First the Cons, now the Studios: Pandemic strikes Japan's anime industry hard

Japan's anime studios fall victim to coronavirus disruptions
'Pokemon' and 'Sazae-san' are delayed as animators and voice artists work from home

Nikkei Asian Review

TOKYO -- Japan's anime industry has been plagued for years by adverse conditions: long hours in cramped studios, razor-thin profit margins, domestic labor shortages and a reliance on public fan gatherings and box office sales.

But since the government declared a national state of emergency for Tokyo and other cities on April 16 in response to the novel coronavirus outbreak, urging citizens to work from home, those adversities have anime producers scrambling for new business models.

Dozens of productions have been suspended indefinitely, including hit series like "Pokemon" and "One Piece"; theatrical releases in the popular "Doraemon" and "Detective Conan" franchises; and even "Sazae-san," the domestic drama that holds the Guinness World Record for the longest running animated TV series. The death of "Pokemon" and Studio Ghibli actress Kumiko Okae last month from pneumonia caused by COVID-19 shocked the voice-acting community.

Animation studios in Japan are not like their mammoth corporate counterparts in the U.S. -- Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks. Most are chronically understaffed and overworked, qualifying at best as small and midsize businesses. Many are also independently operated, and rely upon collaborations with other studios at home and abroad.

Tadashi Sudo

Veteran anime business analyst and critic Tadashi Sudo, founder of industry trade site Anime!Anime!, cites four challenges facing Japanese studios today: the disruption of supply lines with the rest of Asia; the cancellation of live events and closure of cinemas; delays in overall domestic production due to "teleworking" (working from home); and the cancellation of voice-dubbing sessions. Of these, he says, the last is the most damaging.

"Dubbing is the biggest problem. Many anime voice actors gather together as a full cast in a highly congested space. They speak loudly to each other, filling the air. Some of those actors are elderly. We can try to change the system, but it will take a long time."

Having actors appear one at a time to record their lines is standard procedure for many video game companies, Hollywood studios and the larger overseas animation producers, but the process of booking solo recordings is costly. As Tokyo-based anime and manga translator Dan Kanemitsu says, it also produces different aesthetic results.

"The spontaneous interaction between the performers is lost when you have people come in one by one," he says, contrasting it with video games, where flowing dialogue between multiple characters, common in anime, is rare.

"Anime voice actors also make a lot of money with their live performances," he says. "With this revenue stream drying up, the situation is very difficult." So difficult, in fact, that one voice actor, Megumi Ogata of "Evangelion" and "Yu-Gi-Oh" fame, tweeted a plea for understanding from impatient anime fans frustrated by delays: "It's amazing that anything is on the air," she wrote. "While the cuts are painful, we're working as hard as we can."

Japan's anime industry has been reluctant to embrace global standards in digital, computer-generated 3D imagery, adhering instead to a 2D model of visual art, much of it hand-drawn by employees crammed into tiny open-air cubicles, surviving on instant noodles and sometimes sleeping under their desks. The environment is as antiquated as company policy: working from home does not compute.

But Japan's few pioneering computer-generated anime studios are facing their own coronavirus obstacle: bandwidth.

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