The Witch Hat Atelier manga, known for its intricate artwork and captivating worldbuilding, is set to become an anime in 2025. At Anime Expo 2024, Anime Trending had the privilege of interviewing some of the main creatives behind the upcoming adaptation: anime director Ayumu Watanabe, producer Hiroaki Kojima from Bug Films, and manga creator Kamome Shirahama. Earlier this year, Shirahama also appeared at the Toronto Comics Art Festival, where she highlighted her personal thoughts on the Witch Hat Atelier anime adaptation announcement. The three discussed their approach to bringing Witch Hat Atelier to life in animated form and shared their insight into the production process.
This interview has been edited for clarity and was conducted on July 4th, 2024. Questions submitted by Melvyn Tan.
The manga features gorgeous, intricate art. How did you work with the character designer to balance that detail with making designs that are also suitable for animation?
Ayumu Watanabe: As you kind of mentioned in your question, the manga contains a lot of information. So we didn’t want to use the anime adaptation as an excuse or reason to overly abstract what the manga is doing and simplify what the essence is.
What aspect of the manga appealed to you the most?
Ayumu Watanabe: First and foremost, the very attractive drawings in the manga are really captivating. Combined with the very deep story, I think the balance between the two was really perfectly struck. So that’s something that we definitely want to recreate in the anime as well.
When reading the manga, I think there were a lot of relatable characters. It’s quite easy to find yourself placing your emotional state into the characters’ different circumstances and situations. A lot of the internal struggles that the characters go through, I think we are also experiencing as creators of the anime, so I think there’s a weird synchronization that’s happening between what we see in the characters and what we see in the production line as well.
Depicting that accurately is, of course, a huge challenge from an animation point of view, but to be able to capture a lot of those aspirations, the dreams, the hopes of the characters, I think there’s a huge sympathetic element that is happening. It is our job then to transplant all of those emotional nuances into the anime itself. And if we can do that, it will be a success, and hopefully the anime itself will be quite successful. I know the question asked about what we found attractive about the franchise, but I feel that adapting it into an anime is more of our mission that we have to undertake.
When and how did the offer to adapt the manga come to Bug Films?
Hiroaki Kojima: I want to say it was about two to three years ago when the anime adaptation really started gaining traction. Bug Films is also a very new studio, so I was searching for a project that would become the face of our studio that could represent us collectively. Before that, I was a fan of Witch Hat Atelier as well, so I really wanted Bug Films to be the studio to adapt this into an anime. And over the course of those three years, the pieces kind of fell into place that we needed in order to adapt it.
What made Watanabe the director pick for this project?
Hiroaki Kojima: We’ve worked on a few projects together in the past*. So I think one of the very unique qualities of how Watanabe-san directs is capturing that character emotion and development through the acting. Having consumed so much of the manga myself, I thought in order to capture that and then convert it and translate it into an animation, he was the perfect fit.
Were there any noteworthy challenges for this production?
Ayumu Watanabe: I would say perhaps we’re right in the middle of a so-called noteworthy challenge. I think because a lot of the production staff are huge fans of the franchise, there are a lot of great ideas — perhaps too many you could even argue. So it’s almost like trying to control people’s imaginations and prevent them from running too wild because at the end of the day, it’s always a balance between the creative and the business need of the project. So finding that right balance in a sustainable way is going to be, I don’t know if challenge is the right word, but certainly a topic or issue that’s constantly going to be with us in production. So finding why our team likes the franchise and converting it in a positive way so that it shows on screen while maintaining the other constraints is what we’re up against right now.
Hiroaki Kojima: Again, as a huge fan of Witch Hat Atelier, speaking on behalf of our entire production team, I think it’s going to be a battle against time, which is the biggest challenge. How we fit everything we want to do into the schedule. I’m very confident that the completed animation we’re able to upload is going to be really good, but is it sustainable with the current setup and pipeline? Of course, the staff and I want to keep pushing the status quo and benchmark till the very end, but again, it’s going to be a battle against the schedule.
Shirahama-san, have you watched Watanabe-san’s previous shows before? If so, what did you think of them, and what was your reaction upon learning that he would be directing the adaptation of your manga?
Kamome Shirahama: I was actually a huge fan and admirer of Director Watanabe from before. I saw Summer Time Rendering and Children of the Sea in theaters as well. So when I first saw the proposal and learned that he would be directing this, I felt quite at ease.
I think how Watanabe-san is able to capture and animate the performances, the acting of the characters on the screen really raises the emotions and gets the nuance of what the characters I imagine are going through. So I have a lot of admiration for his ability to translate that, which then gets into my role for the world-setting concept information that perhaps the animators don’t have access to because it only exists either in the manga or in my head. I have nothing to say in terms of the acting performances and how it all comes together.
How involved were you in the production?
Kamome Shirahama: My involvement really all comes down to the different aspects of the setting of the world and universe. So everything from the props, thinking of the different materials, and helping get the animation closer to what the manga’s intention and spirit are. Or, the background textures and materials, different regions, and the animals, for example, are what I think I can provide additional value for.
One challenge we have is the magic circles. Because of the requirements of anime, certain magic circles from the manga that we need to include in the anime have not yet been fully expressed. So a lot of communication comes down to, “Well, let’s look at this magic circle, and when it activates, what will it look like? What part would activate?” For some of the effects, I would provide a little bit of insight and value in terms of, “Well, maybe if we adjust this or tweak that.” It really feels like we’re in magic school together. We’re trying to invent and create new magic circles.
*Summer Time Rendering, Komi Can’t Communicate, and Major 2nd are among the productions for which Kojima was the animation producer while Watanabe was the director or chief director.
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