Japanโs anime industry is in better shape overall, but gaps in pay and conditions are opening up largely between studios prepared to put their own capital on the line and those that are not, according to Fujitsu Ryota, programming advisor for the Tokyo International Film Festivalโs Animation section.
โGiven the high level of creativity demonstrated by animation professionals, their compensation is still not where it should be,โ Fujitsu tells Variety.
He describes the link between hits and pay as a chicken-and-egg problem. As overseas demand for anime grows, the companies that can pay production staff properly, and so draw the talent they need, look best placed to make strong work and build a global presence.
โIn other words, itโs not necessarily that a hit film generates profits that are then passed on to the people who made it. Rather, companies that can attract the right people in the first place are better positioned to produce a hit,โ Fujitsu says.
That requires studios to commit more of their own money and shoulder bigger business risks, he adds. Some can. Others canโt.
โHow to bridge that gap depends on how individual companies choose to run their businesses,โ he says. โIf we simply lump everything together as an โindustry-wide problem,โ we risk obscuring the specific factors at play.โ
The Animation section this year features nine new Japanese and international works. On the Japanese side, auteur projects from major studios with commercial track records, Nishigori Atsushiโs โGrotesqqqueโ and Natsume Shingoโs โGhost โ End of Night,โ sit alongside independent productions, Kadowaki Koheiโs โWe Are Aliensโ and Kawajiri Masanaoโs โCherry and Virgin.โ The international slate includes Louis Clichyโs โIron Boy,โ Joel Crawford and Januel Mercadoโs โForgotten Islandโ and โWalking with Animators,โ a documentary by Alexandre Poncet and Gilles Penso about the making of animated films.
โI donโt see commercial and experimental works as opposing forces. There is a broad spectrum between the two, and many films fall somewhere along it,โ Fujitsu says.
The four Japanese titles, he argues, may be closer in genre than their production setups would suggest. Placing them side by side is meant to make audiences ask whether a line between commercial and experimental animation exists at all, and the same goes for the international picks.
โUltimately, what weโre looking for in TIFFโs Animation section are films with a distinct creative signature โ works that make the creatorsโ voices visible and offer audiences something stimulating in a variety of ways,โ he says.
The section also runs a focus on women animation directors, with Nagaoka Chikaโs โDetective Conan: The Fist of Blue Sapphire,โ Watanabe Kotonoโs โGold Kingdom and Water Kingdomโ and Yoshimura Aiโs โThe Rose of Versailles.โ The program has been under consideration for some time, Fujitsu says, and its aim is not to pin down what women bring to animation that was previously absent. Rather, it reflects an industry in which the number of women directors is clearly set to grow.
โThere might be a slight paradox here, but weโre focusing on women directors precisely because weโre in a transitional period, moving toward a point where there will no longer be a need to single them out as women directors,โ he says.
Women have directed animation in Japan since the 1980s, Fujitsu notes, but their ranks began to swell in the 2000s, partly because more women joined production teams throughout the business.
With streamers pouring money into anime and theatrical franchises drawing huge crowds, Fujitsu says the risk that original features without established IP will find it harder to get financed and distributed is definitely there.
โIn a way, the efforts weโre seeing to develop original animated films are also attempts to prevent that future from becoming a reality,โ he says.
Public money for animated features in Japan is scarce, which makes originals hard to finance. More Japanese animated films have reached international festivals in recent years, he says, and while that partly reflects festivalsโ own tastes, Japanese professionalsโ growing interest in festivals, overseas markets and co-productions is opening routes around the funding problem.
Fujitsu is also moderating a discussion at TIFFCOM, the festivalโs content market, on launching a new international anime award in 2027. In conversations with the team behind Tokyo Anime Next, he says, they agreed that an award should be โan inspiring message for creators โ something that makes them go, โAh, that makes sense!โ โ as well as a breath of fresh air for the festival, the kind that makes people say, โOh, such a film exists!โโ
He hopes the Tokyo Anime Next award becomes an occasion for people across the animation business to come together and celebrate the yearโs work, giving both professionals and fans a sense of recognition.
โGiven that an award of this kind has not existed before, I think it could play a significant role, not only by recognizing outstanding works, but also by bringing individual members of the production teams into the spotlight,โ Fujitsu says.
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