The TV anime of the popular manga “Chainsaw Man”, whose second part is being serialized in “Shonen Jump+” (published by Shueisha) and has sold over 18 million copies, will be aired on TV Tokyo and other channels from October 11th (Tuesday). Broadcasting began.

This work will be produced by MAPPA, which has worked on many popular anime works such as “Jujutsu Kaisen” and “Attack on Titan The Final Season.” Instead of using the “production committee method” where multiple companies invest, MAPPA will invest 100%. In addition, the ending theme is performed by 12 different artists each week, and the ending video is also different every week, drawing attention for its challenging attitude and strong commitment to anime production.

We conducted an interview with Keisuke Seshita of MAPPA, who serves as the animation producer for this work. We spoke behind the scenes of the production, including how the company came to produce it, the staff and cast’s commitment to production, and the memorable words from the original author, Tatsuki Fujimoto.

I want to visualize “Chainsaw Man” in a better way.

――Why did MAPPA decide to finance 100% of the production costs in-house, rather than using the production committee method where multiple companies fund the production costs?

For us, we had the idea in mind that we wanted to visualize “Chainsaw Man” in a better way. We then discussed what kind of group we would like to have, and we thought that having our company invest 100% would give us both business and expressive freedom.

This is not to say that the production committee system is not free. There are many works that are progressing under the supervision of understanding teams. However, our goal is to visualize Chainsaw Man in the best possible way, and to deliver “Chainsaw Man” in a way that viewers can enjoy the most. To achieve that goal, I think it would be better for Shueisha and our company to just pursue creating something interesting, rather than having multiple leaders come together and create content that incorporates a variety of ideas. It was.

–The fact that 12 artists perform the ending theme on a weekly basis was possible because it was funded by the company.

I agree. in June 2021Teaser video When we released it, we received a lot of calls from music labels.

While several options for the theme song were being decided, director Nakayama told me that he wanted to do an ending that was close to the content of each episode.As I was thinking about what to do, the company (MAPPA) said, If it’s a sit-down series, it would be possible to change the ending for each episode.”

However, I thought it wouldn’t be interesting if we didn’t change the ending footage for each episode, so naturally there was a question of whether there was enough capacity on set. So I talked with the director and the staff working on set, and they said, “Let’s do it,” so we were able to make it happen.