We’re heading into a Spring anime season that, barring a few exceptions, won’t have as many prestige projects and obvious animation festivals as some of the lineups we’ve covered before. However, it makes up for that with a multitude of smaller projects with potential to shine in unique ways. With talent being spread so thin, including some unlikely projects that would normally get overlooked, this preview is more needed than ever!
Since people seemed to enjoy the first rundown, here’s another look at many interesting books released by individual staff members and creative teams during the last edition of Comiket. It’s not just a very direct way for them to reach fans, it also allows us access to production materials and original art that wouldn’t have been shared otherwise. Enjoy!
Good evening, good afternoon and good morning ladies and gentlemen! We find ourselves at the end of another year, recalling the good and the bad times, celebrating the lack of a hangover despite a wild night out, but also struck with the fear of hanging over a toilet bowl on New Year’s Day to keep the scales balanced. Most importantly, though, it’s the time of the year where we round up the sakubuta to present the ever-growing Sakuga Bowl and…
Now that Land of the Lustrous is at its halfway point, it feels like a good moment to look into the intertwined creative decisions that have led to such a special series, as an adaptation and on its own right. The staff have been fairly open about the production process too, which means we can peek behind the scenes a bit to look at their craft and the mindset behind it. Hopefully this will deepen your appreciation of the show,…
Dissociating individual elements from productions as a whole isn’t as easy as it might seem, but sometimes it feels like some aspects are faring particularly well. We’ve had seasons of anime with many instances of outstanding voice acting, animation, and this time around I would say we’re lucky in another regard — the art direction. There’s little to no barrier to appreciating beautiful sceneries in anime, and yet it tends to stay just as that, without giving actual names and underlining…
Every new season we do our best to curate the massive wave of new TV anime, so you know which projects don’t only have interesting premises, but also the staff to allow them to flourish and an environment where production isn’t at risk of crashing. Many interesting creators have gathered this season on projects you might not have paid attention to, so don’t miss this special feature!
My Hero Academia’s animation producer Yoshihiro Oyabu mentioned on twitter that episode 30 was the result an all-out lineup of creators, commanded by Yoshihiko Umakoshi…who’s celebrating his birthday! Let’s see if the episode delivered on all that promise.
The end of an anime season causes key staff to give the best treatment possible to their shows, but also means that by this point most productions have become messy and the information about them becomes scarce and less reliable. Let’s try to make sense out of it, while noting the episodes that are shaping up to be particularly strong. Featuring My Hero Academia, Boruto, Little Witch Academia, Eromanga Sensei, Tiger Mask and some more guests!
Studio Ghibli’s announcement that they were halting regular operations in 2014 hit mainstream sources as hard as any piece of anime news ever could. It was such a big deal that the discourse understandably revolved around what this would mean for the industry as a whole, but that also means a smaller scale issue was mostly overlooked: Miyazaki was retiring and Takahata on his way out, but what about everyone else at the studio?
We’re back with our regular feature exploring the most fascinating opening and ending sequences of the anime season that has just begun; their thematic strengths, the staff that produced them, all those neat pieces of insight you hopefully will appreciate. Let’s go!