21st Century Necromancer

Hattori Heita is a typical corporate drone in Tokyo, living a 7-to-11 life each week. He is an artist at a fairly well-known animation production company in the industry, primarily responsible for scene and character design.

Of course, he is just an ordinary artist, not the lead. Although his job is described as being responsible for scene and character design, in reality, he just does the detail filling and coloring—work that is tedious and time-consuming. The main designing is done by the lead artist, who provides sketches for them to do the post-processing.

Hattori Heita doesn't have much to complain about this; this is just how it is in this industry.

Artists at the lower levels and newcomers do this kind of work. If you have talent and can get the approval of your superiors, there might be opportunities for promotion. But more often than not, people like him work hard and overtime every day, enduring until they become senior employees, which allows for a step-by-step promotion.

This is also the current situation in Japanese society. Even in emerging industries, the traditional emphasis on seniority prevails, rather than relying on talent to get opportunities for advancement.

In addition, the older generations especially like to show off their seniority and authority, suppressing young people's ideas. As a result, many young people with ideas and drive are stifled, unable to showcase their talents. They either quit and switch to other places where they can utilize their skills, or their edges are worn down, becoming corporate drones.

The animation production industry is actually quite good. As long as newcomers have talent, there are still chances to stand out.

However, none of this really has anything to do with Hattori Heita. As a 7-to-11 corporate drone, he has long given up on the so-called dreams and struggles. He now lives just for his salary, working hard every day just to earn more money, so that when he has saved enough, he can find a suitable woman to marry.

It's just that the cost of living in Tokyo is really too high. If Hattori Heita wants to save enough money to get married with his income, he has to work a bit harder.

With these thoughts in mind, Hattori Heita sat down at his work desk, ready to start today's work.

As an artist, Hattori Heita's daily work is to draw, and he has to draw a large amount of repetitive pictures every day.

Since they are making animations, according to the common modern standard of 24 to 29 frames per minute, with an episode being 30 minutes excluding the opening and closing, there are about 25 minutes of footage, which calculates to over 700 frames.

This means that the animation company must draw at least over 700 drawings per week. If there are scenes with intense budgeting, the frames per minute can even be unlimited—60, 90, or 120 frames—depending only on whether the client can afford it.

Although some animation companies have already switched to drawing with computers, significantly reducing the workload for artists, it is still generally believed in the industry that hand-drawing can improve animation quality. Hattori Heita's company also holds this belief. Despite using computers for post-effects processing, most of the original drawings are still hand-drawn by artists.

Under such circumstances, an artist like Hattori Heita needs to complete at least a thousand drawings per week on average to meet the demands of animation production. And this is just the basic minimum.

Such a large volume of drawing undoubtedly makes Hattori Heita's daily work quite heavy. Even after working fifteen hours a day, there is still work left unfinished.

So every day upon arriving at the office, Hattori Heita must immerse himself fully into his work.

Only today, just as he had finished drawing a shot, his supervisor called him into the office.

"Hattori, you've been with the company for about five years now, right? You've always been doing post-coloring work; do you want to change jobs?" The supervisor looked at Hattori Heita. He had a good impression of such a diligent corporate drone; although his talent was average, supervisors always liked obedient and hardworking employees.

However, when a supervisor suddenly asks if you want to change jobs, it's undoubtedly a nerve-wracking question for a corporate drone.

Maybe the supervisor likes you and wants to promote you, but it could also be that they dislike you and want you to leave.

For an utterly unambitious corporate drone like Hattori Heita, job change is absolutely unacceptable. So he hurriedly said, "I am very satisfied with my current job and do not want to change jobs!"

But even an unambitious corporate drone would not pass up the chance for a promotion. So when Hattori Heita saw that the supervisor showed no signs, he quickly added, "Of course, if the company needs it, I can also adapt to a new position."

Hattori Heita's attitude made the supervisor very satisfied, so he picked up a file folder from the desk and handed it to Hattori Heita.

After Hattori Heita took it, the supervisor said, "This is a very important commission for the company. A client designed a robot, but its appearance is a bit rough, so they commissioned us for the design optimization. You don't have to worry about the mechanical structure; just optimizing the robot's appearance will suffice.

The client has also listed their requirements inside. Take it back and read it carefully. You have a week to complete this work. As for the things in your hands, pass them on to someone else."

"Understood!" Hattori Heita hurriedly agreed but didn't immediately open the file folder to check its contents.

After saying all this, the supervisor saw that Hattori Heita still looked respectful listening to his words, and felt satisfied, so he reminded him again, "This commission is important to the company. The client is a bigshot we can't afford to offend, but the commission fee they're offering is considerable. Hattori, you must do well! The company has high hopes for you. Since you've been doing post-coloring for so long, you can draw something else now."

The supervisor's words gave Hattori Heita great encouragement. He knew this was a promise from the supervisor. If his performance this time satisfied this important client, promotion and raise would undoubtedly await him, along with the generous commission fee from the client.

Encouraged, Hattori Heita left the supervisor's office, returned to his desk, cleared it up, transferred his work to the newcomers next to him, and then opened the file folder to take out the contents.

The folder contained a very detailed design blueprint, which clearly indicated the robot's internal structure and mechanical framework, though the exterior indeed looked quite rough.

"No wonder they want an aesthetic makeover; it indeed looks ugly like this." Looking at the humanoid robot's bare exterior on the design blueprint, Hattori Heita pulled over a blank sheet of paper and began sketching.

For an artist like Hattori Heita, replicating the original drawing is considered a basic skill. So it didn't take long before he finished sketching the robot's shape on the blank paper, though he had no ideas for a while.

But looking at the several anime character figurines on his desk, Hattori Heita gradually got an idea, and the lines of the robot's appearance on the white paper became increasingly rounded.