Bones: Animators “Cancer”, “War Criminals”

A document purporting to be the internal performance review of animators working at notable studio Bones (FMA, Scrapped Princess, RahXephon) has surfaced, and the callow, if not vicious, statements in it are sure spell a PR calamity should there prove to be so much as a grain of truth to them, and that is without taking into account the egregious leak of the personal information of hundreds of animators, as their full names, addresses, work details, etc, are also present. On to the excerpts.

There are many examples:

“War criminal.” (comes up several times)
“Cancer to the company.”
“He’s for the can.”
“He’s finished.”
“Useless by the looks of him.”
“Queer.”
“May be dangerous.”

By far the most numerous remark is “Has personality problems”. Birds of a feather, if the reviewer comments are anything to go by.

The document in question is a 181kb Excel spreadsheet, containing the full personal details of what looks to be hundreds of animators (name, address, phone, etc, as well as their department, responsibility, and of course the incendiary remarks column; quite a damaging leak even without the comments). The animators in question look to have worked on some distinguished titles, though being mere animators this amounts to little.

It should be said that this is a digital document of unknown provenance, and hence the possibility of it being a simple forgery exists (though there it seems only the comments could really be a forgery at this stage), though the attitudes expressed are not unbelievable, particularly considering the rather low position animators occupy on the anime production ladder.

It may be hasty to bury the Bones until the full details emerge, but it does not look hopeful for them at this stage.

Sanitised versions of parts of the file are mirrored here, here, and here. Here is a random source – there are many springing up.