‘Gundam’ Staff Reveals Their Insane Work Hours

Sunrise recently announced that they have five major Mobile Suit Gundam projects currently in the pipeline, and will release them on a steady schedule. But what does that mean for those working on those projects?

Director and storyboard artist for Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, Mitsuo Fukuda, recently took to Twitter and revealed that one of the production assistants has been working extremely long and arduous hours. He’s not happy about it one bit.

According to a report from Anime News Network, Fukuda took to Twitter to vent about the fact that one of the production assistants at Sunrise has “worked 59 hours in four days” and by the sounds of it, this isn’t out of the norm. This schedule has apparently been continuing for a month.

The wild schedule has the assistant starting on Monday “around 10:30 a.m,” and not being finished with work until Tuesday morning. Detailing the schedule, Fukuda stated that “[she] slept until about noon before returning to work again until 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday. She was then able to sleep approximately four hours before she had to return to work again at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday and did not return home again until 11:00 a.m. on Thursday.”

The assistant then apparently had to leave a note for herself to wake up after an hour of sleep. According to Anime News Network, Fukuda stated that he used to work this kind of schedule as well, but he thinks it should change before the production assitant’s health is negatively effected, even if it’s “dangerous” to bring such a thing up

The conditions of those who work in the anime industry have been more in the public eye in recent years as more in that industry begin to speak out about it, but this is a major public outcry. In 2015, the Japan Animation Creators Association reported that animators averaged around 11 hours of work in a single day. Days off were even more scarce, with only four days on average a month of free time. With Sunrise producing not only Mobile Suit Gundam, but many huge anime projects, the workload will only get more intense.

Fukuda’s statement sheds a light on just how much anime production asks of those who are involved, and it’s a much less glamorous existence than one might expect. This is only a detailed account of a single assistant, so it might not be reflective of the entire company. But it certainly paints a bad image. Hopefully Fukuda’s statement will help resolve this before it becomes a health issue as Fukuda fears.

via Anime News Network