Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines Delights Otakon Audience With Scenes and Memes

They weren't kidding when they named this panel “Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines! The Scenes That Launched a Thousand Memes.” This was an event spanning a massive ninety minutes in length, featuring the light novel and anime's major players, all discussing the tiny details that went into the series and its scenes, plus Shūichirō Umeda crashing the panel for a surprise cameo. As the kids say these days, fans of Losing Heroines were eating GOOD.

Going over the production first, light novel author Taikibi Amamori revealed a very surprising influence: DARLING in the FRANXX. This caused the audience to nervously laugh in disbelief, but Amamori was being serious here. “Ichigo left an impression on me,” Amamori said. “She was a childhood best friend of the main character Hiro, and she tried telling him that she loved him, but she couldn't win him over. Something about those blue-haired girls, isn't it?”

Although Losing Heroines would become an overnight success, editor Kentaro Iwaasa wasn't initially convinced due to perceiving the light novel as occupying a “blind spot” in the industry. It wouldn't be until the crew brought in Imigimuru, still hot off the press from Lycoris Recoil, that Iwaasa was convinced that the story could gain traction.

From there, the Iwaasa would discuss how the series was advertised. He discussed using illustrations and pop slide toys, but one thing I found interesting was a “general election” collaboration between Losing Heroines and JR Tokai. Fans could vote for their favorite characters by casting tickets featuring the names and faces of the characters, arrows pointing to their respective crushes, and English teaching reading “You may not change your oshi once you're on the train.” Interestingly, Yumeko Shikiya's ticket decided to lean on the more ambiguous side of things, leaving behind a blank where the name of her crush would have been.

A native of Aichi Prefecture himself, Amimori would do everything in his power to make sure his home region came to life in the story. Specifically, his hometown of Toyohashi granted him the opportunity to feature its Non Hoi Park in Losing Heroines' twelfth episode. Amimori explained how a joint endeavor between Losing Heroines's staff and the Non Hoi Park's management allowed them to go location scouting for the anime, leading to a moment where director Shōtarō Kitamura used an iPad to record his facial reactions as he spun around on the tea cup rides. This would be used to help form a scene that featured the same tea cup ride. Production coordinator Yūtarō Itō would mention how these methods were very expensive but worth it, as they all made way for photorealism that made each frame pop.

Special care was also given to the depiction of seasons to heighten realism. Along with characters changing from their summer school uniforms to their winter ones, Kitamura also said that he placed emphasis on color palettes. Kitamura would use a lot of greens to bring out the humidity that comes with Japanese summers, and blues to show off the cool breezes of autumn. Toyohashi's trees and greenery also left enough of an impression on him that he decided to use them as an influence here.

It was about halfway through the panel that everyone started discussing the scenes that launched many memes. The very first scene shown was from Losing Heroines' first episode, right when the blue-haired heroine Anna gets rejected by her crush Sõsuke at a cafe. This is the scene that birthed the image of Anna spitting her drink out in disbelief, which would inspire otaku and memesters to spam it across Discord servers and anime forums everywhere. Noting the many facial reactions expressed across the span of Heroine's first episode, Kitamura said that the team wanted to go full throttle so the audience could understand who Anna is from the very start.

The next scene shown was from the fifth episode, when the main character, Kazuhiko, goes to a cafe with Anna. Conversations involving sugary drinks and relationships cause Anna to lose her cool in all sorts of comedic ways, and have voice actress Hikaru Tōno screaming from the top of her lungs. “We told her for the rehearsal to just go all out,” Kitamaru said. “We would then do an actual recording afterwards, but we ended up using the rehearsal version.” The staff also showed off a reference image of the real-life Bon Senga cafe in Toyohashi, and encouraged fans to check it out.

The audience was then treated to a more tender scene where another losing heroine, Lemon, holds hands with Kazuhiko as they are riding on a train. The staff went location scouting to find the perfect train with an elegant enough setting to show off Lemon as the most mature of the heroines; someone who, unlike her counterparts, wasn't going to let rejection from her crush get the better of her. Another somber scene had Kazuhiko sit down with the red-haired heroine Chika at sunset. Chika's much more stoic than the rest, but this scene reveals her first and last smile of the series. It was revealed that there were originally two different illustrations from the light novel to use as the basis for this scene. When the time to pick drew near, it was Iwasa who ultimately made the decision.

The final scene shown was another from Losing Heroines' very first episode, where Anna and Kazuhiko share an emotional scene on their school's rooftop. The moment renders Anna in a fit of tears, but being the glutton that she is, she's eating a snack as she's doing this. It was quickly pointed out that this snack was something called chikuwa, a traditional Japanese fishcake, which Toyohashi is famous for, although it doesn't make for traditional light fare for high school girls.

Even if it was from the series' very first episode, the staff emphasized how they wanted to save this scene during the last moments of the panel. If one had watched the entire series already, then went back to the very beginning, to episode one, then they'd see how the scene would cleverly foreshadow how the different relationships between the characters would play out throughout the anime. Some close-up shots from episode four were then shown to discuss how precisely the detail was in re-creating the facial expressions of the light novel's illustrations.

Applause broke out like the happiest thunderstorm ever when a beaming Shūichirō Umeda entered the room for his surprise appearance. Umeda exclaimed that he was happy to be in DC, but more than anything, he was happy to be with the creative team that made everything possible. From the way he was beaming with positive energy and a huge grin on his face, I could tell he wasn't kidding.

When asked if he had any fond memories from behind the scenes, Umeda responded with the time he first heard Tono screaming; he knew this was going to be something. “For the scenes that left impressions on you,” Umeda continued, “the director told me, 'Can you do this, can you try that?'. So it feels like, as a team, we made those scenes together.”

A brief collection of Losing Heroines meme concluded the panel. There wasn't a whole lot of time to cover meme upon meme, but there were two I found pretty good. One had Anna's facial reactions juxtaposed with those of an otter's. The other one was even better: a Yu-Gi-Oh! trap card featuring the side character Karen, and text reading “Winning Aura: Seal a childhood friend to become your boyfriend. Twice as effective against [sic] otters.”