The NHK “Tokyo Miracle” program will broadcast “The Strongest Commodity Animation” on December 17th (next Tuesday) at 21:30 (local time in Japan). The program description reads:

Tokyo, the world ’s largest animation factory, is home to 700 animation studios that produce 2,000 hours of animation each year. Its biggest weapon is a low-budget yet high-quality work. The young animator who gave up his life and pursued work value over money, gave birth to the beautiful background of “The Son of the Weather”. At the age of 78, Miyazaki, who still works tirelessly, supervised the insatiable energy. This is a story unfolding in the Japanese animation industry that is sweeping the world. Ken Sato’s journey to explore the advantages of Japanese animation

As you can imagine, such copywriting has caused anger inside and outside the animation industry. The animator Xi Weihui smiled bitterly: “Don’t take low budget as a weapon.”

(https://twitter.com/NishiiTerumi/status/1204643031988588545).

Animator Kiyoshi Kimon also scolded: “If the content is really as the copywriting said, then this kind of thought is a dead end in itself.”

(https://twitter.com/info_nekomataya/status/1204647664165408769).

Under the violent attack of the masses, the official website of NHK silently modified the content of the copywriting:

An animation factory that gathers 500 production companies and produces 2,300 hours of work each year. Tokyo. The scale of overseas markets has exceeded 1 trillion yen. What shocked the world was its low production costs. For a long time, what makes quality and cheap coexist is the existence of animators who pursue work value over money. However, with the participation of foreign capital and the reform of working methods, the Japanese animation industry had to make reforms. In addition, the show also interviewed the background art of “Children of the Weather” and the energy of Supervisor Hayao Miyazaki who still insisted on creating at the age of 78

(https://twitter.com/ditamabow/status/1204735567767859200).

Judging from the revised copywriting, the show seems to intentionally introduce the changes that the animation industry has made to meet the challenges of the times. However, even with this new introduction, it is still difficult to anger the public

Animator Naooka Kinoka said that just reading this show made her angry. It is a shame to fail to pay for good work

(https://twitter.com/suna_chika/status/1204922427358117888).

Attorney Hai Lao Ze Mei Xing also scoffed: It is not a “coexistence of good quality and low price”, it is just based on the sacrifice of animators, it is a sweatshop

(https://twitter.com/ebisawa_miyuki/status/1204898551265759232).

We are unable to comment on this episode until it is officially broadcast. However, the era of being able to take advantage of low production costs seems to be going away

In October this year, Sapporo hosted the “14th Sapporo International Short Film Festival Sapporo Animation Revolution !!!” Mori Oshii participated as an international judge and gave a half-hour speech at the event

Oshi now leaves his hometown of Tokyo and settles in Shizuoka. He believes in “work anywhere and live anywhere” as his creed, and said that he would be willing to challenge overseas production if possible. At the same time, Oshii also expressed distrust of remote collaboration: he used Skype to work with others, but ended up arguing. In his opinion, the importance of “working at each other’s faces” is more important than ever before when working together

The development of technology not only changed the way of working, but also produced images of the performance methods in movies. Oshii said that performance based on technology cannot be unrelated to technological innovation. What Oshii has been doing is how to effectively use advanced technology in the picture of the entertainment world. It’s not just the picture, the sound is the same. Every time he makes a movie, the sound system changes, and the number of channels keeps growing

However, cinemas that broadcast their work do not necessarily support these advanced technologies, so there must be several versions of the movie. This has caused the animator’s workload to double several times, but the salary has not risen accordingly. This is a serious problem. Many performers can only perform four or five works a year. If the unit price is 300,000, can they still make a living?

Oshii said that the work of animation is established by personal ethics, and must be accepted before it is accepted. However, if the discomfort does not stop, the company will go bankrupt. The more conscientious, the more the studio can’t survive. To what extent and with conscience, people working on the spot can only work according to their own moral standards. The studio’s operators have gone to great lengths just to maintain the company’s operations, and the responsibility for the content can only be assumed by supervision

Although the title of the event reads “Animated Revolution”, Oshii believes that there will be no more revolution in animation, and it can only be expected to mature in some kind of cycle. He was also concerned that the animation industry would be unsustainable before it matured. In a blink of an eye, animation has become a high-risk, high-reward world. Only 3A games at the level of Fallout 4 can expand the market to the world scale; at the same time, as long as one of such works fails, the company will go bankrupt. Such a step-by-step world has been born

Oshii also said that animation using digital tools could not be differentiated and had reached its limit. He believes that in this era, the added value of the old animation is stronger. Oshii declared that he would make another full-painting work in his lifetime. Compared with traditional hand-drawn animation animators, CG Studio, especially the animators responsible for action, has not grown up slowly. Various studios face such problems. Oshii wanted to find out what caused this problem

(https://ascii.jp/elem/000/001/988/1988908/)