To mourn the end of Pop Team Epic, or maybe to celebrate the death of the #1 crappy anime, we went over the many unique, often non-commercial artists at its core, figuring out how such a cheeky series became anime’s greatest hub of experimental animators.
Today we’re bringing you a series of interview translations featuring Bocchi the Rock’s core staff members, talking at length about the appeal they saw in the series, and the drive behind an adaptation that is as inventive as it is technically impressive.
Fall 2022 is a historically loaded season of anime, the result of concentrating essentially a year’s worth of top talent in one single burst through bold and sometimes aggressive management. It more than deserves a deep dive into many of these titles and the teams behind them—the accomplished veterans, very promising youngsters, and experimental artists leading their own projects, as well as the production circumstances behind this madness.
Masaaki Yuasa’s Tatami Galaxy stood as a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, so how is Time Machine Blues perfectly recreating its charm 12 years later and under a different director? This is how context does (and doesn’t) affect the creation of such unique anime.
Lycoris Recoil is the surprise hit of 2022 thus far. A chaotic project that grew in an organic way with the arrival of its director, turning uncertain circumstances into the fuel for their bombastic but very personable character story, which also serves as a love letter to action films.
It’s been 20 years since Princess Tutu, which means it’s been over 28 years since its first draft, and many more decades since Ikuko Itoh picked up the interests that would lead to it. Let’s take this anniversary as an opportunity to retell the long history of this lengthy production, and how a personal distraction and her relationship with Junichi Sato led to anime’s most unique, rebellious, and emotive series about the act of storytelling.
The layouts, the backbone of Japanese animation and its keen sense of immersion, are currently shattering. In this long dive, we contrasted the views of industry veterans and fresh faces with our own findings: the death of studio culture and training cycles, the pressure of cynical commercialism, the inherent labor issues, and the attempts to address it all.
Kaguya-sama Season 3 was a massively fun & heartfelt romcom gem, but unbeknownst to many, it also was a constant fight against adversity that had its team prove they’re among the most resourceful and creative people in anime. Let’s recap its whole production!
10 years ago, director Kenji Iwaisawa absentmindedly agreed to create a movie about a group of school delinquents absentmindedly becoming musicians. The result of its long production process was On-Gaku: an outrageously funny deadpan comedy, which will encourage you to create as recklessly as its team and characters did.
10 years ago, Toei Animation released Nijiiro Hotaru: Rainbow Fireflies, the stunning culmination of a lengthy production to honor the iconic works of their past and the power of traditional animation altogether. A decade later, the loss of projects like this threatens the studio’s future.