A Sobering Capstone To the Recent JaniCa Report on Animator Pay

By now, we’ve all seen the many breakdowns on the latest JaniCa report regarding salaries for workers in the Japanese animation industry for 2015.

With the above statistic, it puts the increasing lack of talent and increase in outsourcing into better perspective, but it also magnifies just how much reform the animation industry needs in order to improve working conditions for everyone involved. Recently, another animator has anonymously stepped forward to describe just how badly the industry needs to change after working in the industry for 20 years, and has made observations regarding the inefficincies of the industry, the lack of salaries and the increase in drawing effort.

While most reports focused on the low rate of pay for animators and the people on the lowest rungs of the industry that work piecemeal, another fact jumped out when veteran animator Thomas Romain tweeted what was probably the most sobering capstone to the report, in an attempt to elaborate on just how low the salaries are for the youngest workers and for industry veterans alike.