The anime community recently came together to dunk on WIT Studio’s most recent project, a short music video utilizing AI technology for the background art. The response has been widely negative and even we here at GameZXC analyzed why people were so upset, but despite the backlash, there’s a possibility that this isn’t the last fans have seen something like this from WIT Studio.Way back in 2018, WIT announced a collaboration with Ghost in the Shell Arise writer Tow Ubukata to work on a new project titled Moonrise, with a prologue novel released in December of that year. It wasn’t until September 2022 that the first teaser was revealed, unveiling more about the staff, and even the involvement of Fullmetal Alchemist author Hiromu Arakawa as a character designer. The teaser featured some exciting action and visuals, but otherwise didn’t tell the audience much, and with a 2024 release date, it would be a while before anyone knew more. Fast-forward to now: WIT is under a lot more scrutiny, and Moonrise is probably the last thing on fans’ minds, but after reflecting on WIT President George Wada’s statements about the series, perhaps it should be.
“... Unlike Any Seen Before…”
Either as part of the industry’s ongoing hunger to tackle western markets or merely a byproduct of WIT’s successes by virtue of their talent, Moonrise seems designed from the outset to be “international.” The prologue novel was swiftly translated and made accessible through Amazon. Wada’s announcement of the project is dripping with excitement.
“‘Moonrise’ will portray the lives of two men, Jack and Al, as they confront various hardships in the vast world of outer space. All action and scenery in the unexplored parts of the Moon will be illustrated using an innovative type of animation unlike any seen before. My sincere wish is that this project inspires contemporary lives everywhere.”
-George Wada, CEO and President of WIT Studio
This is purely speculative, but what if this “innovative” animation being hyped up is an implementation of AI similar to the controversial music video The Dog and The Boy from last month? It would make sense that such a project might have been a test run to gauge audience reception to the technology for its use in future projects. After all, while not received positively, it certainly is unlike what audiences have seen in anime before.
But why speculate at all, you may ask? Why fixate on this fear of AI overtaking anime purely based on one lackluster music video that’s already been widely panned by critics and audiences alike? The suggestion that AI implementation was planned since 2018 is baseless, and the studio has been doing quite well since. And that’s all very true. However, it’s because WIT is a good studio that it’s worth discussing.
WIT Studio has been a titan ever since they broke onto the scene with the anime that had “Titan” right in the very name. They didn’t even want to be pegged as “the Attack on Titan studio” and despite that label sticking for quite a while, they worked tirelessly to forge their own identity. And in recent years, it feels like they’ve finally achieved just that, between Vivy, Ousama Ranking (or, Ranking of Kings), and Spy x Family.
Their projects have been some of the most talked-about - if not the most critically acclaimed - anime of the past few years, after having cast off Attack on Titan to Studio MAPPA. It's not even the first time Wada has discussed WIT breaking into different kinds of animation. In 2019, Honey's Anime interviewed Wada at Anime Expo, where he briefly discussed WIT toying with stop-motion animation.
So when WIT claims that they’ve created an “innovative type of animation” that will change the game, fans should feel compelled to believe them. But it wasn’t a director making that claim; it was George Wada, and he’s something of a contentious figure when he speaks on behalf of the studio's talent.
Energy Bars: It’s For Lunch
Overwork is nothing new in discussions of the anime industry, much less workplace culture in Japan to begin with, especially with GameZXC’s coverage of studios like MAPPA. However, Wada’s past language illustrates a divide between the higher-ups in animation and the artists themselves, particularly within the realm of overwork, and he has not been subtle about it.
Wada likes to address overwork with promises that staff are able to get a good rest after the hard work is done, but not every project allows for time off before the next one comes calling. The Ancient Magus Bride was released on October 2017, just three months after the long-awaited second season of Attack on Titan, which had already experienced its share of delays, and much of Titan’s staff just moved on to Magus Bride.
To hear Wada so casually talk about employees sleeping at their desks - if they have the time at all - and surviving off of energy bars, rubbed a lot of readers the wrong way. A lot of these remarks are naturally phrased positively because he’s the president of the company, and he’s seeing the end result of an extraordinary team. It’s framed as if the grueling work is taken in stride, all in service of creating good art.
While it’s pleasant to see good art come from hard work, many fans would prefer that the artists are in good health first and foremost. Some would argue that the work culture is simply different and that criticizing from the outside is foolish, but it’s not the animators making these claims; it's the CEO. And after all of that, Wada was awarded an Industry Icon award, which some, like YouTuber and animation essayist The Canipa Effect (seen above), saw as salt in the wound.
The Point
Perhaps this is burying the lede, but AI isn’t the most important thing about this story - this hypothetical about a studio with a more-than-flattering resume. Could Moonrise use AI? Possibly, though there is no confirmation of such a thing yet. Perhaps WIT truly is dabbling in some new innovative animation that will yield a new hit original anime just as they’ve had successes in the past.
The point is that WIT Studio is a great studio, yet in spite of this its glowing track record, fans were quick to accuse WIT of “falling off” merely at the suggestion that they were toying with AI. It’s become increasingly clear that audiences are not comfortable with this technology replacing artists. If the innovations of future projects undermine the artistic expressions that have made the studio what it is, then the studio will suffer, and it would be a loss for this industry.
Source: Anime News Network [1] [2] [3], Honey's Anime