Part of the consequence to it is that more and more productions required greater amount of micromanagement, where lead animation directors in the production have to clean up after ill-trained key animators. The result of that is poorer managed productions that sometime slip past deadlines and/or look like a rushed job. At the same time, the number of trained and talented animators are shrinking because they see the poor work conditions they have to deal with and thus become discouraged, even when the low pay alone isn't stopping them.

What's amusing, however, is what Yamazaki pointed out in terms of the pay variance between an entry level inbetweener and a colorist.  According to him, before the switch from traditional animation production to computer ink and coloring, an entry-level inbetweener and an entry-level inbetween painter can each complete about 1000 frames a month. At roughly 200-250 yen per frame for inbetweeners and 180-200 yen per frame for painters, that works out to about a range of 180,000 to 250,000 yen a month. After the turn of the century, almost all anime produced since are colored on a computer, meaning that the inbetween sketches are scanned after they are drawn, and the painter works on the computer to add color. While this process now drastically simplify the workload of painters (those messy cel paint were not fun!), it makes inbetweeners work harder as their lines have to be more accurate, because computerized fill tools rely on fully drawn and connected lines to do their jobs. In the old days a human being did all the painting with brushes, so the inbetweener didn't have to be as precise.

Despite the advances in technology, the pay of inbetweeners versus painters did not change. While a painter can now produce about 2000 frames a month, an inbetweener now typically produce 500 frames, where as the pay rates largely stayed the same. This means an inexperienced inbetween painter can make 360,000 yen a month (or roughly $4,000 USD) where as the inbetweener makes upward of 125,000 yen (about $1400 USD) a month. In comparison, an animation director makes about 200,000  yen (about $2,200 USD a month).

It wouldn't be surprising if smart and talented, aspiring animators leave the industry after seeing that, given inbetweening is one of the traditional entry jobs in the industry, and especially when their friends in the game industry makes more money, doing similar things! The past 10 years have been a perpetration of this cycle.

It's not all lost. Yamazaki proposes that if the overall cost of a colored, inbetween frame is about 450 yen, the difference can be split more fairly for painters and inbetweeners, and it is a change that has to happen across the entire industry. It provides some logic in an otherwise strange industry situation.

For further reading and a very different take, see also animation director Cindy Yamauchi's take on the situation, which is already helpfully written in English.