114: The meteoric rise of anime w/ Matt Schley

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Matt, welcome to Deep Dive. Thanks for joining me today.

Thanks for having me.

So you've been writing about anime for The Japan Times since 2017. And you're one of our go to people for all things anime. To sort of kick us off, I think it would be useful to give the discussion some context. So why don't we go back to when anime started?

Sure, anime in Japanese is a shortening of the word animation. So in Japan, when you say anime, you're talking about any kind of animation. Which really threw me off when I first moved here and I asked people 'what's your favourite anime?' and they said 'Toy Story 2' or something. But in English when we say the word anime, we're of course referring to Japanese animation. Now Japanese animation has a long history. The first known anime that we've still got, you can watch on YouTube, was made

Right.

Same thing here in Japan and the first full length anime feature is called 'Momotaro Sacred Sailors.' That's again a propaganda film. Postwar, the industry really starts to become what we think of it now as the modern industry. There's a very famous film from 1958 called 'Hakujaden,' and that was made by Toei, who are still around. It's the first full length colour anime.

And that film was based on a Chinese folktale?

It was yes, yeah. There was a 4k restoration done a bit a couple years ago. It's a really beautiful film. Now films up to that period, really used a Disney style, animating 24 frames a second, really fluid animation. The first anime to kind of introduce the style that we think of as Japanese animation came in 1963 that was 'Astro Boy' ('Tetsuwan Atom'). That was produced by Tezuka Osamu, and that sets the

Right. I know, it made a huge impression on my mom, because you know, she doesn't watch a lot of anime now. But even now she talks about 'Astro Boy' and how much she loved watching it as a kid.

It was it was huge.

So then after 'Astro Boy' that must have started a trend in anime?

Yep, so anime became huge. Of course, it's first aimed at children. Over time, people get into the industry who originally wanted to make live action films. And they had kind of higher ambitions, people like the creator of 'Gundam,' which is considered one of the first kind of adult anime. It's still for kids, and it's still meant to sell robot toys. But he snuck in a lot of kind of more adult

When I think of 'Akira' I don't really see that as being made for children. It seems like a very adult themed film.

No, absolutely. There's there's violence and blood and guts and all that stuff. Yeah. So we see anime getting more specialised, as well, in the '80s. With the advent of VCRs, and Betamax players and stuff like that, you've got a specialty market that's only on video, that's aimed at more affluent consumers, obviously. You've got this whole subset of anime that's for people in their 20s or 30s, or 40s, with a lot of money to spend. Again, it's

So far, we've talked a lot about how anime became popular in Japan. But how did it move over to the West?

From a very early time from the '60s and '70s. You've got anime being released in the West, but in kind of a hidden form, if you will. So it's a cheap way for for TV shows to get animation. They don't have to animate themselves, they can import it from Japan, they can dub it into English, they can pretend the main character's name isn't Satoshi. It's John. And they scrub a lot of the Japanese-ness from it, right?

I remember watching an episode of Pokemon and the main character's name was turned to Ash. Yeah, right.

Yeah,

It was so disconcerting.

Yeah, exactly. And so you can imagine if you go back even further, the '60s and '70s Just trying to scrub any Japanese-ness from it, right. Once you get to the '80s, you've got a more kind of discerning fan base that starts to grow. And you've got people that realise this stuff is from Japan, they start to demand that they get subtitled releases. In addition to dubbed releases. There were some early anime released in the West that, for

Unthinkable

Unthinkable! And it just became this weird mess. It doesn't make any sense. And fans in the States started to demand from their licensors that 'Hey, we want to see the whole movie. We want to see it given at least an accurate English dub. We also want the option to watch it in subtitled form.' And that grows, so in the mid '90s, you've got stuff like 'Dragon Ball,' 'Sailor Moon'. Eventually 'Pokemon' comes on air. As you mentioned, 'Pokemon' is still a bit of a situation where they're

So I think a sign that the West had really started to accept anime as you know, a legitimate genre was when 'Spirited Away' won the Oscar in 2003.

And the Oscar goes to … Let's see. 'Spirited Away.' Hayao Miyazaki.

Yeah, there was huge 'Spirited Away' is the 2001 film from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. That was the first and remains the only Japanese anime film to win the Oscar. That film had Disney pushing behind it in the publicity department. Nevertheless, that was a huge thing for anime. Miyazaki, he didn't go because America was in the middle of the Iraq War, which he was against.

The one that got the 13 minute standing ovation at Cannes?

That's the one.

What would you say is the relationship between anime, and the build up of Japan's soft power?

I think it's all part of a piece you know, you've got an anime becoming more popular, you've got video games, you've got Japanese technology, people really looking to Japan as being a place they want to go kind of dreamland and anime was definitely huge part of that. Especially when you get to the '90s and 2000s you get a lot more anime that's set in Japan that it's obviously Japanese, not just the kind of sci-fi, neo-Tokyo 'Akira' stuff, but stuff where you can really get a

Well, then, let's move into the 2010s which was a pretty important decade for anime. What would you say were the key events during this time?

So anime continues to be more and more popular abroad. You've also got the retirement, supposed retirement of Miyazaki Hayao.

The first time.

Actually well, the about … every time he makes a movie, he says 'This is the last one. This is the last one.' But yeah, there was kind of a sense for many, many years, that when you released a theatrical anime film, that didn't have a manga behind it, the general public wouldn't go to see an original anime film. Unless it was directed by Miyazaki. His films always did really well. Other original anime films tended not to do that well.

So aside from Ghibli films, it was sort of thought that if you didn't have all the manga series, or like television series to back it up, then the film itself wouldn't do very well?

That's right. Yeah. Now that changed in 2016. Three films came out that year, which were all relatively huge hits, especially 'Your Name,' Makoto Shinkai's film, which became this giant hit. For a time it was Japan's highest grossing film worldwide. It's since been eclipsed by 'Spirited Away,' which we just talked about, because 'Spirited Away' got its official release in China two years ago. So that's kind of cheating, right? You also had two films, which were a little bit more modest

'In this Corner of the World,' which is a kind of prewar and war film set and in Hiroshima. And you had 'A Silent Voice,' which was more arty film, from Kyoto Animation. All those films did really well. And they kind of busted that myth that only Miyazaki could do well, with the general audience.

So between 2002, around the time 'Spirited Away,' was being released and 2020, the Japanese animation industry more than doubled in size with an annual revenue of $21 billion. What would you say are some of the reasons for this booming economy?

Well, we can't discount the foreign market, which has exploded from 2010 to 2020. You go from about $2.5 billion to about $12 billion. Not just the West, but also countries like South Korea, and China, Vietnam, Thailand. So all across Europe, Asia, the Americas, people getting into anime has been has been huge. The domestic market has also gone up. Not as dramatically, but it has gone up as well. People are really into this Japanese cartoon stuff.

Who knew?

Who knew? Who knew? So you see a lot of companies now trying to capitalize on the popularity of anime in the West. We talked before about the '80s and '90s, right? Where you've got essentially what we would now call startups, companies of two or three or four people, slapping some subtitles onto whatever they could licence from Japan, Japan saying that, 'You want to licence this?! Okay, fine. Here you go." These really passionate fans releasing stuff for other passionate fans. At

Another reason for this huge boom would be that people are getting into … they're they're hoping for more of an interactive experience, right? So like, people are going to live events, concerts and things like that?

Yeah, that's been a huge thing. About 10 years ago, one of the largest sources of income in the industry, especially in the domestic industry, was Bluray and DVD sales. Those numbers have gone down because well, everyone's streaming. And the numbers for more interactive experiences exactly like you said, have gone up. People are want to live anime, they don't just want to experience it at home on a screen. They want to go out and make friends

Do cosplay.

And do cosplay. Cosplay is huge. To a certain extent, in Japan, it's huge. In the West, you've got anime conventions in the West, which are which are huge. So yeah, people want to bring anime into their into their lives.

Now you've mentioned streaming a few times. So let's talk about the impact of those streaming services. One thing that really stands out is the success of 'Demon Slayer.' And before the film 'Mugen Train' came out, it was a series and that was available on a lot of different streaming platforms, right? So do you think that contributed to the huge success of the film itself?

Yeah, 'Demon Slayer,' it had kind of all the pieces to become a huge hit right? It was a moderately successful manga. On top of that it had a pretty successful anime series. Plus, it was at a time when everybody was stuck at home

During the pandemic.

During the pandemic. And so word of mouth spread about this 'Demon Slayer' thing. As you mentioned, it was not locked into one specific streaming platform. And that really primed the pump for when the film came out in 2020. Everybody had read the manga, or watched the show really dying for something to do. The corona numbers weren't so bad when the film came out. And so, the floodgates opened. And it became Japan's highest grossing film of all time.

So major companies like Disney and Netflix are seeing the popularity of anime. And it looks like they're aggressively moving into the sphere, right? And they're starting to produce their own original content?

Yeah, that's right. Netflix has its own original content. For the purposes of full disclosure, let me just mention here that I do some consulting work for Netflix. Disney Plus has started producing anime, Netflix has started producing anime, Crunchyroll has started producing anime. And yes, they are going beyond simply licencing anime, putting dubs and subs on it and releasing it. Now they are making their own stuff.

And we're also seeing international collaborations, right? So these big companies are also working with maybe smaller Japanese studios.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. So one example from last year was 'Star Wars Visions,' which is a bunch of small 'Star Wars' stories made by different anime studios. You've got the new 'Blade Runner' show. If you told me when I was 13 or 14 that there was going to be a 'Blade Runner' anime and my brain would have exploded. These kind of quasi anime that are maybe they've got a American director, but they're

Well, something interesting that's happened is, in 2020, the overseas market for anime surpassed the domestic market for the first time. Why would you say that is?

Yeah, this was a pretty big deal. This was a trend that was already happening, but the pandemic accelerated it. Much like all other things, right? You could see the numbers inching up year by year in the foreign market. And in 2020, they did surpass the domestic market in Japan. Now those events that we talked about earlier, going to animate concerts, going to anime live talk events and stuff like that.

Obviously, like you said, the pandemic had a huge effect on the consumption side of anime. But what about

So early on in the, in the pandemic, a lot of shows production? were getting delayed. A lot of that was due to the global supply chain, which everybody keeps talking about, right? A lot of anime is produced, actually, in countries like South Korea and China. Typically, the creative work is

Hoping it all works out?

Hoping it all works out. And there are cases even long before the pandemic of shows that that have been delayed by weeks or months or whatever. So take that, add a pandemic, things get delayed, right. So that was the early days of the pandemic, things are much better. Now. One of the reasons that things are much better now is because more people have embraced digital technology,

Because they were working remotely, or from home?

That's right, exactly. Now, you might think that anime is produced largely in computers. But a very important step in the process, which is the drawing of keyframes is actually still largely done on pencil and paper. Those keyframes are then scanned into the computer where all the colouring and, and post processing happens. It's one of the things that I love about anime, the fact that that first

You talked a little bit about the work environment for these animators. But one thing that comes up a lot when we talk about anime is the poor working conditions that many of these creators have to deal with. So if anime is thriving, why are these workers being treated so poorly?

Yeah, it's a really complicated question. But there are a few reasons. Like any creative industry, there's always this kind of idea that well, you should do it for the love because it's something you really want to do. Because of the way the industry is structured, most animators, even if they work at a single studio, are considered freelancers or independent contractors. So instead of being paid a monthly

And there's this mindset where the companies are saying this is how it's worked for decades, right? So we're not going to change that, you just have to deal with it and do it for the love of the work?

There's that, there's the fact that a lot of studios are run by former animators or former directors or whatever, who are maybe better at making anime than they are at making business decisions a lot of the time. There's also this thing called the production committee system, the seisaku iinkai, have you heard of this? A lot of people blame this system for animators' kind of stagnant wages. Simply put, this production committee, when you fund an anime, you don't fund it

Alright, so then how much are animators getting paid?

Yeah, so there's this group called the Japanese Animation Creators Association. They're known as Jennika. They do a survey every I believe it's four years to ask animators, hey, how you doing? And their most recent survey, which is 2019, found that on average animators in their 20s make ¥1.1 million a year. A million sounds like a lot until you do the math. And you realise that's about $10,000 a year, which is

So with all these animators dropping out of the industry after a few years, would you say it impacts the quality of the animation?

Yes, there are a lot of reports out there recently about productions that are not able to find enough animators. So recently, a big trend has been studios going on places like Twitter, looking at artist profiles of people abroad, saying 'Hey, do you want to work in the anime industry?' That's great for animators who live abroad who've always wanted to work in anime. Now they can. And from what I hear, it's very easy to get a job. Because they're so strapped for

Right. Are there any efforts to improve the industry?

Thankfully, there are. There are a few training programmes that have been opened by different companies. Netflix teamed up with a studio called WIT to set up a kind of training academy, which is giving people a stipend and hooking them up with senior animators. There are also studios out there that have been doing this for a longer time. The most famous example of this is Kyoto Animation. Kyoto Animation has, for a long time, had a really sustainable philosophy. They hire people and

So then these companies are really focusing on nurturing their talent and trying to retain people for long term.

That's right. That's right.

And you're seeing that that has a direct effect on the quality of the animations that they're producing?

Absolutely. And when you've got the same animators over a period of five or 10 years, not only animators but character designers and directors and things like that, you kind of get a house style. Every anime they produce is going to have that kind of Kyoto Animation feel to it.

You've talked about how we're moving away from the more traditional style, and how bigger players like Netflix and Disney are getting involved, you know, more non-Japanese companies. We're seeing a lot of changes in anime. So then, you know, we have to ask the question, what is anime? Is it the storylines? Is it the visuals? How would you define anime?

Yeah, this is the million dollar question. This is the huge debate heard all around the internet. I'll put it this way. There are fans that really care who made it, who's the director, is the large percentage of the creative staff Japanese or not? There are fans that really care about that authenticity. And there are fans that that don't, there are people that love that anime look, and they don't care whether that's made by a Western studio or a studio from South

Well, thank you for joining me today, Matt. It was really nice talking to you.

Thanks for having me.

On Tuesday, Japan recorded 62,599 cases of COVID 19 nationwide — its highest tally since the pandemic began. With cases still rising, the government is set to expand quasi states of emergency to 34 of Japan's 47 prefectures. Daycare centers have been particularly affected by the recent surge in cases with more than 300 forced to shut due to students or teachers testing positive.