on the reality of the anime scene.

https://anirepo.exblog.jp/16461652/

　
*2 When Harada was in charge of Kirby, he wrote in Chinese on the back of the key animations he sent overseas (mainly China) that "Your country has made wonderful cultural anime (such as ink-wash animation) in the past. I hope you will treasure that. I hope you will not become a subcontractor for Japanese commercialism."
However, at that time, young Chinese animators were already fascinated by Japanese anime.
Harada once taught a class to students from Peking University who came to Japan. There is another reason why young people in China are fascinated by Japanese anime. If we have time in the future, we plan to introduce it in this blog.