Japan’s anime industry in crisis even as global popularity soars

Japan’s booming animation industry is in crisis – with low pay, long hours and a huge shortage of artists – just as its global popularity has never been higher.

Three of the 10 feature films in the running for top prize at the world’s most important animation festival in Annecy in France – which ends on Saturday – are from Japan.

The country is the only real challenger to Hollywood’s dominance of the labour-intensive genre.

But just as Japanese anime seemed to be threatening to loosen Pixar and Disney’s grip on the popular imagination with the likes of the teen mega hit Your Name and a Nintendo Super Mario movie in the pipeline, long-running structural problems are in danger of sapping its rise.

With talk of a talent shortage, its greatest star, the legendary Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki, has come out of retirement at 78 to make How Do You Live? – which may be released next year – with speculation that he could take on another feature if his health holds.