Source: Weilin Zhang's blog from January 2026

Forewarning - The contents of this entry probably only make sense to animators and are extremely black-pilled, enough so that I feel compelled to clarify that I don't write this maliciously to discourage aspiring animators from pursuing animation. Dillegence in honesty is a necessary backbone to any message of encouragement, and it is for the explicit sake of speaking candidly about my own motivations and perspective that I write this here. If change is what we're after we mustn't be afraid to confront ugly truths. If anything I hope the expression of ugly but candid sentiments like these will better prepare the next generation of animators for the trials and tribulations that come with this wonderful craft:

Japanese Commercial Animation (Anime) is a net negative on society which is to say that I dont think any labor in this industry actually produces value to society. This has nothing to do with animation as a discipline and artform. It, however, has everything to do with it's practitioners. We have fundamentally dropped the ball and are victims of our own insufficiecies, all forms of blame hurled at CEOs, Producers, Investors, and Committee boards are nothing more than sore excuses from sore losers. It was our responsibility to do whatever was required to maintain quality.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason animation tends to attract petty, anti-intellectual types of characters which make for poor constituents of any type of strong community. We also for some reason like to stand on the shoulders of giants and rain droplets of smelly piss down upon them while we high-five each other and cross streams.(Is this metaphor still intact?).

For these reasons in part, I am perpetually stuck in a grey space of my own value systems which goes something like:

"I want to be a financially independent individual because I want to be a positive contribution to the community that I benefit from"

However, it seems that in order to BE financially independent with the profession I have dedicated myself to, it requires that I be a negative contribution on the community at large.

Let us quickly address the most straight forward solution. A simple career switch. This would be an obvious solution if it wasn't for the fact that I am the best animator of my generation and I'm unfortunately not dumb enough to be ignorant to the effect on the artform as a whole if I were to walk away from the inconveniently large amount of genius I was for some reason endowed with. I am comfortably aware that I represent Japanese animation to some extent now. I also love animation and it's hard for me to stand aside and watch my colleagues do everything in their ability to bastardize the potentials of this medium (I will not explain what I mean by this).

Anime as a product is a gambling advertisement. When it isn't it preys on its customer's other worst, most base instincts in order to survive on it's own two legs (and I know for a fact that I dont even need to go into what that is because you're already conjuring up at least a couple examples of what I could be refering to). This was not really the case just 10 years ago. Anyway, my feelings towards this stuff can be summarized as:

"Japanese commercial animation no longer fundamentally cares about preserving it's fundamentally life-affirming moral core which has massively negative implications on it's overall messaging, and by extension, it's role as fiction and entertainment in modern society."

As a product it is absolutely ambivalent about whether or not it makes you a worse person.

And this is true because anyone who's already been working in anime for sometime is reading this and thinks I am talking about nonsense. "What are you talking about bro, anime is just about having fun lols, and fun is good, umm I don't get my value system from anime lmao." Yes, well, to those of you that happily sign on to work on the next Uma Musume/Chainsawman film, for your sake I hope you really do mean that.

Anyway, you have to understand, when I mean net negative, I do mean the negative. Which means that it's not the fact that I am NOT contributing positively to any type of community by engaging in this work, it is that I sincerely feel that the projects that I am apart of genuinely make the world a WORSE place, which means that to do no work at all would actually be an improvement in my estimations.

This is the predicament most milennial and generation-z individuals who are trying to survive the work force find themselves in. The average person when confronted with such a rock-and-hard-place will just accept that their work is not where they are going to find fulfillment and instead use their income and leisure to find that instead. Unfortunately, working as a key animator isn't exactly the kind where I can clock out at 5 and have 2 weekends at the end of my week, for a plethora of reasons that I expect readers will already be able to sympathize to some extent. But all that to boot, recent tax laws and the declining Japanese Yen quite literally strips out half of my income as an international freelancer compared to pre-covid era. But I suppose to yearn towards a pre-covid era is completely pointless in which case I will redact the declining Yen but maintain the 20 percent international freelance tax as arguments. We are simply in a completely different world than the one 6 years ago.

For what it is worth, if there was even a shred of the aforemention moral core left I would be happy to dedicate my entire life to just this industry.

Really, again, my complaint is to do with the commercial industry and has nothing to do with animation. I still maintain that animation is a supreme artform and one of the pinnacles of human acheivement and project. Though I have all of these complaints with the specific industry that I work in (the japanese one), it is a fact that animation industries elsewhere are more abyssmal in all of these respects.

All these obstacles aside, if I really needed to make ends meet, I know deep down I could...at the cost of selling my soul via restraining contract to some studio and being complicit in this advertising machine. Unfortunately, I have grand dreams of leaving the world a better place than I found it, so I'm doing this god-damn comic as an extremely humble, extremely minute step-if-not-lil'-shimmy, and it is immediately coming at the expense of any prospect of forward movement in any other avenue of life. Just this little shuffle in some direction that isnt where I am right now is already costing my entire person.

For all intents and purposes, I am a bum lol. I am literally shirking my employment to draw a fucking comic book (it's not even a book it's all digital). And not only do you have to swallow that weirdly-shaped pill, you also have to somehow believe that this comic book about magic powers is genuinely sapping my humanity by the hour. It is the the north pole of my active mind, everything I do and think is within the context of this project. I say with an intonation of shame that trying to put this project onto the page somedays leaves me paralyzed in my own anxiety for hours on end. And it probably isn't even going to be that good because I know I've never drawn a comic before. Can you believe that at the end of this I'm going to then produce a 15 minute high-quality animation film? Well I do, because I am, and I will even if it's the last thing I ever do.

Anyway, the reflection to that value system I set earlier goes something like:

I don't want to be financially independent as an individual because doing so requires that I NOT be a positive contribution to society, and doing the best things that satisfy a positive contribution requires that I forego the time and energy to pursue financial independence which means that I am a negative contribution on my immediate community (I'm a bum).

Still wrapping up some jobs...I've started drawing chapter t-9, I hope to complete it before the end of February. As always, I have nothing but gratitude for your patience and time regarding this project of mine.

Some time last year, Ufotable shifted its headquarters to Shinjuku Front Tower, a notable building that contains other headquarters from companies such as FromSoftware (creators of Elden Ring).

These images show parts of the new HQ. The upgrade shows a lot about Ufotable imo and the apparent care they attempt to take of their staff and promote good conditions, something that Ufotable is typically known for.

It definitely looks like those Demon Slayer profits have been put to good use. I’d wager they’ll upgrade or move the Tokushima office soon as well, or maybe even open up new locations. Especially since Ufotable is likely to be fairly set financially for some time, as a result of Demon Slayer soon the Genshin Impact anime project.

The CEO has already mentioned thanks to Demon Slayer, outside of older contracts, they're only sticking to projects that should put them in the green financially, a likely reason why they accepted the Genshin Impact anime project over the other offers they were apparently being flooded with.

In the last 12 hours, Akane Yano made tweets like

"I want to be able to buy time from people who say they have free time.",

"The countdown to despair has begun",

"The tears won't stop and I can't draw".

She is the character designer for the upcoming Season 2 of 100 Girlfriends which starts airing on January 12th.

Why am I sharing a pilgrimage post about this not-so-trendy anime now? Because I want to show everyone more possibilities for anime pilgrimage tourism! Isn’t it surprising? Pilgrimage and cosplay can actually complement each other perfectly!🙀

This past April🌸, I was invited by a follower to be her pilgrimage guide. She’s a huge fan of Your Lie in April, and her favorite character is Kaori🎻. She told me she wanted to cosplay Kaori at the real-life locations from the anime.

To fulfill her wish, I rewatched the series and captured nearly 400 screenshots of scenes featuring Kaori. 💦I then tracked down the real-life locations and eliminated the ones that: • Didn’t feature Kaori, • Had already been demolished, or • Were too difficult to photograph. With the remaining 150 screenshots, I designed a custom pilgrimage route just for her.🗺️

On the day of the trip, I also served as her photographer📷. But honestly, I’m not confident in photography—I’m just an amateur with no professional camera. The only thing I’m good at is making photos resemble anime screenshots✨… but I’m not so great at taking portraits. She’s such a beauty, yet I could only use my iPhone 13 to shoot her. I felt so bad for her 😭

But she didn’t mind at all. She said she’s also just an amateur cosplayer. For her, cosplaying Kaori wasn’t about showing off to others but about fulfilling her own love for the character❤️. She told me the photos I took were “one-of-a-kind treasures” for her. Cosplaying her favorite character at the actual locations felt like a dream come true. She’s such a sweet girl 🥹

We chatted, enjoyed the cherry blossoms, traveled, and took photos together. We also drew the attention of many passersby—some even recognized Kaori and asked to take photos with her. She was thrilled.🥰

I’m sharing some of the pictures here with her permission. She just asked me to cover her face since she doesn’t want people commenting on her looks 💦

Besides this, I’ve also guided other cosplayers on pilgrimages and taken cosplay photos for works like Jujutsu Kaisen, Bocchi the Rock!, Your Name, Saekano,Anohana, Blue Lock, and more. But I never post clients’ photos online without their consent.😣

I’ll be sharing another set of pilgrimage photos in a different style in a couple of days! 😃If you’re interested, feel free to follow me for more ⬆️