Production +h. is a relatively young animation studio, founded in 2020 by ex-Production IG producer Fuminori Honda to make Mitsuo Iso’s The Orbital Children. Since its inception, the studio has produced the anime adaptation of Inio Asano’s Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction manga — first delivering a two-part film followed by a web series version — and is working on Dark Machine, an anime that’s related to an upcoming arena shooter and blockchain game.
At Anime Central 2025, Anime Trending had the chance to have a quick chat with Honda and director Tomoyuki Kurokawa about the studio’s current path, its future, and the making of Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction.
This interview was conducted via interpreter and has been edited for clarity.
Anime Trending: Production +h. is a fairly young company that was founded in 2020 to produce The Orbital Children. How would you describe its current scope and stage as a studio?
Fuminori Honda: Right now, we’re a company that focuses mainly on individual projects and works on them one at a time. But in the future, we would like to expand the production side and increase the number of [production] lines to make multiple productions at the same time.
Could you talk about why Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction was chosen as the second project for the studio?
Fuminori Honda: The short answer is that it was just by coincidence. Dededede was a work in the talks before I made Production +h. with Kurokawa-san. Thus, it just happened to be that, after The Orbital Children, it was the most plausible. I just worked on it, so it just happened to be that way when it came to the second work.
You mentioned that Production +h. has a very controlled amount of titles, since a lot of new studios nowadays tend to have a lot of titles. Is that something you’re looking to maintain for Production +h. in the future?
Fuminori Honda: I think we’ll probably try to increase it. We are getting a lot of offers from various clients, and we’re trying to figure out the best order to work on these.
Tomoyuki Kurokawa: We’re also trying to gather more staff to expand our company and expand our production team as much as possible. So, we’re thinking about how to work on it while we’re expanding the teams.
Production +h. is producing an anime based on the upcoming arena shooter and blockchain game Dark Machine. What led the studio to accept this particular project?
Fuminori Honda: This was an offer that I received from Fuji TV, from a producer that I’ve known for a while. This was [something that I’d] never done before, a project where the game and the anime were being produced at the same time. Also, the anime was not just about the game itself, but about the people who play the game, kind of like in esports fashion. It was just something I’d never tried before, so I decided I wanted to try it out.
Production +h.’s recruitment form mentions a work by director Mitsuo Iso-san. Are you able to share anything on that?
Fuminori Honda: There are several things going on with it.
You touched on this during the panel, about how Production +h. pays their staff salaries. Are you able to touch on that a bit more?
Fuminori Honda: In previous works and work environments, we paid by the amount of work, which was very common. And it led to a salary where the pay ended up being like minimum wage, plus maybe a little bit, being able to pay their rent, and maybe some extra. In more recent years, it’s not just our company, but it’s a fairly recent change where, because we want to foster more new talent, there’s a movement to make it so that it’s more of a monthly salary. [We] make it so that it’s, at the very least, an entry-level salary plus maybe a little extra. Our company was one of the first to maintain this, but I feel like this is just a recent trend that more companies are doing.
There are pros and cons for both systems. Compared to paying per work, whether it’s a monthly salary or a set salary, the pros are that they don’t have to worry about the amount of work that they produce. [They can] focus on the quality, and really focus on what they work on. But on the other side, this system works very well for animators who are very productive and very skilled, and so they produce a lot and can really focus on their quality. However, there are some new animators who sometimes, not a single one of their linework gets used, and so it’s a little bit of a loss for our side to pay money to these people whose work might not even be used in the final product. And so we’re trying to figure out a more suitable way to work around this.
Moving on to Kurokawa-san, what was the reason behind the Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction anime first being released as a two-part movie, with both parts being two hours long each, but now, afterward, being released as an 18-episode series online?
Tomoyuki Kurokawa: This was a system that was decided by our client, the people who brought the thing [to us] in the first place. The client was GAGA — that was just their thing that they wanted to do. The production budget for the TV series was planned from the beginning based on the expected box office revenue of the movies and the anticipated pre-sales from streaming platforms like Crunchyroll.
It wasn’t that we decided it; this development was envisioned from the very beginning.
Were there any unique challenges with adapting the manga with this kind of unique adaptation approach?
Tomoyuki Kurokawa: Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, as a series, as a manga, is a very long [work]. It’s a series that focuses on various different characters [and has] an ensemble cast. So for the anime series, we put a lot of emphasis on multiple episodes focused on specific characters to make this ensemble cast work. But for the movie, we were obviously limited by the runtime. We had to shave off a little bit from the different individual characters. So we talked with the scriptwriter, Reiko Yoshida-san, and we made the decision that for the movie, we’d focus more on the slice-of-life, coming-of-age story of the two main characters, Ouran and Kadode. There’s a fundamental difference in the focus between the movies and the series.
Could you tell us a bit about Lilas Ikuta-san and ano-san as the lead cast in Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction?
Tomoyuki Kurokawa: ano was decided during the audition phase. There were multiple criteria that were a must when it came to deciding Ouran’s voice. The first was, we really wanted someone who was in the same age range, someone in the high school, college age range to voice Ouran. We also needed someone who could not only do the high-energy aspect of Ouran as a high schooler, but also we needed someone who could voice the 10-year-old, elementary school age of Ouran as well.
Unlike animation, for live-action, if we’re doing a flashback of the character at a younger age, then we obviously just use a different actor, a child actor, for instance. So that’s not up to the older actor to do it. But in anime, we have to have someone who can voice both the older character and the younger character. In the case of Ouran, we needed someone who could portray the high, energetic Ouran as a high schooler and the shy, timid elementary schooler. Throughout all these auditions, ano was the only one who was able to portray both perfectly, to the point where, as the elementary schooler, we teared up a little bit from her acting. There was no one else who could do Ouran aside from ano.
Fuminori Honda: When it came to the decision to use Lilas, we had already decided on ano. [We thought,] “We were going to use ano for sure.” [As for] Kadode, we wanted someone who would match ano’s stardom and reputation, someone who could really match her name value. Initially, we couldn’t really find or think of any voice actors or voice actresses who matched that, because it was very hard to compare the two of them; it was like apples and oranges.
So we said, “Oh, we’ll try and find another fellow music artist to do it, to voice Kadode.” We couldn’t really find anyone who matched the situation or matched the role, and then one day I was watching Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle, and I heard Lilas Ikuta voicing a main character. I was like, “Wow, she can really act. Maybe this might work out.” So, I pitched the idea and [Inio] Asano-sensei also agreed and said, “Oh yeah, that’s a pretty good idea.” And so we decided on Lilas Ikuta.
The public might think it was like a sales tactic, to use both ano and Lilas Ikuta, two very popular singers to voice these two girls, but in reality it was actually a coincidence that these two were decided [on]. The opening and ending are sung by both of them, and this was decided after we decided on using these two as the leading roles. Everything, like the opening and ending and all the musical acts, were also a product of coincidence. Everything kind of worked out, and so it was almost like a miracle that this happened.
Also, at the time of their casting, ano and Lilas Ikuta were quite popular, but not as well-known as they are now. Since then, ano has appeared on a lot of variety shows and has become a popular talent, while YOASOBI had a big hit with “Idol” and has done tours around the world, which really surprised the staff.
Questions by Melvyn Tan and Kwok-Wai Hanson. Interview conducted by Kwok-Wai Hanson.
