Production I.G

It's a very tight, focused narrative about their escape and survival.

But the adaptation, handled by Production IG and directed by Kenji Kamiyama, does something very unusual.

They took this lean novel and expanded the middle of it into a whopping 26 episodes.

Hold on.

Uh, and it was a surprise to me.

So Production IG and WIT Studio Which I guess they own, uh, IG Port owns both of those, had an $8 million loss, uh, during the year that ended May 2026.

So literally WIT Studio, not making any money.

Nope.

JoJo, Cells at Work, Attack on Titan, all this shit, doesn't fucking matter.

No, they're, they're not making any money.

Production IG, no money.

Um, and then it continues, uh, s- um, the Spy x Family studio, CloverWorks, nope, no money.

I can't imagine they go that route.

Right now, there's currently a d- a, uh, a Star Wars anime called The Ninth Jedi that is being done by Production IG, and I think that's the, probably the best case scenario, which Production IG is a, is a pretty good studio.

I wouldn't call them like top dogs currently in the industry.

They used to be one of the top dogs, and they're not there anymore, but yeah, that's, that's the best case scenario right now, just have Production IG do it.

They're more like a Corgi.

[laughs] Like a Corgi.

As far as the actual production talk goes, we'll probably cover that more as we go short to short, just because each one has a different animation style and director.

um so outside of that basically just this we we've heard from two of the studios this month already studio 4c and madhouse but there are two other production companies that we haven't heard from yet from the animatrix or from memories last week and that's production ig and b train but i'll reiterate those as we kind of go through Stephen, you mentioned Kevin Conroy returned to be Batman, for better or for worse, even though he's a little anime...

I think

in some of the shorts it's absolutely appropriate, in some of them it feels odd, but I still don't care.

Lots of, like, Dragon Ball and stuff like that.

Like, famous anime.

And it was Production IG, which is one that we haven't really... touched on before but also another production house that has just done so much stuff and the unique thing about this one is it does look like a traditional anime it looks like early 2000s

yeah yeah it reminds me of uh what's that cyber six that that yeah remember that show not as stylized but uh it had that sort of like that kind of like flat but like also colorful and you know like interesting angles and you know stuff that you don't see traditionally it felt expensive you know when you watch like a show yeah yeah you could tell they put a lot of elbow grease into the animation yeah and had a lot oh do you know what's crazy It's funny you said that

Oh, sure.

This was a few years into their career, but they were made up of people from Production IG and Bones.

Bones, I know, do a lot of cool-looking animation these days.

Production IG did a lot of game stuff.

Yeah, so Bones also made one of my favorite animes, Fullmetal Alchemist, and I did notice a lot of similarities in the fight choreography between Fullmetal Alchemist and this movie.

Yeah, I have to say the fight choreo was maybe my favorite part of this because I've seen a lot of RPG adaptation stuff, like the Tales of game ones come to mind especially, where it's a lot of...

Uh, had the one guy, uh, the Aardman, Studio Aardman, and then the Korean studio, Studio Mir.

Volume Three went back to the anime, anime and brought back some of the directors from the first one, Production IG, Project Studio, uh, Studio Anima.

You know, Naoyoshi Shiotani, Hitoshi Haga, all them.

Otsuka, I believe, did the, did, uh, The Smuggler, which I like 'cause I love Otsuka.

Um, uh, they, they showed the first episode on July 1st, and then it was fully released on August 5th of this year.

They showed the first, uh, episode on Anime Expo on July 1st.

Um, directed by, they brought back director Kenji Kamiyama as chief director, co-directed by Shinsuke Tada, screenplay by Mitsu- Mitsuyasu Sakai and Kenji Kamiyama, music by Nobuko Toda and Kazuma Jinnouchi, um, at Production IG, based on the short The Ninth Jedi and The Ninth Jedi: Child of Hope.

From Star Wars: Visions, based on Star Wars by George Lucas.

Whoever made this.

Production IG knows.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Eight episodes.

It's by Studio IG, which we're familiar with from our, uh...

If you're, if you, if you watch the podcast, then you know that we cover a lot of anime and-

What?

I think season two went international with a bunch of international studios rather than just Japanese ones.

Production IG is doing all the night show.

They do Ghost in the Shell.

That animation series from the early 2000s.