Creator Backlash / Anime & Manga

Creator Backlash in Anime & Manga.

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Japanese creators

• The first Haruhi Suzumiya manga adaptation, based on the original light novels and written before the highly successful anime, was disowned by its publisher and most records of its existence were erased. They didn't even try to capitalize on the series' newfound immense popularity from 2006 on by bringing it back; instead, another manga by another author was commissioned in order to capitalize on the phenomenon. One possible reason for this is that the first author did some Hentai Doujinshi about the very same series he was drawing, and firing him and disowning his work was the only way the publishers got to manage the affair. Another likely reason is that the artwork for the first manga was terrible. Mikuru's boobs don't even look like boobs.
• Osamu Tezuka:
  • He didn't exactly care for his live-action/animated Vampire.
  • One of the most famous examples is Tezuka destroying the master for Episode 34 ("Midoro Swamp" aka "The Beast from 20 Fathoms") of Astro Boy immediately after it aired because he was so disgusted by its shoddy quality. He farmed out the episode to a group of young anime/manga students, and the results dissatisfied him so much, that he personally destroyed every possible copy he could find. Unfortunately for him, a copy of the episode had already been sent to America for dubbing (and would later resurface as a "Lost Episode" of the series on VHS), and the Japanese soundtrack (but not the footage) still exists and was included as an extra in the episodes release on the Astro Boy DVD sets. Also, there are a handful of stories he wrote that he permanently pulled from circulation (i.e. not available, even in compilation form) due to said stories not being up to his usual standards.
  • Tezuka deeply regretted how he depicted Africans in later volumes of Kimba the White Lion (Jungle Emperor Leo or Leo the Lion in Japan) when the titular character is a fully grown lion including the 1966 sequel series.
• Referenced in Excel♡Saga: In the opening to one episode, the production staff of the show confront Koshi Rikdo (the writer of the original manga) and toss down several doujinshi in front of him, causing him significant embarrassment. Those doujinshi are actual ones Rikdo wrote before he did Excel Saga. Guess what the plot of that episode is based on?
• Ken Akamatsu, the author of Mahou Sensei Negima! was not exactly pleased with the way the SHAFT-produced Negima: Final Movie turned out. The film was rushed and had 20 minutes of runtime cut hurting the plot. Akamatsu said that he should have intervened more in the proccess. He resorted to another studio later for adapting UQ Holder!, his next work.
• Mobile Suit Gundam has "Episode 15: Cucuruz Doan's Island", which wasn't featured on the US broadcast or DVD boxset at the request of Yoshiyuki Tomino, who felt it wasn't up to the standard of the rest of the series thanks to horrendously Off-Model moments. There's also the reasoning that he and the director for the episode butted heads, with Tomino stating, "He knows what he did," when asked what happened. Ironically, some fans would have preferred that they kept "Doan" and instead removed the previous episode "Time, Be Still", which covers the same concept but not as well and also has tortuously slow pacing. The episode is also still present on the Japanese set, released much later. Then in 2022, Sunrise released a movie based on this episode.
  • Sunrise in general, quote, "do not like to talk about G-Saviour". Most of the franchise's fans agree with them on this point. Although this didn't stop the mobile suit from making a Continuity Cameo in Gundam Build Fighters (in which it got destroyed five seconds into its battle).
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • The Japanese producers were upset by "Electric Soldier Porygon", the infamous episode that featured flashing colors, causing over 600 viewers to go to the hospital with seizures. When news broke of the story in Japan, they aired the same clip again, sending even more people to the hospital. It was an extremely embarrassing event that caused massive problems in the anime industry in general, as apparently something like this could have happened at any time in the previous decade due to the use of "strobe light" animation techniques; they just didn't pay it heed until then. It also was a near-Franchise Killer. The producers want no reminders of it — and that includes Porygon itself. Note that no major characters in the games use Porygon either (although that may just be because Porygon is supposed to be rare). What's particularly bad about it is that the cause of the seizures wasn't Porygon at all — the real culprit were explosive missiles launched by an antivirus program in cyberspace, which for whatever reason flashed red and blue when they exploded.
  • The few episodes from the second season where Jynx appeared with its original, widely thought to be racist color scheme (more specifically, "Holiday Hi-Jynx", "Stage Fight" and "The Mandarin Island Miss Match") are starting to become this to The Pokemon Company, removing them from all digital and home media releases since 2013.
  • In a series of translated blogs, Takeshi Shudo, the original head writer, stated how he disliked the Strictly Formula that was pushed upon it, which led to his resignation... and then after he left, he disliked how his own prize creations Jessie, James, and Meowth^note aka Musashi, Kojiro, and Nyarth of Team Rocket were going way past Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain and into harmless territory.
  • The Japanese voice actors for the Team Rocket trio were quite vocal in how they disliked their characters' change in personality during Best Wishes.
• Kaori Yuki had an entertaining way of describing her first published manga (a one shot about vampires): "I wrote this story while I was still dumb — I mean young." She laughs at its narmfulness now.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • The title of the third chapter (entitled G-R Nonaggression Pact?) might seem strange, as Russia barely shows up (except to break England's cursed chair) and there is no pact depicted. It turns out that the original opening to the webcomic did depict it, and the pages were removed by Hidekaz Himaruya, having not done the research on Germany and Russia's pre-WWII relationship and the conditions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Needless to say, he rectified part of the problem in a later chapter and finally depicted the pact, but once American fandom found the original deleted strips and scanlated them, they would come back to haunt him.
  • Another set of strips titled "Italy Scribbles" were purged from the site in 2008 for containing sexual content involving France, Spain, and the child version of Italy. Though France and Spain back down before they cross Pædo Hunt territory, their overall behavior in the comic shocked some fans when these strips were also recovered and scanlated.
• According with this interview, Shūichi Ikeda's biggest shame was making Char Aznable go out of character in the SD Gundam shorts and OVAs. This is possibly one of the reasons why Char was voiced by a different voice actor in the anime adaptation of the Mobile Suit Gundam-san gag manga.
• Judging by her interview in Otakon 2012, it seems that Aya Hirano doesn't want to speak about her role as Katja in The Qwaser of Stigmata.
• According to Hisashi Suzuki, the writer of Magical Warfare, he felt that the anime adaptation of his work was a bad idea, stating that he felt like he was being "jabbed with a bamboo sword."
• Ichiei Ishibumi, the writer of the High School D×D light novels, and the anime's adaptations director, Tetsuya Yanagisawa, said that the anime adaptation's third season, BorN, wasn't the season they were hoping it would be due to Yanagisawa shifting around the volumes adapted for the season, in this case the fifth through seventh. Ishibumi and Yanagisawa consequently went their separate ways and Passione animated the fourth season, Hero, in TNK's place.
• CLAMP was reportedly dissatisfied on how the storyline in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- progressed near the end. They acknowledged that they had gone too far and had created too much of a Mind Screw.
• Hirohiko Araki has expressed shame over Gorgeous Irene, one of his early manga, due to him having an immature view of women at the time, leading to its female lead being overly stereotypical. He would later write a better Action Girl protagonist in Stone Ocean as a way to make up for this. During his writing for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Araki has since admitted that part of the reason Avdol in Part 3 and Fugo in Part 5 didn't get many fights was because he found their powersets too difficult to make good battles out of. The experience led to him vowing to not use many, if any, fire or poison-based Stands for heroes again as a consequence.
• Kōhei Horikoshi has expressed regret over My Hero Academia's early characterization of Katsuki Bakugo. In particular, there's the infamous scene in the first chapter where he tells Izuku Midoriya to go jump off a building and pray he gets a Quirk in the next life, which makes him come across as far worse than he was supposed to be. While Bakugo does retain his heavy Anti-Hero and Jerk with a Heart of Gold attitude, he never goes that far again and eventually apologizes to Deku for bullying him.
• According to an interview that comes in the Blu-Ray box set of Attack on Titan Season 2, the "Uprising" arc (manga volumes 13-16) was where Hajime Isayama felt "the most disappointed with his work" and hopes that on its animated adaptation in Season 3 he'll have the chance to wipe away that regret and replace it with something he's proud of. In context, the adapted Uprising arc changed in terms of pacing by cutting off some characterization from Dimo Reeves' negotiations with the Survey Corps and his importance in the district of Trost, and the journalists Roy and Beaure's impact on the reporting of the crimes of the government.
• World Witches: Despite its current successful anime, light novels, and manga series, it had a very rocky start that's been quietly ignored by the writers. For the first manga, "Maidens of the Blue Sky," the artist was originally told to make it a bit ecchi. It was then canceled because it was too ecchi and focused too much on fanservice at the expense of everything else (which, believe it or not, is still true, even compared to the current anime). The second manga, "Maidens in the Sky," wasn't much better. The problem this time was just that it wasn't very good, and contradicted the anime in quite a few ways. Although the actual events in these manga have since been ignored, the characters in them have actually reappeared in newer material.
• The original Super Dimension Fortress Macross was almost this for Mari Iijima. She was just a teenager when she played Minmay, and the popularity of the show and the character caused her to be pigeonholed and soon leave acting entirely to concentrate on her music career. It took her twenty years to make her peace with the series and the character... just in time for ADV, in a bit of Stunt Casting, to ask her to play Minmay in English.
• Subverted with The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You. One of the fourth wall breaking jokes involves two people at a bookstore display selling volumes of the manga itself discussing how the title was intended to be a joke but nobody got it, and how the author wanted to "crawl in a hole and die" due to "being too ahead of the curve". The real life mangaka tweeted that the joke was not a reflection of their true feelings and that they did plan on creating 100 girlfriends for the manga.
• Kyoko Mizuki (writer of the original novel as well as the manga) and Yumiko Igarashi (illustrator) have come to despise Candy♡Candy, due to all the legal fights between each other caused by it. Allegedly, in 2006 Mizuki claimed that she got headaches every time she thought of Candy Candy itself.
• The creator of the Slayers franchise, Hajime Kanzaka, stated a few times in interviews that, despite working on it, he had come to dislike the third season (Try) of the anime adaptation, which was one of the first divergences from the plot of the light novels. When the belated season 4 came out, a Discontinuity Nod noted this: on the plane chart that lists the numerous Big Bads of the verse, the two that were slain in season 2 were dented, noting their destruction, but one of the higher-level demon lord's spots on the chart was intact—this particular lord, Dark Star Dugradigdu, was slain in season 3.
  • Strangely enough, characters from season three were depicted in the eyecatches of the final episode (which depicted the various heroes and villains of the series). Filia is especially given a prominent background shot in the "Heroes" eyecatch.
• Yoshiyuki Tomino has stated clearly he isn't proud of his work on Victory Gundam. He made no secret of the fact that when he worked on Victory, he was suffering from heavy depression, which resulted in him actively trying to sabotage the show from within by making it as unpleasant a viewing experience as possible in an attempt to turn the fans against it.
  • Happened again with Gundam: Reconguista in G, as he believes the final result was poorly written and had a very confusing plotline (most fans agree on the second point). Tomino even gave himself a score of 15/100 for it. Part of the reason he is working on a series of compilation movies of Reconguista is to address those mistakes.
• For reasons unknown, the author of the manga Hyouge Mono along with the editorial staff quit as consulting staff or distanced themselves from the anime project. And in a pseudo Alan Smithee fashion, Yoshihiro Yamada also asked his credit be changed. He did not demand he take his name off the series nor did he adopt a pseudonym but rather changed the credit from Original Story to Original Concept (or Original Work to Original Scheme depending on the translation).
• It's reported that Nobuhiro Watsuki disliked the Rurouni Kenshin Reflection OVA as he wasn't involved with its production, going so far as to dub it as Canon Discontinuity.
• Hayao Miyazaki was not fond of how Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was edited for the initial North American release, to the point that he and Studio Ghibli mandated all of his films would never be edited again for international distribution.
  • Miyazaki also worked on preproduction of Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, and considered it one of the worst experiences he ever had in his career.
  • When working on Akage no Anne, Miyazaki did not like Takahata's direction with the anime and left 15 episodes into production.
  Miyazaki: With [Conan], I really recalled why I had wanted to work on cartoon movies. It would be overstating it to say that I returned to my point of origin, but I had lost sight of my own themes after Marco was over. I felt I was back to square one.”
• Yumi Kuroiwa tweeted about how much she hated working on Kuroko's Basketball and, at one point, admitted that she animated Kuroko from memory after losing his character sheet. Along with posting yaoi fanart of Haikyuu!!, she was fired from Production I.G.
• Tite Kubo made it abundantly clear he was not pleased with Bleach: Hell Verse, the fourth movie installment of his popular Bleach series. In the small interview that came with collectors edition of the DVD in Japan, Kubo stated that he requested his name be removed from the credits (a request that was denied) as he stated that he felt that hadn't contributed enough to the film to be acknowledged in the credits... because the studio had rejected all of his ideas.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: After the release of End of Evangelion, Kazuya Tsurumaki would later go on to say that producing the film was unnecessary, since he thought the original Series Finale was fine.
• Makoto Shinkai was initially glad his film Your Name was successful, but added that the film is way too overrated. In an interview, he then began to worry whether Your Name would become a Tough Act to Follow, and the "New Miyazaki" comparisons reached new heights, and Shinkai had to personally make statements to disassociate the label with him. Still later, he said outright he doesn't want an Oscar win, going on to say that he wanted people to stop seeing it as their obsession was unhealthy.
• Sui Ishida, author of Tokyo Ghoul, has admitted that he doesn't feel like his work on the series was a success. According to Ishida, he doesn't feel satisfied with something he's made unless he's able to overcome his own obstacles, which he feels wasn't the case with Tokyo Ghoul due to the heavy workload dominating his life and negatively impacting his physical and mental health.

Other creators

• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Eric Stuart, the dub voice of Brock, was initially accepting of his role; but he grew tired of how people would seldom acknowledge his other work and only talk to him about voicing Brock. This was seen as a significant decision of his to retire from anime voice acting to focus on his music career. To a lesser extent, Veronica Taylor (Ash) and Rachael Lillis (Misty) were also weary of how fans would bring up voicing Ash and Misty when they both had many other anime roles; they, however, at least seem pleased that people enjoy watching Pokémon.
  • For quite a few years after working on the show, Veronica Taylor avoided performing Ash's voice at conventions due to several fan requests. She has softened up to them, however.
  • Andrew Rannells is now a successful Broadway musical star, so he didn't have good things to say about Pokémon Live! stage show, if not the cartoon itself. Unsurprisingly, Stephen Colbert was more than happy to remind him he worked on it. He also hated voicing Harley for the same reasons as playing James.
• Brad Swaile, after gaining mainstream success with Death Note; has since spoken at convention appearances that he dislikes many of his pre-Light Yagami roles; including Lan Hikari in MegaMan NT Warrior and Kicker Jones in Transformers: Energon.
• Several Hungarian voice actors have admitted how much they hated dubbing anime series that had been imported in the '90s. Notably, the voice actors or actresses of Sailor Moon, Vegeta (2nd), Android 18 and Krillin have either disliked or outright loathed their roles and practically had to be forced into the recording room for every episode. Some of them couldn't believe these shows have fans, much less they themselves for having worked on them. Admittedly, a lot of this stems from the abysmal working conditions back in the day.
  • Certain dubbing cast members still echoed similar sentiments well into the 2000s, when the country released another slew of anime imports. In reference to Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), one dubbing director went on record to say he loathed working on "Japanese shit", and the voice actor of lead character Edward Elric has been open about his disdain for anime as well.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • While Tiffany Grant still enjoys voicing Asuka in the English dub of the original TV series and its related works, she was disappointed that her character never spoke German and wasn't obsessed with Kaji in the Rebuild of Evangelion series. She was also dissatisfied with the Netflix release of the TV series due to Khara's direct involvement in the re-translations and casting decisions. Grant also considered You Can (Not) Redo the worst Evangelion film of her 25-year tenure as Asuka. Grant later admitted she disagreed with translator Dan Kanemitsu's script rewrites for Funimation's home video release of You Can (Not) Redo as well as the Amazon Prime Video release of the Rebuild films.
  • Notably avoided by Carrie Keranen and the actors from the Netflix dub, who said they enjoyed working with Khara and VSI for its release.
  • Fabrizio Mazzotta and Netflix felt that their first Italian dub was an unmitigated disaster to the point that they decided to give it a second dub with a new script.
  • Donald Reignoux, the French voice for Shinji, disliked his work on the first French dub of the original TV series and refused to work for VSI until the mid 2010's. He has since reprised his role as Shinji for the Netflix dub, which was dubbed by VSI.
• Quite a few people involved in the English dub of Sorcerer Hunters were upset when then-newcomer Steven Foster took over as the dub's ADR director/screenwriter for the last 12 episodes. Tiffany Grant was particularly frustrated with Foster's attempts to change her character Chocola's personality. When Chris Corey, the original voice of Gateau, spoke out against these changes, he was replaced by Andrew Klimko.
• Nobody at Nelvana or Shout! Factory seems interested in releasing Seasons 2 and 3 of Medabots to DVD. The latter season was panned by critics and fans alike for its apparent removal of most of the show's characters.
• Although Tiffany Grant had fond memories of playing Ryoko Subaru in Martian Successor Nadesico, she wasn't fond of the film due to her character's limited screen time.
• Whenever anyone asked Alexis Tipton about what one of her regrets about her career was, she would answer Master of Martial Hearts without hesitation, due to its low production values and infamous twist ending.
• Steve Blum
  • He has absolutely refused to work on anything hentai,^note and no longer can do any of these titles anyway, since hentai titles are non-union after he was brought on for one title and came across a scene that was so offensive that he left the studio immediately (link to an interview where he talks about the incident here).
  • Blum was one of the first voice actors to portray Goku, the famous protagonist of Dragon Ball. Unfortunately, the one time he did the voice of Goku was in Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout, a lackluster PSX fighting game with hilariously awful voice acting where his performance was embarrassing, even for himself.
• Christopher Sabat and several other actors in the cast consider the original dub of Dragon Ball Z an old shame as it was their first job in the anime industry, meaning that neither their acting or the scripts were up to snuff. That said, the cast are all generally fond of the Dragon Ball franchise and were pleased to be able to improve upon their original work with Dragon Ball Z Kai.
• One Piece
  • 4Kids Entertainment wasn't happy with what they did to the series, since they didn't want anything to do with the show in the first place. They were forced to edit it until they were able to legally drop the license. Both Mark Kirk and Eric Stuart noted that Toei forced them to accept the series as part of a package deal with Ultimate Muscle and Magical DoReMi, and 4Kids never wanted to acquire the series in the first place (revealing their dub to be an Ashcan Copy).
  • Eric Stuart frequently admits at conventions and interviews that he also knows their adaptation was terrible, given how he felt that it would never work as a Saturday morning show. To this day, he still has fond memories of working on that series despite their production issues.
  • David Moo is quite outspoken about how he wasn't given any choice in the matter for giving Sanji that horrible quote-unquote "Bronx" accent.
• [adult swim]:
  • In 2010 they received a piece of fan-mail inquiring about shows they'd lost the rights to. When asked if there were any such shows they were glad to be rid of, they responded with Reign: The Conqueror.
  • Though the show originally aired on the Toonami block, they also didn't mince words on their feelings about another dub with a commercial bump that simply said "Pilot Candidate: Never Again."
• Bill Timoney in regards to his dubbing work on Toshio Maeda's Urotsukidōji, which was his debut in the art form playing lead Tatsuo Nagumo plus rival-turned-evil Yūichi Niki. While Bill does acknowledge his work on the OVAs in interviews, he makes it clear that he and everyone else who worked on them were repulsed by the content even with the censoring done for the theatrical edits and that the only reason he took the gig was to help pay his rent. He goes on record saying that he stayed away from Central Park Media's Anime 18 label projects afterward. He does bring it up jokingly and even does the voices during 18+ panels at cons, however.
• Brian Beacock has said he enjoyed working on Naruto, but makes it clear he hates doing Sakon and Ukon's voice. According to Beacock himself, he regularly had to say lines as both brothers because no one was sure which one said what line most of the time.
• Digital Manga Publishing really regrets licensing the controversial Cure Your Gays manga, The Beautiful Skies of Houou High if their dropping the release of the series is any indication.
• Seven Seas Entertainment isn't very proud of the OEL manga and "actual" manga it released early in its existence. Only a tiny handful of those titles have been reprinted in any way and many of them happen to be Orphaned Series.
• There are several anime series Funimation licensed over the years they are not proud of. Mamotte! Lollipop is one of them. Anime fans who've seen it tend to agree with them.
  • Moeyo Ken, a.k.a. "the series that goes on sale for $5 every year at Right Stuf's holiday sale", is another. Even though the series originally aired in 2005, Right Stuf still has a high stock of singles of the series. Funimation lowered the MSRP on the box set by $10 and still no one bit. They gave up and took down their website for it yet kept up their Youtube uploads of the first two episodes.
• Robotech:
  • The majority of the surviving voice actors who worked on the show seem to be enjoying their belated fame. Kerrigan Mahan (Sean Phillips and Bron) seems to be an exception to this. He appears to just have selective amnesia concerning the show.
  • Although he enjoyed working on the show, Cam Clarke was embarrassed playing Lancer, a cross-dressing character who posed as a female singer.
• Transformers: Scott McNeil has expressed this sentiment about the Unicron Trilogy period, saying at a con that "the voice director didn't give a rat's ass about the quality" and that he told said director "you know kids watch this, right?". He's also said that if he knew Snarl was going to be in Cybertron as long as he was, he wouldn't have just given him a "Dinobot variation".
• Colleen Clinkenbeard voiced a role in the first season of Strike Witches, but you wouldn't know it from the credits because she was so ashamed of the show that she insisted on using an alias. Apparently, she wasn't the only one. Nevertheless, Clinkenbeard was still credited under her real name for the role of Hanna-Justine Marseille in the second season.
• Ikki Tousen:
  • Veronica Taylor (Ryuubi Gentoku's voice) isn't too fond of being a part of the franchise. She feels it belittles women and says she doesn't stand by it. She also chose to be credited under another name for the show for this very reason. Nonetheless, she says she was happy to book more work, and she put no less effort into her characters.
  • Ditto for Rachel Robinson (Kan'u Unchou's voice), who walked out in the middle of one of the commentaries to think of any positive things to say about the series. This trope is actually why her character Kan'u got recast with Suzie Yeung taking over, as she no longer wanted to get involved in the series, so she stepped down and effectively disowned her role.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Most of the first English dub's staff and cast weren't happy how it turned out, except a few of the voice actors. For DiC, the dub's poor reception stings; to Western fans of the original Japanese, the dub name changes stoked ire for years (even though many of the name changes actually made sense... and no one complained about European dubs changing the characters' names); to the Japanese, especially Takeuchi herself, its biggest sin was the fact that it was severely Bowdlerized and edited. That last reason is why it has never been rebroadcast on television again; over 25 years later, it still has not. Fortunately, Viz was given the go-ahead to redub the entire thing from scratch. Roland Parliament, the second ADR director and voice of Umino (a.k.a. Melvin), wrote a book about all about the production issues of the dub called Sailor Moon Reflections, which was released in August 2014.
  • Susan Aceron, the original dub's second voice for Trista/Sailor Pluto, also wouldn't hesitate to agree with fans who disliked her performance, saying "I have no idea what they were thinking when they cast me," finding voice director Nicole Thuault difficult to work with, and admitting that the entire production was under heavy pressure. Nonetheless, she appreciated the opportunity and the minor attention the role gave her for the rest of her life. She also appeared at one anime convention, in 2005.