In the morning of October 28 JST, the English account of the Nippon Anime & Film Culture Association tweeted, “Many production companies are of the opinion that foreign animators are completely useless, even if their drawings are good. Japanese animators are busy making corrections. Because they do not know how to make Japanese animation. We are making an English version of the textbook.”

The post was meant to promote NAFCA’s Animation Skills Test textbook, which seeks to help those aspiring to join the anime industry, whether as an animator or in another area such as coloring or compositing. However, its description of foreign animators drew criticism from industry members both local and foreign.

“can working with foreign animators who dont know the language and/or the pipeline be more difficult? absolutely. but what a garbage statement to make when you consider how many times foreign animators have still come to the rescue for productions before,” wrote J-Mulli, an animator who did second key animation for shows like Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Season 3 and Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Conflict. 

FAR, a former freelance translator of anime production materials who now runs the indie animation studio Buta Productions, remarked, “yeah so useless that corporate owned studios are willing to go in the red to pay certain foreign animators way more than the tokyo average salary so that they can benefit from their ‘lack of skill’ yeah sure.”

Animator Yuichiro Ida wrote in English, “There are foreign animators of all skill levels, so lumping them all together as ‘completely useless’ makes no sense. If you seriously think it’s okay to use that kind of language, maybe learning some basic social etiquette would be more beneficial than learning how to animate.” In a separate Japanese tweet, they pointed out that the post did not provide concrete examples of the production companies in question. 

Elsewhere, Kou Horio denounced the statement, while Shinnosuke Ota expressed the need for NAFCA and its associated members to be more careful with their statements. Ota noted that they carried the impression that NAFCA had made many “careless” statements since before this incident.

NAFCA has since issued an apology for “any misunderstanding caused by the use of an automatic translation software, which did not accurately convey our intentions.” It attempted to clarify things by stating, “Many foreign animators, even if they have good drawing skills, may not know the complicated work process of Japanese animation, and Japanese animators are forced to correct these foreign animators’ works, which may cause trouble. Many of such foreign animators are in the same situation as the untrained animators in Japan. If this situation continues, it will benefit neither animators from overseas nor those from Japan.”

The apology continued, “It is difficult for animation production companies to teach the Japanese work process to so many foreign animators. This is why they welcome the translation of the textbook into English. We wish for the support of every talented animator, both in Japan and abroad, and hope that by reading this textbook, they will learn about the intricacies of the Japanese process. We were going back and forth through the translation software to fit the word count, and as a result, we ended up sounding disrespectful. Our apologies. We will be using a blue badge from now on to avoid such misunderstandings. If there remain any concerns, please let us know! Thank you for your kind understanding and cooperation.”

NAFCA also made a point to state, in a separate tweet, that the Animation Skills Test textbook will be translated by native English speakers and double-checked “by native speakers who work in an anime company in Japan.”

After the apology was issued, Misu Yamaneko, an Italian who is now based in Japan and does storyboards and direction for anime and games, wrote, “We may agree or disagree with some stuff, but I would like you to trust Nafca. I believe that they are trying to make the industry better.” Earlier, they shared that while the words “completely useless” felt overly severe, the “quantity of things enshutsu or animation directors have to correct sometimes is really too much (saw it myself). I can’t really blame them, no one is teaching them. Having a book like this could help ..!”

Ida was less lenient. “I guess that the translation was fairly accurate. Both in grammars and preserving the nuances of original sentence. ten times better than my English fr,” they wrote.

NAFCA was founded last year with the goal of improving the anime industry, which has issues that include low wages and the lack of available staff — the latter is one reason foreign animators can be more easily found in anime productions these days. Its chairman is Masuo Ueda (Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory and Cowboy Bebop: The Movie co-producer).

The association has been visibly promoting the Animation Skills Test textbook, which recently had a Kickstarter launched, and the Animator Skill Test. The latter is described as a “proficiency test for animation in Japan that aims to increase the number of people interested in entering the Japanese Anime industry by providing them with the correct foundational knowledge and skills required in the production studios.” 

While Yamaneko opined that the textbook, which included contributions from one of their “sensei,” was “incredibly useful and will help many people learn how to make anime PROPERLY!” FAR had mixed feelings. As part of a longer thread, they wrote that “while I do really like how proper and complete the nafca guidebook is, I don’t agree with this idea that the issue is fundamentally one of inaccessibility of resources and that should be the main effort in order to reestablish functionality within anime productions…” FAR followed up by saying that “The certification goes into the same direction. Sure in theory is something cool to have but when there’s gonna be like 70 anime x season do you really think you would need it to get hired? Ultimately will be useful to animators only when the market will be shrinking…”

FAR concluded, “The fact that the certification in itself is not available for the people who theoretically need it the most (aka digital animators who should be able to take the exam from remote) also says a lot about how priorities shifted from when this project started to now.”

Source: @NAFCA_OfficialE