Why Is Adult Animation So Far Behind?

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im a 15 yr old who has a job emptying trash cans at a waterpark a few times a week and i get paid more than animators in japan 😭

Instead of making an animation that's actually adult, they get hung up on the novelty of making an animation for "adults." That's why they appeal to edgy teenagers, it's a child's idea of maturity.

As a professional in the TV animation industry, and primarily a senior Toonboom Harmony rigger at that, I gotta point out a few things. You can totally make a rig that can be animated in a super fluid way. You can rig in a way that both leaves a lot of freedom to the animator and also *expects*, not just allows for, heavy use of new drawing substitutions (basically traditionally animated elements within the rig structure) made by the animators directly on the shot to avoid any stiffness. Rigging even allows you to create super elaborate animations that even implement traditionally animated parts and place these animation "bits" into a library that can be accessed at will to reuse or build on top of. Even the "computer generated transitions" between poses that you (rightly) point out to are easily avoided using ease ins and ease outs on the key frames before going in and keying the tweening. All these techniques of animation combining cutout rigged animation and traditional animation is called mixed animation (ikr) and I think really brings out the strengths of rigging without any of the stiffness and cheapness it can cause. The reason you don't see stuff like this and instead you see a bunch of shitty, cheap looking stiff rigs is the deadlines we have to be working under. Making a fluid ass rig takes like a week and a half, but the production expects it to be ready in two days. Animating a rig with care, eases, and traditional animation patches takes even longer. I made some personal rigs in my spare time, where deadlines ain't an issue, that I really wish I could do and have animated for an actual production. Sadly we are meant to output content at a speed that is often incompatible with quality. I have lost count of the times, reviewing an episode or something, that I notice a mistake or something looking particularly shitty and Production doesn't allow anyone to go fix it because there is no time. And they themselves are just doing their job keeping the production on the rails, if I could have gone fixing all the shit I wanted a show will never come out. But the whole rhythm of the industry is in my opinion a breakneck pace that often sacrifices quality for profit. And I know this is hardly a revelation but all this is to say it's not rigging's fault

1:47 I was gonna say it was interesting that you chose Vaporeon instead of Pikachu, but then I remember this video was about adult animation.

I totally didn't think of the naughty kind of adult animation when you asked

You should ask the Italian Senate what they think of adult animation lol

"Western animation raised the ceiling of quality for their studios while anime raised the floor." This right here is the exact sentence I have been looking for to describe how I feel about both worlds of animation. The west has prettier gems, but anime has shinier garbage, and even now I'm not sure which of these two I prefer.

I wish Crunchyroll Originals (their western produced original "anime") got brought up: I do stuff with Aztec history, and Crunchyroll's Onyx Equinox series was actually amazingly well researched and I got to know some of the people who worked on the show as a result of my posts breaking down it's cultural influences (I helped write Cartoon Universe's video on the show, for example). They have a LOT of stories they could tell about the production process and how working with Crunchyroll was, suffice it to say that the budget was insanely low (apparently the entire series had less of a budget then single episodes some other projects they worked on had!), they had to fight and threaten to quit to get some of the resources they were promised, etc. To be clear, this is all stuff they've talked about publicly in interviews as well.

Learning that Rick and Morty went through multiple shell companies solely to avoid unionisation was not something I anticipated today, but I can't be totally surprised. Awful people.

The worst part about how animators are being worked to death for peanuts, I never even asked for there to be so many anime. I've got anime to re-watch, a backlog to work through, and skills to develop. I've got games to play, manga to read, and thoughts to let myself have. The one thing I'm not short on is things to potentially occupy my time. The attention industrial complex is probably my greatest foe of this decade.

One thing I have to say about "western" adult shows that are adult only because of blood, guts, sex and swearing... They are actually pretty damn childish a lot of the time - and this just showcases the insane absurdity of our age rating systems. I suppose the excess vulgarity is a shoddy attempt at disconnecting these animations from the stigma that "animation is for kids". Because as we know, kids never, ever swear like old sailors, do not secretly watch porn and do not have violent, edgy fantasies. Oh wait... This is the thing that hit a lot of the anime with controversy back in the 80s and 90s - where a lot of the shows were seen as excessively brutal or got butchered by censored based purely on a moronic misconception that animation = kids' stuff.

great video!! i watched it while working, im a european overseas animator working on contract for a studio, which is working on am american adult animated cartoon (one that was actually mentioned briefly in this video). a lot of what was said in this video rings incredibly true to my experience in the industry so far. one thing worth mentioning is that, at least here, competition to enter the animation industry is incredibly high. despite the "low skill floor" in western animation, many fresh graduates here have to grind for years on their portfolio before being hired. one of my coworkers got a job as a junior animator for the first time this year, EIGHT YEARS after graduating! its really hard to be noticed! also, reliance on contract based work means that animators have no job security or stability. the industry is ridiculously fickle- i was in a studio once that shut down overnight, 100 peoples jobs gone in an instant. i have coworkers who cannot buy a home because they cant apply for a mortgage, because theyre constantly between 6 month contracts. some of my coworkers have worked at the same studio for 5-6 years, but havent gotten a raise that entire time. this constant instability, fear of losing your job, and how RIDICULOUSLY HARD it is to break into the industry or find new work, is part of why me and my coworkers put up with abuse. there are a thousand other desperate animators who are hungry for work- if you speak up, step out of line, unionize... then they can fire you easily and find someone to fill your shoes out of a massive pool of people. i am a middle animator (just above junior), i make less than average wage in my country even though i have years of experience and a bachelors degree. my love of the craft will only carry me so far. i am definitely better off than my japanese compatriots who i have massive sympathy for, but i can also relate to their plight a lot. also worth mentioning, is that a huge part of why my studio has any business at all, is because we undercut other studios in other countries. we sell high quality animation for dirt cheap by exploiting animators here, because theyre compelled to take any opportunity they can (as well as exploiting their passion for the craft). this is why the studios are generally so against unionisation, as its this cheap labor and short contract flexibility that allows them to undercut competition. anyway. ramble over, just speaking to my experience because this video got me thinking a lot. thank you for a very entertaining and comprehensive video, and love and peace to all artists out there who just want to create but instead suffer under capitalism. there are a lot of deeply passionate, creative, and exploited people behind some of the ugliest boringest adult animated shows out there.

You mentioned Spy Family right next to Fire Punch. Fun fact, the author of Spy Family worked as an assistant on Fire Punch right before starting Spy Family.

Props to Lextorias for dragging his couch to all these different locations to give us nice backgrounds. We appreciate it, man 🙏

Loved the video mate. The long form is what I missed seeing in Youtube back then (namely, when it used to be far more common).

just out topic, a lot of people ask why some western games are heavily censored in japan because of its violence but animes don't, but you have to understand that are not the same guys who censor animes that censor games, de guys who censor animes are eirin, and the guys who censor games are cero, ans historically cero is WAY more restrictive than eirin

Shout out to Hollywood only ever awarding 2 anime movies "Best Animated Film" both being Miyazaki-Ghibli movies and very little other anime ever being nominated, when stuff like Boss Baby and whatever the Pixar movie was that year regardless of quality gets nominated all the time.

TV Tropes coined the term "Animation Age Ghetto." A lot, and I mean A LOT of people believe that animation is meant for kids and kids alone, and don't take the medium seriously at all. A lot of these people are in high ranking positions in the TV and film (and now streaming) industries.

The Animation Guild is starting negotiations on July 31, if you want a better industry, suport the workers! Loved the video, and would love for you to talk more animation labor movements!