On the journey [attempting] to create an anime series about programming.
Hey everyone! I’m Shō Akiyama, an indie animator/director who also works as a software engineer in Tokyo.
Last year, I worked on the production mostly alone for the pilot episode of Venture, an anime series about software engineers at an international tech startup in Tokyo. I’ve always wanted to watch an anime about programming, so when I found the chance to make it myself, I became extremely ecstatic. It was basically a strange mix of Silicon Valley, Cells at Work, Shirobako, and Kakushigoto with 5 years worth of stories I collected and created as I worked as a software engineer.
It took me six whole months to create the pilot outside of my day job, which in itself was also quite challenging yet rewarding — I was juggling jumping into both full-stack development and client correspondence from just being a frontend engineer at work, and at the same time writing, directing, and animating this episode on weekends and on my free time. I had to reference most of the people I look up to on how they time-box, sacrifice social life and other pleasures, and use every minute of the day as effectively as possible.
Fast forward about a year after I started, the pilot episode has been aired on ChibaTV and has won awards and official selections in international film festivals worldwide. I also used the traction on YouTube to create a small short first episode which was also aired on the same TV channel.
It also was the first time I got interviewed on TV and radio shows in Japan. The experience was simply amazing. Life was not just drawing frames and making them move anymore. We were even planning to shoot a commercial on TV for PR purposes.
However, as mentioned previously, since this series was 5 years in the making with stories I write slowly everyday from my daily life as a software engineer, I thought, “I can’t just let this stay as two short episodes”. I needed to know how to scale it up into an actual series.
Which is why when we couldn’t make new episodes since studio recordings are risky due to coronavirus, I decided to halt all production and simply tried pitching to producers using the down time. Of course at first the normal reaction was usually “You made anime mostly by yourself from writing to postproduction to marketing to coding/deploying the PR website, and a whole pitch bible complete with model sheets and a season 1 storyline? I haven’t met anyone like that.”
But that was that. Such was the hype. Maybe it’s my lack of writing ability. Maybe it’s my lack of animation experience. Maybe it’s my lack of communication skill to explain the storyline in a more impressive manner. Or maybe it’s a mix of all of those and more. Way more, perhaps.
With that, unsurprisingly, all pitches have failed. It was definitely a long shot, and I’m aware that pitching an anime series to producers would mean I am competing with actual studios and professional people who animate for a living with their high quality pilots and pitches, let alone the anime I’m creating being too much of a niche with software engineers. The fact that the animation that were bits and pieces of the extremely short experience I’ve had as an animator and director can never in a million years compete with this beautiful piece from Kyoto Animation and breathtaking visuals from Makoto Shinkai just makes it much harder. I ended up just criticizing my own work on YouTube dev updates with Sakami-san, the manager for the series when we were pitching.
Seeing a few comments on the completed episodes on YouTube saying “I’m a programmer and I’ve been wanting a programming anime series and now it’s being made. Please make more!” was a good enough push at the start.
However, animation as a media is a business. We were talking to big-time producers from large studios and streaming companies. There has to be numbers. There has to be social proof. The plot needs to be sellable. It was [countless] times of receiving feedback that range from “It’s very promising but we need more audience data” to “Sorry I’m not sure how we can sell this” to plainly “This is trash and it will never sell”.
And that made it all the more difficult yet interesting.
As of this moment, I have no idea how to proceed aside from just studying both formally and from watching other great works, but looking back, just creating the story in the artform that I love (2D animation) and having people enjoy it, no matter how niche the audience is, is extremely encouraging as a creator.
After the storyline’s evolution throughout the pitches, I’m just excited to create it regardless, be it a web series or starting small as a manga. Perhaps just enjoying creating it and entertaining the audience would be the way to go.
And of course, I thank everyone who has helped build the project up until now, especially Gregory Chen for some of the animation scenes in the pilot and model sheet for the character Mayu Ishida, and Ryohei Sakami for helping out with PR on the Japan side marketing.
Without further ado, I can now officially say that the next steps are now in the works. A short clip on the details will be released on the YouTube channel soon!
You can check out the project on the following links!
- Website: https://venture-anime.jp
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ventureanime
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/VentureAnime
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ventureanime2020/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ventureanime2020/
- GitHub (production repositories): https://github.com/venture-anime
