Märchen Mädchen: A Production Postmortem
The anime industry’s structural issues are well-documented, but for fear of risking their jobs, staff members rarely point fingers at the individuals and companies that make the situation even worse. We reached out to a person very closely involved with Märchen Mädchen, the messiest TV project at the moment, and they wanted to relay a very detailed, scathing report of what happens behind the scenes in a production mess. Even if you’re not following the series, the team’s harsh experience is worth learning about.
The story of Märchen Mädchen is, to a degree, that of many anime nowadays: a TV series launching as part of a media mix strategy, but not given enough resources to put together something that can stand on its own. The idea that all anime is a promotional tool is misguided at best, but it’s definitely true that many producers dream of synergies between releases in different formats. However, at the same time, it is too often that they cannot bring themselves to invest enough in those very projects themselves to ensure they have ample schedules and decent funding for an anime. But while a conservative approach limits the scope of a project from the get-go, it’s not enough to outright kill it, as we’ve seen many cases. Most TV anime are very modest productions after all, often elevated by the skill of individual artists involved. That’s the case of even tremendously messy titles like this, as Märchen Mädchen has promoted interesting youngsters and saw the debut of a truly brilliant rookie with Kiyoki Rikuta aka kerorira, whose Tanaka-inspired sequences stood out the most in a series that even featured the man himself. Unfortunately, the isolated moments of attractive stylized animation became an exception rather than the norm, especially as the show descended into a genuine production horror.
Where did it all go wrong, then? Everyone is aware of anime’s systemic problems, but something must have happened in this case that led to nightmarish unpolished animation even after the series was forced to take an unplanned break for a couple weeks due to quality concerns. Although the general issues of Märchen Mädchen apply to many other titles, the truth is that we can trace back some very specific issues to its inception. The original plans to make it into an original TV anime at the core of a media mix effort date back to 2014, and they were meant to have popular illustrator Kantoku’s work supporting the scenario written by Tomohiro Matsu of Mayoi Neko Overrun! fame. Naturally, these ideas were put on hold in 2016, when Matsu tragically passed away from liver cancer, but the project returned a year later when they began publishing the light novels based off his drafts, with the assistance of StoryWorks, the writing company Matsu himself had founded. This was followed up with the anime announcement they had always planned, which also respects Matsu’s original idea to the point that he’s posthumously credited as co-series composer and scriptwriter for the first six episodes. With the blessing of all concerned parties, it seemed like a good way to pay tribute to Matsu’s work, but this troubled pre-production was a sign of things to come.
The issues the staff faced were never much of a secret, truth be told. From an early point in the broadcast, you would often see public complaints on social media, prevalent enough for fans to pick up on them. Grievances over production schedules falling apart have sadly become commonplace, but when those surface quickly and are accompanied by anger about the series’ utter failure to properly credit artists for their work, the situation manages to stand out; it’s very unusual to see an animation director rightfully complain about being burdened with the only supervision credit on a rough episode they barely touched, as is seeing scriptwriters credited for work they weren’t involved with. As bad as the public grievances were, I was personally aware that the situation was even worse, being acquainted with some regular staff who let out harsher remarks in private. Seeing as how the situation was about to reach new lows, with the broadcast of episode 9 showing nothing but abysmal animation despite the extra two weeks, I decided to reach out to them and ask about this tragic situation. While they were happy to have a platform to spread the nasty truth, please understand their desire to remain anonymous – in an industry dominated by freelancing and networks of acquaintances, public complaints can be very risky, which is why we rarely hear people speak out. All I can say is that we talked with a key staff member who’s fully aware of the ins and outs of this production, and while they can’t speak for the whole team, their remarks mirror the feelings of many of their peers.
Our source explained that the situation was chaotic ever since the start of production. “From the beginning up to now, four members of the production crew have quit, including the original production desk for the series and the settei manager.” The specifics about the situation boggle the mind, as episode 6 for example changed hands three times before its broadcast, and it wasn’t until the broadcast of episode 7 that they found a production assistantProduction Assistant (制作進行, Seisaku Shinkou): Effectively the lowest ranking 'producer' role, and yet an essential cog in the system. They check and carry around the materials, and contact the dozens upon dozens of artists required to get an episode finished. Usually handling multiple episodes of the shows they're involved with. who could handle the management of #9. “None of the production assistants besides Kitamura, who had transferred in from 3hz, even had any experience in TV anime,” they added, which illustrates just how stacked the odds were against them; keep in mind that production assistants face perhaps the most stressful role in all of anime, so doing it for the first time on a show with no time whatsoever and lacking in manpower is simply suicidal. When asked about what led to such an extreme situation, they wanted to choose their words carefully while still pointing the finger at those who allegedly caused this massive mess. “While I wouldn’t say that (Masaru) Nagai [CEO of the studio, animation producer and planning member in the series] is the sole one to blame, the main problem lies with Hoods Entertainment” isn’t a statement open to interpretation, and they took that accusation further by adding that their decision to offer very low rates even by this industry’s standards might have been the final nail for a rushed, understaffed project.
After noting that it was quite hard to discuss these matters with Nagai to begin with, as it had become a regular occurrence for him to scream at others during meetings, they explained how the hands-on staff tried to remedy this: “By autumn 2017 we were already worried that the broadcast could be in danger, so Kitamura, as production assistantProduction Assistant (制作進行, Seisaku Shinkou): Effectively the lowest ranking 'producer' role, and yet an essential cog in the system. They check and carry around the materials, and contact the dozens upon dozens of artists required to get an episode finished. Usually handling multiple episodes of the shows they're involved with., came up with an outsourcingOutsourcing: The process of subcontracting part of the work to other studios. Partial outsourcing is very common for tasks like key animation, coloring, backgrounds and the likes, but most TV anime also has instances of full outsourcing (グロス) where an episode is entirely handled by a different studio. plan that was then rejected by the CEO for financial reasons. By late January, the CEO finally approved the subcontracting proposal, but at that point we were running so short on time that no studio was willing to take the offer. Even after that, the CEO planned to continue delivering unfinished episodes so as to make broadcast, but the distribution side [NBC Universal?] forced us to postpone it for two weeks.” The fact that they were granted a brief break might very well be the one positive development in their report, but of course even that had to go wrong: “By episodes 6-7, the burden on series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. (Shigeru) Ueda was so strong he ended up stepping down after #8. On top of that, right before the delivery deadline for episode 8, we lost contact with the production desk, so in the end we spent those two weeks mostly sorting out the production situation for the episodes still remaining.” Perhaps now you can understand why, despite the best efforts by the staff, the break to improve the quality of the animation didn’t have the desired effect.
The consequences of all this on the creative team have been devastating as you might expect, to the point of the regulars having to risk their health to try to keep the project afloat. “The problems began from the very first episode, as the key animationKey Animation (原画, genga): These artists draw the pivotal moments within the animation, basically defining the motion without actually completing the cut. The anime industry is known for allowing these individual artists lots of room to express their own style. from outside the studio turned out to require many complete retakes. The quality of the drawings for episode three was so low that the episode directors and supervisors had to correct essentially everything (this marked the start of the severe delays). Even the storyboards for that episode were late, as they had to be redrawn by (Hisashi) Saito, since the original director fell sick, and his replacement was an assistant without any experience in episode directionEpisode Direction (演出, enshutsu): A creative but also coordinative task, as it entails supervising the many departments and artists involved in the production of an episode – approving animation layouts alongside the Animation Director, overseeing the work of the photography team, the art department, CG staff... The role also exists in movies, refering to the individuals similarly in charge of segments of the film..” Even the mess regarding the credits has its roots in these production issues: “As the production grew more chaotic, episode 7 ended up being broadcast without consulting the studio members about the credits (the animators at the studio were so occupied with episodes 6 and 8 that no one was available to act as animation director, so they had to resort to falsely crediting someone for the episode). As a result, (Kiyoshi) Tateishi [the only supervisor credited for episode 7] only corrected about 20 cuts – everything else was either fixed by the key animators themselves, done uncredited, or went through entirely uncorrected.” In the end, they conclude that while lack of personnel and production funds were pointed out as issues, that hid the root of the problem: “Ultimately, many of the problems we faced could have been quickly resolved with action on the part of [animation producer and Hoods CEO] (Masaru) Nagai.” The structural problems affecting anime production are obvious, but in this case, the behavior of certain individuals can be faulted just as much. And that’s the kind of truth that tends to get silenced.
There are many reasons why this article came to be, even though we prefer to focus on the exceptional work anime manages to put together. For starters, it was a chance to act as a megaphone for hands-on animation staff, who continue to be mostly ignored, even as the community grows more interested in what creators have to say. Most formal anime interviews, as insightful as they can be, either involve producers or are sanctioned by them, and at this point you should be able to tell they might not always have the best intentions in mind. And beyond that, I also believe it’s important for fans to understand that within a fundamentally flawed system like the anime industry, there still can be individual culprits. Of course it’s important for everyone to be aware that the major issues are systemic and won’t be solved by getting rid of a couple of individuals, but we’ve gotten to the point where that acts as a shield against responsibility. Producers wield flimsy excuses like, “Sure, we screwed up the planning and left the staff with no time, but what can be done about it?” or, “Our major studio would love to pay better as others do, but we just can’t.” And too often, we see fans echo similar defenses themselves.
Back when we wrote about the production woes of Just Because!, we immediately got a reply from a highly-esteemed creative that confirmed our suspicions about the ambitious approach royally screwing up the production, which directly blamed series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. Atsushi Kobayashi and his personality for it all. There’s no denying that all these situations have been made worse by the awful general climate, but the industry’s sad state doesn’t excuse personal mistakes, especially when it’s careless decisions from the production side hurting the people who actually make the show. While not many people are watching this particular series to begin with, the specific problems detailed here, as well as the more general sentiments, are well worth reflecting upon as fans of the medium.
Support us on Patreon to help us reach our new goal to sustain the animation archive at Sakugabooru, SakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites' brand. Video on Youtube, as well as this SakugaSakuga (作画): Technically drawing pictures but more specifically animation. Western fans have long since appropriated the word to refer to instances of particularly good animation, in the same way that a subset of Japanese fans do. Pretty integral to our sites' brand. Blog. Thanks to everyone who’s helped out so far!
Very interesting. I wonder if something like this happened with Ito Junji Collection. That didn’t have great animation, either, and episode 8 (iirc, whatever episode was the one with the clowns running with frames missing) was the most notably terrible
I think it’s part production issues, part usual Studio DEEN incompetence going on.
From this article, it seems clear that Mr Nagai mismanaged the project, but is dismissing the claim that they had not enough money true in this case? The fact that Nagai screwed up his management doesn’t mean that there couldn’t have been a money problem upward that led to him refusing the outsourcing plan until it became clear to him that the project wouldn’t recover or at least go through in any other way. Honestly, writing “Producers wield flimsy excuses like, “Our major studio would love to pay better as others do, but we just can’t.”” seems very arrogant. According… Read more »
Imagine reading this article and reaching the conclusion that we shouldn’t be too harsh on the management that got blamed
Imagine that all management are not crazy Kamikaze guys that consider dying on their workplace an honor, but just people dealing with the cards they are dealt. But hey I must be crazy to consider another point of view right?
‘Maybe the people who got blamed by the victims are the true victims’ great point of way to consider
Imagine reading this article with an open and critical mind that can assess and respond to the arguments made by the author.
Dude, you really should think a little harder. He makes a good counterpoint and opens up a broader discussion here. And he was super polite too….
I think it was implied earlier that the CEO was the one who decided to charge bargain basement rates.
That was his call. The funds allocated for the actual animation process are low all around, but in this case they tried to keep in even lower than usual, and that was one of the many decisions that eventually blew up on everyone’s faces.
But source this bargain was all because of greed and not because of lack of funs?
In my opinion – if you’re undercapitalized – that’s on YOU. Being personally poor due to circumstances outside of your control deserves sympathy; not having enough money to run your business properly is your fault. Your employees’ health and livelihoods are at stake.
I mean do you think that they’re going to make money out of this? In business doing something half-assedly is often worse than doing nothing at all.
I totally agree, so why is underfunding such a problem in the anime if that’s the case, that’s what I want to know. Yes Nagai underpaid his worker, but other studios also underpay theirs like another article here said.
Why is that when there is a shortage of animators? Why aren’t the wages going up?
That’s not really relevant here – this was an exceptionally bad production meltdown.
Furthermore: Nagai made a “decision to offer very low rates even by this industry’s standards”.
On the contrary to me that’s all the most relevant in the discussion.
Why, in an industry where projects are constantly understaffed with a chronic lack of animators, did Nagai, who oversaw other projects before, and so knows the rates, chose to offer lower wages than the already low standard? You think he didn’t anticipate that animators would go to better-paid jobs, like any normal people?
As the person in charge of both the production and the studio, being conservative means that you’re protecting your benefits and also that you’ll have money left later in the production if needs arise – but if you go overboard, a complete mess like this can happen. Nagai refused to ask the committee for more money so that the studio didn’t come across as too needy, which is not an unheard of attitude. Even the break was something he was explicitly against and had to be forced from the committee onto him. Arguments about “what if he’s just a victim… Read more »
“Nagai refused to ask the committee for more money so that the studio didn’t come across as too needy, which is not an unheard of attitude.” That’s things like that that I would have like to read in the article instead of letting it up to the reader’s interpretation as to why a CEO of a functionnal 9 year old studio would throw an entire project to shit defying all common sense. Saying that it’s not an uncommon attitude, on the other hand, put it back in perspective that their is a culture in the anime industry that find it… Read more »
Seems like a very typical situation where the management side underestimated the work involved and ended up not asking for enough time, money and personnel. Happens on every industry, and while the fault usually lies with some middle manager, it’s usually reflective of a general climate of half-baked planning.
“Yes Nagai underpaid his worker, but other studios also underpay theirs like another article here said.” I mean, uh, you are contradicting yourself here. Other studios admittedly underpay their workers (your words), but situations like Märchen Mädchen’s are exceptional, which means that the lack of funds is not the main cause here, but the mismanagement. Other studios do face situations with limited, or even starved, budgets, but manage to turn in a decent to good product. Many options allow that: cheap outsourcing, newbies hire, etc. The fact that he indeed had to pay his workers even less than the industry’s… Read more »
I totally agree with you, however nothing IN THIS ARTICLE even indirectly suggest that it was Nagai’s pride at fault here. All I got out from the interview was that from the start the project didn’t have enough time nor money and that Nagai paid his workers even less than the already low standards and didn’t engage outsourcing until it was too late and the staff blame all of it on Nagai. All the pride and stuff I only got from Kevin’s comment here so sorry for assuming from the article a more logical conclusion than what would be madness… Read more »
Weird how you’re the only one who reached that ridiculous conclusion
-That there simply wasn’t enough money to afford fully outsourcing episodes was straight up a lie *because the CEO himself ended up agreeing to the exact same proposed plan* – just way too late for it to actually be applied. There’s no reason to speculate about whether he could or not, because he did. Managing the slim margin of profits is indeed his job, but do you know what else is? Pressuring for more if needed, and not destroying the health of his employees. -I really don’t know what post you read if your takeaway is that it’s implying that… Read more »
“Managing the slim margin of profits is indeed his job, but do you know what else is? Pressuring for more if needed, and not destroying the health of his employees.” Maybe you know more than what you wrote in this article, but where is it said that Nagai didn’t pressure for more money? Like I said, how do you know he didn’t get more money from the company in between Autumn and January to forward that plan? “-I really don’t know what post you read if your takeaway is that it’s implying that lack of funds wasn’t a major issue.”… Read more »
Have you worked in industry before? People get blamed for other people’s mistakes all the time – especially if your name is publicly attached to shoddy work.
As an addendum to that, the first major public argument regarding this started with the sole credited animation director for episode 7, who was risking taking a hit to his reputation by seemingly being the one person at fault for its very poor animation. Had he said nothing, people would believe it was on him, and he’s still risking something similar happens in the future if the context gets lost. People get unjustly judged for poor work in anime all the time.
Dude you’re the only person here arguing that this means all management people are psychopaths, this is some insane devil’s advocate
“Ultimately, many of the problems we faced could have been quickly resolved with action on the part of [animation producer and Hoods CEO] (Masaru) Nagai.”
what are you even arguing
On my comments I’m not arguing with what the interviewee says, that’s their point of view and the goal of the article (even though I could cynically comment how easy it is to say that when you’re not the one making the decision after the fact).
I’m just arguing with the editor bias that I feel and hoped would be more impartial.
studios arent all demons just because one of them acted like morons but this dude is a jackass and sucks at his job
Elegant summary.
Poor Hazuki’s show…Thank Goodness the Creator of this Series who has since passed away isn’t here to see how terrible His arts…and His stories are being done! I hate this for the Show. I’ll still support it! <3
This was the Kitamura mentioned in the article, for the record: https://twitter.com/maro0327/status/977962248936161280
The people working on the series really are doing their best.
This is just sad to read… I can’t even imagine how the working environment was like for these involved. It prompts another question, though: how does studios like this even get created and trusted in the first place? I mean, I understand that even shitty people can have strong acquaintances, but if the CEO has the personality that he has, why would anyone trust his company with a whole production? On another note, I’ve always wondered what kind of studios are responsible for the kind of outsourced episodes that are so bad that the animation director basically have to correct… Read more »
It varies overall, but outsourcing, even to noted companies like Madhouse or Pierrot, tend to carry a negative stigma these days. Of course that isn’t to say outsourcing wasn’t always great back in the day (all those American produced/Japanese animated shows like TMNT, Transformers and Real Ghostbusters; Studio Live and Last House’s DBZ episodes or most of Sunrise’s 80s/90s fare being good examples), but it’s far worse than it was back in the day when you could give a company like Anime R an episode and it’ll be on par with, if not better than an in-house episode at times.
There is still *good* and trusted studios like Studio Wanpack and Creators In Pack.
Except that Wanpack is now gone so lol.
Really insteresting and good article. I know this blog a while now, but i’d never read a full article before. This article really resumes most of the problems that hunts the anime industry.
What i have to say about it its just a simple quest…
Why they keep rushing and making so many animes like this when they know that the founds aren’t enough and doesn’t exist the required manpower?
They should have stuck with making Big Breast Ecchi. At least they had a passionate fanbase back then… Low resources and simple Studio Burnout are to blame. People either forget or don’t even know Hoods didn’t even exist before 2009. As a studio they fucking went on a bender of content creation from 2009 to 2014 making sometime multiple shows per year. From Aki Sora to Seikon to Manyuu to MGX to Blazblue and Kagaku all in the span of 4 fucking years. Then they went on to produce higher profile material like Blazblue, Drifters, and made that 2015 Senran… Read more »
Even if I hadn’t picked up this series late after hearing about the production issues, the fact that they were using episode clips in the OP animation would have clued me in pretty quickly that something was going wrong behind the scenes.
So, who made all the fixes / changes for the BD version?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvRBDO_Rmjk
Did they reassemble new staff?
I noticed a lot of similar changes in other anime, though not quite as pervasive in every cut.
They appointed bluray-specific animation directors to fix that mess somewhat. I was hearing about it precisely today because one of them’s so unlucky that he’s gotten in another messy production (can I say names? one that involves 5 siblings) that forced him to be promoted to regular animation director faster than he was comfortable with
ohh.. thanks very much for the info. I wouldn’t mind names of course. It would also be great to elaborate on the BD specific animation fix process maybe in a blog post. I didn’t know they hired other animation directors for that. But now that you’ve mentioned it, wouldn’t this kind of work cause a studio to bleed money, as in more than what they’re budgeted for by the producers?
Often it’s people in the core team (regular animation directors and chiefs, the designer itself) making those quick final corrections, but in this case it needed something more substantial than that. Which yeah must have cost them more money, but so does everything when a project goes off the rails this badly.