Gridman is a series where creators and fans are not separate entities, but rather intertwined and constantly co-evolving groups. We’re due a retrospective about the production of its latest film Gridman Universe, the franchise altogether, and how the staff navigated that unique situation.
While fans tend to think about production circumstances as black and white, Frieren exemplifies what success tends to look like in the real world: a result of resourceful management, delegation of the right tasks to the right people, and ingenuous solutions to tricky situations.
At its absolute best, Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 is a focused effort to fully realize its directors’ ideas, from the grandest action to the least perceptible details. But at all points, it’s also something else: a fight against an asphyxiating schedule. Let’s catch up with one of the biggest, coolest, but also most troublesome productions of the year.
By popular demand, we’re starting a new column for shorter commentary on animated works and their craft, as well as news and general industry happenings. To open things up: parallels between Hayao Miyazaki and Masayuki Yoshihara’s new films, the quiet theming amidst the bombast of Frieren #06, and much more!
Frieren is, at its best, a story tightly written about time; its passage, how different people perceive it, and the tangible marks it leaves in the world and its inhabitants. Its anime adaptation is a beautiful spectacle, but what makes it truly extraordinary is how it imagines that setting and people beyond the original boundaries, solidifying their existence so that you can feel their aging almost physically.
As the anime industry fails to properly train new generations of creators, “convenient” technological advances (whether good or not in their own right) have accelerated the loss of technique, fundamentals, and knowledge among the workforce. This is how veterans and newcomers face an already devastating issue that only stands to get worse.
The first episode of Zom 100 is one hell of a showcase of inventive, fresh, and very bombastic animation and direction, all packaged together with clear intent. It’s well worth looking into the team behind it and its rising star of a director, but also into the risks in their approach.
Tengoku Daimakyou is an exceptional series facing equally exceptional challenges. It’s got a production environment and an amalgamation of talent most anime would die for, but also the duty to tackle a fascinatingly weird post-apocalyptic story that is somehow both terrible dense and also mostly laid back in nature. One of a kind!
Skip and Loafer is as pleasant as anime gets. Its director is Kotomi Deai, and this is how she went from being a fan of Shinichiro Watanabe, to collaborating with him and other renowned creators, carving her inconspicuous niche in the industry.
The collapse of anime’s mentorship systems and the attempts to fix them aren’t new. At its peak 10 years ago, the Young Animator Training Project produced Little Witch Academia and Death Billiards while raising new talent—but did it succeed, and what’s their legacy now?