Dandadan Producer Details the Anime’s Intense Production Demands

Dandadan will be making its highly anticipated anime debut later this year, and the producer behind the series opened up about the demands on its production. Yukinobu Tatsu’s original Dandadan manga will be making its anime debut this year with Science Saru leading up the animation production. As a result it’s become the most highly anticipated new anime release of the Fall, and fans are curious to see how Tatsu’s manga will be making its jump to motion on screen. Especially when considering that the manga has many highly detailed moments, there’s been a curiosity about how the studio will be approaching it. 

Speaking with Science Saru producer Kohei Sakita during Anime Expo 2024 earlier this month, ComicBook got the chance to ask Sakita about the challenges of adapting the Dandadan manga to an anime. As Sakita noted, it began with the director’s vision and knew that it would require a lot of “artistic power” and wanted to recreate high-resolution images of the manga as closely as they could with the final product. 

Dandadan Turns Manga Into Anime

“If we talk about the show from a production standpoint, of course, the director’s vision or direction comes first, and then he gives guidance to the character designers and visual artists,” Sakita stated. “That’s what is considered the most important thing, isn’t it? First of all, I knew from the beginning that the original manga had very impressive artwork and would require a lot of artistic power.”

Sakita then explained the way they would then further adjust the production itself to make sure the anime closely followed the manga’s visuals, “So when I signed on to Dandadan, and when it was made into an animation, the way I would adjust the drawings and the shape of the anime closely followed the original manga. Also, it’s not only the drawings to consider, but the colors and the photography – we tried to recreate high-resolution images of each panel as the manga unfolded.” 

It won’t be too much longer before we get to see it all in motion as Dandadan will be releasing sometime this October as part of the Fall 2024 anime schedule. Dandadan will be streaming its new episodes with Crunchyroll, Netflix, Hulu, ADN and Muse alongside their release in Japan. Directed by Fuga Yamashiro at Science SARU, Hiroshi Seko is supervising and writing the scripts, kensuke ushio is composing the music, Naoyuki Onda is designing the characters and Yoshimichi Kameda is designing the aliens and monsters.