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The Summer 2023 Anime Preview Guide

There's two possibility, either his job pay him enough that he can save money up (so he can retire one day) in which case he has saving and can afford to quit and not have a job for a few weeks/months. Or it doesn't, in which case he really should quit because there's no reason to work there instead of just getting a min wage jobs in a low cost of living area. He mentioned going to university, it didn't sound like he did graduate study so he was somehow living during that time without the uni paying him, he can just go back to doing what he was doing then and look for another job. If all the company in the industry are like that, then all the more reason to quit the industry, and if they're not all like that they he can find another one. And I get being exhausted, but quitting literally require nothing, he could flat out just stop showing for work one day, they'd eventually fire him and he could start collecting japan equivalent of worker comp. He really just exemplify "we've tried nothing and are all out of idea" and I just can't bring myself to care about someone like that, especially someone so incredibly selfish.

Honestly, I thought I was used to your bad anime takes, but "just quit your job and live in poverty" is a new level of libertarian nonsense. There's a variety of reasons that people stay at an awful job, whether it be social pressure, fear, or the fact that they already went to university to study for that job and are stuck in the sunk cost. Wage slavery is also a thing, and there are a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck even in the US, who can't afford an emergency if it happens to come up.

TOKYO — In Japan, a nation reputed for loyalty to companies and lifetime employment, people who job-hop are often viewed as quitters. And that's considered shameful.

Enter "taishoku daiko," or "job-leaving agents." Dozens of such services have sprung up in the last several years to help people who simply want out.

"Imagine a messy divorce," says Yoshihito Hasegawa, who heads Tokyo-based TRK, whose Guardian service last year advised 13,000 people on how to resign from their jobs with minimal hassles.

Miyo barely has enough left in her to hope, assuming that because she lacks Spirit-Sight she'll be rejected and die on the streets as her parents intended

Sekaro wrote:

Never watched a single episode of Tenperu but through reading the reviews, it seemed sorta familiar to the manga Hatsukoi Zombies with the MC sharing somewhat similar qualities & the dad situation too but delving deeper would be going into spoiler territory. However, the latter series is actually a unique & competent rom-con while the former sounds like a dumpster fire... And yet it gets an anime but not the masterpiece that is Hatsukoi Zombies. The world really is unfair...

As someone who read every chapter of Hatsukoi Zombie, I'm not seeing the similarities?

I really, really enjoyed the first episode of My Happy Marriage, but this part of the synopsis worries me

Quote:

Miyo barely has enough left in her to hope, assuming that because she lacks Spirit-Sight she'll be rejected and die on the streets as her parents intended

I don't remember this coming up once in the episode (unless I somehow missed it?). And I don't really see why it exists, the plot seems works just fine without it and it seems tacked on just to have an obligatory supernatural element. Maybe the later episodes will prove me wrong, I hope.

flamemasterelan wrote:

Honestly, I thought I was used to your bad anime takes, but "just quit your job and live in poverty" is a new level of libertarian nonsense. There's a variety of reasons that people stay at an awful job, whether it be social pressure, fear, or the fact that they already went to university to study for that job and are stuck in the sunk cost. Wage slavery is also a thing, and there are a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck even in the US, who can't afford an emergency if it happens to come up.

This seems to be the specific issue with the mc. He said it in the episode: this is the job he studied for at the company he thought had a good track record. The idea that it's easy to just give up on what you spent 4+ years studying for and settle for a min wage job in a "low cost of living area" is naive. Frankly, the show isn't even saying he made the right decisions in life, it seems to be implying the opposite. Hindsight is 20:20.

Hal14 wrote:

flamemasterelan wrote: Honestly, I thought I was used to your bad anime takes, but "just quit your job and live in poverty" is a new level of libertarian nonsense. There's a variety of reasons that people stay at an awful job, whether it be social pressure, fear, or the fact that they already went to university to study for that job and are stuck in the sunk cost. Wage slavery is also a thing, and there are a lot of people living paycheck to paycheck even in the US, who can't afford an emergency if it happens to come up. This seems to be the specific issue with the mc. He said it in the episode: this is the job he studied for at the company he thought had a good track record. The idea that it's easy to just give up on what you spent 4+ years studying for and settle for a min wage job in a "low cost of living area" is naive. Frankly, the show isn't even saying he made the right decisions in life, it seems to be implying the opposite. Hindsight is 20:20.

He worked at 1 company, he hasn't tried any others. He hasn't tried to get payed for his overtime. He hasn't tried not working overtime. He tried nothing at all. The problem isn't that he made a bad choice, the problem is that he hasn't tried making good choice or any choice at all. He's like the the Austin Power steamroller guy, except he had 3 year to get out of the way. Sure poverty would suck, but why does he need money anyway, he has literally 0 free time, what good does money do to him?

And as far as money, the zombie apocalypse just instantly made him poor, he'll never get a yen from the company ever again, so clearly money isn't an issue. And yet he's really happy, his entire attitude is: "why would I care about anybody but me". Imagine on 9/11 they interviewed some guy that was going in to work that day and the guy reacted like the MC, while body were falling behind him. And then realize that this is a more generous take because it doesn't mean that all his friend/family are also dead (which he spare no thought for, although tbf I wouldn't be surprised if he had no friends and his family abandoned him), along with the majority of the human race. In a story, when the apocalypse happens and a character is gleeful about it, we call those character the "bad guy" or "the evil one" and there's a good reason, his complete utter lack of empathy is shocking.

He worked at 1 company, he hasn't tried any others. He hasn't tried to get payed for his overtime. He hasn't tried not working overtime. He tried nothing at all. The problem isn't that he made a bad choice, the problem is that he hasn't tried making good choice or any choice at all. He's like the the Austin Power steamroller guy, except he had 3 year to get out of the way. Sure poverty would suck, but why does he need money anyway, he has literally 0 free time, what good does money do to him?

Japanese office life can be extremely difficult. There's a deep-seated culture of constantly having to prove your loyalty by staying later than everyone else, of being ashamed to be the first one to leave, and of taking as little time off of work as possible.[..]Sexism aside, other aspects of Japanese office life have actually gotten worse. The shrinking labor market means that companies are hiring fewer people and expecting them to work harder. Every year there's a spate of suicides by office workers that just can't take the overtime anymore. While overtime is seldom officially made mandatory, it's often made clear that it's not optional -- you simply have to get the work done and there aren't enough hours in the day. Many employees intentionally don't even log their overtime hours so as not to get their department in trouble.

The problem has gotten so bad, journalists and rights activists have started publicly shaming companies that push their employees to the breaking point. Last year the list of so-called "black companies" included public broadcaster NHK, Panasonic, as well as several construction companies, a courier company, a supermarket chain and a pharmaceutical company. In 2016, the award went to Dentsu, the famous advertising giant that once owned Geneon. Many anime studios are starting to get the reputation of being "black companies" too.

Bullying of junior employees by superiors can be severe as well. Restaurant chain Watami won the Black Company Award two years in a row after a well-publicized employee suicide. One manager reported regularly working from 7am to midnight with almost no breaks -- literally working 119 hour weeks. It was reported that the CEO would leave messages on employee paycheck envelopes like, "you should reflect on your sales this month by killing yourself." (The CEO refused to meet with or apologize to the suicide victim's family until they took him to court.)

In virtually every company, being invited out with the team or the boss for after-work drinks is an important bonding ritual. Since so much of office life is about being polite and not saying what you really think, getting drunk together is an essential tool for venting frustrations and letting it all hang out, as they say. Attendance is not literally mandatory, but not joining in can be a surefire way to torpedo your career because nobody will like you after that. Especially not your boss. The same goes for showing up and not drinking alcohol. [...]In a country where it's the societal norm to push people to drink as much as possible, and where beer and canned cocktails are available in many vending machines and most convenience stores, there is almost nothing there to keep someone from developing a real addiction. If you're one of the unlucky people who is predisposed to become an alcoholic, it's hard to imagine a way around becoming one...In 2013, a government study estimated that 1.09 million Japanese people are battling alcoholism, but the total number of people who could conceivably have a problem is estimated to be ten times that.

There's an insane amount of work, pressure, and dedication involved in creating stuff, be it animation or live action. That's not a Japan thing or an animation thing, that's an everywhere thing. People who work on sets regularly work 16-18 hour days, 6 days per week. People who make movies and TV shows almost always end up sacrificing their personal lives and their health for the work. And that's in North America. Consider that Japan's work culture is already notorious for pushing people to the brink, and people working to death is a real societal problem.

Karoshi is a sudden death that usually takes the form of a heart attack, heart failure or stroke in someone way too young to die from things like that, although it also often takes the form of suicide. It's brought about by prolonged stress, extreme fatigue and overwork, malnutrition, and probably way too much caffeine and possibly alcohol. It first became a problem in Japan in the 70s and 80s, but it also happens in South Korea (where it's called "gwarosa") and increasingly, in China (where it's called "guolaosi").

The roots of karoshi are a toxic mix of deep rooted cultural behaviors and corporate insecurity, and it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Japanese corporate culture already values people staying way too late, self-sacrifice and other displays of dedication. During the post-war reconstruction and economic boom, the idea of giving yourself almost entirely for the sake of a company, which in exchange would give you lifetime employment, took deep root in Japanese society. It became part of an employee's duty to do their absolute best at everything, no matter how hard it is or how much it destroys you. (Sound familiar, kids?)[...]Selflessness at the office quickly turns into self-flaglation. Overtime doesn't get counted because it would cause trouble for the company, and anyway, if you only knew your job better it would probably be unnecessary. If you don't work harder, the project will fail, and it will be your fault for letting down the team. It's hard, but ganbarimasu! Before long, you have people working 80-110 hours per week, every week. It's full-fledged workaholism, which is a real thing.

Of the locations where overwork was confirmed, 33.5%, or 2,982 locations, were found to have cases of working more than 80 hours of overtime per month. 4.7%, or 419 locations, had people working more than 150 hours per month.

Sakakura went into more detail about the Madhouse production assistant's situation: during crunch time, the assistant would work over 200 hours of overtime per month, and would be made to work all day and night even on weekends or public holidays. They had even collapsed due to overwork before and had been taken to hospital. Sakakura remarked that he has heard from a lot of people that "this is how the anime industry works."

He worked at 1 company, he hasn't tried any others. He hasn't tried to get payed for his overtime. He hasn't tried not working overtime. He tried nothing at all. The problem isn't that he made a bad choice, the problem is that he hasn't tried making good choice or any choice at all. He's like the the Austin Power steamroller guy, except he had 3 year to get out of the way. Sure poverty would suck, but why does he need money anyway, he has literally 0 free time, what good does money do to him?

And as far as money, the zombie apocalypse just instantly made him poor, he'll never get a yen from the company ever again, so clearly money isn't an issue. And yet he's really happy, his entire attitude is: "why would I care about anybody but me". Imagine on 9/11 they interviewed some guy that was going in to work that day and the guy reacted like the MC, while body were falling behind him. And then realize that this is a more generous take because it doesn't mean that all his friend/family are also dead (which he spare no thought for, although tbf I wouldn't be surprised if he had no friends and his family abandoned him), along with the majority of the human race. In a story, when the apocalypse happens and a character is gleeful about it, we call those character the "bad guy" or "the evil one" and there's a good reason, his complete utter lack of empathy is shocking.