@astagadragon:
Robby, how many anime do you watch? Because us anime watchers
How much anime do I watch?
[hide]I've been watching anime since Maya the Bee, David the Gnome, Mysterious Cities of Gold, and Grimm's Fairy Tales were airing on Nickelodeon. I grew up on Voltron and Robotech (which yes, I know it is actually Macross. I've watched it in that form too.) I've been watching it in japanese since the mid 90's, when there were only two tapes of Slayers out, bootleg fansub tapes were the only way to get it most things, and Goku hadn't even gotten to Namek yet in America, let alone gone Super Saiyan, but I'd already seen all the DBZ movies. I saw Sailor Moon Stars before the US had even finished Sailor Moon R. I've seen every single episode of Lupin the Third, all five series and nearly every movie. i've been watching anime since it was possible to see literally every single title a rental store had and the entire anime community had common ground because we'd all seen the same 10 titles and 15 movies, so the only options were basically Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D and Ping Pong Club. I watched Sci-Fi Channels "Saturday Morning anime" religiously, even when it was boring garbage like LILY Cat. I own copies of Outlanders and Green Legend Ran and Tank Police on DVD and VHS.
I was a regular at an anime club that had eclectic tastes so I ended up seeing even stuff like Brother Dear Brother, Kodoma No Omocho, and Yatterman. I saw Berserk before it was licensed and a third generation fansub calling him "Gatsu" was the only way to see it, then went out and bought all the current manga at next con I went to, and it went all the way to volume 19 at the time.
I have also worked at comic book companies my entire life including years at Antarctic Press, an american manga publisher where I wrote the manga parody series Ninja High School for a decade and got access to review copies of all sorts of random things. One of the guys that worked there had a penpal in Japan that sent VHS tape of stuff taped off of TV so I saw Monster Farm and ZOids and Digimon in uncut raw japanese before they were ever brought over, and to this day much prefer the Japanese opening to Zoids and Monster Farm, and I know to call the wolf Raiga rather than Tiger. I saw the Arlong fight in One Piece before American SHonen Jump even started publishing One Piece. I've seen BOTH dubs of Nadia, and I saw Howl's Moving Castle over a year before it had a domestic release.
And that's just the stuff I can think of from the late 90's/early 2000's, doesn't really cover much from the last 15 years.
Unless you are in your 40's and were keyed into the anime scene in the mid 90's I have very likely seen more anime than you have.
And for voice acting, I've studied that and animation industries since the 80's when I started noticing recurring VA's in a bunch of show, particularly a big fan of Frank Welker, Jeff Bennet, and Kath Soucie. It was one of my actual big hobbies. And that carried over to when I started watching anime in Japanese in the late 90's though admittedly nowhere near as extensively as how much I followed english VA's. But I did look into how all their stuff worked and how it differed from the US..
But yes, I watch and have watched a lot of anime. I don't watch as much of the newer stuff because not much of it really grabs me, and there's a backlog of older stuff I'm still getting to,, but I know how it works and I have seen quite lot.
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I have been around the block a few times when it comes to watching anime.
So knock it off with your condescending "us anime watchers" nonsense.
I was providing a SIMPLIFIED version of payment stuff for this particular discussion in order to make it short, pithy, and easy to understand. One single line to summarize after I'd already written paragraphs.
There is greater nuance than my one line retort provides, but for the specific discussion of One Piece and its cast of veteran actors, it's close enough.
The main cast for One Piece are going to be paid close enough to the same rate, (which for all of them is "decently") that there is no real point in differentiating them, and anyone new for the main cast was always going to be on the higher end to match them. Luffy probably gets paid the most as the face of the franchise, but the rest of them aren't going to be paid like F-listers to compensate.
One Piece is successful enough it can afford it, and the long term consistency of a main role can be a large factor in negotiating rates. A character you know you get to play consistently for the next decade, and occasionally for the rest of your life (video games, movies, etc.) is a pretty good bargaining chip.