Bandai Namco’s anime production company Bandai Namco Filmworks disclosed a new “human resource strategy” on November 17 via their newsletter. Over the course of the next two years (as part of its 2025-2027 midterm plan), the company will be implementing multiple measures to combat the “chronic talent shortage” in Japan’s anime industry and maintain a high quality of domestically produced anime. As reported by Gamebiz, one of those measures includes a strong focus on training skilled creators in-house schools and aiding them to make a safe shift towards a creative career.
In their newsletter, Bandai Namco Filmworks lists four major tactics for their “human resource strategy:”
- Providing frameworks for training work-ready talent through Sunrise Animation School and Sunrise Art School
- Supporting employees who wish to work in the creative industry through Screenplay School and Production School
- Establishing in-house CG and filming teams for developing talent and accumulating know-how in digital technologies
- Creating opportunities for employees to tackle on new challenges through the “Original IP proposal project”
As Bandai Namco explains, the anime industry is growing at an immensely fast pace, with about 300 new anime titles releasing every year. Due to high demand for skilled, work-ready staff that can take on crucial roles in anime production, the company has been actively recruiting aspiring creators and sending them to studio Sunrise’s Animation and Art Schools. The students are provided with scholarships and other forms of support for daily living, and get to pursue a career at Bandai Namco Filmworks after graduating.
On the other hand, Screenplay and Production schools are offered to employees who are interested in screenwriting and production of anime, or want to change their career path. As the company notes, “it’s a talent development program meant to boost not just our company, but the whole industry.” The newsletter explains that both studio Sunrise’s Schools and Bandai Namco’s screenplay and production Schools have been operating for a while now and have shown positive results so far.
Asides from their efforts to elevate the overall quality of their work and technological know-how by creating the CG and filming teams, the company also announced an “Original IP proposal project” as a way to create more opportunities for workers to be directly involved in IP production. The project is hosted by Sunrise and Warner Brothers studios, and will be accepting pitches and proposals from all employees, regardless of the amount of experience they have. Employees whose ideas get selected will be able to experience the whole process of IP production, and Bandai Namco Filmworks cites this as an “opportunity to discover and develop human resources through practical means.”
As the shortage of human resources is becoming more apparent with the expansion of the anime industry’s overall market size (in 2023 it surpassed $19.3 billion USD both domestically and globally), Bandai Namco Filmworks decided to enforce these new measures in order to be able to “maintain the high quality of works founded on the creativity, worldviews and know-how of Japanese anime.” As one of the most influential companies in the anime industry throughout the years, Bandai Namco Filmworks say that they “bear a huge part of that responsibility.”
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