Animation studio MAPPA’s working conditions have come under a lot of fire in the last year. It’s gotten so bad that the director of one of its leading anime, Chainsaw Man, is following in the footsteps of Jujutsu Kaisen’s season one director by moving away to form his own company.
Chainsaw Man director Ryu Nakayama has announced he has opened up his own animation studio, Andraft Co. Nakayama made the announcement on X (formerly Twitter), writing,
“We are pleased to announce the establishment of Andraft Co., Ltd. Our goal is to build an even better animation production framework and deliver high-quality works to audiences worldwide without genre restrictions. We hope to take on challenges and open up new possibilities. We humbly ask for your support!”
This comes after a year of bad press for MAPPA, who have seen animators quitting en masse while calling out the studio for untenable working conditions on social media. It got so bad that MAPPA aimed to silence workers by pushing them to sign an NDA, which resulted in many of the tweets being taken down. Most of the complaints had to do with how ridiculously packed the schedule was, with animators forced to work grueling long hours in order to get work finished in time. This has been going on for some time, with workers likening the working conditions at MAPPA to those of a sweatshop.
Though not expressly stated, it would appear that Nakayama has also had enough and believes he can run things better himself, with his own studio. Over on its new website, Andraft Co. has already posted its first video, a short trailer for a collaboration between the virtual e-sport platform VSPO and the trading card game Cardfight!! Vanguard.
The “about” section of the site states that the studio will not be “bound by existing concepts” and that they hope to “maintain that impetus for as long as possible.” It hopes to create a place where creatives have “even freer expression” and can “truly face your creativity.”
Nakayama has at least not completely dissed MAPPA in his more recent post, but fans quickly referred to a post he wrote back in November of last year, which read,
“Our mission this year is to build a better working environment that is free from power harassment and moral harassment, free from unnecessary stress, and stable in terms of money and time, and although it is still a small scale, we are slowly taking shape. It’s only the first year, so we’ll be steadily building our foundation, and we should be able to release it soon.”
His seeming departure comes on the heels of Jujutsu Kaisen’s season one director, Sunghoo Park, who left to form his own studio, E&H Production. If MAPPA isn’t careful, it’s going to keep losing talented staff, though, sadly, they can probably count on desperate animators wanting to work on a hit anime series no matter what and continue to overwork and underpay them.
It hasn’t been confirmed whether Nakayama will stay on with Chainsaw Man or whether MAPPA will, once again, have to find a new director for one of its biggest hits. You can check out his work on season one of the show, available on Crunchyroll.
(Featured Image: MAPPA)
