If You Want to Help Animators, Support Original Anime

A discussion took over Japanese Twitter at the beginning of May this year when a Japanese user began explaining how the anime industry makes its profits. Even when an anime itself ends up in the red, companies can still generate profit.

If You Want to Help Animators, Support Original Anime

In practice, how animation companies make money is directly tied to the so-called “production committee” system. In this model, different companies invest together in an anime with their own objectives.

What does this mean? Basically, your favorite anime works more like a “big commercial” for related products:

• Publishers → want to increase manga sales
• Record companies → want to boost theme songs, concerts, and voice actor businesses
• Toy companies → want to sell merchandise
• Streaming platforms → want to increase subscribers
• TV stations → want to fill programming slots and advertising time
• Advertising agencies → want to drive media campaigns

Another important point is that, in many cases, the animation itself does not generate direct profit. The studio responsible for production often receives a fixed payment to deliver the work within schedule and budget, but does not significantly participate in the profits from global success or merchandise sales.

This model reduces risk for studios, but creates strong dependence on third parties for monetizing the work. Because of this, some newer companies have been seeking alternatives, such as investing in their own IPs or controlling international distribution rights, especially with the rise of platforms like Netflix and other streaming services.

Even so, the situation remains challenging. Most anime still do not generate significant profit on their own, and only a few titles manage to be profitable just through the anime itself. The vast majority survive through merchandise and related products.

“I want to say this to those who claim that ‘anime makes a lot of money and should reward animators’: only a few works with strong original backing actually generate profit. Most anime do not make money on their own. Investing in something that won’t return profit and trying to acquire rights is not something companies would do, because it simply doesn’t make economic sense.”

He continues:

“When people see successes like Demon Slayer or exclusive productions from Netflix and Amazon, they form a distorted perception. But in general, anime has never really been a highly profitable industry — neither today nor in the past.”

And in the end, he says that if you really want to support animators, you should support original anime—those not based on existing works:

“Even when a studio takes the risk and creates an original work, most of them do not become hits. One reason manga adaptations are more likely to succeed is simple: they are only adapted when they already have a certain level of popularity.

In other words, the success rate is naturally higher. Original works face a much higher barrier. Even so, would you bet on that? If you don’t understand this logic but talk about animators’ rights, then you should financially support original works made by studios.

If you don’t want to do that, then complaining about ‘exploitation’ on social media is, in my opinion, inconsistent.”

What do you think?

via HY