If I Wanted To Work For Manga UK, MVM, Animatsu, Anime Limited, etc

Invisible Crane

Adventurer
So I had this crazy idea about maybe wanting to live out a dream of mine of wanting to work in something involving anime and maybe wanting to be involving one of those 4 companies. Lets say I wanted to, what kind of qualifications would I need, obviously a business one, but if anyone here knows anything else someone would need, could you please tell me?
 
To be brutally honest I wouldn't worry so much about qualifications - and that goes for much of the media industry as a whole. Work experience and skill set is king - if you have an impressive CV and can prove you're good at the task required already, you're far more likely to be hired. Qualifications sadly mean jack in many industries these days - everyone has one so they're already the bare minimum.

I have to confess I wouldn't recommend working in the UK anime industry either as it's pretty tiny - many of these companies simply don't have the money to hire any more staff than they already have so I can't help but feel it'd be a frustrating process trying to pursue it.
 
There is, sadly, an ever increasing trend in such things of 'study for the job you want... then sign on, because nobody is hiring.'

I'm not sure how much this'll help, but when I decided that I wanted to work in comics, I looked for ways into it that offered less resistance. Hence, I never tried out for writing gigs. That's a 99% guarantee of failure. I didn't try out for artist gigs, because I knew my quality of work at the time just wasn't good enough to make an impression. Instead, I started learning the lay of the industry and looking for more realistic ways in. Hence, I learned how to letter comics. Because fewer people blitz publishers and message boards with requests to do that, in comparison. I learned the craft from two textbooks, and the result has been that I've worked solidly for about 6 years and worked on award nominated comics. I did that with no more than my GCSE's under my belt.

It may be that there are ways you can get involved in the anime industry, but you may have to work very hard at some thankless tasks. I have no idea, really. It seems to me that, short of being a privately wealthy individual with money to throw at a business venture, there's no easy way in. The entire Western arm of the industry seems pretty small.

Qualifications certainly don't mean jack. Common sense, good people skills and the ability to make things happen is what counts in most career paths. And with anime, it seems that all the savvy and business education in the world can't protect you from the sheer cost of doing business or the many, many potential pitfalls.

Maybe there's another route you could take besides working for a distibutor? Maybe you could hone your knowledge and skills and go into a field that's related to anime, like journalism or merchandising? I personally think there's room for more publications that deal with anime or Japanese culture. We know NEO and MyM. But is that really IT? Could something like the old Anime UK magazine work in today's climate?

Just spitballing ideas there.
 
Lutga said:
To be brutally honest I wouldn't worry so much about qualifications - and that goes for much of the media industry as a whole. Work experience and skill set is king - if you have an impressive CV and can prove you're good at the task required already, you're far more likely to be hired. Qualifications sadly mean jack in many industries these days - everyone has one so they're already the bare minimum.

I have to confess I wouldn't recommend working in the UK anime industry either as it's pretty tiny - many of these companies simply don't have the money to hire any more staff than they already have so I can't help but feel it'd be a frustrating process trying to pursue it.

Pretty much this in a nutshell. Usually too - unfortunately - if you have to ask where to start then you've fallen at the first hurdle I am afraid...

All in all if you're going to study something, keep it wide-band not narrow focussed. You want to be able to find work in it and going to hunt for work in the anime industry is like trying to find a job in a really difficult to reach corner of a much bigger room. Most of us stumble into it by complete chance to be honest.

As a side note, my degrees by the by have nothing to do with business or anime - my first was an MA in Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence, my second was a MSc by Research.

AP
 
I don't think its been mentioned yet, but I'd imagine that a good grasp of the Japanese language would certainly appeal.
 
The answer is probably "listen to Andrew" but I'd also have a serious think about what you actually want to do as a job role. Much as it might be nice to work with a product you enjoy, are the kinds of jobs available in home media distribution the kind you can you see yourself doing for eight hours a day and enjoying?

Whatever that thing is - The thing that would make you want to get out of bed in the morning and do it rather than hang yourself when you wake up with the realization you have to do it again - Study that (if it's a thing you need to study for). Then be prepared to relocate wherever the jobs are.
 
While I can't speak specifically about the anime industry, I think Andrew's advice of studying something with wider applications as opposed to a narrow focus is definitely the way to go. While there's nothing wrong at all with going for a dream, it's always best to have a back-up plan in case things don't pan out as you hope.
Expanding on what HdE said, perhaps a good start would be focusing on a specific discipline that may be useful if you were to land the dream job, but still leave doors open to employment elsewhere if required? In anime for example, I imagine some of these could include PR and product design - which are two completely different professions with their own skill sets.

anime_andrew said:
As a side note, my degrees by the by have nothing to do with business or anime - my first was an MA in Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence, my second was a MSc by Research.

AP
Okay, colour me interested. So if your life had turned out a little differently, you could have ended up creating something like Ultron? :p
 
Joshawott said:
While I can't speak specifically about the anime industry, I think Andrew's advice of studying something with wider applications as opposed to a narrow focus is definitely the way to go. While there's nothing wrong at all with going for a dream, it's always best to have a back-up plan in case things don't pan out as you hope.

Expanding on what HdE said, perhaps a good start would be focusing on a specific discipline that may be useful if you were to land the dream job, but still leave doors open to employment elsewhere if required? In anime for example, I imagine some of these could include PR and product design - which are two completely different professions with their own skill sets.

Wider is definitely better - as the anime industry is a niche within a niche really it's sad to say but the opportunities are scarce on the ground especially for open applications (case in point - have you ever seen an open application for a role in the anime industry here?) So the wider your studies the better you will be suited to finding something tangental that suits until you find something :).

Joshawott said:
Okay, colour me interested. So if your life had turned out a little differently, you could have ended up creating something like Ultron? :p

Maybe - or I just wanted to augment my own stupidity with some artificial smarts :p!
 
If you wanted to work in the Anime Industry but had no close ties, i guess the best thing to do would be to look into what activities/roles are currently involved in the Anime Industry and looking for a job/internship for another industry that has similar roles in it. So roles involving packaging design, public relations, events management, international partnership, optical media production (is that a thing? lol) etc - I am sure the roles in the anime industry are less clear-cut than what their job titles makes out so experiences of a bit of all of these things and more would probably be best.

Then once your experience is up and you have something you feel you can offer, maybe send in a CV because, as Andrew points out, there's not many open positions so I'm guessing the recruitment of the staff in this industry is much less formal than with other employers - i guess more based on professional relationships/familiarity with key people within a particular company before your appointment is made, coupled of course with their need for someone with whatever skill set you may have. Maybe one of the Anime companies will let you intern for 6 months or something if they have a particularly busy period.

Or, something I'd quite like to do (in my dreams) with the experience you gain (from positions both outside and inside the anime industry), and some money you save up/borrow from the bank, set-up your own company to rival those mentioned in the title.
 
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