[0:09] It can be difficult to talk about Studio MAPPA.
What I’d say in 2015 would be very different
[0:15] from what I can say about the studio today,
on its 10th anniversary. The company has changed
[0:20] a lot, as has the anime industry as a whole,
and instead of fighting the trends, MAPPA
[0:26] has firmly adapted to them. They’ve earned
the title of hit-maker but lost the title
[0:32] of risk-maker.
[0:33] At the time, MAPPA was referred to as the
team that would make the sort of shows nobody
[0:38] else would. But now, the studio has changed,
focusing instead on accepting work from companies
[0:43] like Aniplex, Shonen Jump, Netflix and Crunchyroll,
rather than letting their directors develop
[0:49] new ideas themselves. They’re often referred
to as goats, but it’s more accurate to say
[0:55] they’re sheep to an industry that continues
to burn out its most valuable artists.
[1:00] [baah]
[1:01] Sorry, that joke genuinely was awful. There
is plenty to love about MAPPA, from the creativity
[1:07] of Zombie Land Saga, to the trusting of Yuri
on Ice’s creators, and the incredible animation
[1:12] of Jujutsu Kaisen but these successes have
sacrifices.
[1:18] Hello and welcome to The Canipa Effect. This
is an anime studio spotlight on Studio MAPPA.
[1:40] MAPPA shows can be great and more significantly,
popular. But popularity was never truly the
[1:46] goal, but rather, something the studio fell
victim to, warping the philosophy of its founder.
[1:52] And so, to learn about MAPPA, we need to learn
about the man in the name. MAPPA. Maruyama
[1:58] Animation Produce Project Association. Let’s
get to know him.
[2:05] Masao Maruyama started out in the industry
in 1963, same year as Hayao Miyazaki. And
[2:12] like Miyazaki, he’s refused to retire since.
He joined Mushi Production, owned by the founder
[2:18] of TV anime, Osamu Tezuka and when the company
went bankrupt in the early 70s, it exploded
[2:24] into a fountain of talent, who went on to
create TMS Entertainment, Sunrise, Kyoto Animation,
[2:30] and of course Madhouse, assembled by Maruyama’s
own group of friends. Each of these creators
[2:36] was shaped in some way by Tezuka, and thus,
so is the anime industry as we know it today.
[3:07] Madhouse started out as a way of making cool
shows with his cool friends, but over time,
[3:12] Maruyama found more friends. These included
Made in Abyss director, Masayuki Kojima. Cardcaptor
[3:18] Sakura director Morio Asaka. Yuri on Ice director
Sayo Yamamoto, Mob Psycho’s Yuzuru Tachikawa,
[3:24] Steins Gates’ Hiroshi Hamasaki, Devilman
Crybaby’s Masaaki Yuasa. Sword Art Online’s
[3:29] Tomohiko Ito, Attack on Titan’s Tetsuro
Araki. Mamoru Hosoda. Satoshi Kon. Sunao Katabuchi.
[3:35] Takeshi Koike. And many many more. Basically,
he made a creative haven for the industry’s
[3:40] most creative directors and helped launch
their careers, recognising them as director
[3:46] material. No other producer has the breadth
and quality of Masao Maruyama’s career.
[3:51] The focus at the time was always on shows
that were interesting to those at the stuio
[3:56] and there was always a good mix. Plenty of
shows that the creators at Madhouse wanted
[4:00] to make, along with shows that other companies
wanted them to make. This culture was important
[4:05] and is the reason so many industry-defining
directors stuck around so long. Madhouse was
[4:11] a place where they could generally do what
they wanted.
[4:14] That was until 2011 when NTV bought the studio.
Suddenly, the culture was gone. The rule used
[4:23] to be, if you can convince Maruyama it’s
interesting, you can make it, but now there
[4:28] was a parent company to deal with. This sparked
a massive exodus where everyone from director
[4:35] to animator left the studio. Mamoru Hosoda was in
the middle of making Wolf Children, and so
[4:40] he created Studio Chizu to finish it off,
rather than stick with Madhouse.
[4:45] “Madhouse literally was represented by Mr.
Maruyama and yeah, without him all the creators
[4:50] were like, “Well, what am I going to do?
Can we stay here and still make the anime
[4:54] that we want to?” Obviously, if another
company owns it, not really, right? So then
[4:59] I had no choice but to create Studio Chizu
on my own.”
[5:03] And so while everyone else went on to create
Science Saru, Studio Chizu and join a bunch
[5:08] of other teams, Maruyama did what he knew
best. He made a new studio. And now, we’re
[5:14] back to Studio MAPPA.
[5:23] For him, starting from scratch was an opportunity.
[5:27] As Madhouse had gotten larger, he’d found
it more and more difficult to make creative
[5:31] works. Unfortunately, it’s always going
to pay better to make the show that a large
[5:35] company wants you to, rather than a passion
project of your own making. But he still fought
[5:41] this. Satoshi Kon films never performed well
at the box office, but Maruyama kept trying
[5:46] over and over again, because he’s the best
director anime’s ever had, who cares if
[5:52] it’s not making money.
[5:53] MAPPA started out with the goal of bringing
back those earlier days of Madhouse, where
[5:57] it’s a bunch of friends making cool anime.
And so he started by ticking one goal off
[6:02] the bucket list. Work with Cowboy Bebop director
Shinichiro Watanabe. Watanabe exists on originality,
[6:10] but despite his critical acclaim, he’s not
exactly a hit-maker. After Samurai Champloo,
[6:15] he’d been working at Studio Madhouse on
new projects, but the funding would always
[6:20] get pulled out from under him.
[6:21] Maruyama was frustrated, so when he was offered
the chance to adapt Kids on the Slope, he
[6:26] handed the manga to Watanabe telling him,
here, you’re making this. And of course,
[6:31] Watanabe accepted, because in his words, nobody
refuses Maruyama. But he did have a catch.
[6:38] He wanted to bring on a producer from Studio
4C called Manabu Otsuka to help them. He’ll
[6:43] come up later.
[6:44] Kids on the Slope was MAPPA’s first show
and it kind of defined the bucket list nature
[6:49] of the studio. Maruyama wanted to finish making
his new film with Sunao Katabuchi so he did.
[6:55] He wanted to make a Garo anime, so he did.
He wanted to work with Tiger and Bunny director
[7:01] Keiichi Sato, so he did. In fact, the show
they made, based on Cygames’ Rage of Bahamut
[7:07] was pitched to the studio purely because a
Cygames producer was entranced by Kids on
[7:12] the Slope.
[7:23] Rage of Bahamut: Genesis itself created a  wave of opportunity for the new studio. Keiichi Sato created a series that people would later
[7:32] refer to as too good for TV anime. It’s
a mindblowing production, with plenty of well-directed
[7:38] moments with incredible animation. And it
might as well be an original series, with
[7:42] how much creative freedom Sato was allowed.
For me, it was the show that put Studio MAPPA on
[7:48] the map and Cygames agreed. Ever since Bahamut,
they’ve funded the studio’s projects and
[7:54] when they set up their own animation studio,
CygamesPictures and bought background company
[7:58] Kusanagi, they’ve returned the favour on
stuff like Attack on Titan: The Final Season
[8:03] and Yuri on Ice.
[8:09] But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. At this point, each show had a goal in mind.
Maruyama predicted that 3D animation would
[8:17] become essential in anime in the future, so he gave Yuichiro Hayashi the mission
[8:22] of learning how to direct 3D animation for
Garo: The Animation. And in fact, that was
[8:27] another goal, he felt it was his responsibility
to give opportunities to younger directors
[8:32] rather than other old men. So in those early days, he helped produce
Shin Itagaki’s Teekyu and for Punch Line,
[8:38] he hired Yutaka Uemura, one of the last remaining
talents at the collapsing Studio GAINAX at
[8:44] the time.
[8:45] And Punch Line perhaps is the main differentiating
point between Maruyama and other old men like
[8:50] Hayao Miyazaki. They’re both stubborn, but
Maruyama recognises that there’s plenty
[8:55] of great shows that aren’t necessarily his
thing. So there’s things like Ushio and
[8:59] Tora, which he’s specifically a fan of and
wanted to make with the Hunter x Hunter team,
[9:03] but stuff like Punch Line, he greenlit it because
they told him it would be about panties, and
[9:08] he jokingly thought, hey it’ll be easier
to animate if they don’t have clothes on.
[9:13] He later found out that the show had mechs,
which made that point entirely redundant.
[9:17] As an aside, Punchline is fantastic and it’s
not actually about underwear at all. But while
[9:22] he was working on these shows, that producer
Shinichiro Watanabe had hired, Manabu Otsuka
[9:27] was earning his paycheck as well. The schedule
was already pretty full, but Otsuka and animation
[9:32] producer Fuko Noda had heard that director
Sayo Yamamoto was pitching a show about figure-skating.
[9:39] And so they went ahead and asked to make it,
thinking it would become a hit.
[9:43] And it kinda was.
[9:52] Manabu Otsuka was good at this. He can determine
what sort of shows will be popular, even when
[9:58] everyone else is giving up on them. Yuri on
Ice, Banana Fish and Zombie Land Saga were
[10:02] all shows that producers from outside of the
company were struggling to pitch. But he believed
[10:07] in them when few others would, using MAPPA’s
prestige to secure funding from other sources.
[10:13] It would be easy to say Yuri on Ice was the
turning point, but Otsuka was already wanting
[10:19] to ramp up the amount of anime produced at
the studio, leading to six different shows
[10:24] airing in 2017. But the success of Yuri on
Ice became a confirmation. It suffered production
[10:30] difficulties, but it made a load of money.
[10:34] Welcome to the new Studio MAPPA.
[10:44] The thing about Yuri on Ice is that it was greenlit knowing that the studio was already
swamped. In fact, the staff were working so
[10:51] close to the deadline that different broadcasters
got different versions of the same episode.
[10:57] With the increase in productions and the studio
expanding, Masao Maruyama felt deja vu for
[11:02] the last days at Madhouse. As a company gets
larger, it becomes harder to make creative
[11:08] passion projects and things become too much
about money, and so for this reason, he left
[11:13] a studio with his namesake yet again, founding
the new M2 Studio. The new president would
[11:20] be Yuri on Ice producer Manabu Otsuka.
[11:23] The amount of shows MAPPA was producing was
concerning, but what was worse, was the level
[11:27] of control the studio had over these productions.
To control things like the schedule and budget,
[11:33] a studio needs to invest financially in the
thing they’re making. But MAPPA either rarely
[11:38] does this, or doesn’t invest enough to overrule
the bigger anime companies. It’s not too
[11:44] much of a problem if you’re not making all
that much, but instead, MAPPA left their workforce
[11:49] in the hands of producers from publishing
companies and megacorporations.
[11:53] “The most important part of a producer’s
job is making money. Animation is a product,
[11:59] so selling that product and making sure it
turns a profit is our most important job.”
[12:05] These are the kind of people who control MAPPA’s
fate. And while the studio now has the money
[12:09] to invest, they’re not doing so nearly as
much as they could.
[12:23] Director-focused originals are a point of
pride for a studio. It’s basically the point
[12:28] where they say, “You’ve seen what we can
do with other people’s stories. Now here’s
[12:32] what we can do with our own.” But not only
does MAPPA do very few of these, but in the
[12:37] case of Gymnastics Samurai created by director
Hisatoshi Shimizu, they didn’t stand behind
[12:43] it, letting Aniplex control the show’s difficult
schedule instead. This is the same reason
[12:48] why I’m worried for Masafumi Nishida’s
water polo anime RE-MAIN. What’s the point
[12:53] in creating an original anime if the creators
don’t have time to make it amazing.
[12:58] And this is putting aside stuff like Kunihiko
Ikuhara’s Sarazanmai, a show that despite
[13:03] MAPPA being credited, they ended up having
very little to do with its creation, with
[13:07] it largely being planned and produced at Lapin
Track instead.
[13:11] MAPPA just isn’t the place for creative
original anime anymore. When Aniplex found
[13:16] a director for Banana Fish, they requested MAPPA
to help them make it. But when that same director
[13:22] went on to pitch her own original project,
SK8, she went and asked Bones instead. She’s
[13:28] not the only one. After Maruyama left the
studio, Shinichiro Watanabe stopped pitching
[13:33] to MAPPA, instead heading back to Studio Bones
to make Carole and Tuesday.
[13:38] Bizarrely, despite their prestige, instead
of funding and giving time for the shows the
[13:43] staff wants to make, MAPPA is even picking
up after other companies, like with Granblue
[13:48] Fantasy the Animation and Attack on Titan,
making their staff needlessly anxious about
[13:53] not being able to live up to fans’ expectations.
[13:55] In a later interview, Maruyama stated that
if MAPPA directors want to create the sort
[14:00] of shows they want to make, they should come
visit him over at M2 instead, where they’re
[14:06] currently working on a passion project adaptation
of Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto.
[14:10] All of this isn’t necessarily a MAPPA specific
issue, but rather an overproduction crisis
[14:16] that’s been stretching the anime industry
to its limits. Due to the rise in international
[14:21] streaming from both the United States and
China, anime has become more profitable than
[14:25] it ever has been before. And so, with profits
raising, they decided to pay all the animators
[14:31] on their shows a liveable wage, right? Nah,
fuck that. They decided to use it to make
[14:36] even more anime. And now every company in
Japan, and a few abroad, want to fund the
[14:41] creation of a load more anime series. From
a fans perspective, this is great. But the
[14:46] reality is, there’s not enough people to
actually make these shows. Masao Maruyama
[14:51] himself has chimed in, saying that there’s
too much anime being made, which is burning
[14:56] out talented artists far too quickly.
[14:59] Different companies have had different ways
of dealing with this. Some have held fast,
[15:03] rejecting offers that would overburden them.
But MAPPA has a different approach:
[15:09] “There are some in the industry who think
that the number of anime being made should
[15:13] decrease, but I think that is just averting
your eyes from the task in front of you. There
[15:18] is a lot of demand for anime, so the question
is how to deliver high quality works that
[15:22] meet the demand. Our company is still adapting
to the current climate, but I'm always conscious
[15:27] of what has to be done. That's why I want
MAPPA to meet the current problems in the
[15:32] anime industry head on by increasing our production
capabilities.”
[15:36] Instead of holding fast to the ideals the
company was founded upon, MAPPA is adapting
[15:41] to the broken system and it’s being put
under more and more strain as time goes on.
[15:46] The studios who accept this kind of workload
often end up having to put out clunky uninspired
[15:52] animation for the sake of constantly bringing
in money.
[15:55] But there is one clear difference and it’s
the reason people wanted me to make a MAPPA
[15:59] spotlight to begin with. Jujutsu Kaisen and
Attack on Titan: The Final Season.
[16:09] The studio has a new image. Not one based
around original projects, but instead based
[16:14] on creating loads of adaptations while still
often managing to retain a level of quality.
[16:20] Of course, there are plenty of MAPPA shows
that flounder when it comes to its animation,
[16:24] but directors Sunghoo Park and Yuichiro
Hayashi have been both the saviours and victims
[16:29] of this image.
[16:30] I’ll start with Jujutsu Kaisen. By all means,
it shouldn’t be as good as it is. After
[16:36] delivering his own brand of visceral action
choreography on God of High School, Sunghoo
[16:40] Park turned his attention to the fan-favourite
Jujutsu Kaisen manga from Shonen Jump. Park
[16:45] is an animator by trade and mindset, and so
he scouted out artists from that would help
[16:50] him achieve an ambitious vision. Many of these
animators and episode directors don’t usually
[16:55] work with MAPPA. But despite everyone being
so damn busy all the time, Sunghoo Park and
[17:01] character designer Tadashi Hiramatsu collectively
command enough respect to bring in the people
[17:06] who could help elevate this beyond a bog standard
manga adaptation.
[17:10] In fact, the one thing letting the show down
is its compositing, which is constantly struggling
[17:15] to keep up with the ambitious and unique animation.
[17:18] And while Attack on Titan doesn’t rise nearly
as high as Jujutsu Kaisen, fans have found
[17:23] a lot to like about its Final Season. The
show was made on an incredibly tight schedule
[17:28] but due to talented directors and the strength
of the 3DCG team that’s been working with
[17:32] director Yuichiro Hayashi for years, it was
able to hold together and somehow become literally
[17:38] the most popular show in the United States.
[17:41] But what anime fans often aren’t privy to
is the cost. MAPPA leads have talked about
[17:45] wanting to try and improve conditions for
the workers at the studio, but not only does
[17:50] their production philosophy run counter to
this, but also most of the people that make
[17:54] MAPPA shows don’t actually work there. Instead,
the burden is placed on creators outside the
[18:00] company, or increasingly, outside the country.
[18:13] There have been more anime being created over
time. And there have also been more foreign
[18:17] animators working in the industry over time.
And that’s not a coincidence. Generally
[18:22] production staff prefer to work with animators
in Japan, but when they’ve found it difficult,
[18:27] they’ve started reaching out over Twitter.
For many, this is a dream come true. All that
[18:33] childhood doodling has resulted in being able
to actually create anime. But unfortunately,
[18:38] the industry isn’t thinking of it the same
way and instead of using them for their specific
[18:43] skills, foreign animators are being used as
an essential repair team, making sure the
[18:48] episodes are able to be finished but not being
paid based on how essential they really are.
[18:54] MAPPA is especially guilty of this. They know
from the outset that they are incapable of
[18:58] producing this many shows themselves, and so
they’re consistently taking on more and
[19:03] more work with the knowledge that they’ll
have to heavily outsource it as early as Episode
[19:08] #2. Unlike animators in Japan, there’s no
advancement as a part of this repair crew.
[19:13] There’s no directing dreams ahead when you’re
not able to work face-to-face. But foreign
[19:17] animators are increasingly becoming the backbone
of too many anime, and it’s often younger
[19:23] animators, in high school or university with the
time spare to save MAPPA’s ambitions.
[19:28] And this is only happening after they’ve
already exhausted the Japanese industry. Altair:
[19:33] Record of Battles has key animation from ten
different companies. This trend of relying
[19:38] on outsourcing at Studio MAPPA is so prominent
that SakugaBlog predicted in 2019 that only
[19:44] MAPPA would be large and reckless enough to
take on Attack on Titan: The Final Season,
[19:49] when they were offered a schedule that no
other studio wanted. Exploitative is just
[19:55] one word for it.
[19:56] This has been a pretty negative video, and
that’s kind of one of the issues with covering
[20:01] the anime industry in 2021. I imagine most
people wanted a 10 minute gush about how great
[20:06] Jujutsu Kaisen is. And it is incredible animation,
Yasuke will be brilliant, Chainsaw Man is
[20:13] going to blow everyone’s minds. But when
talking about MAPPA, it’s easy to forget
[20:18] about the people behind the scenes.
[20:21] The directors who are constantly shifted from
one project to another. The animators, both
[20:25] local and overseas who are being given strict
deadlines without the pay to match. And the
[20:30] production assistants, who have to handle
this nightmare, every single day.
[20:50] Thanks for watching The Canipa Effect. And
thanks to Abhi and Eric from The Cartoon Cipher
[20:54] for voicing Mamoru Hosoda and Manabu Otsuka
respectively, and Kennedy from Red Bard for
[21:00] voicing Kadokawa producer Sho Tanaka. They’re
both great channels that are dedicated to
[21:05] researching anime accurately. But before I
go, I’d like to thank these incredible people
[21:10] for supporting the channel. In particular,
I’d like to thank Austin Hardwicke, deadermeat,
[21:15] Eddie Lehecka, Edwin Shale, Frizzy Canadian,
Frog-kun, Jacob Bosley, JRPictures, my own
[21:22] mother, Noland Soga, Quentin Alchin-Smith
and Ronald McDonald-san.
[21:27] This channel exists for videos like these,
so if you want more of them, please consider
[21:32] visiting Patreon.com/TheCanipaEffect.