The recently concluded Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? (DanMachi) Season 5 delivered an explosive resolution, marking the end of the overall Goddess of Fertility arc. Anime Trending previously had the privilege of interviewing Yuji Matsukura, chief producer at J.C.Staff, and Kazuki Uejima, producer at Egg Firm, about Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? (DanMachi) at Anime NYC 2024. The producers shared their thoughts on the challenges of producing a long-running series, the importance of the show to the production team, and the evolution of the anime industry.
This interview was conducted on August 24th, 2024, and has been edited for clarity. Questions submitted by Melyvn Tan and Isabelle Lee.
Can you both introduce yourselves and your roles as chief producer and producer on DanMachi?
Yuji Matsukura: I’m Yuri Matsukura from J.C. Staff, and I’m the chief producer. DanMachi’s been producing since Season 1, and my main job is kind of like an extension of the staff since I decide on the direction of how the work should go and who works on the movies. Generally, I steer the staff in the right direction, and I guess that’s the best way to understand my role.
Kazuki Uejima: I’m Kazuki Uejima from Egg Firm. DanMachi, like any other anime, has a production committee that gets put into place. My job at Egg Firm as a representative company is that I support, manage, and integrate all businesses that partner companies develop, like working more on the marking and the product placement of DanMachi, whether it becomes a video game or other sub-genres of the anime, and for the global release of the series.
DanMachi is now a five-season anime, with four of those seasons, seasons 2 to 5, being released within a five-year period from 2019 to 2024. How does J.C.Staff view the series in terms of its influence and importance to the studio and its production priority?
Matsukura: Within J.C.Staff, we regard DanMachi as one of our most important pieces. It’s a piece that continues to maintain its popularity — that’s one of the reasons why we value it so much. Also, I believe because of how it continues to maintain its popularity, it also leads to the motivation of the staff to continue to work on it.
While you’ve had prior experience working with J.C.Staff, DanMachi season 4 seems to be the first time you were involved with this particular series. How did you get assigned to season 4 and what were your thoughts on the DanMachi IP and the anime adaptation?
Uejima: I joined Egg Firm around the same time when DanMachi season 4 was already going into production around 2021. My first impression of DanMachi entering season 4 is that it is already a really rare thing compared to other anime series now. I think we have been able to achieve long-term series by continuing production with a proper understanding of what fans want and what they enjoy. We will continue to work hard and see to it that even more fans enjoy our work in the future.
As a producer at Egg Firm, how do you work with different production teams and studios such as J.C.Staff on DanMachi to ensure a cohesive final product?
Uejima: Egg Firm is kind of a bit of a unique company. In most cases, the Japanese animation industry is divided between production companies that actually create animation and companies that develop businesses and promotions derived from animation. For Egg Firm, we’re kind of like the in-between, and we produce both production and business aspects. Usually, production teams and business teams have very separate roles, so they don’t really interact too much, but for Egg Firm, we try to work together with the production team as much as possible. So for us, I believe that in order to ensure this cohesive final product for DanMachi, we should continue interacting with the production team itself to ensure that we’re moving in the right direction.
What was the production experience for seasons 4 and 5 like with Fujino Omori-sensei, the source material’s author, involved as co-series composer?
Matsukura: DanMachi’s original work has a lot of content, [like books that are very thick and dense in material], and so we decided that to adapt it into an anime, we really had to shave off some of the content inevitably. In order to do that, we really had to work together with Omori-sensei, and after many discussions, we decided that Omori-sensei himself would be the best person to actually do the shaving of the material. Working with the author, we really put a lot of emphasis on figuring out what was really important within the original source of material and what should be actually adapted into the anime.
So this process is actually unique because generally, when works with an original story gets animation, the product itself is already the result of shaving off the unnecessary parts. The fact that Omori-sensei was able to shave off more is very impressive. It’s a feat that not too many people can do.
With the anime now having five seasons, what do you see as the appealing factors that allow it to keep going?
Matsukura: Obviously, the popularity among Japanese and global fans has been very high for this series, which is why it was able to continue on for this long. But I also think that the love for the work within the staff is also very high, and I believe that also contributes to the factor that they continue to be like, “Oh, we’re excited to work on more.” I believe that led to the longevity and the appeal of this work.
Uejima: After working on DanMachi, the cohesiveness of the staff and the production team is also one of the big reasons for its longevity and how it maintains its popularity. I also think that the author’s involvement with the series of the anime production is also a very big reason. We’ve been releasing the game for DanMachi worldwide as well — which has an original plot line written by Omori-sensei. And so, I believe because the author is very forward in working with the anime [production teams], it leads to the appeal for the series as well.
Matsukura-san, you’ve been in the anime industry for over three decades already, so how has the evolution of the industry and audience expectations across the span of time, as well as your accumulated experience, influenced your approach to producing the anime, particularly with multi-cour projects like DanMachi?
Matsukura: In terms of the evolution of the anime industry, the biggest thing is that it has become a lot more digital. Starting from pen and paper to cel animation, there’s a lot of involvement with 3D CGI and the digitalization of anime. I believe that helps with increasing the threshold — the baseline of anime.
So with the evolution and with the involvement of digital CGI usage, I also think it increased the realism of the work of the animation, but on the flip side, I also think that when it comes to anime, realism is not always necessary in the world of animation. When you want an anime work that’s entertaining and interesting, I feel that sometimes the creativity [behind] the animation starts to decline a little bit with the involvement of CGI. I believe that in that part. I believe it’s not quite an evolution, but it might be a little bit like a devolution to an extent.
Throughout my years of experience, I’ve seen a lot of examples of successes and failures. I feel that I kind of have a good understanding of what’s going to work and what doesn’t. But one part that I worry about and always think about is that I always share my thoughts with the production team or staff about what usually works and what doesn’t. But as I mentioned before, I always value the creativity of anime and how people work on animation. So I sometimes worry that my experience might actually hinder the development of the anime series.
How does the production of season 5 compare to season 4 in terms of difficulty and challenges?
Matsukura: The biggest difference between season 4 and season 5 is that season 5 has a really complex story. It’s a story that involves plot points going all the way back to season 1, so it involves a really complex plot line. It’s very hard to convey a complex plot line and maintain its complexity, while also making it easier to understand for the viewers. Through discussions with Omori-sensei, we’re struggling right now. We can’t reveal too much because there’ll be spoilers, but we’ll just say that it has been a lot of work trying to convey it as well as possible. Also, another difficult part is the action scenes. There are a lot of action scenes this time around, and there’s a lot of dense animation.
Uejima: It’s a little similar to what Matsukura-san said, but as the main character Bell continues to grow, we have to continue to scale up the intensity of the battle scenes because he’s going to become stronger. It’s still in the development stage, and we can’t really spoil too much, but working on the action scenes has been a lot of work. We’re trying our best to increase the scale of it while maintaining the quality of it.
After four seasons of DanMachi, are there any new lessons or strategies that are being applied to the production of season 5?
Matsukura: So, after four seasons, it’s become like second nature for us. I guess we don’t really have any new lessons that we’ve worked on, or new lessons to apply, so we might not have a satisfying answer for this.
Oh, that’s fine. If [the previous lessons or strategies] are working, then you’d just continue on, right?
Uejima: Right.
Since you’re adapting the Goddess Festival arc, what are the main appealing factors of this arc, and what elements were the production staff most concerned with?
Uejima: So we’ll be premiering episode 1 [soon], and the PV has also been released. There’s not a whole lot we can say, but at least in episode 1, it starts off with a dating scene between Bell and Syr. The story focuses on Syr, who she is, and her relationship with Bell. So I’d like the audience to try to focus on Syr as a character.
Matsukura: Maybe that was a little too much from us — we might not even go through that with episode 1. But as you can see from the key visual, these two characters (Freya and Syr) are featured right now. So, the fans should understand that these two are going to be pretty important. You don’t see Hestia within this key visual, but we’ll try to make sure she’s not forgotten when we make this anime. (Lol) We haven’t forgotten about Hestia!
What else can fans look forward to in Season 5?
Matsukura: It’s thanks to you guys that we were able to produce Season 5, so please look forward to what we have in store. Thank you so much!
Special thanks to HIDIVE for this interview opportunity. Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? V is streaming exclusively on HIDIVE.
