Without a doubt, the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen is for many the best anime of all of 2023. The adaptation of Gojo’s past and the Shibuya incident has left exceptionally good moments and next-level animation. However, this technical power has had consequences.
As we have learned through a Reddit compilation post, MAPPA workers would be willing to go on strike this week after spending months receiving abusive jobs with hardly any rest. Apparently, the staff in charge of the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen He requested to delay this week’s episode, but the production committee denied him.
It turns out that, according to the comments of the workers, the episodes that we have seen every week end just a few hours before their broadcast. It seems that the next episode, 17, will continue to have good animation, but from then on things will change a lot.
As for why the episodes can’t be delayed, it seems that it is not that easy to do this kind of thing: on the one hand, the production committee is made up of many parties, so they would all have to agree to postpone these chapters. On the other hand, due to the few broadcast slots, the marketing behind the series and the Blu-Ray releases, it is very difficult to make these delays.
Arai Kazuto, director and storyboard of episode 13, commented through his personal Twitter account about his fatigue in making the anime: “I’m really deflated. Nothing is fun anymore. I can’t stand it.” In turn, Ookubo Shunsuke, director of episode 12, published an image of one of the main protagonists of Shirobakoan anime about, precisely, making anime, trying to hang herself, while visibly tired.
There have been many workers who have complained about this working method, and knowing the disastrous status that MAPPA hasIn this sense, it would not be surprising to see public complaints against the studio again for exploitation and mistreatment of animators.
