So, you’re not Japanese but want to work in animation in Japan? Columnist Andrew Osmond talks about how it can happen with Joseph Chou, the CEO of Sola Entertainment, Sola Digital Arts, and Sola Animation.
Is it possible for people from outside Japan to work in the anime industry Japan? Well, yes.On the directing level, the film (2006) was helmed by the American Michael Arias, who’s now making the stop-motion feature.
This year’s second season of was co-directed by the Spanish Abel Gongora; its production studio, Science SARU, is run by the South Korean Eunyoung Choi.Another case is the Polish Mateusz Urbanowicz, who created more than 120 backgrounds for the blockbuster .I interviewed him in 2018.
This week, though, I sought the perspective of Joseph Chou, an anime CEO who’s been involved in the industry for more than 20 years.He’s employed many non-Japanese people in his productions and believes strongly in the value of doing so.Born in South Korea, Chou’s first involvement in anime was from an American angle.
Working at Warner Bros., he was involved in the planning and development of 2003’s , a seminal anime anthology which I mentioned last week.Since then, Chou’s producer credits have included the films (2007) and (2013), as well as the anthology (2010).He produced the glossy 2017 short and last year’s action series , both directed by Shinichiro Watanabe.
The former has an official copy on YouTube.In 2009, Chou founded the CG studio Sola Digital Arts, which has handled CG series versions of big-name franchises: , and .In 2017, Chou also established Sola Entertainment, which is now the parent company of Sola Digital Arts and the 2D studio Sola Animation.
Chou is CEO of all three, though he explains they operate out of the same office.Last winter, Sola Entertainment released the film , another producer credit for Chou.Sola Entertainment and Chou are currently involved in the anime series version of the monster manga , to be broadcast from April 2026.
Although , and are 2D productions, many of Chou’s other credits are on the CG side, and the differences between 2D and CG come up in the following talk.Apart from a few interjections from my side, what follows is mostly Chou in his own words.Enjoy! Andrew Osmond: Joseph Chou: It might generally be true when it comes to 2D animation and that’s something I’m trying to address through my company.
In 2D, some productions reach out to animators who are really doing great anime-style work, to get a scene or a few cuts [shots] out of them, but it would all be done remotely.In many cases, it’s hard to come into a 2D animation area and then to integrate unless they speak Japanese.But CG animation has a better track record on that.
What 2D anime looks for is very specific, a specific style.With CG, you still need to make models, and you still need to do backgrounds, you still need to composite, and all that.The production flow is a little different here, but we try to make it more logical and universal.
A lot of CG studios also do service work outside of Japan… CG tends to be more open towards international artists who want to come in.There are a couple of ways that they can do it.One is they come into Japan, they settle down in Japan, some have children with a Japanese partner.
There’s an expat community here… We also reach out to international studios; there are also people who approach us from overseas directly.When big teams are formed, it’s for CG animation.[] As you gather more of a team together, it tends to be that no matter where they come from, the common language would be English.
It helps that I’m an American, but I can’t be on the ground all the time.The staff who have settled (in Japan) help out the ones who come in for the first time.Japan is no longer a hard place to figure out.
I read in the why places like Kyoto are very crowded.It’s because of the mobile phones and maps and translation tools; people learn how to get on buses and trains.They can communicate through their phones; they wouldn’t get lost.
There's so much information available in English or any other language that it’s not very hard for them to get around the country.It’s not the struggle that it used to be; Japan is not inaccessible anymore.There’s a lot more accommodation for people who want to work here.
It’s not just restricted to our industry in the last few years.The visa is not as hard as it used to be, as long as you can demonstrate a skill and are supported by the companies that are hiring.My Indian head of production has a Korean wife and likes living in Japan, even though his relatives are back in Dubai.
He’s doing really well; his Japanese is not perfect, and he doesn’t like speaking it so much, but he understands like half of it.For convenience’s sake and for details, we do have translation help.But once you are here more than a few years, you pick up a lot of the production language.
Recently, we started picking up on a CG production.I recently saw someone from Russia, someone from Morocco.It’s not hard.
There are a lot of people who want to come here just because they’re fascinated with Japan, its culture.We’re willing to accommodate that as long as they’re talented, and our needs match.That’s a perfect scenario.
I think there’s more and more need for that, for the 2D animation industry as well.It’s just that 2D animation is older, it’s not as used to it.I’m starting to have a lot of Chinese staff getting trained here for a year or so, and we’re talking about have more down the road.
And already one of my directors has followers from overseas and has kind of run through an audition.I said, “Why not do a training program with them?” I’m encouraging some of them to try and come here, because you can only learn so much remotely, you need to be in the thick of it.AO: JC: I had just come back from China to Japan when that thing broke (laughs).
It can get difficult, but I don’t think (the current situation) is driving to cut diplomatic ties or anything.It's a lot of political rancor and strategic posturing on either side… It is what it is, and we just have to deal with it.One of our 2D production department heads is Chinese.
I also have about five people working here from our partner company in China, working on keyframes.We have a plan to get maybe 30 more Chinese artists down the road.I was in China meeting with a lot of universities and a lot of folks.
Artists are artists, we like to make stuff, and we enjoy what each other makes.There are a lot of talented people, and Japan needs a lot of artists.So, if they love anime, it would be great to have them.
[Chou also brought up China in relationship to the “2D hybrid” film,: It used a lot of overseas companies, but it ended up mostly becoming China.A lot of stuff that came from other countries was very hard to use because they didn’t understand the spec.Like I said, 2D is a little different, trickier.] It won’t just be China.
I would like to reach out to France, America, Spain...One of my directors just came back from an event in Spain where he was mobbed by artists asking about how they break into the anime industry.A lot of it tends to be still CG but I would love more 2D animators also to be interested in here, to come here and learn the grammar of it, because Japanese animation is different, the way it’s done, the cadence of it, the style of it.
And they can also bring their own sensibility, they can contribute, globalizing anime even more.It’s gone all over the world, why not.Conversely, I would love Japanese staff, as has been happening in our company, to meet with international folks and learn different cultures and get new influences.
That’s how you go forward.I think Japan needs it.We really need international artists to come and help, because we're running out of talent for the amount of demand that's out there… We hired a couple of interns from Gobelins [the Paris art school] and one of them stayed a few years.
That was a positive experience for us.I would love to reach out more and talk directly with schools, and I’m hoping maybe I can help the schools in Japan to get connected with schools overseas.My business is not running a school.
My business is production, and I interact directly with talent on real titles.That's the merit that I could provide and once I can help them train at that level… Chinese universities are already tying up with a partner company of ours, and by the time the students are in the second or third year, they’re trained even before they graduate.So, once they graduate, it only takes three to six months for them to get up to speed.
That’s already filtering that’s happening, between people who want to stay in the industry and those who don’t, and people who’ve really got it versus those who don’t.I think that’s a good system to have.And then, what if we can do that with many different countries, and use Japan as a center for them to come in? From that point, the talents decide what they want to do; they can move on to different companies in Japan, or back to their own countries.
I think it works better when we become enablers and if what we do is fascinating enough that they want to stay, which I think it is, then they’ll stay.It just means that we need to also work harder to provide a place where they would want to stay.I think that would be a positive reinforcement on everybody.
I have a CG head of department at Sola Digital who’s Indian, and a manager from Morocco, and an artist from Indonesia.Production is picking up, geared more towards overseas.I need to gather together a team of another 20 people or so, which I think we have finished hiring, and then we’ll bring them here - a lot of visa work to be done.
That team will be from all over the world, working in CG, where you can form an entire team with international people.A couple of them don’t really speak Japanese, though they’re learning basic Japanese.We figured out a way to help communication.
But it’s art, so it’s not that hard.If you want to become something else, not the art part, we need people on all sides.I really need people even on the script side now.
I need people who will become directors in the future.But these people all need to start from somewhere.Right now, the main focus is on artists; some of them rise up to be head of production sometimes, and if they’re so good, I don't care whether (they) speak Japanese or not… I need more international people to come in, and I would love it if a lot of them wanted to stay in Japan.
And I would need to figure out a way to accommodate them; not necessarily in Tokyo, which is so crowded and so expensive.It could be somewhere beautiful outside the city… Tokyo is always accessible.And also, they’d have to be at a certain level initially for them to be able to become productive within a few months’ time.
I’ll need people who will help them through all that.That’s where my eyes are on; I would really love more internationals to come in here, because I’m a foreigner myself in this country.Andrew Osmond is a British author and journalist, specialising in animation and fantasy media.
His email is [email protected].
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