All the News and Reviews from Anime Expo 2025

Every Anime Production is Connected: From Land of the Lustrous to Leviathan

Returning for Anime Expo 2025, animation Studio Orange shares a behind-the-scenes look at how they make anime. Led by speaker Yoshihiro Watanabe, producer at Orange, the panel shared material from their upcoming anime series Leviathan, as well as some fun sequences on how they make anime.

Right off the bat, as Watanabe showed a visual for Land of the Lustrous, someone in the crowd shouted a question to him. "I answer this at every single convention, but it's not our decision yet. On the creative side, many animators who worked on the show are still with us. Once that decision is made, we would love to make that."

He continued to the other series that Orange has worked on, including BEASTARS and Trigun Stampede. He briefly introduced the CEO of Orange and the chief CG director, Eiji Inomoto. "If you've seen Phos doing this, it's Eiji Inomoto doing this to animate that character. He's been forty different characters in BEASTARS." Since its inception, Orange's twenty-year history has included shows, shorts, music videos, and CG parts. "We've worked on a lot of mecha shows like Code Geass, but we didn't work on Gundam for some reason," Watanabe said.

Moving on to BEASTARS, Watanabe spoke about how they developed animals with emotions. "We wanted to create a natural feeling, but also with a sexy body." He dove into the specifics on the kinds of muscles that humans, wolves, and dogs have. Comparing the facial structures, there are more similarities between dogs and wolves. Watanabe wanted to dispel the assumption that sequels are easy since they already have the same CG models. However, there are many models and variations, as well as new characters.

"Even with the rig from season one, we add more controllers to help give a wider range of expressions." In addition, there is a "new life, new story, new place, new friends, and new team" for every new story. All the work that goes into developing a sequel involves numerous factors to create the world, including even the smallest details, such as a stool. The two to three minutes of BEASTARS that he showed to the room took "six months of work from six people."

Turning to Leviathan, Watanabe welcomed Justin Leach (Executive Producer at Qubic Pictures) to the stage. Leach's résumé spans many years, with impressive projects under his belt, and he came onstage to introduce Leviathan's background. According to the panelists, Leach has been developing it for five years, and Watanabe has been on the project for three years. Showing some early production art and model sheets as they extrapolated on the story, the two speakers introduced the crowd to the rich world of Leviathan.

Watanabe further explained how Orange's pedigree and start with Land of the Lustrous helped lead to the development of Leviathan. At the time, they didn't have the technology to draw mouths on characters comfortably. The entire character was rendered in 3D, except for the mouth, which was hand-drawn. To show a broader range of expressions, Orange developed a tool called Automorph, which facilitated this process.

Of course, talented animators like Takayuki Miyakoda create those expressions in the first place. At the same time, there are still limitations, which is why certain camera angles aren't shown in a shot. The tools aren't perfect and are constantly being developed. In Leviathan, the model tool was more developed at the time. However, an animator still needs to go into the shot to address any issues or add notes to make the expressions appear more natural.

Overall, every project under Orange is connected. Some elements will pass on to their later shows. From Trigun Stampede to Leviathan, there will be more things in Trigun Stargaze that weren't in Stampede because of the work that was done on Leviathan. Unfortunately, there were no announcements related to Stargaze. Watanabe left the crowd with a picture of animation director Shunsuke Aoki carrying a box. "They're doing something about Trigun right now. Imagine, what is he holding?"

ANN's coverage of Anime Expo 2025 is sponsored by Yen Press and Ize Press!