Victoria's blog

 Anime is known for being packed with a wide range of expressions and emotionality, that at first may appear as really weird or even like animation mistakes, but all of those have their meanings behind them . For example, there is an expression called Orz , that happens when a character kneel down or bowl on four, and it means that the character is crushed by events- has given up or maybe is begging for help. Another famous and very typical for anime expression is beady eyes and it looks just how it sounds and it appears on screen when the character is overwhelmed or dazed. The emotion for extreme happiness in anime is XD, and it’s when eyes turn into „x” and mouth opens like „D” ,so it looks very funny and bizaare. And the special for anime- Deanimation - when a character is transforming into a simple pencil sketch, because of extreme surprise or feeling dumbfounded. There are also more understandable expressions like a popped vein for anger, blush while being intimidated or a ...

„Violet Evergarden” is a high-rated anime with an unusual for an anime topic, with wonderful animations, all while being accessible for wide range of demographic. The main character- Violet- is an orphan used as a war weapon, that is given to Major Gilbert, who tries his best to raise her and take care of her. After their last battle, Violet loses her arms and Gilbert is nowhere to be found, and Violet needs to start a new post-war life. She gets a job of „auto memory doll”- a person that helps people put their emotions into a letter- which turned out to be really hard to Violet, since she doesn’t understand human’s emotion, because her whole life she was just doing other people’s orders. So, Violet starts travelling the world, writing letters for strangers to learn about human relationships and finally to understand Gilbert’s last words- „I love you”. What is unique for this anime, is that it’s structure is designed to every letter, so one episode contains singular story, that tugs on...

The biggest issue with anime industry is that animators don’t get paid enough. Animating is extremely time consuming and in Japan it is a very unbeneficial job. According to the  Japanese Animation Creators Association , a Japanese animator in their 20s earns on average ¥1.1 million (which is about $10,000) per year, while the poverty line in Japan is earning  ¥2.2 million per year. So the only way the animators make ends meet is working even more, which leads to another issue of animators- being overworked. There are plenty of cases where those poor workers fall asleep at their desks, have their health declined and are hospitalized- all because of exhausion. It also happens, that animators even commit suicide due to such an unpleasant job. Some time ago, even a popular studio Madhouse has violated lobor code, because employees were working 400 hours per month, so the problem is more complex than you could think. In my opinion, this whole topic is heartbreaking and animat...

 There are couple main problems with anime industry. Firstly, anime in-between artists don’t have enough skill for their job. Anime is almost entirely drawn by hand and every single drawning is usually very detailed and requiers a lot of skill and talent from the animator, but suprisingly most of anime studios employ total freelancers as in-between animators. When the professional key animators and top-level director have done their work, the rest is finished by unexpierenced group of people, that are just passionate about anime. The reason why anime studios rely on freelancers is simple- because they don’t have to worry about labor code. Freelancers are independent contractors, that companies can still enforce deadlines while saving money by not providing benefits. In conclusion, a lot of talented and experienced animators are not employed for the in-between animating job, because studios love depending on freelancers, that sometimes can be untalented and can make the animation lo...