But during its production, the scheduling and management problems that are now talked about were already present.
MAPPA is one of the most renowned animation studios in the modern days, and that's pretty understandable: they ended up adapting some of the most popular manga series, and did them justice, translating the black-and-white drawings into fluid full-color animation filled with life and motion. Sure, there's a lot of controversy surrounding their current projects' inconsistent quality, but let's dive a little bit into history and see how MAPPA rose to fame. Spoiler alert: it's ice skating's fault.
Freedom for creators
If you think about it, it's a relatively young studio: it was established in 2011 by Masao Maruyama, a producer who previously founded Madhouse, another staple in the Japanese animation industry — and worked there from its inception in 1970. But Madhouse faced dire times in terms of financing, so Maruyama decided to create a new company, and its name is an acronym: Maruyama Animation Produce Project Association. It was created specifically to produce a film In This Corner of the World by Sunao Katabuchi, who became MAPPA's co-founder. But securing funds needed for production was not easy, and while they started working on the movie in 2010 in Madhouse, even before establishing MAPPA, it wasn't released until five years later.
In a weird twist of fate, Maruyama established a new studio because he wanted more creative freedom, but years later it turned out that his creation had the same problems Madhouse had: it turned into a capitalistic cash-grab prioritizing profits over anything else.
Setting the bar high
They started fine, however: their first project in 2012 was Kids on the Slope — a series centered on the beauty of jazz and the lives of young people who didn't know where they wanted to go in their future. Its mid-century setting, focus on real life, and fluid yet realistic animation, aided by the beautiful soundtrack by Yoko Kanno, set the tone for the studio's feature projects.
Their first original anime was Terror In Resonance (Zankyo no Terror) — one that focused on kids whose young days were taken from them because they were trained to be weapons, and it was as grim as it sounds. This show looked breathtaking: the amount of detail both in the animation and the backgrounds was astounding. These projects, alongside many others, were pretty successful, and the studio was on the rise. They had renowned directors working on their shows, they adapted Ushio & Tora, and looked like a safe haven for animators.
The high-quality work made the studio popular, and the amount of productions increased, increasing the workload, too. The studio wasn't big enough to handle all the projects with the same intensity, and scheduling and management became the main problems: the studio started to suffer from the same things that Madhouse did. So in 2016, Maruyama stepped down as the CEO of the studio, remained the chairman, but gave the title to the young and talented Manabu Otsuka.
We were born to make history
That was not the only huge change for MAPPA that happened in 2016. This year, a certain show focused on ice skating, Yuri!!! On ice, was released. And it was even more successful than people could hope: it was popular not only in Japan, but all over the world. It won numerous awards, became one of the most successful media franchises in Japan in the following year, had huge Blu-Ray and DVD sales — the first volume was sold for 50,878 copies in the first week, and other volumes topped the charts in terms of sales. It made MAPPA a much more prominent player in the animation field, and not only among the nerds.
There are multiple reasons for Yuri!!! On Ice becoming so successful. It's a beautiful show; it depicts the skaters realistically through the usage of rotoscoping which allows the animators to properly capture the intricate movements in their routines. The backgrounds are as spectacular as they were in Terror in Resonance, and they're quite diverse, as the story takes place in multiple parts of the world. And the story itself is incredibly wholesome.
It's about defeat and hope: the Japanese skater Yuuri Katsuki suffers a defeat at the Grand Prix in Russia and returns to his hometown of Hasetsu in Kyushu to heal his broken soul. Not only did he flop his routine: he did so on the same rink where his long-term idol, Victor Nikiforov, won another gold in the same Grand Prix. But as he was defeated, he was practicing Victor's program, and upon arriving home he decided to show it to his childhood friend. Little did he know that his friend's kids stealthily filmed him and uploaded the video — and it went viral overnight, prompting Victor to take a year off from competitive skating, fly to Japan, and propose himself as Yuuri's coach for this season.
The story concentrated on Yuuri getting back his passion for skating, finding confidence in himself, learning to rely on others — and on Victor being by his side, once again falling in love with ice. And, as it turns out, with Yuuri, too. This is a sports show that also had a romantic storyline between two main male characters, yet it never was advertised as a BL — because it was not the main focus. This realistic portrayal of relationship development is also one of the reasons why Yuri!!! On Ice became such a successful show. Or at least seemed to be.
The load was already too heavy back then
Despite all that, MAPPA recently revealed that it was a financial flop. The money that the show brought wasn't enough. And the troubles that we are now talking about regarding the production of Jujutsu Kaisen and Attack on Titan (Shingeki No Kyojin), two of the largest MAPPA's shows at the moment, already were present.
Animators said that the show had an extremely tight production schedule, resulting in constant overtime and a huge workload. Right after that MAPPA went on to adapt successful manga franchises instead of making original shows and went Madhouse way, surrendering its creative freedom to capitalism.
They had plans to revive the show and even announced the movie Ice Adolescence to be released in 2019, but then the scheduling, once again, interrupted their workflow, then the pandemic came, and now the movie seems to be shelved. MAPPA became one of the most talked about animation studios because they were bold and pushed their staff to their limit — and they still do, but is it worth it?
A beautiful story with beautiful animation but horrible production.
Summary:
MAPPA was created to give its creators more creative freedom than Madhouse.
Their road to success was jumbled due to unstable financing.
But during its production, the scheduling and management problems that are now talked about were already present.
MAPPA is one of the most renowned animation studios in the modern days, and that's pretty understandable: they ended up adapting some of the most popular manga series, and did them justice, translating the black-and-white drawings into fluid full-color animation filled with life and motion. Sure, there's a lot of controversy surrounding their current projects' inconsistent quality, but let's dive a little bit into history and see how MAPPA rose to fame. Spoiler alert: it's ice skating's fault.
Freedom for creators
If you think about it, it's a relatively young studio: it was established in 2011 by Masao Maruyama, a producer who previously founded Madhouse, another staple in the Japanese animation industry — and worked there from its inception in 1970. But Madhouse faced dire times in terms of financing, so Maruyama decided to create a new company, and its name is an acronym: Maruyama Animation Produce Project Association. It was created specifically to produce a film In This Corner of the World by Sunao Katabuchi, who became MAPPA's co-founder. But securing funds needed for production was not easy, and while they started working on the movie in 2010 in Madhouse, even before establishing MAPPA, it wasn't released until five years later.
In a weird twist of fate, Maruyama established a new studio because he wanted more creative freedom, but years later it turned out that his creation had the same problems Madhouse had: it turned into a capitalistic cash-grab prioritizing profits over anything else.
Setting the bar high
They started fine, however: their first project in 2012 was Kids on the Slope — a series centered on the beauty of jazz and the lives of young people who didn't know where they wanted to go in their future. Its mid-century setting, focus on real life, and fluid yet realistic animation, aided by the beautiful soundtrack by Yoko Kanno, set the tone for the studio's feature projects.
Their first original anime was Terror In Resonance (Zankyo no Terror) — one that focused on kids whose young days were taken from them because they were trained to be weapons, and it was as grim as it sounds. This show looked breathtaking: the amount of detail both in the animation and the backgrounds was astounding. These projects, alongside many others, were pretty successful, and the studio was on the rise. They had renowned directors working on their shows, they adapted Ushio & Tora, and looked like a safe haven for animators.
The high-quality work made the studio popular, and the amount of productions increased, increasing the workload, too. The studio wasn't big enough to handle all the projects with the same intensity, and scheduling and management became the main problems: the studio started to suffer from the same things that Madhouse did. So in 2016, Maruyama stepped down as the CEO of the studio, remained the chairman, but gave the title to the young and talented Manabu Otsuka.
We were born to make history
That was not the only huge change for MAPPA that happened in 2016. This year, a certain show focused on ice skating, Yuri!!! On ice, was released. And it was even more successful than people could hope: it was popular not only in Japan, but all over the world. It won numerous awards, became one of the most successful media franchises in Japan in the following year, had huge Blu-Ray and DVD sales — the first volume was sold for 50,878 copies in the first week, and other volumes topped the charts in terms of sales. It made MAPPA a much more prominent player in the animation field, and not only among the nerds.
There are multiple reasons for Yuri!!! On Ice becoming so successful. It's a beautiful show; it depicts the skaters realistically through the usage of rotoscoping which allows the animators to properly capture the intricate movements in their routines. The backgrounds are as spectacular as they were in Terror in Resonance, and they're quite diverse, as the story takes place in multiple parts of the world. And the story itself is incredibly wholesome.
It's about defeat and hope: the Japanese skater Yuuri Katsuki suffers a defeat at the Grand Prix in Russia and returns to his hometown of Hasetsu in Kyushu to heal his broken soul. Not only did he flop his routine: he did so on the same rink where his long-term idol, Victor Nikiforov, won another gold in the same Grand Prix. But as he was defeated, he was practicing Victor's program, and upon arriving home he decided to show it to his childhood friend. Little did he know that his friend's kids stealthily filmed him and uploaded the video — and it went viral overnight, prompting Victor to take a year off from competitive skating, fly to Japan, and propose himself as Yuuri's coach for this season.
The story concentrated on Yuuri getting back his passion for skating, finding confidence in himself, learning to rely on others — and on Victor being by his side, once again falling in love with ice. And, as it turns out, with Yuuri, too. This is a sports show that also had a romantic storyline between two main male characters, yet it never was advertised as a BL — because it was not the main focus. This realistic portrayal of relationship development is also one of the reasons why Yuri!!! On Ice became such a successful show. Or at least seemed to be.
The load was already too heavy back then
Despite all that, MAPPA recently revealed that it was a financial flop. The money that the show brought wasn't enough. And the troubles that we are now talking about regarding the production of Jujutsu Kaisen and Attack on Titan (Shingeki No Kyojin), two of the largest MAPPA's shows at the moment, already were present.
Animators said that the show had an extremely tight production schedule, resulting in constant overtime and a huge workload. Right after that MAPPA went on to adapt successful manga franchises instead of making original shows and went Madhouse way, surrendering its creative freedom to capitalism.
They had plans to revive the show and even announced the movie Ice Adolescence to be released in 2019, but then the scheduling, once again, interrupted their workflow, then the pandemic came, and now the movie seems to be shelved. MAPPA became one of the most talked about animation studios because they were bold and pushed their staff to their limit — and they still do, but is it worth it?
