Well well well, finally some political news that doesn’t immediately make me want to jump off of a cliff. Today I’m happy to report that Japan’s recently elected prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has made some promising announcements. Huh? About the alliance with the US? I mean yeah he said the US is very epic and we’re gonna stay close allies, but bitch I’m talking about his political stance on animators baby. Specifically, raising the wages for the hard workers who have been delivering entertainment for us (which in turn, of course, leads to lewd content) season after season, year after year. Now those are some politics I can get behind.
Obviously every political promise is a complete gamble with a very low chance of actually being fulfilled or even worked on, at least over here in America. Maybe officials are a bit more trustworthy over there in Japan but I’ll keep my hopes restrained. On the bright side it would really make sense for him to focus on this issue to some degree considering that, as fellow blogger Yung mentioned in an article earlier this year, many animators are transitioning to working for Chinese companies as the pay is significantly improved. I’ve seen reports that Japanese animators working in/for Japan are receiving approximately a third of what Japanese animators working for China are receiving. I have to fucking admit too, everytime I see the godlike animation coming out from studios like MAPPA and then subsequently hear about poor labor conditions, it makes perfect sense. The animation is simply so damn good for anime after anime. Somebody has to be suffering to make that shit so clean, so quickly. Hell there’s even a joke among the anime community that MAPPA has a slave basement. Keeping these factors in mind, it checks out that the minister would be interested in supporting these creative industries more (manga, anime, etc.) to plug the creative brain drain to China.
Look at that expression, that's how you know the pay is low.
Oh, and you may be wondering what Demon Slayer has to do with all this. Well, Kishida has openly stated his love for manga and anime and elaborated that he has read the entire Demon Slayer manga with Akaza as his favorite character in the series. As a filthy anime and movie watcher only, I don’t know much about Akaza so I can’t critique or agree with this choice at all. Between his apparent love for the industry’s creations and acknowledgement of the non-competitive conditions for animators, we may have a chance to get things turned around and improve the lives of these workers. I’m not holding my breath, but this is the most promising news I’ve heard in a while.
He was sick in the movie though, I'll give him that.
If nothing else, at least he reminded me that new animated Demon Slayer content is on the way. That’s more than most politicians ever do. Do you think Kishida will be able to improve the situation for animators? Will China continue to suck artists and animators out of Japan? Whip out that political science degree you bought off Ebay and jump into the comments below!
