While most anime studios are scattered indistinctly in Tokyo, regional branches and rural studios with distinct cultures are becoming more common. Let’s dig into how their bonds with local communities develop, their affinity for mentorship, and KyoAni’s ever-evolving training systems.

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Although it’s not likely to get much attention from broader audiences, Kyoto Animation’s latest project embodies the trends at the studio too perfectly not to stop and examine it. Earlier this month, the city of Uji unveiled the third chapter of their collaboration with KyoAni: a beautiful commercial to promote the atmosphere of the city and its historic heritage, encouraging everyone to come get a taste of those first hand—that’s supposed to be the only way to stream the full version of this short film after all, though experienced computer users might disagree about that limitation. Prior to this, the studio had already illustrated a gorgeous visual with the characters (fictional, historical, and of myth) that would eventually star in this new animated work, and even intertwined the worlds of Genji Monogatari and Hibike! Euphonium’s with special illustrations. Those now decorate the city all over—soon there will be more life-sized Kumikos than actual people in the tourism center—as if to unsubtly make a point: KyoAni’s ties to its home town are growing increasingly stronger, to the point of becoming a factor in their creative processes.

This type of relationship is, of course, not unique to them. While it may be difficult to perceive these local relationships from an overseas point of view, this topic shouldn’t feel new for readers of this site; after all, we do have a predilection for studios that have developed a culture of their own, and that will sometimes manifest through that special bond with their home turf. Admittedly, those are tricky to develop if your studio happens to be one of the countless companies in Tokyo, but the increasingly more popular practice of establishing regional branches or simply launching your own digital-based venture elsewhere is opening up more studios to this possibility.

One such example we’ve written at length about is WIT’s Ibaraki branch, located in the city of Tsukuba. Two leading members of the studio in animation producer Tetsuya Nakatake and designer Kyoji Asano (both known for the likes of Attack on Titan and Spy x Family) happen to hail from that prefecture, where they’d always wanted to start a studio. After partnering up with the city and an exciting animator like Masaaki Tanaka—who also graduated from Tsukuba University—they created a small branch with clear goals: nurturing regional talent through less demanding projects like kids’ anime, and working with folks outside the sphere of commercial animation.

A handful of years after its creation, it may seem like this wasn’t that big of a deal, as Tanaka has eventually left for the indie space and it’s the works of WIT’s Tokyo studios that receive the most attention. The truth, however, is that this was a culture-shifting move; they did indeed train animators locally, Ibaraki remains a place where the studio holds physical events to this day, its team has created works as stunning as Totsukuni no Shoujo, and perhaps most importantly, it has become a bridge between commercial and experimental animation in Japan. Even when not gathered in a specific project at Ibaraki, the relationships created because of that branch have made it so that Geidai alumni and their equally interesting acquaintances now pop up all over regular WIT projects (and even sibling companies!). For a studio with notoriously ruthless top management, such bonds with indie artists who have a much fresher attitude are a bit of a godsend.

While there are some recurring patterns in the relationships between anime (sub)studios and their local communities, the way those develop depends on the specific culture of the companies and their region. As seen in WIT Ibaraki, it’s common to take advantage of the less hectic, lower-pressure environment of more rural anime studios to focus on fishing for talent on potentially untapped pools and then focus on steady training. That does apply to some degree to Ufotable Tokushima, whose model (laxer working hours with strict control of overtime, more robust benefits, and so on) is one of the few that can be said to successfully have intentionally followed the model of a certain studio in Kyoto; as opposed to the more common practice of saying you want to be like them, and acting in a radically opposed direction. Leaving their story at that, though, fails to consider what Ufotable themselves bring to the table.

If the philosophy of the team is a factor in the culture that develops in these regional studios, we just have to ask ourselves: what sets Ufotable apart? Among other things, there’s the predilection for doing a bit of everything they owe to their founder Hikaru Kondo. That has led to them offering a wide array of services—from cafes to cinemas—and directly dealing with customers in a way that naturally led to the organization of a bi-yearly event by the name of Machi★Asobi. With time, that has become not just a noteworthy event within the anime calendar, but also a pretty big deal for the prefecture of Tokushima. As the smallest and least populated of the main islands of Japan, Shikoku rarely gets any love when it comes to otaku events, making MachiAso an important cultural artifact for locals. And by default, that means that Ufotable means something to them; yes, even now that they nominally don’t organize it after Kondo’s tax scandal.

The characteristics of each of those territories affect not just the upside for both parties, but also some downsides. Look no further than P.A. Works, with its identity firmly rooted in the prefecture of Toyama—the hometown of president and founder Kenji Horikawa. After working in Tokyo for various studios throughout the 90s, he had to return to Toyama for family reasons about a decade later. In his view, something had changed in that timespan: the digitization of animation had made it much more doable to maintain a rural anime studio, which would have been a logistics nightmare with fully physical materials. Capitalizing on that opportunity faster than most of his peers, Horikawa created the studio that would become P.A. Works.

To his credit, Horikawa succeeded in establishing a now-beloved studio with a strong identity, both creatively and in its local presence. P.A. Works is another example of strong ties between neighboring cities and an anime studio, which has become a cultural hub for aspiring artists and the population at large. That training aspect is also a major focus of their goals, as we’ve written about before. Though in execution their track record is rather spotty, they’ve kept doubling down on their efforts to nurture artists away from the big city, to the point where there’s no denying that they do mean well and act upon that.

Between their establishment of a training course modeled after a certain studio’s, publishing animation teaching materials by living legend Toshiyuki Inoue (a good friend of Horikawa), and production models like Maquia’s meant to maximize the training opportunities, P.A. Works have more material policies with this training goal in mind than the vast majority of studios. And again, those have to be specifically geared to fitting that specific rural environment; back in 2010, Horikawa already talked about the dormitory they had established for the young animators, as they’d come to the conclusion that you need tools like that to have a sustainable workplace away from the big city.

And yet, as previously stated, the major drawbacks to that can’t be escaped; in their case, they haven’t been able to mitigate it either. Home-grown talent leaving for Tokyo to work in a freelance capacity, maybe jumping around short contractual stints with various studios, is something that all studios in a similar position face. Talent retention at P.A. Works, though, has been particularly troublesome—even more so coinciding with this more recent effort to double down on the training, though I wouldn’t venture to say that the two are related.

If we look back at the young animators being mentored in Maquia (especially the younger in-betweeners), the reality is that the studio has struggled tremendously to benefit even from a once-in-a-generation training effort. Initiatives like this are worthy of praise in an industry that is killing its present and future by neglecting traditional training mechanisms, but for P.A. themselves the results have been less than ideal. For the good and for the not-so-great, there are anime studios that simply can’t be understood without considering their environment, and that often includes how likely you are to convince people to work and live there.

What about KyoAni’s relationship with Uji and Kyoto as a whole, then? If you’ve read our summary of the studio’s history, you should be aware of their origins as a cel painting company for housewives in the neighborhood—something that immediately, materially rooted them into their surrounding community. Few people have had a clearer view of that process than Taku Sugiyama, since he was somewhat to be blamed for this. Sugiyama had entered the anime industry through iconic Toei Douga films, and was later recruited by Osamu Tezuka himself to join MushiPro as a director and writer; making his debut as 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. on Wonder Three, and making appearances on the likes of Astro Boy and Kaitou Pride at the time. As he has explained in multiple interviews and on his own blog, it was also then that his little sister asked for help to join the anime industry, so he introduced her to the studio where she began working as a painter. Her name was Yoko Sugiyama, but chances are that you know her as Yoko Hatta.

Sugiyama notes that despite that fruitful experience there, his sister found herself quickly moving to Kyoto, where she would settle after marrying Hideaki Hatta. Not being one to sit idly, however, by the beginning of the 80s she was already organizing an anime painting crew alongside the local housewives. She once again prodded her brother to hook her up with some acquaintances, which most notoriously included Daikichiro Kusube: an animator who had entered the industry through Toei Douga alongside Sugiyama, and who by this point had already established a studio by the name of Shin-Ei Animation. Kusube sadly passed away in 2005, at the age of 70—and yet, Shin-Ei remains the single studio that Hatta’s company does regular outsourced TV work for to this day. They were introduced through family, and as far as animation production is concerned, it’s no exaggeration to say that the two studios still share a similar bond.

At the time of first gathering neighbors, they weren’t a company yet; they weren’t even Kyoto Animation, but rather Kyoto Anime Studio. Though some of the earliest members only had a passing interest in anime, others have stuck with them for the long run. In the wake of the tragic arson, many outlets began reporting on the unique qualities of a studio that weren’t unknown, yet were hardly given enough attention, almost taking them for granted. Within their piece, The Hollywood Reporter noted that one of those local housewives who joined in 1983 was still working with them, and that her daughter was hired in 2014 as well. That person—misleadingly named Mihoko Kouda there, the correct reading should be Mihoko Eda—did indeed work with them until 2022, when she finally hit the age to retire; don’t ask me who her daughter is unless you want an overly long theory about her being a certain art directorArt Director (美術監督, bijutsu kantoku): The person in charge of the background art for the series. They draw many artboards that once approved by the series director serve as reference for the backgrounds throughout the series. Coordination within the art department is a must – setting and color designers must work together to craft a coherent world. working under a different name. What’s truly important here, though, is how relationships like this demonstrate how deeply rooted the studio remains in the local community it was born out of.

Beyond this small scale, quite literally personal bond with its immediate neighborhood, KyoAni rose to a position of being emblematic of the Kansai region at large. By the time of its creation in the 80s, virtually no anime studios existed in Western Japan. Which that means that, those that did pop up, naturally weaponized their unusual position. Though getting Anime-R off the ground in Osaka wasn’t easy, once they had established a solid foundation—shout out to Kazuaki Mouri—they became an extremely alluring studio for aspiring local artists; enough for a 16 years old Hiroyuki Okiura to begin a career that would lead him to becoming one of the most technically proficient animators of all time. There’s no downplaying personal efforts like his, but the reason why Anime-R’s golden age in the 80s is chockful of stories like that simply cannot be separated from these geopolitical factors.

Similarly, you can assess KyoAni’s lack of competition in its vicinity by that straightforward Kyoto Anime Studio name they first adopted; incidentally, you can also asses the same plain naming sense that would eventually get them to name their branch Kyoto Animation Osaka, before realizing that Animation DO rolls off the tongue better. By preceding most anime studios in the prefecture, and then by making a name for themselves through less abrasive working conditions and a strong reputation for their quality, KyoAni have been the number-one destination for aspiring Kansai artists for quite a while. While that does play a factor in their emphasis on training, I think we ought to explore how that quality of being emblematic of their specific area interacts with their artistic tendencies as well.

As we covered at greater length in our piece about the studio’s history, KyoAni’s fondness of carefully depicting the daily lives of their characters precedes what people know as KyoAni anime. If you were to narrow it down to a single mastermind, that would be the late legend Yoshiji Kigami, who arrived at the studio through the aforementioned Shin-Ei link and quickly became a mentor to everyone. Kigami fostered a thoughtful approach to characterization through animation that inevitably rooted the characters’ daily lives in physical, existing spaces—especially once they started producing their own shows, and thus handling the location hunting themselves. By beautifully depicting those places after thorough research, and then holding an uncompromising attitude when it comes to animating what living in those locations might be like, they’ve been making anime that accidentally doubles as tourism ads. KyoAni’s name has become inseparable from the anime pilgrimage phenomenon, which they revitalized in 2007 with Lucky Star and have kept being a key factor in. Their way of making anime is simply conducive to it.

With all of that in mind, the eventual outcome appears inescapable. What happens if you have a popular studio that is emblematic of one location, with personal ties with its inhabitants, and that is characterized by a style that emphasizes the daily life in the setting of their stories? There’s only one possible answer: those people will want to tell stories about their home. The moment KyoAni grew big enough to have the leading voice in what they would animate, they strongly pivoted towards stories centered in Kyoto and nearby locations, especially through their own imprint of KA Esuma. That’s not to say that they won’t animate stories set in other locations in the country—their latest TV shows are Tsurune, mostly set in Nagano, and Maidragon bouncing around Saitama and wherever big lizards come from—or even jump to different countries and fantastical places altogether. Even when they do that, though, there’s still that grounding element that brings them to model aspects off real locations; as seen throughout Violet Evergarden, with its specific roots in Germany.

That predilection for applying this style to stories set in Kyoto has been an important aspect when it comes to their title selection, something that viewers overseas often fail to realize; if not the fact that it happens, at least how prevalent it really is. The studio had a history of relocating stories without a definite setting to nearby places (K-ON! in the neighboring Toyosato, Shiga, with nods to Kyoto itself) or to directly tell original stories in their neighborhood (Tamako Market & Tamako Love Story, with their heart in Demachi Masugata Shopping Street). Whether consciously or not, the nods in the awards the studio used to select new stories they’d have control of trended in the direction of Kansai too, with multiple examples between those that they’ve animated and the ones that remained in book form.

Such is their local bias that, when a writer who often works with them like Jukki Hanada was asked about his tendency to work on stories set alongside a local line of trains, he added some more like Kyoukai no Kanata… and a certain unspecified title with an adaptation already announced. Given that all his upcoming series are located elsewhere, and that KyoAni’s 20 Seiki Denki Mokuroku is unsurprisingly set in Kyoto, he might have alluded to having written the scripts for its adaptation.

If that were true, it wouldn’t even be the first time that we’ve been able to guess an upcoming project of the studio because of their fondness for their home. Back when Eupho’s anime adaptation was first announced in October 2014, it was a rather obscure novel with one single volume and not even a manga adaptation to speak of. It might have seemed bizarre to hear rumors that KyoAni pursued such a niche title to adapt it, and yet people with deep knowledge about the anime industry sorta bought into those despite some details about the supposed leak having turned out to be false. Why did they believe, then? The reason was simple: the author was from Kyoto, and so was her story. If there’s one relatively practical bit of knowledge you’ll retain from this history lesson, let it be this: no better bait for this crew than a story tangibly set in their home.

Given this context, if there’s one surprising fact, it’s that KyoAni wasn’t collaborating with local entities all that much in an official manner. Uji and surrounding areas were plastered with their works, visited by their fans, but it was something that those cities passively benefited from rather than actively pursuing. Ever since the arson, though, it feels as if all parties involved are working towards strengthening the bonds that have always united them—which is to say that now they won’t stop commissioning the studio. That may come in a highly specific form, like their staff painting two posters for the Kyoto State Guest House so lifelike that everyone confuses them for photos when they first look at them. Right now, it’s this long collaboration campaign with the municipality of Uji, which is in the midst of an effort to highlight its historical heritage and current qualities alike.

In the same way they’re collaborating with the NHK period drama Hikaru Kimi he / Dear Radiance because of its depiction of local icon Murasaki Shikibu (author of The Tale of Genji), they’ve also been highlighting the role of Uji’s most renowned modern creators in KyoAni. And as noted at the beginning of this piece, they’re willing to mix the two. When it comes to the studio, the first role they were commissioned for was to produce that visual featuring Murasaki herself and various Uji inhabitants across different eras, unveiled on October 31 2023. Also in that visual, you can see a certain rabbit that stars in the logo that KyoAni designed for that broader Uji campaign. That cute creature is representative of Ujigami Shrine, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and possibly the oldest Shinto shrine in the country. Its ever-present rabbit motif comes from the legend that, at a time when the crown prince had become lost, it was the Way Back Rabbit who guided him back to safety by hopping in the right direction. And so, you’ll still find these cuties in all shapes and forms in the shrine, from figurines to fortune slips.

When asked to animate a 2 minutes commercial for that same promotional campaign, the studio subverted that same legend. Uji ni wa Monogatari ga Aru features Akane, the same 23 years old tourist seen in the initial visual, visiting the shrine and meeting the Way Back Rabbit. As divine messengers do, the rabbit eats her smartphone whole and then dashes away, forcing Akane to follow through beautiful landmarks, pleasant local delicacies (lots of matcha, of course), and even to come to face with Murasaki herself. In the process of bringing their beloved city to life, however, things got out of hand. Remember that 2 minutes runtime they were asked for? No one at the studio did, because they instead submitted 6 minutes and a half. As the press releases stated, approximately 120 staff members found their way into this project, which was in the making for 3.5 months—1 for storyboarding, 2.5 to animate it—and piled up 6.5k drawings total; something that studio reps called the equivalent of your average TV anime episode, but would be more than that if applied to the industry at large.

Considering the large number of participants we just stated, it might sound like it was a free-for-all production. And while they did all want to have a hand in depicting their city, framing it like that obscures the true nature of the project. We began this piece by talking about the natural propensity of anime studios outside the big city to become a place of careful mentorship, something that the industry is in dire need of. When it comes to Kyoto Animation, that hasn’t so much been an aspect of the studio but the goal, sometimes feeling even more important than actually producing anime.

When she was recruiting painters in the early 80s, Yoko Hatta wouldn’t seek people with experience, but rather publish ads saying they would teach people how to do it. As we’ve written about before, the renowned KyoAni School precedes their own anime, and continues to be just the starting point of their continuous development of talent. Even when pondering about the repercussions of tools like AI animation, their worries are framed from the angle of perhaps no longer being able to pass down skills to future generations—that is the role of the studio to their veterans. It’s not a surprise that a studio like this wouldn’t only have systems of training, but also projects on the side for the newbies to experiment.

Traditionally, side jobs like the Shin-Ei 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. have been a playground for newcomers, though always under the supervision of veterans who know the Shin-chan franchise like the back of their hand; the first role as trainees for studio stars like Taichi Ishidate was to draw its irreverent protagonist, something that you’d never know by looking at ending credits. In their process of recovery from the arson attack, however, the studio has attempted to carve out more of those safe spaces for training through side projects of their own that would still have less pressure than their popular titles. The studio’s comeback to TV with Maidragon S was accompanied by a short web series fully animated by their younger staff, as well as two commercials led by those fresh faces. Incidentally, one of them was Haruki Sakamoto, who has since then returned to the Tokyo he hailed from and his old friends like Ichigo Kanno—a very interesting mix of influences that has allowed him to handle the most delicate bits of animation in Dungeon Meshi.

The studio’s reinvigorated desire to create these safer spaces of training and experimentation for young artists doesn’t just manifest through animation, but also other types of jobs that end up on the studio’s lap… and the ones they make up too. On some levels, it’s fairly traditional stuff; rather than entrusting the official illustrations for magazines and merch to character designers, directors, and studio aces as was the norm, nowadays those are mostly handled by the younger folks at the studio. In other instances, it’s the studio’s quirkier side which opens up those opportunities. Hagureboshi no Uta is an experiment between Ishidate and composer Evan Call to combine writing, art, and music in the form of a multimedia book. To complete the team, the former held an audition for writers that was won by the young Ayano Sato, then personally chose the equally inexperienced Shiori Yamasaki as the artist—he’d taken notice of her talents across Violet Evergarden and she was up for a new challenge, so that ended up being a perfect match.

Though each of these side projects chooses its participants differently, it’s no coincidence that they’ve consistently landed in the hands of young staff members. In a long, rather interesting interview about what goes into the making of a book’s cover and illustrations, one of them let it slide that it’s essentially expected that fresh members who haven’t gotten to branch out like this before will land at least one such project. Mao Takayama of the art department had been painting backgrounds for the studio’s works since right before the arson, which meant that due to the company slowing down, she didn’t have all that much experience yet. She credits her nomination to work on Moon Fighters to that fact, though it’s also true that her name did come up when the rest of the team was asking for someone with the right skills, and that her portfolio made them wonder how there was someone that impressive still relatively unknown among their ranks; given how beautiful her art already was as a student, I don’t think they’re exaggerating.

By handing these opportunities, they’re not only offering practical training grounds to these up-and-coming figures, but also helping mitigate an issue that not even they can avoid: talent retention. While their staff sticks around for longer than they do anywhere else in the industry, some members still part ways with them at some point. In a recent interview, now-renowned designer Atsushi Saito reminisces about his fun anecdotes at the studio. When talking about his departure, he saw it necessary to point out that he did so on good terms (hence why an exception was made and he got to work on his beloved Koe no Katachi), but that he was attracted to the idea of working freelance in Tokyo for whatever title he wanted, as opposed to only ever focusing on KyoAni’s titles. His story is not uncommon among those who’ve left, and shows the obvious downside to the studio’s fully in-house model.

As an extension to that, some notable individuals have also left because they saw it unlikely that they would move up the ladder into positions to lead their own projects, which is more or less inevitable at a fairly large studio that insists on making fewer titles than the norm. Perhaps to avoid encountering that issue even more now that they’ve further reduced their output, they’ve also diversified it through all these side projects. The young Yamasaki herself expressed that she had the desire to try higher responsibility procedures like color scripts and concept art that a regular background artist within their pipeline wouldn’t be entrusted with, which she saw fulfilled through Hagureboshi’s unusual means.

These entertaining diversions for the younger staff have already served to test promising individuals at the next level, before they start leading major projects at the studio. The most beautiful of those 2021 commercials had character designs and supervision by Tamami Tokuyama, who over the last couple of years has moved up to become the studio’s newest animation director; a job she has done while maintaining the same appealing round forms already seen in that side project. Uji ni wa Monogatari ga Aru is set up similarly, with pretty much nothing but newcomers in leading roles, perhaps as a final test before they do so for major titles. That includes, for example, the aforementioned Takayama: making her debut as art directorArt Director (美術監督, bijutsu kantoku): The person in charge of the background art for the series. They draw many artboards that once approved by the series director serve as reference for the backgrounds throughout the series. Coordination within the art department is a must – setting and color designers must work together to craft a coherent world., overseeing the beautiful, somewhat fantastic depiction of their city. She worked alongside the equally green leaders of the other aesthetic departments—new color designerColor Designer (色彩設定/色彩設計, Shikisai Settei/Shikisai Sekkei): The person establishing the show's overall palette. Episodes have their own color coordinator (色指定, Iroshitei) in charge of supervising and supplying painters with the model sheets that particular outing requires, which they might even make themselves if they're tones that weren't already defined by the color designer. Yuki Honiden, and debuting director of photographyPhotography (撮影, Satsuei): The marriage of elements produced by different departments into a finished picture, involving filtering to make it more harmonious. A name inherited from the past, when cameras were actually used during this process. Keisuke Sudo—to craft an aesthetic with a subtle parchment texture; as if Uji’s past was really printed on a scroll, but not so visible that it obstructs the beauty of it all.

When it comes to the role of character design and animation directionAnimation Direction (作画監督, sakuga kantoku): The artists supervising the quality and consistency of the animation itself. They might correct cuts that deviate from the designs too much if they see it fit, but their job is mostly to ensure the motion is up to par while not looking too rough. Plenty of specialized Animation Direction roles exist – mecha, effects, creatures, all focused in one particular recurring element., this short film also features the debut of Kengo Narimatsu. That likely means he drew the original illustration that kicked off this project, which I had personally assumed was the work of Nobuaki Maruki due to his expertise in constructing complex layoutsLayouts (レイアウト): The drawings where animation is actually born; they expand the usually simple visual ideas from the storyboard into the actual skeleton of animation, detailing both the work of the key animator and the background artists.. Given Narimatsu’s uncanny versatility for his age and how clean his art remains regardless of the task, this isn’t actually much of a twist—by which I mean that I accidentally predicted his promotion mere hours before this video dropped out of nowhere, just because his talent was that obvious.

At first glance it may seem that the directorial roles are a bit of an exception to this wave of youth, but the truth is more interesting than that. Takuya Yamamura is indeed the chief director, and while by all means he still qualifies as a promising young star, he already has some (wonderful) project direction experience under his belt thanks to Tsurune. Given what we have heard from the production of this short film, though, it appears like he had more of a supervision role, while the hands-on direction was left to an absolute newcomer. Ayumu Yoshida has only ever been credited for in-betweening once (Tsurune S2) and twice for 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. duties (Tsurune’s sequel again, as well as Eupho Ensemble Contest), and yet she was the sole unit director and storyboarder for this Uji promotion. She handled jobs that normally wouldn’t be in the hands of a unit director, let alone someone with no experience whatsoever. For one, she was the person who chose and invited the music composers; a role with even more responsibility than usual, as Uji ni wa Monogatari ga Aru has no dialogue and instead relies on the music matching her first boards ever.

In the end, the result was beyond satisfactory. Yoshida’s storyboards smartly use reflections to overlay the multiple eras of Uji on top of each other, and get fairly creative once the protagonist steps into the local museum. The scrolling compositions enhance the performative aspect, as if she had stumbled into a theater with a historical play, and the various tricks used to make it flow seamlessly add to how mesmerizing it all is. If you just so happen to visit Uji, accessing this site with your GPS on will lead you to an easy quiz and the full video as your reward. And if you happen to know how to spoof such a thing (or how to look up a video on certain sites) instead, you can watch it anyway—but you should still visit Uji if possible, it’s a beautiful place! The people who produced the video can and will vouch for that.

Do you need to develop personal and historical bonds with the location of your anime studio to make something this gorgeous? The answer is no, of course. That isn’t even doable if you’re one of many anime studios within the same Tokyo districts, or if your staff works remotely across different places. What an approach like this allows, though, is to foster anime’s much-needed mentorship in more fitting environments. And while it’s not necessarily a factor in the quality of the resulting work (though in cases as extreme as KyoAni’s, it’s clearly a factor in what they want to depict), these relationships with local communities add extra layers of appreciation to them, making them richer in the end.

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