Animator Vincent Chansard, famous for his anime work One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen Part 2 recently, it was revealed that he will not be working with MAPPA studio again due to poor working conditions.
However, veteran animation director Mamoru Yokota, who worked for Death Note, Dragon Quest and even One Piece among other series, expressed doubts about the claims of”overseas animators” about working conditions and pointed out several things about the situation.
Image source: Fullfrontal
In his first post made on January 10, 2024, Yokota said that the animation studio could only be blamed if the animators were paid less than what was originally agreed upon or if the project is delayed or canceled. If a breach of contract does not occur, the responsibility for poor planning will fall on other employees, including directors and even production staff/committees.
“I saw a post from an animator abroad announcing that they would never work for a certain company again. They say the working conditions are bad, but I have some questions.
What were the terms of the contract when they were hired? Is there any hidden information? If the work is within the scope of the contract, then the problem is not with the production company but with the director, animation director or production staff.
If they are paid less than agreed upon or if the project is delayed or canceled, that’s a different story. But if it’s something else, I don’t know what they’re complaining about,” Yokota wrote in his post on X.
Yokota believes that animators who complain about the anime’s working conditions/schedule should have negotiated it in their contracts instead of causing a fuss later.
Accepting or rejecting the work depends entirely on the animator. And if the animator’s refusal leads to the project falling apart, the production studio will have to bear the consequences.
“SNS is your private yard so you can say whatever you want.
No, that’s not true. How rude.
But if you spit in the air, it will come back to you.
Negotiate first before making a fuss later.
I understand that there are people who can’t do it, but then you need to hire a friend or agent who can.
Then, have the courage to refuse.
Whether you do it or not is up to you.
The production company will be the one to suffer if it collapses.”
Yokota likened this situation of animators accepting projects without considering the difficulty of the anime’s storyboard, to someone jumping into a boiling cauldron thinking it was empty. He urged people to consider both sides of the story, not just one side.
“I think it’s just a story about jumping into a pot of boiling water, fully aware that the kettle of hell is empty where the calorie calculation of not being able to complete the storyboard is,” the article said.
Note: In Yokota’s tweet, カロリー (karorī – translated as calorie) refers to the difficulty and amount of work involved in an animation project. Think of the storyboard (コンテ, conte) as a blueprint for the animation, and calculating its “calories” represents an estimate of the amount of effort and resources needed to complete it. So jumping into the “boiling cauldron” without counting the “calories” means taking on an overly demanding project without fully understanding the scope of work involved.
To further illustrate, Yokota said in one of his posts (on January 14, 2024) that some extremist anime fans attacked the production studio’s staff who were working on the production. another project.
“After seeing a one-sided post from someone claiming they would never work with a certain company, an extreme anime fan who did not know the company’s details attacked someone anime-related tweeted about another of the company’s works. They also said that there have been many cases where the company gave animators difficult jobs while ignoring their calorie intake, then asked for pay increases after the work was completed,” Yokota wrote.
MAPPA has come under fire recently from fans as poor scheduling issues came to light during production Jujutsu Kaisen Part 2. Vincent Chansard is one of the animators who spoke out about poor working conditions.
Shortly after the project was completed, Chansard announced (in November 2023) that he would no longer work for MAPPA.
Chansard was not the only one to express concerns, as veteran animators Itsuki Tsuchigami and others had similar complaints about the production schedule.
Source: Twitter