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Netflix Anime Produced at MAPPA Paid Bottom Rates, According Animator Ippei Ichii


Animator Ippei Ichii recently took it to Twitter to open up about money matters, claiming that animators were being offered bottom rates on the production of a Netflix anime project made at MAPPA, the studio who made Yasuke for the streaming giant.

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Credit: Netflix

"Apparently, a producer working on a

Netflix

anime made at

MAPPA

suggested to pay 3,800 yen (US$34) per cut. The budget for TV series is between 3,800 to 7,000 yen, so if you accept that offer, the unit price for animators would go down," Ippei said in a

tweet,

according to the English translation via

ANN

. "Heads-up: If you're asked, I think it's best to negotiate for 15,000 yen (US$134) or more."

The animator went on to say, "To avoid misunderstanding, I have to say that my issue is with

Netflix

. For all the exorbitant amount of capital they have, it's a problem that they've started to place orders with such low rates. There is a possibility that the prices are even lower than a TV series."

Freelance animator

Zayd retweeted

Ichii's words with his own comment: "The usual 4500 yen per cut is already bad enough. What is

Netflix

thinking allowing them to pay less than the average?"

In May, a

freelance animator said

that they left MAPPA due to the "factory-like" conditions. They criticized the studio's decision to work on four shows at the same time instead of properly training their team so that they wouldn't have to do that, then said, "As far as I can tell, about 80% of the employees had similar complaints at the time."

Another animator

claimed

to have been paid 250 yen ($2 USD) for in-between animation at a subcontracting studio for a movie project made by "the company that recently made a viral PV." They added that the work was extra demanding because it was a project that required a high degree of polish.

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For a company as big as Netflix, Icchi's comment is a bit surprising. I've never been a big fan of Netflix's anime originals, but if they want to bring more quality anime shows to their platform, shouldn't they focus their budget on the animators? Recently, Toei Animation president Katsuhiro Takagi

addressed the quality-quanitity issue for anime projects

.

Le Sean Thomas and MAPPA's

Yasuke

anime premired on April 2 worldwide on Netflix. The show follows a samurai warrior of African descent in Feudal Japan who must return to his life of sword and violence in order to protect a mysterious girl from dark forces.

For more articles like this, take a look at our Anime page.