Silver is
10.49 g/cm^3. Silver is also
$0.92 per gram. According to google,
12 field paper is fairly common to use for anime. I found some
stainless steel foil on ebay, so we'll use that for the thickness. Realistically these would need to be a lot thicker, but I don't want to do the work of finding a more realistic figure so this will work as a lowball.
267mm*330mm*0.05mm=4405.5mm^3, or 4.4055cm^3. 10.49*4.4055=46.213695g, 46.213695*0.92=42.5165994, so about $42.52 a frame.
Animation is usually 24 frames per second.
This website says 24 minutes is an average runtime for one episode of anime.
This website says that anime seasons are usually 12 episodes long. 24 minutes=1440 seconds=34560 frames. Therefore, one episode would cost a whopping
$1,469,491.20, while a whole season would be
$17,633,894.40. I couldn't really find out how many seasons anime usually gets, and I've been lowballing this whole time, so let's take Dragon Ball and its 16 seasons
according to this website. To force Josh to watch all of Dragon Ball via engraving it to silver sheets would cost an eye watering
$282,142,310.40.
Of course, this is just the raw silver cost. This doesn't factor in the regular production costs, but the whole point of this is to be superior to normal via using silver. As such, we'll be superior to Japan and their system of abusive work environments and graduate to magical slavery. $0 production costs besides the cost of silver, because I said so. Nobody really has hundreds of millions of dollars in liquid assets except the tippy top plutocrats of the world, and governments.
