Anime Studio TMS Entertainment Restructures Employee Pay to Give Higher Base Salary

 

Long-running anime studio TMS Entertainment, known for producing series such as Detective Conan/Case Closed, Lupin the Third series, Rent-a-Girlfriend, Sonic X and more, announced on Monday that starting this month, the base salary for company employees has increased by an average of 30%. This increase includes a 24% rise in starting salary for new employees from 210,000 yen to 260,000 yen (US$1,980).

 

This only affects salaried employees at TMS Entertainment, which includes those in production, sales, office workers and some animators. Like many anime studios across Japan, the company uses freelancers to fill its anime production ranks, who likely will not benefit from this increase.

 

TMS Entertainment was able to increase the base salary of employees by cutting advanced prepayments for overtime as well as spreading out bonuses over the year rather than all at once. It is not known if the yearly salary has increased due to this restructuring. TMS says that the change was to balance out the ratio between the base salary and yearly earnings and stabilize the income of its employees

 

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In comparison to other studios in Japan who have publically confirmed salaries for staff members: MAPPA is currently hiring for its production department with a salary that starts at 240,000 yen (US$1,823) including overtime, Studio Ghibli hired for Miyazaki’s latest film at 250,000 yen (US$1,898) per month and Kyoto Animation’s base salary is 186,000 yen (US$1,412) with allowances that top out at 30,000 yen per month. Though, it should be noted that the cost of living in Kyoto is 30% lower than in Tokyo.

 

Sources: TMS Entertainment via Animation Business

 

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Daryl Harding is a Senior Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram.