Reminder:
- The people that make these animations do not see the light of day.
- Things like showers, sleep schedules that exceed 2 hours, basic nutrition, relaxation in their own rooms, comfort toys, or friendly associated contact do not exist for them.
- The wages they earn are less than even minimum wage, ensuring that they work a phisically degrading schedule that stretches at least 130 of a 168-hour week.
- The holes they "reside" in are just that, tiny closets that barely qualify as a single room studio apartment. 99% of the "earnings" they make are put into a hole they barely are allowed to exist in for more than two hours at a time.
- Families as a concept is even more out of reach for them. And those that do are often destroyed entirely as role of husband/father in abstencia builds an inevitable and powerful resentment in those persons, which then taxes this worker's mental instabilities even further.
- Many have figuratively and quite literally "died" at their workdesk, their ball and chain that robs them of their humanity.
- Their "world" is their workroom, and so as a result, they often pour their depression, sadness, anger, and lamentations into their work. Into the one time in their life when these crushing pressures did not exist: High School.
- As the last remnant of their humanity, it's understandable and natural that they would futility cling for the one piece of shining hope in a foregon and destructive life. Even if that time was miserable from bullies or being socially outcasts, or undue/unwanted pressures from scholastic staff, in the fantasy, it's all better. In the fantasy, they have good food to eat, comfy beds to sleep in, games to play, friends to play with, and perhaps even a beauty or two who hopes for one day to be noticed by these disillusioned workes.
- There is no Gensokyo for the animator. No Avalon. No Neverland. So many have lived and died in poverty while animating their one true, simple wish—the only one they're allowed to have. They toil for an audience who doesn't empathize even slightly.
- Worst off is they are scant-better than the everyday salarymen who, while are financially better off than they are, are cursed to live a similiar existence with even more familial turmoil.
- In deference to that, they continue to draw even when they know most of these salarymen would openly shun such things, but quietly admire them in their brief instances of solitude.
Reminder that this is why the high school setting is eternal in anime and manga.