Posted in: Anime, Crunchyroll, TV | Tagged: anime, chinese animation, Mobile Suit Gundam, yoshiyuki tomino

Gundam Creator: Japan "No Longer an Advanced Country" for Animation

Yoshiyuki Tomino, the creator of the endlessly popular anime Mobile Suit Gundam, was interviewed by Real Economy, a Japanese business outlet, and dropped a bombshell with this controversial statement: "Japan is no longer an advanced country in terms of animation." Tomino chalked it up to the rising sophistication of Chinese animation and a lack of support from politicians and the government in Japan. He recalled that 10 years ago, he went to Peking University in Beijing to give a lecture on animation and was surprised by the number of enthusiastic students. Now, 10 years later, he says, many of those students are now professionals working in the Chinese animation industry. Anyone who has seen recent anime from China on YouTube or streaming services like Crunchyroll will see that Chinese-made anime is becoming every bit as creative, surprising, and dynamic as Japanese anime at its creative peak.

Meanwhile, Japanese politicians still think about Japanese anime the way they did 30 or 40 years ago, a kind of laissez-faire attitude in which the government doesn't support the industry. By contrast, Tomino says, the Chinese government is actively working to support the animation industry there with subsidies and resources.

"I feel a sense of crisis that if we continue to make animation from a business-oriented perspective, we will be completely outdone by our Beijing counterparts," said Tomino.

This sounds like another salvo in the trade war with China, a common attitude being pushed by many countries that are US allies right now. What Tomino does not mention is that the lack of budgetary resources has driven many Japanese anime studios to outsource much of their work on various anime TV series overseas to cheaper studios in countries such as Vietnam. These studios do it cheap and fast, but not always well. The result is often in segments in anime shows where movement is stiff, faces are wildly inconsistent, sometimes unrecognizable. Nobody in the Japanese anime industry talks about this publicly even it's so out in the open it's not even a secret. The names of the outsourced studios abroad are already listed in the end credits of the shows.

Meanwhile, anime from Japan continues to be considered cutting-edge mainly due to its content: high concept stories in Science Fiction and Fantasy. China is catching up, though, with Pixar-level updates of Chinese folklore. Also, every new Mobile Suit Gundam anime series currently enjoy a healthy budget so their animation is still top-notch.

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