Passion's gonna kill ya, kid: about the Mob Psycho dub thing and "dream jobs"

Full disclosure: I have worked for the former owners of Crunchyroll (Ellation) on their defunct blog for the defunct streaming service VRV. I count several current and former Crunchyroll employees among my personal friends.

Today in anime news, the dub of Mob Psycho 100’s final season has been making headlines. The lead dub voice actor Kyle McCarley, who belongs to a union, let his fans know that Crunchyroll would not sit down to discuss even the possibility of him reprising his starring role in the major hit series.

CR confirmed that they were replacing the actor in a non-statement, and all hell broke loose from there.

The reason for the furor is that anime fans have, collectively, recently found out just how bad anime dub voice acting rates are. Major actors on the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 movie— which made $30 million in US theaters alone, mind— were paid $150 total for their work.

Crunchyroll’s PR sells the service as “supporting the creators”, but rates like these indicate they don’t practice what they preach.

Christ, $150 to dub a movie. I’ve made more off blog posts, I thought. And that brought me here.

I don’t know a lot about anime dub work; I only know one person who does it. But I’ve worked in the US anime industry, and I’ve worked in video games. Naturally I know a lot of people in these and related spaces. I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years, stories that are not mine to share.

And I can tell you that the story at the heart of it is always, always the same.

Let me talk to you guys about passion.

Passion required

In “dream job” spaces like anime and games, passion is a necessary prerequisite. You would not be here if you didn’t love the stuff. You carry forward the flame that your fictional heroes planted in you. You care a lot. You take pride in your own work and you have love for the material, so you go the extra mile every time even if nobody will ever notice or care but you. You do that because you love what you’re doing. Unfortunately, that’s exploitable.

Management understands this, and uses passion as a weapon to extract maximum value from their workers. From their point of view, hell, this dumbass would do it for free.

Passion as a bludgeon

Whenever I asked why the miniscule check ($75 an article) was late at one freelance gig, my editor would call me “mercenary”, say I was all about the money. “What fucking money?!” I wanted to shoot back. But I loved what I was doing, so I didn’t.

Late in that gig, the same editor would tell me that lately my work— which he barely read and didn’t edit— didn’t have the same passion as it used to. Maybe you don’t like this job anymore, he proposed.

Once I got a frantic e-mail from a co-worker asking how they could improve the popularity of their column: the editor had sent an e-mail warning that their column was at the bottom of the hit rankings, losing even to me. I immediately sent over the email I had gotten from the same editor on the same day, saying that I was on the top of the hit rankings, losing only to them.

These weren’t sincere observations about passion or lack thereof: they were techniques that the editor used to keep the freelancers on their toes and pitted against each other. This editor had dealt with people like me for years, and he knew that the way to really cut to the heart was to imply I didn’t care.

When the site let go of me, the readers in the comments were perplexed as to why they’d let go someone whose passion for his subject was the specific reason they read. Readers’ words, not mine. I have my pride.

The upside

Of course you can be proud. You’re doing something really cool. You probably dreamed of this kind of thing when you were a kid, and here you are. People are impressed with you, especially other nerds.

You might even become a kind of micro-celebrity in your niche, like anime dub voice actors do. This even goes for nobodies like me: I’ve had top fighting game players treat me reverently because of Kawaiikochans, of all things! No, you, you’re the amazing one!

Every so often I have a moment that reminds me why I do this stuff. Like recently, I joined a mahjong club in New York.1 The president asks me if I remember her; I don’t. It turns out that ten years ago, I did a panel on mahjong at Otakon2 and I played mahjong against her: she was in full Touhou cosplay, so of course I never would have recognized her. She never forgot, and she was thrilled to see me ten years later playing at the club that she started. I really can’t put into words how fulfilling that is.

It’s not about getting review copies of games, or whatever. That’s cool and all, but it’s just the equipment you need to do your job. The real payoff is that you transformed your passion into something that helped someone, something that somebody loved. That’s intangible and it’s precious.

It’s just that no amount of pride or warm feelings pays rent or puts food in our mouths.

It all ties together

So what do you do, right?

Anime dub voice actors can and must leverage their micro-celebrity status into convention appearances and autograph sales that actually keep them fed. It sounds like fun to be at a convention every weekend, but work is work when it comes down to it, no matter how cool it is. Constant travel takes its toll, and I’ve seen people in the anime industry worn down badly by 5-day all-day office weeks bookended by full on-the-job weekends at the anime con.

As for myself, well, it’s all part of why I’m running this newsletter. As a freelancer who’d finally started to command a reasonable rate, I found that once I lost my reliable contact— the one who didn’t say “this is more of a $60 piece”— I didn’t have a lot of wiggle room left. So I’m here, on my own, asking readers to sponsor me directly. After a year of this newsletter, people have been quite generous, and it’s been very personally fulfilling.

But unless I’m endorsed by Hideo Kojima or something tomorrow3, it’s never gonna be my job.

So in the meantime, I’m looking for less cool work.