What’s it like to work as an anime and manga figure sculptor? (video)

There’s a whole universe of manga/anime figures available on the shelves of model and toy stores in Japan. And you know what, some lucky bugger has the job of designing and making them. In this case, a chap called Sho who works as a model sculptor at the Good Smile Company in the world’s geekiest area – Akihabara in Tokyo (he’s called a ‘Genkeishi’ in Japan).

You can drop in on Sho as he goes about a typical Japanese working day at the office of a big figure production firm in Japan, creating figures like Jujutsu Kaisen, and Kimetsu no Yaiba! We follow Sho from morning until evening to see what a complete day would be like working at a Japanese figure-making company.

He creates his anime figure prototypes by hand using a polyester putty known in the trade over there as ‘Nendo’.

A real-life Nendo Master? Cool!