A Look Into How the Pros Make Anime & Manga Panel at Anime Expo
Amuse Creative Studio Presents: How the Pros Make Anime & Manga was a featured panel at Anime Expo 2025. It hosted Rei Hebiguchi, manga editor at Weekly Shonen Champion; Shinobu Seguchi, manga artist known for Prisoner Riku; and Kazuhiro Nishikawa, founder and CEO of DandeLion Animation Studio.
Hebiguchi and Seguchi kicked things off, with Seguchi sharing a story about how AX 2025 was not his first time visiting the United States: he went to New York some 30 years ago and returned to Japan because it was snowing and he didn't do anything. He shared his experience working on Prisoner Riku, which was serialized from 2011 to 2018. In these seven years, his biggest fear was having to take a break due to health issues of any sort.
Seguchi is working on the upcoming Oedo Fire Slayer manga adaptation of Shogo Imamura's novel, which is also getting an anime adaptation by SynergySP, produced by Amuse Creative. The manga has been serialized in Akita Shoten's Weekly Shonen Champion magazine since April 2025 and is expected to get a North American release this summer. Hebiguchi reflected on the adaptation, saying that adapting novels to manga is about taking the essential parts of the original story and finding the artistic strength.
With Oedo Fire Slayer, Seguchi has gone fully digital. Hebiguchi highlights how this move has allowed manga artists more time to work since it means they don't have to go through the process of printing and mailing manuscripts. This is especially relevant with this series, as the manga and anime adaptations are being made at the same time as cross-promotions.
Seguchi commented on the use of generative artificial intelligence, highlighting how he and other artists and writers don't want their work stolen, even if people use AI. The most important thing, to Seguchi, is following the rules set in place.
After this segment, the duo was joined by Nishikawa, who shared fun tidbits about DandeLion. For example, for The First Slam Dunk, they focused on being able to merge the 2D and 3D styles without them feeling divergent from one another. Nishikawa, who started the studio after a career as CG director at Toei Animation, also shared some stories about the 2024 Magic Candies movie.
Magic Candies was co-produced by DandeLion Animation Studio and Toei Animation. The short movie was inspired by a Korean picture book of the same title and took four years to produce; the production staff even went to Korea to do filming. Earlier this year, it was nominated for an Academy Award. Nishikawa shared that the staff stayed up until 3 AM getting drunk to celebrate.
Nishikawa mentioned how DandeLion was looking to move into a hybrid animation style: with the upcoming Eleceed anime adaptation, they're using motion capture to shoot video storyboards and then use virtual cameras and that video to decide on things such as the camera angles, compositing, and editing. Through this process, they're also using 2D drawings in the mix as part of the hybrid work, using in-house developed tools, as 2D processing with 3D camera movement is otherwise more difficult.
