/anime/ - Anime

Okada claimed that animators are so poor even though the industry attracts more money than ever because the production committee caps the budgets on individual anime titles. This is apparently because of a culture of corporate collusion, where the lead investing company determines beforehand the highest amount every other company in the committee can spend proportionally.

Okada elaborated that because control over the copyright is proportional to the amount of investment, companies will bid to become the highest investor (this is usually 40%). Once they attain this status, they have the power to determine the budget. For example, if the lead investor spends $4 million, the budget would be capped at $10 million.

After the budget has been determined proportionally, production committees will not accept larger investments from outsider (usually foreign) companies. A large investment would be split into separate projects to keep those companies lower down in the production committee. For example, Okada said that if a Chinese company offered to pay for an entire $10 million budget, the production committee would turn their investment into $50,000 chunks across 20 different projects. In other words, to maintain control and profits, the Japanese companies on anime production committees are incentivized to use the surplus from foreign investment to fund other projects instead of increasing an individual title's budget.