Interview: Freddie Wong Talks ‘Anime Crimes Division’ Season 2 and Live-Action Anime Films

The surprise announcement of a second season for fan-favorite web series Anime Crimes Division was a major hit during Anime Expo 2018, and ComicBook.com participated in a roundtable with director Freddie Wong of RocketJump to ask all about it.

Wong elaborated on all the crazy stuff he and his team were able to get away with in the first season, along with teasing some of what fans can expect out of double sized second season.

With six episodes in total, the second season is exploring much darker areas but will still be full of all the parodical anime fun fans fell in love with on the first season. Along with this, Wong discussed the nature of live-action anime adaptations, and why there seems to be such a huge interest in making them now.

For more of Wong’s thoughts along with more info about Anime Crimes Division Season Two, read on for the full interview!

Did it Ever Feel Like You Went Too Far?

IGN: So, was there any point that your team felt like you went too far with the first season? 

Freddie Wong: OK, so I will say this. We wrote in that we’re gonna do Gundams and we’re gonna have the whole serial killer, sort of seven Gundams thing, and then it came time to be like, “All right, OK, but which Gundams?” 

And then it was like, “Oh shit.” Like we had to research, it was like a lot of research to figure out what the right ones were, but then to find the right ones that you could build, and so I did the building over the course of like a day.

My fingers were raw. So like that was the problem because we were getting all these pieces and putting them together. Gundams are very complicated. 

A lot of stuff that, at first, when you looked at it, you were like, “This is going to be nuts,” but then when you actually sort of like started building it you were like, “Nah, I get that.”

Anything You Wish You Could’ve Referenced?

ComicBook: Was there anything in Season One, like a reference or series, that you really wish had made it that you couldn’t do for any sort of reason?

For me, I’m a huge Miyazaki fan. And I remember that was one of the first times for me that I saw a movie in a theater and the credits rolled and I walked up to the front and bought tickets for the next screening and watched it again. It had such an impact in terms of…for me as a filmmaker and then also storyteller, just everything about it was just mind blowing for me at that time. And it really got me down the kick of doing and watching animation in high school and really getting into that.

The thing is like, Miyazaki is like so specific. His art is so specific. We wanted to get some Miyazaki in there, just some reference, and we got a few this season which I’m very happy about. 

Best Animated Meme?

IGN: What do you think are the best animated memes?

The “Is this the butterfly?” is so good. I mean ’cause, right, ’cause for a meme to work, it has to be versatile. You know what I mean? It has to have flexibility in a number of different situations. 

Coolest Line You’ve Done?

ComicBook: Speaking of memes and references, is there a particular joke or line from Season One that, when you guys came up with it you were like, “This is it. This is the coolest”?

The line about Death Note. Anthony Burch, who is writer of Season One and Season Two, he is awesome. We’ve worked with him in the past on some of the stuff we did with Hulu. 

That was the one we were having difficulty doing without cracking up on set because it was funny. Yeah, I think that’s my favorite one.

Favorite Live-Action Anime Movie?

IGN: Are there any anime live-action movies you like?

The Matrix.

No, no. No joke. I think the problem is when you talk about film, it’s not like anime. The thing about anime that I think a lot about is that spatially, anime breaks the rules of space a lot. A lot, a lot, right? In terms of depth, in terms of how stuff moves. 

You know, Cowboy Bebop maybe is the closest [to reality] because they’ll reference some actual fight stuff for some of it.

When people try to replicate that, when they try to replicate it literally, it doesn’t work. You kind of have to go and come out a little bit sideways, so honestly, no joke, the Wachowskis have been the only film makers I think who understand what anime is getting at in terms of the action, in terms of the staging.

Anime that Could Work in Live-Action?

IGN: So, technically then, what anime do you think are most fitted for live action that haven’t been attempted? 

There have been some K-drama adaptations right? I think those actually work, because if you’re trying a sort of smaller scale, you know, a sort of slice-of-life story then that works.

Flaws of Live-Action Anime Films?

ComicBook: So, you know, working within the industry, and you know, on the bigger scale, Hollywood is trying to do these live action projects now. What do you think one of their biggest flaws are, just from your perspective of how they’re approaching this?

One is, it’s always dangerous to try and compress. I don’t think you can compress a story and have it work. Ever. 

I think there’s a lot of anime that is about taking the time. Trying to compress a series into a movie. I think no matter what, you’re doomed for failure there. That’s first and foremost. I think two, the problem with any time a movie is bad, I think it’s always really one answer which is the script is bad. I think it’s tough because if you take a great script, it’s still a good movie even in the hands of, of a mediocre director.

But, if it’s a bad script, you can never elevate above that source material. So, I think that there’s still a lot of, I think there’s still a lot of problems in terms of just, on the scripting side.

I think that it absolutely should be doable. Like, we have good book adaptations. We have good Asian movies to live action Asian movies to American movies, right? I think there’s just a different mindset when we come to approach it in a source material but, I think that Pixar has done a lot to kind of change that perception.

Why Is There a Big Live-Action Anime Push?

IGN: Why do you think there’s such a push for live action movies?

One, there’s always something interesting to see something you love in the context of live action and the context of recognizable actors or what have you. There’s this sort of visceral thrill. And I don’t know if it’s so much validation as it is just curiosity. What’s this going to look like, you know? 

I think validation might be part of it. I think part of it might be wanting to be like, “Hey, this is a legit thing” and the way that’s always been signified is, “Is there a movie of it?”

Don’t forget in the ’50s Hollywood was making movies about Medal of Honor recipients, and it was like, “Yes. This person, We have to put this person on stage.” It was the way we signified in culture something that was important.

There’s sort of the, societal signifiers of importance, and I think there’s a part of it that comes from that because I think anime has been like underground in a way for so long, and it’s only sort of just now coming from a point where it’s way more mainstream than people give it credit for at first glance, but I think it’s been that way for much longer than people realize.

How’s Taking on Season 2 With Season 1 Being So Popular?

CB: Shifting back to Anime Crimes Division, how are you guys taking the positive reception of season one that fans have shown and moving into season two?

I’ll say the thing that we were the most psyched about was someone tweeted me and was like, “Hey, have you seen these Japanese Tumblr GIFs?” And like, the moment you’re on Tumblr, you’ve made it. The moment people are giffing you on Tumblr, it’s like you’re set. We saw this huge surge of Japanese anime fans translating it, putting subtitles on the things.

I think for us, what it said, and for us from the get go, it’s always about, we need to build a foundation on “What will we will have to come at from an anime in the first place?” You have to have familiarity with the [medium].

You know, what we saw was people who are passionate about something. They can sniff out fellow kids real quick, and it’s so obvious. So, obviously I think when we saw the reception, we were very happy like, “Oh man, people are getting it. People are like on our level in terms of the passion for the genre, the whole subject material, right?”

You know, don’t fix what ain’t broken. It starts with like, “Cool, what are the [anime] that we love and what are the little references that we can make?” And that’s very much a core theme of this season as well.

What’s Coming in ‘Anime Crimes Division’ Season 2?

IGN: So, can you tease anything for this season?

It’s going to be twice as many episodes. Six episodes.

It’s a little more of a serialized storyline and we are going to be telling the story over the course of the season about a serial killer, not of Gundams but of real people.

The serial killer is taking inspiration from famous anime deaths, and they put that together and they’re like, “Wait a minute. These aren’t just any anime deaths. These are tear-jerker, the top five tear-jerker deaths” and that’s like the thread for it.

We are exploring Neo Otaku City a little bit more. It also works more in the fact that this is a world where there are entire cities dedicated to fandoms of things. We’re expanding on that scope a little bit.

An ‘Anime Crimes Division’ Anime???

ComicBook: Is there ever an interest in doing a full-on anime segment or episode of Anime Crimes Division down the line?

We’ve been joking around for, even since the beginning of [Video Game] High School, we’ve been like, “I could do a proper animated anime intro for something.”

We’ve been wanting to do that for, at this point, almost a decade as far as anime intros go.

There’s definitely that world, but part of the fun of this [series] is when we talked and we were like, “Okay, how much of this is shot stylized like an anime and how much of this is a cop show?” You know, like, where is that, where does that blend sort of hit?

Where we sort of settled on in the first season is about 60/40. It’s 60% an anime, live action talk show, but it’s set in a world where these anime references. I think this season we’ll get a little closer to 50/50 because of subject matter. You know, I think that we are obviously, from the beginning, just huge fans of animation and everything that you could do with it.

Some of our other projects, you know are sort of exploring animation and looking at that world.

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For those who have never seen Anime Crimes Division, the series is co-produced by Crunchyroll and Rocket Jump and is available for streaming on Crunchyroll and Rocket Jump’s YouTube page. Crunchyroll describes the series as such:

“In Neo Otaku City, there are two kinds of people. The kind of people that can recite the Sailor Moon theme song from memory in the original Japanese, and the kind that don’t belong there. When someone commits a crime against anime, they don’t call the police. They call: the Anime Crimes Division”