Anime Creators to Get Career Boost from New Organization, as Japan Looks to Grow Overseas Market

The Yomiuri Shimbun

1:00 JST, April 20, 2025

The Cultural Affairs Agency plans to establish a new organization by the end of fiscal 2025 to help foster talented workers for the anime industry. The organization will comprise of entities including universities, vocational schools and private companies such as major anime production firms.

The agency aims to help people who want to work in the anime production industry acquire the skills they need. It is also looking to raise standards in the industry in order to boost anime businesses overseas.

The organization will design programs for anime creators so they can acquire skills, and will encourage production firms and relevant schools to offer the programs.

Workers and students will get help acquiring skills for each phase of anime production. These phases include drawing frames, writing scenarios, audio production, film production and editing. Training will cover a wide range of jobs, from working level positions to director and producer.

Given the aim of helping anime companies expand abroad, the organization’s programs will also teach participants to explain anime products in foreign languages and how to make use of intellectual property rights.

Additionally, the organization will plan joint international projects to produce anime and promote student exchange programs with foreign universities.

In a complementary push, the agency will encourage universities and vocational schools across the nation to launch new anime courses. It plans for the schools to conduct joint studies with anime production firms, dispatching researchers to anime studios and having them preserve anime films and restore old films.

While expectations are high for Japan’s anime production industry to expand further, there are still workplace problems such as low wages and long work hours.

Some creators have complained that they cannot see anywhere to go in their careers. To help resolve this issue, the agency wants the organization’s programs to help workers acquire comprehensive skills for each of the production phases.

The overseas market for Japanese-made anime products in 2022 was estimated to be worth ¥1.45 trillion.

In September last year, the government established the Public-Private Council on the Content Industry to assist Japanese anime, game and other content industries so they can better make use of their advantages.

The agency aims to expand the value of the overseas market, which hit ¥5.8 trillion in 2023, to about ¥20 trillion by 2033.