One trend we noticed at Anime Expo this year were panels that were hosted by Japanese production companies rather than North American anime distributors. This included panels by long-established producers in Japanese anime and television such as  YTV, TV Tokyo, and TV Asahi, as well as some new entrants in the space. Among them included Amuse Creative Studio, a production company that was founded fairly recently in October 2024. Amuse Creative Studio is owned by the larger Amuse Group, who manage music acts like Babymetal and FLOW, and have produced films like Departures, Your Name, and the live-action Rurouni Kenshin movies. 

Amuse is now also involved in anime production, and are behind two new notable anime projects coming out in 2026, including Eleceed, a long-running Webtoon by writer Jeho Son and artist ZHENA that is about a super-powered kid with cat-like reflexes teaming up with an uber-smart secret agent stuck in the body of a cat to save the world from eveil forces, which will be produced by DandeLion Animation Studio and directed by Hiroshi Nishikori, known for works like Honey Lemon Soda and A Certain Magical Index. 

Amuse is also producing an anime adaptation of Naoki Prize award-winning writer Shogo Imamura’s novel series Oedo Fire Slayer -The Legend of the Phoenix-, also known as Hikuidori: Ushuboro Tobigumi, which is about heroic firefighters who save lives amidst a break of arson cases in the Edo period. In conjunction with this anime, a manga adaptation of the series was launched in Weekly Shonen Champion by Shinobu Seguchi, best known for his previous manga Prisoner Riku. To further cross-promote the series internationally, Seguchi’s manga are being made available in English through the first time through the localization service Emaqui, a digital manga webstore and app run by Orange Inc. While no print release for these series have been announced, Emaqi distributed print samplers of the first chapters of Oedo Fire Slayer and Prisoner Riku in the Exhibit Hall, and the Oedo sampler was also given to panel attendees alongside an Eleceed fan of the cat character, Kaden. Both manga have been available to read on Emaqi since July 3rd.

To promote both of Amuse Creative Studio’s anime projects next year, they presented a panel at AX spotlighting both together, hosted by actor Takaaki Hirakawa (Shogun, Blue Eye Samurai) and featuring Kazuhiro Nishikawa, the founder and CEO of DandeLion Animation Studio, and Shinobu Seguchi and his editor for Weekly Shonen Champion, Rei Hebiguchi. We were invited to cover the panel by representatives of AIM Entertainment on behalf of Amuse, and they let us into the panel room about fifteen minutes early to sit in the first two rows. At first glance, it didn’t seem like the line for the panel was so long as to be in danger of the room reaching capacity, especially since staff were still pitching the panel to passersby to interest them in attending. However, getting seated early proved to be fortunate, because the panel room did end up filling up. Originally, two rows of seats were reserved for press and guests, but this was consolidated into one to allow more general attendees to take up seats. 

While we were initially told that press were allowed to take pictures of the panel, Hirakawa announced that pictures were not allowed to be taken shortly after the guests started being invited on stage. While the host claimed that this was because they didn’t want any production materials shown during the panel slides to be made public. However, I realized another reason why later when looking at photos of the panel on official accounts that Shinobu Seguchi didn’t want his face to be public, a common and understandable concern for a lot of manga artists. Regardless, I took very limited photos of the panel, just a few before the announcement to stop taking pictures was made. However, that might’ve been for the best, as it allowed me to focus on reporting the information shared during the panel, of which there was a lot of! 

After going over the background of Amuse, Eleceed, Oedo Fire Slayer, and the English release for Shinobu Seguchi’s works, Rei Hebiguchi was brought on stage. He mentioned it was his first time in LA, and he’s currently editing SHY and Oedo Fire Slayer for Weekly Shonen Champion. Then, Shinobu Seguchi was brought on stage! It was his first time coming to the U.S. since traveling to NYC for vacation 30 years ago, but because it was constantly snowing, he ended up not doing much and going back early. He is asked by an audience member whether he thinks LA is better than NYC. With a laugh, he replied that he thinks LA is a wonderful place, and he wishes he could live here! 

The panel then dug into Seguchi’s work, starting with Prisoner Riku. Seguchi worked nonstop on Prisoner Riku for 7 years. During this time, he was afraid of being forced to stop the series due to health problems, but luckily he never had to. He feels that keeping up his health is an important part of his work. With Prisoner Riku, Seguchi wanted to create pure entertainment in the form of a manga, and for people to read it as cinematic. For his North American fans, he wanted to create entertainment that would appeal to those in the “birthplace” of entertainment. 

They then played an English language trailer for Prisoner Riku, and later one for Oedo Fire Slayer, both of which seemed to be produced by Emaqi. To be honest, the female voiceover in the manga trailers for Seguchi’s work sounded so stiff and robotic, with very inconsistent emphasis and tone in the line reads, and I would be surprised if it was not performed by AI. The video editing of manga panels in the trailers is really incredible though. The presentation of art, graphics, and visual effects in the trailer was so well done that it almost looked fully animated at parts, and made Seguchi’s manga look, truly, cinematic. They later showed a proper Oedo Fire Slayer anime trailer that didn’t show off any animation, just character designs, concept art, and manga art, though the compositing in the trailer was pretty good. 

The discussion then moved to Oedo Fire Slayer. They ran through the basic background of the project; the original novel for Oedo Fire Slayer was written by Shogo Immamura, a famous writer who won the prestigious Naoki prize. Seguchi’s manga adaptation just started this spring in Weekly Shonen Champion. When developing the manga adaptation, Hebiguchi matched Seguchi with the project believing that his skills and style would complement the strengths of the novel. The anime, produced by Amuse, is coming winter 2026, and both the anime and manga will run simultaneously. Hebiguchi noted that this particular approach to mix-media cross-promotion is a rare case.

They then showed more behind-the -scenes production art from Oedo Fire Slayer, including a colored storyboard for a scene of a woman opening the door to a fire inside a building. When mapping out his colors, Seguchi uses a limited color palette of only yellow and purple. They then showed various drawings of the black and white manga pages, showing the process of developing sketches to finished pages. Seguchi noted that it takes him one week from draft to final page, though that’s to be expected considering his work is released in a weekly magazine. His workflow has become entirely digital since starting Oedo Fire Slayer, primarily because his assistants are more familiar and adept with digital tools. 

 

 

Seguchi then performed a live-drawing of the main character of Oedo for the audience, drawn digitally on a tablet in Clip Studio. Seguchi’s underlying pencil sketch was already pre-drawn pretty clearly, but his inking added an extra calligraphy-like texture. He’s extremely deft with varying his line widths for dynamic stokes. Seguchi uses Clip Studio because it has brushes that produce strokes close to Japanese calligraphy brushes. He took a three-month transition period to adjust from paper to digital. 

While Seguchi was drawing, they opened up questions to the audience. The first came from MangaAlerts of Behind the Manga, who asked Seguchi and Hebiguchi how they felt finding out their work had an international audience. Seguchi described his feeling as “pure happiness.” He was pretty happy when he learned he had international fans because he feels that he was a late bloomer as a mangaka, but he had always hoped that one day he’d have a work that would cross over internationally, and to see that happen is really satisfying. For his part, Hebiguchi feels he’s just in a supportive role to the artists he works with. But seeing so much support for Seguchi from overseas fans, especially at AX and at the panel, was really astonishing to him, and he was grateful to see so much support for Seguchi. Hebiguchi wants to support his mangaka in all kinds of ways, so the international support for his work is really gratifying. 

Hirakawa then asked Seguchi about the difference between the black, blue, and red strokes he put in his sketches. Hirakawa seemed pretty genuinely interested and fascinated to learn more about the production process of manga and anime in his questions to both Seguchi and later Nishikawa of DandeLion, often breaking into asking the guest questions in Japanese and then interpreting their answers into English himself, to which he apologetically admitted to stepping over the other interpreter’s toes doing so. Seguchi noted that it’s to distinguish different parts of the illustration; black lines are for the character’s body, blue is for the clothes, and red is for the weapon. Responding to another audience question on the benefits of the switch to drawing digitally, Seguchi replied that sending files over emails saves him a lot of time and gives him more time to work. On staying motivated despite competition, Seguchi says that even though it can be difficult, ultimately, you just have to keep drawing. 

Regarding the touchy subject of AI, which was particularly relevant considering Emaqi and Orange use AI in their localization processes, Seguchi feels that you can use AI in artmaking processes, but it’s important to have rules how to use them. He doesn’t want his works being stolen and used to train AI models, for instance. He feels that for someone who can’t draw but has ideas, maybe using AI is fine for them. Even so, when using AI, we should have clear guidelines for how it will be used and make sure everyone in the industry follows the rules. 

After this question, Hebiguchi and Seguchi left the stage so Seguchi could finish his drawing off-screen, and the focus of the panel shifted to DandeLion studio. The host even changed out of his shirt mid-panel to a DandeLion shirt to mark the transition. DandeLion president Kazuhiro Nishikawa was then brought on stage. He was asked when he was last in LA, and he noted it was pretty recently, and he was here for the Oscars just 4 months ago, as Magic Candies was nominated for Best Animated Short Film. A sizzle reel for DandeLion’s work was then played, showing off Magic Candies, First Slam Dunk, Swee, IDOLiSH7, Selection Project, Ensemble Stars, and ending with Kingdom. Nishikawa noted that while DandeLion mainly focuses on 3DCG, they are always working with 2D artists for drawing. Their creative philosophy is “The Only Constant is Change.” They want to keep challenging themselves by changing production methods and exploring new techniques.

Commenting on the success of their work, a spotlight was put on The First Slam Dunk. The host noted how The First Slam Dunk has grossed more than Avatar in Japan, and that it’s the 12th all-time highest grossing film in Japan period. DandeLion divided production of the film in two parts; the CG basketball game and the 2D backstory scenes. They tried to make them fit together well. Their goal was to move the manga right, and they spent a lot of time on the pre-viz phase as well as on the animation itself. 

They then started discussing their Oscar-nominated short film, Magic Candies. They played a video of the DandeLion team reacting to their Oscar nomination for Magic Candies, and it was very cute to see their genuine joy and jubilation to the news. Nishikawa noted that the team genuinely didn’t think they would really get nominated, so after seeing the news, they stayed up until 3am drinking and celebrating afterward. Magic Candies had been featured in and had won other film awards in the year leading up to the Oscars announcement, but the Oscar nomination was still a special moment for them. 

Magic Candies was based on a Korean picture book. They visited Korea to get a better sense of the setting and their culture. There is an 70 years old candy store in Korea that they visited and took a picture of to base the candy store in the film on. The design of the old man from the candy shop is based on the director of the film. While the CGI modeling was meant to emulate clay, they wanted the characters to feel properly alive. They paid attention to adjust the way the main characters’ arm bends to reflect his emotional state. Dong Dong’s movements were soft and slow when he was sad, and sharp and fast when happy. They spent a lot of time crafting subtle facial expressions. They showed an example, featuring him swirling around a candy in his mouth. A lot of subtlety and attention to detail was placed on the character animation and the world design of Magic Candies, and that really did infuse a lot of life and a tactile feel to it. 

Lastly, they moved on to discuss Eleceed, DandeLion’s newest anime project, which is directed by Hiroshi Nishikori, scripted by Yousuke Kuroda, and has character design by Minami Sakura. The manga will be published in print by Inklore next year, as was just announced earlier at their AX panel. Eleceed is about lonely characters with their own individual problems who Nishikawa hopes fans will come to appreciate through how they grow a lot through intense battles. With Eleceed, they are taking a hybrid approach in its storyboarding phase using live motion capture for pre-viz, basically planning out the layouts for each shot. He feels that filming smooth camera work makes hand-drawing action animation and animating characters in perspective easier. They then played a trailer for the Eleceed anime showing off some of its finished animation, which looks really good, and confirms that it will be coming out 2026. Nishikawa thanks fans for their support and will bring back their enthusiasm to the staff and continue to work hard to make something they will enjoy.

After the DandeLion portion of the panel was done, Seguchi came back on stage to show off his fully finished drawing, which had not only been fully inked but had screen tones and shading added to it as well. The drawing was of the main character of Oedo charging forward with his sword. It looked incredibly striking and dynamic. The panel closed by doing a group RPS contest against Seguchi to win either a Dandelion prize bag that had hat, cloth, and shirt or copies of the Oedo Fire Slayer sampler signed by Seguchi. A surprise final RPS contest with Seguchi was then done for a Oedo Fire Slayer shirt signed by him! Seguchi seemed to really enjoy playing RPS with the crowd, and getting to bestow the winners with signed products of his work. After the final winner received their prize, the panel concluded, and fans excited the room to make the most of their last hour or so of the convention. 

Amuse’s panel was a great showcase of both behind-the-scenes processes of both manga and anime production from two incredibly accomplished creators in their respective fields, which made for a thoroughly entertaining and informative panel. I certainly left the panel impressed and in awe of Seguchi’s artwork and eager to read more of his manga, and am more curious to check out the Eleceed anime after seeing how DandeLion is using an interesting hybrid of live-action and motion capture for compositing scenes. I really enjoy panels that spotlight the craft that goes into the production of manga and anime from different angles and perspectives, and appreciate Amuse for bring these creators to AX for this presentation, giving them an opportunity to not only talk about their work but interact with their fans, who hopefully came away from the panel with an even deeper apprecation for the media that amuse them. 

About The Author Siddharth Gupta

Siddharth Gupta is an illustrator, video editor, and writer based in Minnesota. They graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Animation from the School of Visual Arts and from the Master's of Science in Leadership for the Creative Enterprises program (MSLCE) at Northwestern University. They have worked on projects for the University of Minnesota, Shreya R. Dixit Foundation, and TriCoast Worldwide among others. An avid animation and comics fan since childhood, they've turned their passion towards being both a creator and a critic. They credit their love for both mediums to Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball, which has also defined their artistic and comedic sensibilities. A frequent visitor to their local comic book shops, they are an avid reader and collector, particularly fond of manga. Their favorite comics include The Adventures of Tintin by Herge, Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed, and pretty much anything and everything by Rumiko Takahashi.

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