This Short Manga Shows How Tough Making Anime Can Be
It honestly reminds me a lot of the American studio system as well, which, as some of you know, I was a part of until the studio I worked for folded. We got paid by the frame, just like the animators in Japan. Basically, we got paid a base hourly rate, which was quite low compared to similarly educated people our age, then we got paid an extra amount per every finished frame. We also got bonuses for finishing a scene before the deadline, or a larger bonus for turning it in early AND perfect. (Getting this larger bonus was referred to as "catching the mythical white stag". It happened ... but so rarely that whichever artist managed to pull it off got a standing ovation from the rest of the studio. Yeah....)
Then there were the long hours - like the manga shows, it is very common to work long and extended hours. My normal work weeks BEFORE crunch time were routinely 60 hours a week with one day off. Officially, you could take Saturday's off if you wanted to, but God help you if did.
Team Lead: "Hey. Didn't see you on Saturday."
Me: "Yeah, I took the day off."
Team Lead: "Oh...okay."
Me: "Was I not supposed to do that?"
Team Lead: "No, no. It's fine. It's allowed."
The team lead's disappointment was palpable, however. I didn't do that again. Six day work weeks from then on out! The studio was basically divided between those artists who worked on Saturdays and those that didn't. Guess which artists they kept after things got difficult?
Then you get "crunch time", which could be official or unofficial. Basically, it was official when the studio had to submit finished scenes to the publisher by a deadline, and we were falling behind. Unofficial crunch time was when YOUR scene was due INTERNALLY and you were behind on it. This is what the manga was talking about when it says "too slow and you're fired". You basically wrote your own workday and timetable - you could take an hour lunch or a two hour lunch, no one much cared. You just had to have a certain output - for instance you may be given 2 or 3 weeks to finish a scene. If you missed a scene deadline once, you were warned. If you missed a scene deadline twice, you were written up. If you missed a scene deadline three times ... pack your bags kid, you're going home. Oh, and those 3 strikes and you're out deadlines didn't reset when you got a new scene. We had team leads get fired for missing deadlines.
You could appeal a missed deadline if you had very good reason - but it had to be something about the SCENE, not your personal life. In other words, you had to successfully argue the original deadline for the scene was too short considering the requirements for the scene. You could not argue that you had been sick, been in a car accident, or any other excuse. They didn't care. The timetables for how long a scene should take were decided by 3 people - the studio director, a team lead, and an experienced artist, all coming to a consensus.
Occasionally, you could submit a scene early and still miss the deadline. That's because we had "dailies" where the studio director and team leads (and sometimes other artists) would sit and watch your work projected in the studio's mini-theater to critique the scene, offer suggestions, and gauge progress. I once submitted a scene early I thought was perfect (chasing that white stag) and they found a few little nitpicky problems in dailies. No big deal, and normal. So I fixed the problems and resubmitted the next day. And they found NEW problems. All of them tiny and almost non-existent. I fixed those the following day and resubmitted. They found brand NEW problems, all of which were pre-existing from the other dailies. This repeated for an entire week past the original deadline, until, exasperated, I stood up in dailies after the team lead present pointed out a new nitpick (a section of a background extra's sleeve forty feet back in a dense crowd wobbled 2 pixels for 2 frames or 1/12th of a second) and cried out, "For the love of God, Josh! (Names changed to protect the innocent.) Does that really matter?" The studio director agreed with me and we "shipped it". I wasn't warned or written up for a missed deadline, as the scene had been "almost perfect, except for one tiny thing" for a week.
Crunch time consisted of 12 hour days, then 16 hour days, then 18 hour days. We had a high burnout rate, and like the manga shows, we occasionally would have someone just collapse from exhaustion. For a little while I actually slept at the studio so I wouldn't lose the half hour commute time coming and going. We'd have artists walk outside, rapidly pace in a circle, yell at the top of their lungs, then come back in and keep working.
The pay scale is actually depressingly similar to the one in the Japanese manga, too. And did I mention missed paychecks, like your job NOT PAYING you because their check hasn't come in from the publisher yet? So not only do you make peanuts, sometimes you don't even get those. I think the truth of working at a studio as an artist or animator can be summed up by this sentence:
"I was working 60 hour weeks, sometimes 18 hour days, and I couldn't afford to keep my apartment."
That's what I get for trying to live by myself rather than live with my parents (impossible, as they lived hundreds of miles away) or shack up with other artists at the studio. 
But yes, it's all worth it to see the finished product on the big screen. As rough as the work was, it was still very fulfilling and rewarding, and I'd rather work in a studio again than work with the public like my current day job. I wish I could shout at the people, "I'd rather be working 18 hour days for slave wages than have to deal with you!"
Just thought I'd post this for any young and aspiring artists and animators to show its not all gumdrops and lollipops, and you'd best get used to poverty, crippling debt, and ramen noodles in exchange for those little moments of euphoria when you see it all come together and you see someone enjoying your work.
