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Japacon TV is a show that introduces Japanese subcultures such as anime and Vocaloid and broadcasts at 24:00 every Friday on the Japanese satellite broadcast channel BS Fuji. This episode is titled “Dream Collaborations Between Anime and Commercials?! The Frontlines of the Anime Advertisement Business.” It is themed after collaborations between anime production companies, creators, and the commercial industry. In this fourth part, we look at the inside story behind the collaboration commercial between Mercedes-Benz and Production I.G called “Next A-Class.”
Interviewed in this episode is Ryuji Mitsumoto, a department leader at the animation studio Production I.G. According to Mitsumoto, teams are usually only given one to two months to create a commercial using animation. For animation created manually, this is a fairly short amount of time. However, the “Next A-Class” commercial was given a production time of four to five months. This is an extraordinarily long time. They were also given an ample budget. It can be said that this is evidence of Mercedes-Benz jumping headlong into making the commercial.
With a full support system at its foundation, production on “Next A-Class” was carried out and a fairly famous staff was brought together to cover every important point. This included in particular character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, who was character designer on the worldwide popular anime Evangelion, making him one of the most well-known creators in Japan. It goes without saying that his schedule is jam packed...so how in the world did he become appointed to work on the commercial?
Watch the episode for the answer!
This is a Tokyo Otaku Mode original article.
