Cost Comparison: Anime vs American TV shows

I was recently talking to a friend about how the plots in some animes are similar to the big live action spectacles that U.S. studios produce. Since anime is mainstream in Japan's culture and live action films are in ours, I thought it would only make sense that Japanese studios are saving a lot more time, energy, and money. So I decided to look into this to see the comparison of cost between these two countries and art forms.

In terms of comparing animated tv shows, The average American 2D TV series like The Simpsons or a Nickelodeon show can cost typically between $1 and $2 million USD per episode. The longer a show goes on, the more it costs to produce because the crew gets a raise every season. The Simpsons now costs over $5 million per episode to make and Fox has been desperately trying to renegotiate everybody's contracts because the show has become unprofitable. No one thought that the show would be on air for over 20 years.

Cable shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender and Invader Zim are estimated to have cost a little over $1 Million per episode. The low budget shows can go down to about $350,000 to $500,000 per episode, which still isn’t cheap.

Anime, however, is much, much cheaper. A typical show can cost as little as $125,000 USD per episode. On occasion a very well-off production can go north of $300,000 USD per episode, but that's rare. Budgets for an anime are not made public, but that's what the general level of things are at.

Here's the budget breakdown:

Original work - 50,000 yen ($660)

Script - 200,000 yen ($2,640)

Episode Direction - 500,000 yen ($6,600)

Production - 2 million yen ($26,402)

Key Animation Supervision - 250,000 yen ($3,300)

Key Animation - 1.5 million yen ($19,801)

In-betweening - 1.1 million yen ($14,521)

Finishing - 1.2 million yen ($15,841)

Art (backgrounds) - 1.2 million yen ($15,841)

Photography - 700,000 yen ($9,240)

Sound - 1.2 million yen ($15,841)

Materials - 400,000 yen ($5,280)

Editing - 200,000 yen ($2,640)

Printing - 500,000 yen ($6,600)

The reason for American shows to cost so much more is because they have to entail the payment of actors, writers, director along with sets and equipment such as cameras, studio space or shooting on location which adds more money to the show. I think its interesting how much money we would save if we didn’t make our big budgeted movies live action films and created them as 2D animations, but then it would probably not do as well because western audience are so used to mainstream live action films.