A report based on interviews with members of the animation industry was published on the Japanese news portal Mantan Web, in which they reported that anime productions "are taking twice the regular time", and recordings of voice "they are taking triple."
An industry member who started working from home as part of the precautionary measures for the COVID-19 pandemic mentioned that the effect is much greater in studios that still do analog work. “There are several studies that are still in the transition period towards digital work. When it comes to teleworking, reviews will start to take much longer than scheduled, no matter how tasks are divided, and this is coupled with many people still being used to face-to-face meetings, causing the quality of work to drop . It is very difficult to maintain the quality of a project through teleworking, "he commented.
The site reported that there are those who assure that the situation "is gradually returning to normal, but that it will continue like this for a while." The outlet also highlighted the situation in the voice recording studios, which are also experiencing their own problems. For a time, a large number of voice recording projects for anime were completely halted, but they are also gradually restarting. However, a source indicated that “the new precautionary measures taken within the recording studios only allow up to three actors to record at a time. It is very difficult to get ten people to enter one of these cabins due to the distance measures, unlike how it was worked before. For this reason, some recordings take three times the time than before and, as a result, the amount of time that the director must dedicate to voice recordings also lengthens, "he said. The situation has apparently also made it much more difficult for actors to improvise in their work.
In reality, the anime industry has always struggled when it comes to labor and personnel shortages, hindering the survival of any studio, clearly excepting the most successful ones. Some experts commented to the site that the COVID-19 pandemic "only worsened the situation further, and could even bring an irreversible turn in the industry", which would clearly require changes in the approaches of the producers.
Previously, the Sponichi website had already reported in April that voice recordings for anime productions had already stopped, and that the delays would only extend in the future. Industry output was also affected as a large amount of work is outsourced from China and South Korea, countries that are also battling the COVID-19 pandemic.
Subsequently, in May, sound director Masafumi Mima and composer Masaru Yokoyama revealed photographs of how the studios were working with the new measures of social distancing, also indicating that the recordings had already been resumed.
Source: The Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan-Web
