Anime brings in more than $19 billion a year. Its artists are earning barely enough to survive.
Pikachu’s thunderbolt struck America in 1998 and changed the lives of a generation.
The US anime craze started at the turn of the century with Sailor Moon’s middle-school magical girls out to save faraway planets; One Piece’s pirates, cyborgs, and fish people seeking a legendary treasure; and Pokémon’s Ash Ketchum on a noble quest to “catch ’em all.”
These classic shows and many others led the charge; between 2002 and 2017, the Japanese animation industry doubled in size to more than $19 billion annually. One of the most influential and renowned anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion, finally debuted on Netflix this month, marking the end of years of anticipation and a new pinnacle in anime’s global reach.
But anime’s outward success conceals a disturbing underlying economic reality: Many of the animators behind the onscreen magic are broke and face working conditions that can lead to burnout and even suicide.
The tension between a ruthless industry structure and anime’s artistic idealism forces animators to suffer exploitation for the sake of art, with no solution in sight.
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