Pretty Cure veteran resigns as animation director

The anime industry continues to squeeze every last drop of energy from its greatest talents, and this time a true legend has reached her breaking point. Toshie Kawamura, the acclaimed character designer and veteran animator behind iconic franchises such as Yes! Pretty Cure 5, Smile Pretty Cure!, and HUGtto! Pretty Cure, took to social media to cry out for help. After a decade of accumulated frustrations, she confessed that she no longer has any desire to work as an animation director again.

A hell of infinite corrections

Far from disparaging her colleagues, Kawamura explained that the real problem is that animation directors have been demoted to being the "janitors" of the production. Instead of supervising, they are now forced to redo from scratch the disastrous and rushed layouts of novice animators, correct poor linework, and attempt to save poorly finished scenes. The stress is so brutal that she bluntly confessed: "When I was young I could endure it, but thinking that this will go on forever feels like an endless hell. No wonder the amount of medication I need has increased."

The imminent collapse of quality

Her post opened Pandora's box, unleashing a wave of support from other professionals in Japan who confirmed the sad reality: new generations deliver mediocre work without caring about quality, treating art as a simple factory job. The veteran artist closed her message by pleading with studios to only hire people with solid foundations, stating that her life is short and she doesn't want to waste her time fixing the mistakes of people who don't know how to do their jobs. All of this makes it evident that the brutal over-saturation of the market is destroying the few masters who still keep quality afloat.

Knowing that animation studios prefer to release dozens of mediocre series a year instead of taking care of their veterans, do you think anime's visual quality will completely collapse when this old guard decides to retire for good due to stress?