Interview: Masahiko Ohta, the Go-To Director for Anime About Eccentric Young Girls, On His New Anime

Recently, Anime News Network was able to sit down with Director Masahiko Ohta and talk about his newest anime, The Demon King's Daughter Is Too Kind!!. In the process, we dove into how he came to be the go-to guy for directing comedy anime centered around the lives of eccentric girls and how this new anime sets itself apart from his past projects.

“I've been in the industry for years—since I was 18. So about 40 years.” Ohta introduced himself. “[The anime I'm known for] are shows like Minami-ke, Yuruyuri, and Himouto! Umaruchan. Most recently, it would be My Deer Friend Nokotan.”

From those titles, it's easy to see a common trend: They are all comedies centered around the crazy lives of high school girls. However, this is a pattern that Ohta fell into by chance. “I get offers for a few projects, and of those, I usually accept the first one that comes along,” he explained. “I don't accept them just because I think that a really silly girl would be in them, or anything like that—and that's true for [The Demon King's Daughter Is Too Kind!!], too.”

“I've wanted to make [different genres of anime] from the very beginning, not just someday in the future. I've always wanted to make them, but it's not that easy,” Ohta jokingly lamented. “If you tend to take on projects on a first-come, first-served basis, your filmography ends up looking like mine—or at least that's how it ended up for me.”

Ohta getting involved with The Demon King's Daughter Is Too Kind!! followed the usual pattern for him. “I got a call from [Masaomi Hattori at EMT Squared Co., LTD], the company that makes the anime, to talk about it. I asked them to show me the original work, and they did.”

Ohta didn't know what to expect when he first picked up the manga, but the shadow of the isekai genre loomed over him. “There are so many reincarnation stories out there, and to be honest, I don't really want to do another. I've already done one myself, but…” Ohta told me. “So, when I was offered the role for an anime fantasy, I thought it was another reincarnation story—and if it had been a reincarnation story, I would have turned it down. But when I read it, it didn't seem to be that.”

Yet, that alone wasn't why Ohta signed on to direct the anime. “The reason I accepted the job was that the main character, Dou, was a young child. Up until now, I've done a lot of anime where the main character is a whiny girl around middle or high school age—and that's all I've done,” Ohta explained. “The fact that the main character was so young made me think that it might be able to give my work a somewhat fresh feeling, so I accepted the role.”

The Demon King's Daughter Is Too Kind!! is built around a singular joke—one that's right there in the title. To keep things from getting stale, Ohta has a few tricks. The first has to do with exploiting the medium of animation. “In the original manga, for example, there's no sound or movement, right? Anime can move and make sound,” Ohta told me. “I always try to take full advantage of that and emphasize things even more than the original.”

The other trick to keep things interesting is more character-based: “This is true for every anime I work on, but the main character always has some kind of unique trait. For example, in My Deer Friend Nokotan, which I mentioned previously, the character's strange trait is being a deer. This time, Dou is a young girl—a little girl—and that's what really differentiates this show from my other works. It's fine to just follow the original story, but I always try to emphasize that aspect of Dou.”

In the first few episodes of the series, this is put on full display to accentuate the heart and humor of the anime. “The old lady and the bald old man [in the nearby human village] have lived pretty miserable lives, but it's not like the main character, Dou, finds out about this and solves their problems. It's more like she feels a little sorry for them [in general] and ends up helping them. But it's strange because she doesn't really understand what's going on. That's what I was drawn to.” Ohta explained. “That's what makes her so childlike, and that's what makes her so appealing. There will probably be a lot of confused people. Like, why is it happening? But isn't it fine for people to be amused in that way?”

Dou is also what makes the anime work on a thematic level. “[The moral of the story] is about everyone being kind and living in harmony, whatever their race,” Ohta told me. “It's very optimistic, but because it's coming from a young child, it's not overly bold or pushy. When an older person says, 'let's live in peace' or 'let's all get along,' you think, 'come on now,' right? Like, 'does this person understand reality?' But Dou doesn't understand reality, and she does what she does naturally—which is what makes this anime great.”

As the entire anime revolves around Dou—be that the story or the humor—it was important for Ohta to find the perfect fit for the role. “At first, we wanted to make her a more realistic child, to emphasize her childlike feelings. We thought it would be best to use a real child, and we looked around, but it was quite difficult.” Ohta continued, “I watched a bit of Barakamon [which used real children for that anime's child characters] for reference. And I got the feeling that it was really simple and good in its own way. But child actors are hard to control—and you can see that with the little kids when you watch their performance.”

“In terms of acting ability, the child actors [that auditioned] weren't bad, but with their level of acting skills, it seemed a bit too difficult—we thought the sound director would probably be puzzled [working with them each week],” Ohta said about the process. “In the end, we decided to go with [an adult] voice actress, and we chose Mizaki Kuno.”

“Kuno won by a landslide among the voice actors [at the audition]. She's an expert—like an expert on voice acting child [characters].” Ohta told me, “She was really immersed in the work and the character, and she thought about it very seriously.”

When it comes to creating each episode of The Demon King's Daughter Is Too Kind!!, it's not the animation or the story that provides the biggest challenge. It's the music. Each episode of the anime contains an original children's song sung by Dou (and sometimes the other characters join in). “I've occasionally had insert songs in my anime up until now, but I don't think any other productions have done one [in every episode]. So, we took on the challenge of doing it—and it was actually my idea—but when we actually started doing it, I realized how much of a hassle it was.”

The issue is one of timing and pacing. “If the music part is set to, say, 90 seconds, it can't be cut off during editing—there's a TV episode runtime limit, after all. And so, knowing that there's a 90-second part of the episode that can't be cut puts a lot of pressure on the editing.” Ohta continued, “The songs have to fit, and the drama can't become too compressed. It is a bit difficult to strike that balance.”

“I wondered if, when I first thought we were going to do this in every episode, I shouldn't have said it out loud.” Ohta joked. “But this was also something I wanted to include as a distinctive feature of the anime. I guess it can't be helped.”

In the end, Ohta simply wants to do justice to the original manga while adding his own interpretation of it. “I just want to convey what the original work is about in an easy-to-understand and natural way—and it will naturally help people appreciate what's good about it,” Ohta said in closing. “It's also a comedy. It's not the type of show that will make you laugh out loud, but it will warm your heart. It's an anime that will just soothe your everyday stress, even if just a little, through watching Dou.”

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The Demon King's Daughter Is Too Kind!! is streaming in North America on Crunchyroll. You can also enjoy Dou's songs and adorable expressions on the official X account.