Shueisha Online recently published an interview with MAPPA’s animation producer Keisuke Seshimo, where he talked in depth about the production process of Chainsaw Man anime.

During the course of the interview, Seshimo also talked about Fujimoto’s involvement in the anime and also revealed how the creator reacted when he saw the production process of Chainsaw Man anime.

According to the producer, Fujimoto is not a man of many words, and whatever feedback or requests they received was limited. However, the author’s facial expression while watching the video during recording or sound recording processes revealed how he felt.

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“As you might imagine, he does not talk a lot, so we do not receive detailed feedback or requests. However, when he checks the video footage during the recording or sound recording, his face sometimes relaxes when he sees a character with a particularly good performance or movement. Smiling and looking like they are having a good time,” Seshimo said.

Fujimoto’s reaction made Seshimo happy as an onsite person. The producer added that he tried to adjust as much as possible to accommodate Fujimoto’s and editor Shihei Lin’s thoughts on “what makes it Chainsaw Man”.

“That is why we, as animation producers, are motivated by the fact that the original author, Mr. Fujimoto, is pleased with our work.”

He also went on to explain what it means for him to faithfully reproduce a manga into an anime.

“Inevitably, we have to add elements that are original to the anime in order to make it to anime length. Manga is expressed through pictures and panel layouts, but images must be expressed through a realistic time axis. Therefore, rather than ‘faithfully reproducing the original work,’ we try to make it look more faithful to the original work when it is made into an anime,” the Chainsaw Man producer said.

“Director Nakayama and screenwriter Koji Seko and I had a lot of discussions about how much pacing and length we should use to develop the original work’s tempo and atmosphere when adapting it to anime,” he added.

In another interview, MAPPA CEO Manabu Otsuka had explained why the studio had decided to invest 100% in the anime. Seshimo added to Otsuka’s statements in this interview, noting that the staff were able to express themselves freely thanks to the risk that MAPPA took.

One of the benefits of having this added freedom included the anime getting 12 ending theme songs, one for each episode.

“As we were deciding on several options for the theme song, Director Nakayama expressed his desire to have an ending that would be in line with the content of each episode if we were going to do it anyway, and as we were thinking about what to do, the company (MAPPA) said, ‘If we use this arrangement, we would have to change the ending of each episode’,” Seshimo said.

“However, I felt that if that were to happen, the ending video sequence for each episode would also have to be changed to make it interesting, so we naturally asked if there was enough room at the site. After discussing this with the director and the staff working on site, they said, ‘Let’s do it,’ and we were able to make it happen.”

Chainsaw Man anime started airing in Japan on Oct 11, 2022.

Ryu Nakayama is directing Chainsaw Man anime at MAPPA studio. Hiroshi Seko is writing the scripts, and Kazutaka Sugiyama is designing the characters.

Other staff members include:

• Kensuke Ushio: Music
• Makoto Nakazono: Chief Technical Director
• Tatsuya Yoshihara: Action Director
• Kiyotaka Oshiyama: Devil Design
• Yūsuke Takeda: Art Director
• Naomi Nakano: Key Color Artist
• Yohei Miyahara: Screen Design

The cast working on the anime includes:

• Kikunosuke Toya as Denji
• Fairouz Ali as Power
• Tomori Kusonoki as Makima
• Shogo Sakata as Aki Hayakawa
• Shiori Izawa as Pochita
• Mariya Ise as Himeno
• Karin Takahashi as Kobeni Higashiyama
• Taku Yashiro as Hirokazu Arai
• Kenjiro Tsuda as Kishibe
• Maaya Uchida as Angel Devil
• Natsuki Hanae as Shark Fiend
• Yuya Uchida as Violence Fiend
• Saori Goto as Spider Devil
• Daiki Hamano as Katana Man
• Yo Taichi as Akane Sawatari

The opening theme song of the anime KICK BACK, will be performed by Kenshi Yonezu and is composed by King Gnu and Daiki Tsuneta (from Millenium Parade).

Maximum The Hormone will also be performing an insert song in the anime.

Source: Shueisha Online