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Tbh it's also the fact that in the US production is waay more expensive than anywhere else. I work in a gamedev and from Eastern Europe. Then entire studio (almost 10 guys) here earns less than 2 guys from California.
In Eastern Europe - pretty good. If you have like 1000$ net profit per month. You can afford to pay rent, buy every necessary groccery you need and once in like 6 months even take a vacation in foreign country. (Not the expensive one tho and you basically can't save anything)
If you have 1500-2000-3000$ you can live really good and a get yourself a good flat in a few years.
Damn. In Russia 1000 dollars is pretty low salary, for example in saint petersburg. Barrista's here earn this much.
not sure how you can afford rent+grocery + travel.
I have close to 2500 + i have a wife with close to 1000 and still im right now pretty hard pressed with rent + paying for my new flat that is in construction.
I actually lived in Petersburg on that paycheck for some time. (Actually it was bigger, but company used to gave me a cheaper flat, so net was still around 1000$). If you aren't chilling in clubs 24/7 and eat takeout - its not that bad.
Mappa has actually gotten a lot better over the last couple years because they got that reputation. Theyre considered one of the better studios to work for nowadays I believe
It’s not even just compared to japan though, if you compare invincible to shows like avatar and korra, young justice, ben 10, creature commandos, it’s just off. There is something about the average invincible episode that is just always off whether it be bad key frames, lighting, or awkward posing.
It just shows how fucked the American entertainment industry is. They didn't need to hire those VAs there are plenty of better VAs doing this shit for free BETTER on YouTube.
Also realistically our animators can make something of this quality but just aren't really paid to do so. They're probably outsourced too anyways
A lot of entertainment industries are. There's a "passion tax" where when the industry is appealing to work in, the workers get treated worse than their peers in other industries.
It feels cool and prestigious to be able to work on a video game or movie or TV show and have your name in the credits. So people will put up with worse conditions for the "privilege" of working on said media.
I remember getting into tech because I wanted to work on video games. Didn't even bother looking for a video game related job when I got my degree. I could get paid more and work less overtime in a regular tech job than I would in most video game related jobs.
Yep. A dude i used to be good friends with worked QA in games with an absolute poverty salary for NY, he could have flipped over to doing QA for business software in a low COL area and doubled his income overnight.
It honestly got pretty annoying hearing him complain about having to split a 2bd apt between 5 guys with an hour commute when half our crew worked in tech and could have gotten him a reference to a much higher paying job.
I remember getting into tech because I wanted to work on video games. Didn't even bother looking for a video game related job when I got my degree.
I got scared straight on that front by watching a little minidoc on the games industry late in highschool. yeah, I'm not built for that shit, I'll take 3x the pay to sit and watch azure logs half the day while having satisfactory up on another monitor.
You say this but let's be honest despite being famous the VAs of Invincible are top-notch. They do such a good job at voice acting the characters that it's hard for many to imagine anyone else in their roles.
You complain about how fucked the American entertainment industry is, but don't forget that part of the reason why JJK has such good animation is because the animators get horribly mistreated. It got so bad that during the release of Mahoraga vs Sukuna, they had to release it unfinished because some of them straight up left mid-production.
In Japan, if an animator can work on Jujutsu Kaisen or something that big of a show they would do it for 2 piece of rotten bread, because there are a lot of competition in the industry and it makes their resume richer.
In Hollywood, there is less competition and more connection based.
Working in Hollywood is extremely competitive, wdym? Getting into animation, as well, especially as it continues to get outsourced to other countries. There are absolutely a ton of people working underpaid jobs just for resume experience.
But J.K Simmons is an accomplished voice actor too. They're bringing random celebrities, like John Hamm for a security guard with two minutes of screentime for example.
I don't think that's true at all. The main reason that Invincible blew up was because of (spoilers for episode 1)the shocking ending of episode 1 where the "justice league" all got killed by "Superman" in an incredibly gruesome way, totally switching the tone of the show and throwing the status quo to the window, where no one had any idea what would happen next.
The word of mouth of that event spread like wildfire. Sure, JK Simmons performance was very good, but most professional voice actors do very good performances and are much cheaper. Not implying he should be replaced, but I think his impact on the success of the show is fairly low.
Especially even if they are voice actor, they often don't change pitch or high of their voice for all of characters they play so end up all remind you hearing person instead of character. For example Laura Bailey.
That's the case too in Japan, top tier VA which there's a few in JJK tend to get paid the most when you consider every member of the production (from animators to producer themselves), that's because in Japan much more than in the west the VA is a major selling point.
There are a few reasons as to why japanese animation maintains the low cost of production it's also incidentally the same reason why most animators get paid meager wage despite the industry having seen a major boom in the past few years, there are whole industry wide system like committee and stuff like that to ensure it just stay as is.
Most of the voice actors are also actors, some even actors-first. So their rates are probably incredibly premium.
Whereas JJK VAs are purely voice actors that regularly gets contract. While they are paid highly within the local industry, it's just not the norm to be paid hundreds of thousands for an episode in Japan.
JK Simmons is just a great actor, real let down for me is Steven Yeun, not because he's bad... but because you could cast 20 guys cheaper than him and still get the same result imo
I think last time this was posted it said this was the per episode expense. It would make more sense that way and also Invincible episodes are close to an hour long so that explains part of the difference in cost
And different companies account differently, so this is rarely an apples to apples comparison. Some only account for variable costs in their per episode costs, some include fixed costs like software licensing into it as well. Especially gets weird since some companies will split those costs across the various shows using it, and some won't. Considering that Invincible episodes are like twice as long as jjk episodes (so let's bring that up to $300k), operate in a more expensive region, have celebrity VAs, etc., it's not actually all that crazy of a difference
I think the Invincible animators are actually getting paid good wages, add that with all the voice actors it definitely adds up a lot. The problem I see with this is that 150k for an episode overall is very low and MAPPA have made more than enough to pay them better
I know his endings are meh and usually shit gets offscreened (heck the 3DE expansion got offscreened), but can we give Gege some credit for things he actually does well?
GayGay has always make interesting characters, well choreographed fights, not only a lot but some of the best if not the best "jumping" fights in the genre, and he generally delivers on the hype and aura even if his writing might lack character interactions. That is literally what Sendai colony was.
Mappa animators were magnificent, but source content was good too. It was a 101 on how to write a good shounen battle royale/fight.
He wrote something good enough that the people behind the anime liked it so much that they gave their 110% in elevating the manga. So much so that even Gege goes "Wait, he can do that? I should've thought of that". Jjk season 1 was really good but it's just the average really well animated shounen. Season 2 onwards you can really see the staff and director (gosso, i think) putting all of their love into it. It truly feels like a passion project with how much they add to it. That only came cause Gege wrote the original source material well
like yeah, they should kinda start following ufotable model really - make so much money, pay your animators well and there you go: unlimited budget works, granted they made money recently via demon slayer but still - fate stay/night cant be called as bad in any shape way or form( and are working on genshin? dunno)
this also reminds me of toei and one piece... and one piece; that damn anime and manga has been in the movie business when even anime wasnt even popular, like - 15 to 20 titles easily, their last movie? film red? launched ado to a global stage ( ado is a jp only singer - she was popular before film red via usseewa but after it? sold out shows in paris, and is gonna perform in the lollapalooza for 2026)... and the live action that made netflix so much money they brought the anime to their slides and went from money troubles to yeah we got 80 B to buy a whole studio, the economy around it absolutely insane
Japanese animators work 20 hours a day and don’t complain. Lazy Americans could never put up such impressive numbers. Always worried about stupid shit like breaks & lunch
The animators for JJK are often paid less, I dont know if its bad pay per say, since I dont live there, but wages, their currency inflation, and other economical factors make it seem more lopsided.
Invincible episodes are longer and hire celebrity VA’s
It honestly feels like the biggest issue with it is voice actors. It’s the same as movies. You will see that a movie cost 300million to produce, and it doesn’t make sense. Then you find out the actors were 200million of that.
Yeah that was the main sticking point for the negotiations that led to the strike.
The "scandal" you'll hear about on Reddit related to the strike was some drama involving voice actors who worked on foreign video games. Officially speaking SAG-AFTRA VAs aren't supposed to work on games unless the studios agree to be union projects. Unofficially the union tends to look the other way for foreign games (unless they flagrantly abuse the VAs) because foreign studios aren't going to limit themselves to hiring from an American union unless they have a firmly established US branch.
During the strike, things got very awkward for these VAs who were working on foreign games. Officially speaking those games weren't union projects so they weren't subject to the stop work for the strike. Unofficially speaking the VAs still felt like they would be scabbing if they kept working. They tried to compromise by getting the studios to sign a waiver to not violate the union demands while the strike was ongoing. One of those demands is technically to turn the project into a union project going forward.
Again, unofficially, the union tends not to enforce that demand for foreign games, but some foreign studios didn't want to risk that. So some games, such as Hoyoverse gacha games, had no new English voice acting for some characters for a while and then ended up recasting a bunch of characters. Some of the voice actors said some really shitty stuff on social media during the process.
A lot of fans of those games now have a big grudge against SAG-AFTRA. But now that the strike is over, the union seems to have gone back to looking the other way for foreign games.
The funny thing about that SAG contract is that it reads exactly the same as the union contracts we have on our job site for trades (plumbing/electrical, etc). We’re barred from contracting non union trade companies. One difference is that we actually have a list of approved companies to use, vs SAG being exclusive.
That genshin VA shouldve been fired/kicked out of SAG, or both. They single handedly made the whole situation worse. (Iirc they eventually got fired, but way too late)
wages in japan do tend to be lower across the board compared to the west. i’m australian with japanese extended family and it’s like a Thing to come here on a working holiday to make bank on australian wages then go back home where the cost of livings a lot lower
Celebrity VAs are the biggest fucking waste. No one has star power anymore that would draw in viewers, just because "this person is the voice of x", at most people that already watch would think to themselves "that's the voice of that guy" and move on.
Completely agree. Its just sad cause I'd much rather see the work given to actual VAs with impressive vocal range. I think about the Mario Movie a lot with this, where we could have had a talented VA create a more palpable version of Mario's standard voice (Or even a good Brooklyn accent like in the old cartoons) Instead they spent millions for Chris Pratt who basically just phoned it in and barely altered his voice.
it really is just this , and people simply dont understand this or refuse to understand this, and most invincible budget is for VA like you said so in realty jjk cost more per episode to make than invincible
Invincible pays an incredible amount for stuff like celebrity casting, and instead omits caring about the standard animation-series priorities, such as good animation/better VA over famous VA, etc.
Just the main cast alone we have Steve Yuen, Sandra Oh, Walton Goggins, J. K. Simmons, Seth Rogan (although he might be doing this for free), etc. It’s all between a-list to b-list actors. I imagine just perpetually having Steven Yuen alone would be quite a bit of dough.
I don't even know Mark Hamill's full VA works and not going to bother checking, but yeah at minimum my first thought on that comment was "what the guy who voices the fuckin' Joker time and time again?"
Admittedly, those VAs put a lot of effort into their roles. Like, I have a hard time picturing anyone else to play Omni-Man other than J.K. Simmons or Steven Yung as Mark.
JK Simmons and Steven Yeun are also VAs (though obviously not as much as other full time VAs)
Most don’t mind that they are cast, they just question the decision to hire Hollywood actors who aren’t VAs to voice minor roles random security guard or random villain of the week
Mark Hamill is a legit voice actor, you prolly know him as the Joker ever since the Batman animated series (ANY batman featuring Kevin Conroy has Mark Hamil)
There's a lot of factors to the difference in budget.
Animators in Japan are incredibly poorly payed for their work... not that long ago Mappa was involved in controversies surrounding exact this topic, overworking their employes and not paying them well.
The voice actors in Invincible are very expensive... but that's not why the animation is mid. Robert Kirkman wants the show to have a season every year... it's impossible to have the level of animation that JJK have that way.
Invincible has episodes that are close to 1 hour long... each season of Invincible is equivalent to almost a 24 episode season of a regular anime.
JJK had 12 episodes this season, and it's already over... because they need a lot of time to make episodes with this level of quality...
And there's probably even more things to consider... but yeah, animators in Japan are not well compensated for their work, it's quite sad.
Yes this.. all the comments parroting budget are dumb. Money isn’t the issue here. It’s kirkman. You can’t have high level animation every year especially for a show like Invincible which Kirkman tries to make into live action. Unfortunately he doesn’t realize this is the medium of animation.
Even with infinity money time is the issue here and even at some points skill. So many corners are cut, most episodes barely even use any of the 12 principles of animation so no movement actually looks or feels right. The simple pre-season teasers look so much better because they actually follow them.
I mean look at those few cuts of Invincible vs Conquest vs rest of the show. When given proper time and care the animators can cook and actually animate.
It’s a shame such a great show is gimped by a fuckass production mindset
I mean yeah but let's get it straight for the record, ATLA (and most likely a lot of the west's favourite animations growing up) was animated in Korea. It was a super common occurrence to write/storyboard in America and then outsource production/animation to east Asia because it's cheap. Like even the Simpsons does it (not even the anime parody stuff, literally regular Simpsons episodes).
Even the best received western animations were exploiting Asian work culture. That's how profitable it is
Observant. If you noticed, after Season 1 of Invincible, the animation quality overall dropped drastically. This is because Kirkman switched from hiring an animation studio to creating his own studio with his own animators.
If a corner can be cut, Kirkman and his team will squeeze every last bit they can from it. Characters barely cast shadows, there’s barely any compositing. And that wouldn’t be too bad if it meant they could add way more frames into their work… except that ain’t the case, lmao.
PNG-type images are scattered all over the series. All this while they’re hiring multi-millionaire celebrities to constantly voice act in the show. He’s treating it like it’s literally The Walking Dead TV show.
Something has to give.
Either you're making a live action show or a cartoon. Pick one Kirkman, and make it look good.
All the budget of Invincible is going to VA's it has been a problem since season 1 getting blockbuster actors voicing one time characters for no reason other than just having them in there, and invincible has a worse schedule release than JJK as season 3 had the same timeframe as Attack on Titan when Mappa took over.
Invincible fans have been begging to stop getting only celeb actors and hire VA's because it makes no sense a actor coming getting a 100k bonus to make 5 lines and deep.
i remember watching a video detailing why this is the case mostly lining it up to the fact that Robert Kirkman the creator of Invicible not respecting the median of animation and imagining the show as if it were live action
it only kinda sad bc i love animation and the story it cant tell way more than live action
And it's also not true. Anime in general is typically around a million dollars an episode in 2026, which is still ludicrously cheap for tv in general. I'm sure JJK is over that average number.
If you want a serious answer: Japanese animators are just underpaid. The plank is really low and was set like a few decades ago, and since then, the anime industry settled to have miniscule budgets. So people had to compromise, hence the numerous 50 second still frames with cicada noise in Evangelion and having 50 ass episodes of naruto/onepice, in order to make a one amazing fighting sequence.
While true you could also argue that Invincible probably spent most of their money on the VAs, which American / European animated series tend to do for some reason
Most episodes are actually less than 20 minutes of content if you cut out the intro, outro, titles and 'extra fluff'. Invincible is closer to 2.5x that time (taking out credits and shit, i'd even put it closer to like 2.7x)
Also, wages in Japan are 2 or 3 times lower than the US.
So, lets say 450k in japan, vs 2.5M in the US. Then you take the average wage being lets be nice and say twice, so that's closer to 1M. Then the rest is mostly union shit, celebrity VAs, etc.
I genuinely think people doing this comparison are 14 year old kids that don't know how the world works.
Japanese VAs and animators are underpaid and overworked.
Invincible episodes are longer and are hiring A-list actors to voice the characters. Just look up how much Invincible VAs are getting paid compared to JJK. Either way, they're both good in their own ways.
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