Secret Sabunga Notes #05 (Patreon)

We’ve got a bunch of articles nearing completion for the blog, but missing just a bit of time for various reasons; just another episode for a witchy series, polishing up a piece about a found family, waiting for the publication of an interview for LoGH & Golden Kamuy’s love child, doing more obsessive research for a few titles even though it ultimately won’t be necessary, and so on. I’ll publish another set of notes here to update on those and also comment on stuff this year that might not get a dedicated article, but in the meantime I wanted to publish something for supporters to enjoy during the blog downtime. Yell at me to do this more often, it’s what this format is supposed to be for.

Anyway, this is all going to be themed around KyoAni for multiple reasons:

·       We attended their studio event last year and have maybe more production materials footage than anyone on earth, so it’d be good to dump that somewhere.

·       We also attended staff events where interesting stuff was discussed.

·       The studio has announced a bunch of titles and they’ve got one airing in about a month, so it’d be good to update people on those productions.

·       This format is lawless as far as I’m concerned, so less of a reason to dance around some inner workings stuff.

KyoAni Event Production Materials Exhibit

An attendee pointed out something I’d been taking for granted, but it really is luxurious to be able to appreciate thousands of original production materials. You can print digital work or set up screens to showcase it, and of course there is still a bunch of analog art being created within anime, but there is no major studio where all the animation is done on paper the way those Kyoto nerds do. This included some aspects you don’t always get to see, like concept art, the materials for key visuals, physical endcards, etc.

Among the coolest exhibits was Tatsuya Ishihara’s actual desk. In previous, pre-arson instances of the event, they’d brought over an entire production line with their work stations, so the staff was creating episodes of Violet Evergarden while being closely watched by the attendees. That might have hurt their productivity, but do you know what impacted it even more? Ishihara realizing that, by having his desk away for a week, he had no place to work at the studio.

There were exhibits explaining the studio’s history, how anime is made step by step, but the fundamental appeal is being able to see the production materials for their works. Among them, CITY’s obviously stood out. You’ll be able to tell which are the douga/in-betweens because of the executive choice to draw every single one of them with a brush pen, which is maybe the most demented thing a TV anime has done. Better not get one line wrong.

There was a separate exhibit where you were allowed to flip through storyboards. It hadn’t actually been announced, so the people who found it early on the first day were able to check them at their leisure. By day 2, you only got one minute because their megahits were in extremely high demand. Fortunately, we got to have our sweet time with CITY #5 early on, so you can see how the storyboard for such a demented episode worked: regular boards with increasingly more panels, and then a separate appendix for the tiny windows.

Can’t capture the charm of CITY’s production without showing all the physical props and arts and crafts projects, but fortunately they had that covered. Of course, that includes the diorama for that fifth episode, as well as videos explaining the process to make it.

Speaking of videos, they also did have genga/douga reproductions to flip through entire sequences. They started degrading with the passage of attendees flipping them and I found out that the friend who came with me has the disease of being bad at flipping (definitely not me also), but here are some of them:

Due to the proximity of the production and how much the series is beloved by the studio, there was also a metric ton of Eupho materials. Including, of course, an euphonium.

Free! may be long over but is still massively popular, so it was very well represented as well. I got to check its storyboards too, which at points required queuing for hours. Me? Bullshit luck at exactly the right second they were adding a new queue.

Similarly to Free!, Violet Evergarden has become a mainstay due to its enduring, massive popularity. Always stunning production materials because they pack so much detail.

No need to Imagine Dragons because they were right there as well.

Tsurune and even Chuu2koi had some presence as well, as you’d expect from Esuma titles. Phantom World? They don’t know anyone by that name.

Staff Stages Highlights

Another big draw to these events is the possibility to attend stages hosted by all sorts of creators at the studio across many departments, talking about specific projects but also their approach to animation production in general. In that regard, the most interesting panel in this latest edition was the episode directors' one featuring Ogawa, Yamamura, Ota, and Miyagi. After an introduction to the job for all attendees not that well-versed in the craft, they proceeded to talk about their personal highlights in recent works, as well as how it felt to work in certain titles.

As the newbie in that position, they all doted on Miyagi a lot, happily listening to him talk about how he emphasizes the key animation stage (which he still personally handles a lot, very much in Ishidate pupil ways) as he did for the amazing race in CITY #09. The likes of Yamamura want to move the audience even if it’s through mere scenery, while Ogawa is in a phase—thanks to the experience he’s built up and advice from greater veterans—of consciousness about not getting tricky with the delivery for its own sake. They even shared what it’s like working with some directors who didn’t attend that particular panel, poking fun at the fact that Ishihara is all about physically communicating his vision to the staff through gestures and acting out sequences, so everyone’s staring at him rather than the storyboards during their meetings.

The most interesting corner was dedicated to what they deemed the key to excelling as a director: fetishism. They didn’t mean it in the way many would assume, though they happily shared their passion for side views of handsome men (Ota), necks and both thickness or thinness of legs as appropriate (Ogawa), or even appealing flutter of flags and clothes (Miyagi really does have an animator’s brain). Beyond specifics, what they value the most is the obsessiveness with specifics, tied with a core studio belief that as a creator you must constantly go out there and experience/observe things. As the industry gradually morphs into the business of being hype merchants, turning creators effectively into publicists for others, it feels important to value this type of insane passion not for one popular series but for specific minutiae that eat up the brain of the artist.

Beyond this one, the stages dedicated to multiple series featuring creators with hands on many if not all of them were also neat. This allowed the staff to expand on topics they’d already mentioned before, like the cyclical process to design Mayu (big favorite within the studio!) for Eupho S3, which went through multiple pitches just to ultimately land on the rather unsettling color scheme that had been initially proposed. The quest to nail CITY’s art direction is something that Ishidate had spoken about before, but as the person directly in charge, Shiori Yamasaki showcased how they gradually abandoned textures, the adjustments to the colors to nail that summery feeling, and the tweaks to the line thickness to maintain the visual readability. Creators like her who don’t usually get the spotlight were able to share both their thoughts and regrets, like Nobuaki Maruki’s desire to eventually animate a truly reptilian drake for Maidragon. As far as title-specific stages, though, the most compelling one was dedicated to a then still unannounced work. Which brings us to…

Denmoku is Almost Here

And it’s also finished, which I suppose is worth bringing up. It has been for a while as well; rookie series director Ota recently mentioned that he moved desks (and thus spent an entire day doing no work) at the beginning of April as they tend to do at the studio, which he would have delayed if he were still very busy. I know for a fact that Maidragon was finished in February 2025 and CITY before May of that year, and while I don’t have an exact date in the same way for this project, I do know it was already in fully fledged animation tasks after that CITY closure. Ota is currently on a world tour that has already taken him to London and will drag him to the US (AX), Germany (AnimegiC), of course Japan itself, and… well not Thailand, since it’s the one stop in this global tour of prescreenings that he won’t attend. Not bad for someone who hadn’t left the country until now, though!

As he has made obvious in these ongoing events, and as early as that reveal stage & accompanying interviews, Ota is taking a wild swing with his directorial debut. Rather than approaching the charming romcom at the core of the story in a more straightforward way, as it may have happened if the initial project hadn’t been rebooted due to the arson, Ota has attempted to reimagine its setting in a way that better embodies the ideas he found sharpest about Denmoku. The concept of bringing revolution to Meiji era Japan through the introduction of electricity—elevated into an almighty power—was already present, but they decided to reformulate the starting point. If both the world and characters had sunk into a stagnant, polluted state, what better way to contrast that with the potential of an age of cleaner power than shifting the story to a steampunk Japan? He has compared that to our current need for renewable green energy, so I guess chuds will be boycotting the show.

This process necessarily means transforming the very blue image people had of the series into something grittier. This is not to say that it won’t eventually get there—that’s basically the goal of the protagonist, and the show makes a few nods to the CM that young staff animated inspired by the series. And even within that muddier look, there’s a lot of life they’re trying to imbue into the world. The series is very specifically set in a steampunk version of Kyoto, so they went the extra length to depict human touches that feel both native to their surroundings and also adapted to that specific reality; like, for example, the mud you get from all the leaking pipes being covered by the same type of mats Kyoto folks would use for comparable annoyances.

Beyond those links between the themes and aesthetic, another point of obsession for Ota was exposing both the audience and the team to new forms of expression. He is, for starters, a gloriously weird guy. His insane fifth episode of CITY began with his misunderstanding of Ishidate’s proposal of “making all the plotlines advance at the same time”, which he parsed in an impossibly literal way. As seen in that episode and increasingly so in everything he touches, his multitalent (animation, props, instruments, storyboards, multiple levels of direction) and broad interests push him to try new angles. In Denmoku, this is immediately visible with the painterly, abstract backgrounds, which sometimes he makes a deliberate point in not blending with the character cels. While I expect him to whiff every now and then given that this is his first TV show, I’m very excited about his eccentric brilliance.

This all may sound rather serious for what was originally a romcom, but they haven’t forgotten about that aspect. The comedy in particular is, according to all the prescreening attendees, immediately present. It’s not a coincidence that one of the most prominently featured characters (and already a staff favorite) is a flamboyant man who is clearly conscious of how perfectly chiseled his butt is. Even the animation itself can play it quite loose, showing that the team still carries some CITY inertia. And that’s a pretty damn good thing to have!

Ishidate’s Next Project is Literally Cinema

It’s a movie and about making movies, c’mon. As was recently announced, Umi ga Hashiru End Roll / The Credits Roll Into the Sea will be adapted by the studio for a 2027 release. This shoujo manga about a 65yo widow picking up interest in filmmaking may seem like an unexpected choice, and Ishidate does relish that. There hasn’t been any interview over the last few years where he hasn’t expressed his desire to constantly make new things, to avoid getting pigeonholed into one specific profile (VEG’s success will haunt him forever, lol) and also to train the whole studio in ways that wouldn’t be possible without a diverse output. At the same time, there is no studio with a stronger history in capturing amateur filmmaking than KyoAni; Haruhi’s iconic first episode, an entire arc in Hyouka, even as recently as Niikura’s janky youtuber adventures, they’ve collectively shown great interest in capturing the authentic vibe of non-professional films.

Looking at the teaser and stunning reveal visual, I expect Yamasaki to return alongside him. The style in the latter is close to the work they did together for Hagureboshi, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Ishidate called Evan Call back as well; would be a welcome development, not only because they’re good friends, but also because that guy is funny as hell. Given that they’ve shown no regular animation, there’s no grounds to make a guess about other main staff members, but those might become obvious after Denmoku—the good ol’ trick of “whoever is missing here is preparing something else”.

As a final note for now, it’s worth pointing out that End Roll is 9 volumes long and should by no means be rushed through. Even if they had wanted to, which they most definitely wouldn’t, the decision to animate it precedes the end of the series; it only wrapped up at the end of last year, with the final volume being released alongside this recent announcement. This is to say that the movie shouldn’t be a complete adaptation, but some degree of reimagination of this story. I know for a fact that faithfulness-rotten brains will argue that it should have been a long TV series instead, to which I would say: why the hell wouldn’t you make a film based on the story about how making films is uniquely thrilling? Adaptations are companion pieces, and this could be a beautiful one.

RuriDragon? Eupho? Other things?

Before this recent reveal, it had already been announced that the studio partnered up with the devil for the first time to produce a TV anime for RuriDragon. Spooky as it is to see their name alongside the words Shonen Jump, they’ve yet to change their project selection rules—nothing ever gets made at the studio without the proactive interest of the core staff. And when it comes to depicting the daily life of a girl who is also a dragon, you shouldn’t be surprised that there are quite a few people at the studio fond of that idea.

That begs the question: who’s making it and when is it coming out? The initial reveal and a few reminders since then have emphasized that it’s still a ways away, having only gotten that early announcement because it was the protagonist’s birthday. At the same time, though, we can’t forget that a very likely series director (unless Denmoku’s staff allocation suggests otherwise) is Ishihara, who has been free since February 2025. Considering the Kadowaki-ish designs, there could be genuine continuity between Maidragon and RuriDragon’s teams, which would easily allow another 2027 release. They could easily have it finished by Winter/Spring, but the studio’s buffer has been protected so much in recent times that I could see it releasing later. If the series direction is going into someone else’s hands (Yamamura would be excellent, but I'd take a new promotion as well), then even more so. For now, I’m a preemptive Ishihara x Kadowaki x Summer 27 believer.

The other upcoming work on their slate is the final Eupho film, which I stopped myself from calling a recap because it’s reframing the story and adding all sorts of new scenes (and performances!). Even then, they’re already polishing it up for its September release, so Ogawa & co should be available once more. As Kumiko’s story has ended, it feels inevitable that the studio will eventually get to the spinoff sequel focused on everyone’s favorite river ship. Will that happen soon? I’m less confident now than I used to be, after they revealed that this quick revisit of S3 was a wish of their now late founder—someone who dearly loved a series that depicts their literal neighborhood. The appreciation for those things is going nowhere, but they might want to let the series breathe.

And after that? No idea, and I treasure that. Anytime the studio teases a new reveal, the comments are nothing but sequels to past hits, often ones owned by other companies that wouldn’t grant them creative and financial freedom. It’s things like that which make me understand how the iterative, fundamentally unoriginal genAI machine has tragically captivated so many people who only desire familiar keys jingling. So Kyoto nerds, keep doing your weird little things and swerve as you please. Do make that Natsuki & Yuko film at some point tho, I know people at the studio campaigning for it.