Anime Limited's Cloud Matsuri Online Convention

BEASTARS Director Shinichi Matsumi & Producer Hyun-Tae Kim

Anime Limited's Cloud Matsuri online convention offered more insight to Orange's work with a panel dedicated to hit series BEASTARS. Series' director Shinichi Matsumi and producer Hyun-Tae Kim attended the panel and updated fans on the show's season. Kim confirmed they are currently in the process of making BEASTARS Season 2. “Coronavirus isn't having too much of an impact on Studio Orange,” Matsumi added. “We're still working very hard.”

Matsumi revealed he came to the anime industry out of his love for film, especially fantasy films. “I started creating animation as an easier way to create fantasy.” Matsumi also claimed CG animation was closer to live-action film than hand-drawn animation. One can have big movements and gestures in hand-drawn animation, but CG makes a much greater level of detail possible. Kim agreed, adding that hand-drawn animation is limited to what an animator can actually draw.

Matsumi pointed out how in CG certain basics are fixed, such as a character's proportions. “You can focus on other things.” Trial-and-error testing is also easier in CG, he said. Kim said that CG animation could match the emotions of characters to the style of direction; for example, CG makes it possible to manipulate the frame and the “camera” position.

Matsumi came to BEASTARS with the belief that CG could be used to express subtle changes in character expressions, though he didn't know if the series could make it work. Kim pointed out how the BEASTARS' voice actors recorded their lines while acting out the relevant scene. “We would get them to do a punch, sit down, lie down.” Unusually for anime, the dialogue was recorded before the animation was created, freeing up the actors' performances much more.

That practice even extended to one of the last episodes, when Legosi and Haru are lying together in a bed in a love hotel.

“We actually had a bed, with the actors in the bed, we turned the light off… We got good performances,” Kim said.