Studio Durian‘s movie adaptation of Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto‘s emotionally resonant one-shot manga, Watch Help, is arguably one in every of essentially the most moving items of artwork to reach out of animation in rather a while. As evident by its booming box administrative heart success every in Japan and North The united states and a spacious quantity of award circuit sweeps, Watch Help stands as a testomony every to the grueling labor of fancy that making artwork demands of its creators and the energy of a decent-knit community of animators painstakingly drawing the movie to lifestyles by hand.
At Anime Central 2025, Studio Durian and director Kiyotaka Oshiyama made a distinct customer appearance, offering insights into his profession as an animator and the stride of founding his studio in 2017. During panel discussions, Oshiyama gave audiences a gape of what’s next for Studio Durian—an formidable pudgy-size adaptation of their acclaimed instant movie, Shishigari.
During a take a seat-down interview with Anime News Network, Oshiyama mirrored on his experience working on Watch Help, shared his solution to anime diversifications, explored the broader impact of AI on feeble arts, and offered an change on what’s on the horizon for Studio Durian.
Watch Help intertwines a poignant fable about two close chums drifting aside with a heartfelt fancy letter to the unglamorous lifetime of being an artist. As its director, which scene from the movie most resonated with you in portraying the complexities of creating artwork?
Kiyotaka Oshiyama: In the climax of the movie, there is a scene the put Fujino, having lost her buddy Kyomoto, enters Kyomoto’s room, the put she’s no longer there. That room for Fujino is a extraordinarily comforting location for them. The overall scene, the put she takes a step away from that room to pass on for herself, became something that in truth resonated with me when I learn the manga. Or not it’s a scene that I in truth save a quantity of emphasis on.
In any other future, there can were a future the put Fujino stays in Kyomoto’s room and would not pass forward. But for me, for my fragment, in Shawshank Redemption—it be a extraordinarily classic movie—the main persona Red, portrayed by Morgan Freeman, after leaving penal complex there became an chance not to continue moving forward and unprejudiced ending it all there. But instead, he moves on forward [and] goes to meet his buddy. I imagine that scene and the climax of Watch Help delight in similarities. I think there is a quantity of significance in that one step forward that Fujino comprised of Kyomoto’s room.
The artwork kind of Watch Help closely mirrors the manga’s loose and expressive aesthetics. What energy did Durian Studio must find and emphasize by hewing so closely to the manga’s vogue through hand-drawn sequences?
OSHIYAMA: Starting from the comment that the movie has a extraordinarily loose touch, for my fragment, I produce not think the outline is nice. In comparison with his weekly serializations, Watch Help as a one-shot has plenty extra detail save into the drawing by the creator. When we had been working on the movie, in preference to emphasizing one point, we tried our most effective to translate the total notable points that had been drawn into the movie – especially since these notable points seem to derive lost when it involves animation diversifications.
That being mentioned, we also wished to derive determined the hand-drawn peep wasn’t lost after we tantalizing the movie. We tried our most effective to be sure the total aforementioned notable points had been kept in the tantalizing movie while maintaining the drawing-esque nature of the original work.
In the the same vein as discussing the energy of hand-drawn animation, there became valuable debate online in the West about what makes for a decent anime adaptation. Some argue that an anime has to follow its provide discipline cloth physique for physique dogmatically with out deviations, while others imagine an adaptation has to breathe aloof lifestyles into a work in a technique most effective animation can. Is there a particular camp you subscribe to as a director regarding a decent adaptation, strictly following what came earlier than it, or trying to bring something aloof to the desk, or is there truth to every arguments?
OSHIYAMA: In Watch Help, it’s seemingly you’ll well derive the impact that it be extra closely adapted as valuable as imaginable to the original work. But for me, for my fragment, I think I’m in the latter camp. In terms of manga and anime, they’re unprejudiced two fully varied mediums. Some [things] which are portrayed in the manga usually are not plausible to describe in anime derive. In the occasion you’re employed in anime, your opinion will naturally fall in the latter category. Or not it’s most unlikely to utterly narrate what’s portrayed in manga in tantalizing derive.
Clearly, there are some sequence that had been adapted very poorly [because they’re] previously aside from the original work. Perchance those examples can delight in gotten a little blended in with this latter camp, however I firmly imagine that when it involves anime adaptation, it’s seemingly you’ll well light in truth derive certain the animation makes exercise of the strengths of the tantalizing medium when it involves the variation. So, I’m definitely in the latter camp.
Watch Help became released when AI-generated artwork was increasingly prevalent. In the West, AI-generated artwork is being oldschool to repeat the forms of notable animation studios delight in Studio Ghibli. This results in usual online discourse over how it diminishes the human component that makes artwork particular. How would you acknowledge to those that ogle AI-generated images as a technique to “democratize artwork?”
OSHIYAMA: I imagine that expertise causes individuals not to be in a field to return to their mature methods, as an illustration, the washing machine. The washing machine is a main instance of technological construction. Help then, individuals washed their dresses by hand. Now that the washing machine exists, telling individuals to return to hand washing their laundry is out of the interrogate. I wasn’t there on the time, however perchance some individuals complained about the roles of hand-washing laundry being taken away by this machine. I fully agree that this AI expertise, or this AI artwork, would take the roles of those that work in the inventive industry. I strongly imagine it be something to be talked about.
On the different hand, as you mentioned, the latter camp of those that grunt that creating AI artwork “democratizes,” makes it extra obtainable to the usual those that can’t specific their creativity through artwork—I produce not must take that away from them. After I made Watch Help as a movie, the memoir itself is set the inventive efforts of these artists and how their efforts bloom into inventive artwork. Or not it’s a memoir that portrays and celebrates the enlargement of artwork. I didn’t derive this movie to mutter the percentages of individuals gaining creativity or the opinions of those that grunt that AI artwork enables them to take their creativity.
In terms of the unlawful usage of AI—whether it be copying a stutter actor or actress’ stutter, making AI learn and map it, and perchance making a profit out of it, making AI learn Studio Ghibli-style animation, and producing Studio Ghibli-vogue animation and making some kind of profit out of it—I imagine that’s beyond the scope of the technological construction. That’s an absolutely separate pickle.
Using AI to learn natural landscapes or making it learn the realism of your surroundings to derive some extra inventive artwork, I think, is fully fine. But when it involves those unlawful, illegal, malicious makes exercise of of AI, I will grunt loud and certain that’s not something strive to be doing.
Switching gears, I wished to discuss Shishigari. What motivated Studio Durian‘s decision to expand Shishigari from a instant movie into a characteristic-size project?
OSHIYAMA: From the initiate, Shishigari wasn’t only a instant movie. It became created as a pilot movie—a movie in preparation to derive a characteristic-size movie. We must derive enhance from the authorities, especially for funding Shishigari. For that to happen, we desired to derive a pilot movie to make certain that this movie we may perchance well map it as a pudgy-size characteristic movie in the main articulate. So after we made this pilot movie, we already had plans to derive a characteristic movie.
Since Durian first introduced plans to expand Shishigari into a characteristic-size movie five years in the past, how has the project stepped forward? Can you fragment any updates? Will the pudgy-size version close correct to the core aspects of the instant movie, or has the inventive course shifted greatly since 2019, leading to significant changes?
OSHIYAMA: When we first made the announcement, we labored with a international producer to find a honest client that matched our imaginative and prescient for the movie. But, in these past five years, now we haven’t been in a field to find a settlement that we can agree upon with the producers or with other purchasers regarding the movie. During that point span, the manufacturing of Watch Help started, so we had to place extra of our point of interest on Watch Help, so there hasn’t been too valuable development when it involves the work. But now, we’ve already cut the total contracts with Shishigari. Shishigari was our contain independent project, so we’re not relying on initiate air sources anymore. Currently, now we delight in our contain inventive freedom when it involves Shishigari. That’s roughly the put we’re at.
If the timing is correct [and] if the opportunity arises, we would delight in to work extra on the manufacturing of Shishigari. But on fable of we’re a minute studio—we’re a barely minute team—when it involves producing a characteristic-size movie, now we must employ a quantity of time and effort on it. It in truth boils down as to whether the opportunity arises, and then we’ll work on it. We’re at this time unprejudiced waiting for that point.
With Watch Help in the rearview ponder, are there any other manga or novels it’s seemingly you’ll perhaps delight in Studio Durian to maintain as an anime adaptation, or does the studio must detect making extra original works?
OSHIYAMA: We may perchance well not mutter the opportunity to work on an adaptation, however our present point of interest is on original work.
