This does tend to happen with changing markets. As a market rapidly expands, studios crumble away and new ones swoop in to replace them.
Anime boomed in the 90s, and then it lulled for a while. When the Covid-19 Pandemic shut down the world, anime interest spiked, but due to literal health reasons studios had to delay or cancel content. This has negative effects for years later, with some studios never being able to recover. Some lost very important people, and that can lower the quality of the studio’s works, which can lead to complaints, less viewership, lower employee morale, and ultimately studio closure.
As an interesting note: Cost of Living in most of Japan isn’t all that bad, actually. According to (source), the United States is ranked 9 and Japan is 76. The cost of living in Japan is about half the cost of living in the USA, meaning the minimum amount of pay a person should expect to live is less in Japan. Now, this is of course an average. So someplace like Tokyo is going to be more expensive than Fukuoka, just as literally any city in California will be highway robbery compared to any city in a state like Oklahoma. But for the purposes of this conversation, the low pay isn’t really the big problem. Japanese culture makes up the difference for low pay and generally Japanese workers will stay with low paying jobs, as much as I might wish that aspect of their culture was different.
The biggest problem is the physical health toll due to overly long work hours, leading to sleeping under their desks in their office most days of a month to be considered normal and expected.
This does tend to happen with changing markets. As a market rapidly expands, studios crumble away and new ones swoop in to replace them.
Anime boomed in the 90s, and then it lulled for a while. When the Covid-19 Pandemic shut down the world, anime interest spiked, but due to literal health reasons studios had to delay or cancel content. This has negative effects for years later, with some studios never being able to recover. Some lost very important people, and that can lower the quality of the studio’s works, which can lead to complaints, less viewership, lower employee morale, and ultimately studio closure.
As an interesting note: Cost of Living in most of Japan isn’t all that bad, actually. According to (source), the United States is ranked 9 and Japan is 76. The cost of living in Japan is about half the cost of living in the USA, meaning the minimum amount of pay a person should expect to live is less in Japan. Now, this is of course an average. So someplace like Tokyo is going to be more expensive than Fukuoka, just as literally any city in California will be highway robbery compared to any city in a state like Oklahoma. But for the purposes of this conversation, the low pay isn’t really the big problem. Japanese culture makes up the difference for low pay and generally Japanese workers will stay with low paying jobs, as much as I might wish that aspect of their culture was different.
The biggest problem is the physical health toll due to overly long work hours, leading to sleeping under their desks in their office most days of a month to be considered normal and expected.