15 Things You Didn't Know About The Hottest Anime Of 2021

Tokyo Revengers is a story about a young man who travels backwards in time to save his ex-girlfriend from losing her life to gang violence. Its depiction of youth gang culture feels totally believable, which might be because the creator, Ken Wakui, was writing from experience. In an interview, he revealed that he was once a gang member (yankii) himself. 

"The starting point came from my editor, he wanted to read a story about yankii. This interested me, but I had no idea what they are like today. This is how I came up with the idea of traveling through time so I could describe what Yankii were like in early 2000’s, when I was one of them."

The Tokyo Manji gang at the center of the series was inspired by Black Emperor, a real motorcycle gang in Japan. Some have speculated that Wakui was part of this specific gang, though this has not been confirmed.

Yoshitoki Oima is the award-winning creator of A Silent Voice and To Your Eternity. The protagonist of To Your Eternity, Fushi, is a complex and fascinating character who has undergone nuanced character development. This may be because Yoshitoki Oima first thought of Fushi when she was only in elementary school. 

But the proto-version of Fushi was quite different than the one who appears in the manga and anime. One difference is that he was originally going to be female, but a coworker convinced her that a male protagonist would be more interesting. She said that she prefers characters who present in a more gender-neutral way anyway, a preference that may have influenced Fushi's constantly changing body. 

Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation was a controversial anime that resonated strongly with some people, and made others deeply uncomfortable. Whatever your opinion, it's hard to deny the story's impact. When discussing Studio Bind's first work in an interview, director Manabu Okamoto talked about the work's challenging nature. He also revealed that he'd actually removed an arc that was included in the original web novel in order to avoid reducing the protagonist to a single moment.

"It had a lot of vulgar and uncomfortable parts, but ultimately I thought it was a first-rate story. On the Narо website, there was a part called the “Aisha arc” that has now been removed because it was controversial. In it, the protagonist is finally able to acknowledge who he was in his previous life, but to put it in words would reduce his entire reincarnated life to that one thing. It's because that story took the form of an online novel, a hallowed ground that the hand of a commercial editor could not reach, that it was able to depict a single person's life with so much richness. By the time I read it, it already had a lot of fans, so I felt more pressure to create an anime that could do justice to the story for their sake."

Some creators base their characters and plotlines on personal experiences or people they know in real life. That's not the case for Nanashi, the creator behind Don't Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro. While Nanashi would have liked to have met a flirtateous girl like Nagatoro who constantly teases her senpai, the concept is pure fantasy. When asked in an interview if they'd ever met anyone like his characters, he said:

"Unfortunately, I haven’t… I didn’t really model any of the characters based on my personal life. I imagined it all inside my head, and that’s how Nagatoro and her friends came to life."

Nanashi also stated that they don't hold back when it comes to drawing what appeals to them. They said: 

"I just love to draw whatever I like without holding back. So, I think I might not really have that sense of balance. I am aware that I’m a bit of a trend-junkie when it comes to the things I personally like. And to a certain extent, I draw the things I like with the expectation that the majority of my readers will continue supporting me."

Jun Mochizuki is the manga creator behind the new series The Case Study of Vanitas. If that name sounds familiar, it might be because she also wrote Pandora Hearts, a shonen manga that debuted in 2006 and was adapted into an anime in 2009. 

There were a few things that Mochizuki wanted to change from one series to the next. The first is that while she was drawing Pandora Hearts, she wasn't especially good at drawing fight scees. She wanted to improve this in her next series.

The second change is a little bit more unsettling. In Pandora Hearts, every character who passed away did so for a reason, and had a satisfying emotional conclusion. Mochizuki is tired of that. In Vanitas, she wants her characters to kick the bucket cruelly, randomly, and for no real reason. We're not sure what motivated this hardcore change, but it should make for an interesting vibe. 

Each anime has its own production story, but it's pretty common for a series to be based off on existig manga, light novel, web novel, or some other pre-existing format. It's also pretty common for anime studios to create original content. 

The creators of Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song decided to blend the two approaches. They asked Tappei Nagatsuki, the writer behind the original Re:Zero web novel, if he would write a full-length novel that the production team could use as a basis for the story. Why do all that? Here's an explanation from a roundtable discussion held in March 2021. 

"Eiji Umehara: When it comes to original titles, it can be hard for the creative team to see the bigger picture, and it can also be difficult for the staff members to share the same vision. But when there is a novel first, it can serve as a guide during production."

Tappei Nagatsuki:That's why the novel was only used as the initial concept, and when we started working on the anime, we had many meetings with the director and producer to make big changes to the story. In fact, the characters' personalities, the events of the story, and even the narrative arc that leads to the ending are different. Even if you know the story of the novel or anime beforehand, you can enjoy the other as a fresh experience.

Eiji Umehara: A big advantage of this method is that you can reassure the creative team that there is an original story to work off of, while keeping the viewers excited because they don't know what’s going to happen next, which is unique to original anime titles. If I may say so, the downside to this method is that it takes a tremendous amount of time (laughs). The project began at the end of 2016, we started writing the novel in 2017, and finally finished writing in the latter half of 2018. I wouldn't recommend this method to everyone (laughs)."