Originally Posted by
ap19
Source: Anonymous Diary
My comments. I don't exactly sympathize or empathize with everything here, but there are a few key things I would like to pick up. Note that I work my butt off to pay at least 200,000 yen to the anime industry every year, and that I am against your kind of piracy as a whole. I'm not exactly rich, so I only use 1,500 yen on food per week, which is a fourth of the average expenditures.
You can compare and contrast this with other "terrible companies" all you want as if this was normal, but there is no denying that staff members are literally sacrificing their lives for the sake of making anime. It is a wonder why anime still exists when you think of it that way, but it's truly all because there are devoted otaku in Japan.
For those of you who haven't worked before, 2,000,000 yen is as much as a part-timer who works at a convenience store for a whole year. If you were living alone, a moderate minimalist living would cost 1,500,000 yen per year per person in Tokyo. If you had a 4-person family, you would need at least 3,000,000 yen to barely survive. 90 yen = 1 U.S. dollar about. You have to think about this in Japanese standards, as there is no point in circumventing the situation by saying "Oh but it only costs this much to live where I am."
As stated, the anime industry is financially garbage. This certainly isn't the only personal account I've seen of the battlefront, and it is easy to understand why blu-rays cost 9,000 yen on average per 2 30-minute episodes in Japan. This person mentions related merchandise, but most of that money goes to the merchandise manufacturers and not the anime company itself. You all like to criticize Funimation and Crunchyroll etc., but what they're doing is amazing, buying licenses for anime that get sold at such ridiculously expensive prices within the country of origin, so that they could be streamed for absolutely free, and sold at 3% of the original price. Yet you all still don't buy, and there are even some who frikin complain about their existence. It really makes no sense to me. These staff members have no obligation to continue working like slaves to churn out anime so they get pillaged by the world. I certainly have no obligation to continue paying for all of you pirates. If deficits caused by worldwide piracy, based on the number of torrents and fileshare downloads, was converted to Japanese blu-ray/manga/hentai game/doujin costs, it wouldn't be wrong to make an estimate of about 1,000,000,000,000,000 yen, which is greater than the Japanese national debt. (It would probably be around 400,000,000,000,000 yen by anime alone.) So it wouldn't be surprising if even 1% of you all paid even at the very low price of Funimation and Crunchyroll, it would make a huge difference. Feel free to retaliate with actual numbers (as if it's actually possible to get a summation of torrent files, downloads, and illegit streams) if you'd like, because I don't think I'm too far off in my estimates. There is also no point in saying, "Well Hollywood movies and American dramas are pirated too." Great, you can financially support them too.
I've stated this in a couple of other threads too, but there is concrete proof that not buying DVDs damages the industry. Bandai Entertainment of America used to have an anime faction that held licenses to super-popular anime like Suzumiya Haruhi and K-ON. However, no one bought, even at the ridiculously cheap prices they had to offer. As a result, the faction went bankrupt and now Bandai Entertainment of America does not have an anime faction. This set a record for not making any company or country want to really promote a localization effort, because it simply wouldn't pay off. Former employees were crying when they saw the "Where can I download this movie?" on the K-ON movie trailers of youtube.
Many mention making better use of the internet. However, piracy is unstoppable by any technological means. This is a given. It's just a property of the internet. Therefore, regardless of whatever online marketing methods they may use on the international front, it would be easy to assume that products wouldn't sell anyway, because piracy would still be rampant. Piracy is concrete proof of human nature; there will always be people who pirate without payment, proudly and without hesitation. Look at all of the localization factions that have virtually self-destructed. Online licenses simply won't sell as much as selling blu-rays. Note that the current money is barely enough to keep the industry active, meaning the current financial income is the bare minimum. If BD production was stopped, CR/Funimation licenses would have to be acquired in par with the BD prices of Japan, meaning CR and Funimation couldn't possibly stream or sell the way they currently do, which in turn means no one would join or buy at those ridiculously expensive prices. Even trying to promote localization or international online distribution from the anime industry side would just be too costly for the risks involved. Yes, there are many obstacles such as international trade regulations and import taxes. And as you can see from the above, they can't possibly afford risks at the moment.
Though I'm not exactly in favor of banning piracy as a whole, the logic behind banning piracy is as follows. Let's say 1,000 people pirate anime for free without paying. Then, piracy is banned. 900 people would cut their ties with anime, but you can expect 100 more people to pay. Yeah, the loss on popularity isn't exactly nice, but right now, as I stated, the economic status is devastating, to the extent popularity would mean nothing if the whole industry collapsed.
In terms of the working environment itself, Japanese companies generally have terrible working environments. They evaluate customs and manners more than actual capability and workload, much more extremely than you can ever imagine in the United States. You rarely ever get "your own feelings" represented by the work you do. I believe it's naive to think that you should be needed by the company, and that you should be represented by whatever work you do in general. However, I do find it special to an animation studio that the environment lacks sanitation at an extreme level, and that workers lack proper communication skills. You all have probably never encountered a real otaku, who you would all think has some mental or lingual disorders in terms of communication and social interaction. I couldn't bare working with those kinds of people, and I can imagine how impossible it is to come to a group consensus or create a group effort. It is ironic that the Japanese social style of honne and tatemae is supposed to make a virtual group consensus on the surface, but these kinds of otaku-ish people haven't a clue on reading the atmosphere, so honne and tatemae become defunct, making it very uneasy for the average Japanese person.
Note that this article in particular only comes from the perspective of a production assistant. He complains about the happy-go-lucky attitude of the animators in terms of doing whatever whenever he/she wants to. However, according to other accounts from the animators' perspective, most wouldn't be able to deal with these terrible conditions if they didn't resort to these happy-go-lucky attitudes. It's not that these animators don't have a sense of responsibility; it's just that the work is so gruesome, animators can't retain the mentality to deal with every minute detail so diligently. As a result, you get these whatever whenever attitudes the production assistant is talking about.
"Production is directed towards buying customers." What sells? Anime like Infinite Stratos and Highschool DxD, those that place a heavy emphasis on hentai and moeblob. I don't know if this is necessarily the case for you all, but I would like less hentai and moe in anime. However, those kinds of anime just don't sell as much. If they had money, they wouldn't need to worry so much about incorporating hentai and moe anymore.
One of the top ten companies. Wouldn't be surprised if this was AIC. From what I know, at least Kyoto Animation, Shaft, Sunrise, A1 Pictures, IG Productions, ufotable and Satelight have their own company building.
You all might want to read about the Japanese Law on the Punishment of Illegal Downloading/Uploading, which will go into effect starting October 1st. j0x was nice enough to promote my posts on his OP. My posts are here, here, and here.
The kind of people who defend piracy without paying (excluding those who really face extreme poverty and destitution) are all delightful criminals who exploit the situation on the basis that the exploited are too stupid to do anything about it. Then the anime industry will die, those pirates all won't get penalized, and only those who worked so hard to keep the whole thing going will be lying dead on the battlefield. Now that would give anyone reason to start complaining. Even if the industry didn't collapse, there'd still be much reason to complain given that it's impossible to stop piracy and that there will still be pirates who say "Great, keep up the good work." to a diligent supporter of the industry, like some 15th century aristocrat talking to a slave.
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