Top 10 Advantages of Working in the Japanese Animation Industry

10.		Free stuff. You sometimes get videotapes, LaserDiscs, postcards, T-shirts, cels and all sorts of interesting things. (Much of this sits in boxes in your closet. See #6 on the next list.)
9.		No dress codes, anywhere, ever. Go ahead and wear that wild Hawaiian shirt to your production manager's wedding. (I did.)
8.		People at conventions believe you know what you're talking about. They actually listen to you. You might even get to write magazine articles!
7.		Not having to deal with the rigid traditional social structure that you would at a bank or insurance office or car manufacturing company or such.
6.		The great rush you get when you do something well and when you see that you are improving. It could be seeing it on the TV and thinking, "Hey, that wasn't bad" or not having so many retakes or your sempai insulting your work a little less.
5.		A studio is like a family. It's totally different for working for some big corporation with no personality and employees who are only worried about doing their little bit then getting the heck out. People care about each other and about their work at a studio.
4.		Working in a dynamic industry that is constantly evolving. There is always room for innovators and people with different ideas. There are always companies looking for new people. There are sometimes even sponsors who want to invest money in something new.
3.		The chance to get out and see a little of the world. Animation and cel checkers and other supervisory staff sometimes get a chance to go to Korea or China or Indonesia or other places where there are studios that subcontract work from Japanese companies. It's a great chance to see another culture and broaden your horizons.
2.		Working with incredibly talented, interesting and creative people. (And learning from them.) You'll meet people who are experts on animation, boats, cooking, plastic models, buses, weapons, pop singers, and many other subjects. (Some of them are totally obsessed with those subjects and will drive you insane because that's all they talk about.)
1.		Making the coolest animation in the world. Enough said.

Top 10 Disadvantages of Working in the Japanese Animation Industry

10.		You have to work on things that you never want to admit you did. You'll come upon some incredibly hideous and embarrassing projects a couple times a year that you need to take on for the money but you curse yourself for doing. You ask for your name to be taken out of the credits. You're horrified when you see it still there. Your friends see it and mock you. (You can mock them back — "Why were you watching it?")
9.		You work on a lot of projects that never come out and don't often get your name in the credits of the ones that do. (Especially the ones that are actually good.) Unless you are one of the top staff, getting your name in credits is often more a matter of where you are and who you know rather than what you did. You spend most of your career working on things that you can't prove you did.
8.		The Hygiene Thing. Summertime: The guy at the desk next to you hasn't taken a bath or shower in a week. And he's a chain-smoker. And your company is too cheap to air-condition the room so they only have a fan and he's in between it and you. Since he pretty much lives at the studio he's there every time you are, which is about 16 hours a day.
7.		Your life collapses into the black hole of the studio. Everybody around you spends most of their life at the studio and you end up doing it too. It's not that there is so much work that it can't be done in a normal 8 - 10 hour day but that tasks start expanding to fill the time available. I've seen production workers who are only doing the equivalent of 4 hours of work in a 16 hour day. Even if you do your work quickly and get extra done too if you leave early the others will think you are a slacker and aren't doing your share.
6.		Falling out of love with anime. Once you know how to make it you see all the corners that are cut in shows and poor quality animation are very apparent to you. Many animators stop watching all but the highest quality theatrical animation and complain about even that. You quit watching any animation.
5.		Lack of business knowledge means chaos. There are very, very few people who have any sort of business and management education or knowledge in the anime industry. Managing schedules is often no more than running around in a blind panic screaming at people to get things done. There is no such thing as time management in the anime industry. It can be extremely frustrating to work under someone whose ideas about management are based on manga and Yakuza movies and it must be frustrating to try to manage people if you don't have any idea how to. The sempai - kohai (senior - junior) thing often compounds the problem. The sempai, in order to show how superior he is, rains terror and garbage down on the kohai, treating them like dogs until they quit, become buddies (see #4), or kill the sempai. Then the kohai becomes the new sempai and continues the tradition of petty abuse. I've seen this destroy studios.
4.		Difficult to get interesting work. Anime works primarily on the "Buddy System" — you have to be buddies with someone who can get you work in order to get any — so you're limited to the contacts you have. The buddies come and go quickly based on the whims of the powerful people.
3.		Very little chance of finding someone to become romantically involved with. People who work at anime companies tend to be a little odd and usually don't make good partners. Divorces are common.
2.		No benefits and chances for advancement are not too great. You don't get insurance or stock options or anything like that. Unless you attach yourself to somebody (see above) it's unlikely that you will go far.
1.		Health problems due to stress and overwork. This may include vaporizing when hit by direct sunlight because an animator spends so much time working at night in dark, dingy places that his body may begin to think he is a vampire. Working long hours in cramped, smoke-filled rooms takes its toll. Quite a few people develop health problems like high blood pressure, eye problems, nervous exhaustion, lung problems and mental disorders. When you first start working in the industry you don't make enough money to eat right and that can cause problems too.

The Doomsday Clock Ticking Down?

I was talking to the president of a large animation company the other day and he was saying that there might not be a Japanese animation industry in another fifteen years. Because Japan has a negative population increase (more people are dying than are born every year) the largest part of the population is drifting towards middle age. In another fifteen years something like 35% of the population will be over 65 years old. There isn't much of a market for senior citizens animation shows. (Can you imagine EVANGELION with all 60-year-old characters? GRUMPY OLD SAILOR SENSHI? PREVIOUSLY PRETTY SAMMY? Obviously the current type of shows would not work out.) The animation industry is aging too. Most creators are now in their mid-30's to mid-40's. The amount of new blood that comes into the industry and stays more than 5 years is very low.
It could be an excellent time to start thinking more globally and make shows that will appeal to the international market.

A couple of notes:

I've left Production I.G. to pursue freelance opportunities around the industry. Anyone that needs information about the company or the shows they work on should take a look at I.G.'s website http://www.production-ig.co.jp/ and e-mail the webmaster there.
My homepage address is changing at the end of June to http://www.age.ne.jp/x/scott. Please update your bookmarks and all of your Most Useless and Stupid Pages links and such.