J's Chimes: The Shocking Truth About Animators

By Djenar Siti

A shocking truth is being revealed to the public when research is done to find out just exactly how much Japanese animators are paid for their hard work. Animators are paid slave wages for drawing the animations, characters and tracing for a mere 200 yen per hour for 1 pathetic piece. It is been said that even a burger flipper working in Mcdonald's gets at least an hourly wage of 1000yen. Such comparison shows that even an unskilled job like that beats being a skilled animator that draws wonderful animes we see on tv.


With the plight of these poorly paid animators, their woes are even greatly increased as more of these animations are being outsource to other countries to finish the work with cheaper production costs and twice as fast. Such brings to the point that animations will be slowly diminishing in Japan, which could bring about the collapse of anime in futures to come which originated from Japan.


The average annual salary for animators and such are as stated below:

Animator (Animation) = 1,050,000yen = SGD$16,228 per year
Animator (Illustration) = 2,300,000yen = SGD$35,547 per year
Artists = 2,320,000yen = SGD$35,856 per year
Performers = 3,330,000yen = SGD$51,466 per year
Directors = 4,950,000yen = SGD$76,504 per year

With figures like this, its no wonder animators are often struggling with their lifestyle. A mere $1300 per month is not even enough to survive in Singapore, let alone Japan. With many wants and needs, desires and attractions, such contributed to the low birth rates in Japan and with such meager salary, one could only wonder how to get on with life resisting many temptations. Hopefully such are being reviewed and changed so that animators are appreciated for their job as they did it out of passion instead of the money, which we should really salute them for all their hard work...