There has been a shocking discovery in the creation of one of the most popular animated series of this year, Jujutsu Kaisen. Many sorcerers reveal the dark work practices of the animation studio running the whole show, MAPPA. This kind of case isn’t the first of its kind, and it definitely won’t be the last.
Jujutsu Kaisen is a Japanese manga series created by Gege Akutami and published by Weekly Shonen Jump on March 5, 2018. It is an incredibly popular dark fantasy action manga that was adopted as an anime on October 2, 2020. Considering the time it takes for an anime studio to create a script, storyboard, and plan animation, it’s incredibly fast and successful. Jujutsu Kaisen follows a complex story line in a world where curses are born from the intense fears of humanity. These curses terrorize the human world, and it’s the jujutsu sorceress’ job to exorcise these curses to keep people safe. The story line itself is very dark and a bit introspective but the creator airs it all out with silly interactions between the main characters.
Its success isn’t only shown through its popularity among anime lovers but also its revenue. Apart from the anime, a backstory/spin off movie film was created in December 2021. In just a year, the movie has sold 20.51 million tickets and earned over 200 million worldwide, making Jujutsu Kaisen 0 the top 5 highest-earning films of all time. So considering how successful the spin off movie and first season were, it is to be expected that season two of the anime was well anticipated. But no fan would guess that the animators of this successful anime were facing hell in the MAPPA studios, causing an unexpected delay in the recent anime season.
The animation studio that houses Jujutsu Kaisen is MAPPA. Studio MAPPA is one of the biggest anime studios, with many controversial issues. Some of their greatest hits include Chainsaw Man, Attack on Titan, and Jujutsu Kaisen. But this very honorable studio is erasing its clean reputation with mass criticism for mistreating animators. Many animators have been expressing their frustration with the studio and many fans are trying to dig deep into what’s happening.
Going into the second season, many fans of the manga noticed that the scenes did not accurately match up or were not as impactful as the original manga panels (especially the low quality of episode 14). These fans called out the head animator of that episode, Hokuto, on Twitter. At first, the animator tried to deny directing the episode but eventually revealed the truth about the working practices of the studio. Hokuto tweeted, “Perhaps viewers are more discerning these days, and even amateurs no longer talk about it on a company-by-company basis. He memorizes not only the director’s name but also the name of the director and pinpoints it. The name change didn’t mean anything because of the shitty leak. Yes, I’m sorry that I couldn’t finish all 250 cuts in two weeks.”. Hokuto would also tweet his sorrows about working hard on a project no one would appreciate. There would be more instances of fans being unhappy with the ‘inaccurate’ animated depictions of the manga, resulting in angry tweets from the animators themselves. But the meltdown of episode 14 wouldn’t be the last time MAPPA’s toxic practices would show up. Slowly, more and more animators would come out of their shells to tell the horrible conditions they had to face at the studio.
As animators revealed their experiences with MAPPA, the most consistent complaint was the time given to work on huge projects. Many were upset that they had to quickly finish up work, only to not get paid adequately. Animators complained on Twitter that they had to work until sunrise to finish a tight schedule just to be overlooked by the higher-ups of the company. Many of them requested a delay for an episode after working nights but were harshly rejected by the production committee. This kind of behavior from MAPPA wasn’t just from the start of the second season of the anime, as noted by animator Hone. In the previously mentioned movie adaptation of Jujutsu Kaisen 0, animator Hone would tweet about the harsh experience while working as their animator. Hone exclaimed that higher-ups at the company only cared about the result and did nothing to improve the staff’s conditions. He also pointed out the fact that the average feature film that gets done in two to three years was finished in just four months. Tweeting “The worst thing is when all the staff work hard to complete a schedule that would normally be impossible to meet in time, and the people adobe them look at the results and think,‘I can’t say anything!’ and fail to make improvements. I guess the cycle started when I completed one movie in four months….”
It’s no surprise that many MAPPA employees had to quit their jobs, unable to take the work stress any longer. There has also been talk about a small work strike against the company, but with season two still in production, many doubt that the strike will happen soon. Even with all of these issues, most of the episodes had come out on their correct scheduled days. The episodes are still incredibly high-quality, despite what picky fans are saying, and the anime is still immensely successful. It’s shocking to hear a dark background from such a renowned studio like MAPPA. As fans, the best thing to do would be to send words of encouragement and affirmation to these fellow animators, praising them for their hard work.
