**This post was influenced by what is happening at Mappa right now, but One Piece Chapter 1098 came out the Sunday before the JJK episode aired; it was the first unfinished One Piece Chapter to ever come out. That is something that needs to heavily be mentioned here because it's still an important point.**
I'm writing this at a point where the entirety of the point of this blog post is already known by so many news sites and social media posts by the anime industry, but I think this is something that is very important to think about. I've written a post about Zom 100 and its production issues, but there is always another case of this happening. In this case, it's Mappa pushing its workers harder than ever, making its production staff sign papers saying they won't complain on social media, and then the recent walk out after episode 17 that was unfinished and pushed to air barely on time.
Mappa has been pushing its production staff into higher gear than they should have been for years now and we are finally seeing the result of that happening. Look up how much Mappa has produced in the last few years and then compare their production standards with increasingly short deadlines and this should have happened sooner. Attack on Titan's final season has been a success I am sure, but it's kind of a fiasco in its own way too. Not to mention that Mappa also helped work on some of the heavier episodes of Pluto and the JJK Movie with its high level of production was completed in 4 months of production.
Now, production issues and shortages are not a new thing to anime. I recently listened to a podcast about Tezuka and Mushi Production's 1001 Nights. A film from the late 60's anime film that was a complete fiasco where animators and other production members were thrown into a complete war zone and so many people died producing it. A film that went so over budget and over time that it was lucky it didn't make its budget back at all. Anime has this continuous history of this happening over and over again as famous creators and celebrities to us nerds die younger than they should be because they are overworked. It's a long, sad story as old as time.
I mean seriously, watch Stevem's videos on the production nightmares of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Very popular anime films by Studio Ghibli which no one ever thinks about the mess and over working environment by Ghibli because these films barely made it on time. All of them came out and made a lot of money, which is why Ghibli continued to exist after them. In these production massacres, Yoshifumi Kondo (Whisper of the Heart) who was first slated as a successor for Miyazaki died after helping with Princess Mononoke. These production pieces of chaos really damage them in the highest level there too. It's really sad.
The question I always ask myself here is always is it ok for us to watch the result of this madness? For us to indulge in the madness of people working themselves to death for our pleasure? I don't have to put it that way, but that's what it feels like. People are putting their passions on display which pushes them harder and harder away from keeping their personal health and yet here they are to watch them do it and their work. I felt guilty about watching the 17th episode of the second season of JJK after hearing members of the production crew dropping out after it came out. Same with so many things I have enjoyed from Mappa in recent years.
These passion projects are meant to be watched by someone, right? At the same time, one could say that watching these chaos piles means supporting them to happen. If we stopped watching these messes, they wouldn't be produced right? Well, that means these creators are suddenly not able to create their passion projects. That means hurting people more for their own good but also not allowing people to create what they want to do. IT's a very complicated sort of matter and it's always up to our own interpretation as to whether we should actually enjoy the media we watch because finding a way to be morally correct all the time is impossible. But we should still push for healthier production schedules for everything that is being produced. Maybe even make less anime. That would be nice.
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