 |
|
|
|
—by Scott Frazier
The anime industry is dying.
At least in Japan. Economic problems in Japan have caused the sponsors of
anime shows to reduce budgets and cancel funding for shows entirely. The quality of
an "average" TV show today is significantly lower than it was
even five years ago and far lower than it was fifteen years ago.
Consider this: The number of drawings used per show is the benchmark for
quality of animation in Japan. (This is not "frame count." It is sheet count. The number
of frames is constant—30 (actually 29.97)
frames per second for NTSC broadcast signal.) When I first moved
to Japan, the average drawing count for a TV show was
6,000 sheets but it has now dropped to 4,000
sheets.
Unscrupulous companies—particularly those who have been living on the low
end of the quality scale for most of their existence—are doing shows with
2,500 or even 2,000 sheets. If the sponsors
and clients do not keep a very careful watch, the low-quality studios will stick it to them
by using the absolute minimum number of sheets.
But sponsors losing money isn't the worst problem with this practice. There are
production managers, animation directors and animators who, working in this type of
environment, have never worked on a show of acceptable quality. So naturally, they do not
know how one should be made; when a project comes in, they automatically go to the low-quality
mode they know so well. I've met factory-minded production managers who have never worked on
a show of acceptable quality and they think that the garbage they are producing is good and
have deceived themselves into thinking that the viewers do not notice. This of course is
not to say that all studios do this, but as budgets continue to shrink, quality will
continue to be sacrificed.
With the lack of funding and the diminishing quality of animation, workers in the
animation industry are finding it a less fulfilling profession. When people feel that they
are contributing to an artistic project—doing something that will make a difference or
has some sort of artistic merit at least, then they are willing to deal with low pay and
long hours. But if studios degenerate into animation factories, that willingness goes away
and it becomes a menial job where you are paid less than at McDonalds or Yoshinoya and have
fewer benefits. (At least at McDonalds you get free food! You can't eat cel paint.) If
you're working on a show which you don't think anyone will even watch, much less enjoy, then
it is hard to work up any sort of enthusiasm to push yourself artistically.
And without artistry anime is meaningless. Animators and directors with twenty years
of experience are leaving the industry and moving on to jobs in other fields. I met one fifteen
year veteran animator who went to work at an electronics store and doubled his income in just
the first month.
The quality of a show and the content of a show are not necessarily linked, although
the better artists tend to go where they can get better pay and more influence over what they
make. A retro show or a remake does not necessarily draw a better or worse crew and the detail
of the character designs has nothing to do with the quality of animation. There have been
great character designs that have been rendered into less than stellar animation.
|
|
|
