Development Hell / Anime & Manga

• An anime adaptation of Tonari no 801-chan was originally supposed to be animated by Kyoto Animation, and even had a preliminary website up for it. Then something happened and it fell into limbo. The project was ultimately cancelled, though a 90-second animated OP was created by A-1 Pictures and bundled with Vol.4 of the web manga.
• The planned Spiritual Successor to the Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise, Aoki Uru, entered preproduction in 1988, but hasn't been completely abandoned yet. Despite it being shelved indefinitely, Studio Gainax is still wishing to eventually produce it, and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto still releases the concept arts from time to time.
• Lost Universe, which had only one season, fraught with Troubled Production; a second season was due to follow, but because of a financial pitfall occurring through animation studios at the time, it was held off in favor of more Slayers media, and no more episodes were produced.
• A stall can be typical of all English manga distributors, especially for less common titles, but the yaoi distributor Drama Queen seems to have either gone on a dragging hiatus since 2007, or is dead and no one can figure out where it's been buried, so to speak.
• The U.S. release of Shonan Junai Gumi is similarly stalled.
• The Five Killers was supposed to be an original creation from writer/producer Eric Calderon as an animated TV series (12 episodes with a 1 hour finale) done by GONZO. A trailer is unfortunately all that came out due to GONZO's financial situation.
• An Appleseed television series titled "Appleseed: Genesis" was first announced in 2005 and languished in Development Hell until it was officially canceled in 2008, resulting in several lawsuits. A new (possibly a replacement or even a Retool) series titled "Appleseed XIII" was released in 2011 and dubbed into English in 2013.
• After Gundam SEED Destiny ended, it was announced that there would be a movie sequel which would be the Grand Finale for the Cosmic Era timeline. However, the film's head writer Chiaki Morosawa underwent a hysterectomy to treat her uterine fibroids and an ovarian cyst (according to her April 2008 interview with Animage magazine, in which she explained the delays behind the movie), so literally no progress has been made on the film since 2005. With Morosawa's death in February 2016, it appears that the movie is on indefinite hold, if not cancelled outright. However, in late May 2021, it was revealed the movie was back on as part of the Project IGNITED event to celebrate the franchise's 20th anniversary. The movie, titled Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Freedom, will finally premiere in January 2024.
• Despera's production is currently on hold due to the director Ryutaro Nakamura's health issues and his untimely death.
• We might have found out what happens after GaoGaiGar FINAL if not for the fact that Project Z ceased to be. Though a net novel based on Project Z has been confirmed.
• After the release of its third movie, the credits listed the release of a third Tenchi Muyo! OAV series. Took about five years and a series that took place a year after it to do so. This is pretty normal for the franchise, because its creator, Masaki Kajishima, is essentially a free agent and always seeks to obtain funding without relinquishing the rights and the creative control, which is quite difficult.
  • And let's not forget the fact that the English release of said 3rd OAV series' 2nd and 3rd volumes languished for a year due to the fact that Funimation screwed up on its contract.
• The Dream Machine, the last film by Satoshi Kon was back on track for a short while but financial difficulty has put the film off indefinitely.
• The English version of Heroman falls into this category thanks in part to a lack of cooperation between Studio BONES and Disney. The deal with Crunchyroll to get it streamed to English speaking territories was rushed in at the last minute.
• Hunter × Hunter: Due to the writer, Yoshihiro Togashi, being extremely ill in real-life^note Though there is also another possibility due to his constant hiatus on the magazine, the manga goes on hiatus for long periods of time. The Chimera Ant arc took roughly seven years to complete because of this.
• The D.Gray-Man manga suffers a similar problem to Hunter × Hunter where its manga creator, Katsura Hoshino, was involved in a car accident in real-life which gravely injured her writing hand. To help endure the pain, the D.Gray-Man manga was later switched from weekly to monthy releases, but even then, she has a rough time turning the work in monthly.
• NANA has been in this since the summer of 2009, due to Ai Yazawa's serious illness and hospitalization. While she was released from the hospital in April 2010 and a special chapter/spin-off was made in 2013 for the 100th issue of Cookie magazine, as of 2021 the main series is still on hold.
• In July 2011, an anime adaptation of the light novel Savanna Game was announced, planned to air in 2012. There has been no word on it since. It has gotten to the point that some people believe there was never going to be an anime and that the announcement was just shameless advertising for the novel.
• A sequel to Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 entitled Tokyo 2041 was announced in 2002 to be in the early stages of production, with ADV Films, the US distributor of Tokyo 2040, backing the project. ADV later said that they were waiting on the staff from the original series to become available before they could proceed. There have been no updates since, and with the downfall of ADV Films, and the license to Tokyo 2040 now belonging to Funimation, it's safe to say the project is canceled.
  • A live action adaptation of the original Bubblegum Crisis has its own entry in the Live-Action Film section.
• A sequel film to Ninja Scroll was announced in 2005, but nothing new has come about since.
• Back when t.A.T.u. were at the height of their popularity, an anime starring their animated counterparts called t.A.T.u. Paragate was in the planning stages. According to what remains of the official site (Wayback Archive link) it was supposed to come out in Winter 2004. Nothing more is known about it, since when the girls cut ties with their manager (the same guy who decided about adding a lesbian subtext to their performance) the project ground to a halt. The opening animation was to be directed by none other than Shinichiro Watanabe, and it's possible that nothing other than a title and a vague hint of plot was ever put together for this failed project. The Lost Media Wiki has something more to say about it.
• In 2012, Madhouse announced they were animating a short based on Peanuts, but as of 2017 more info has yet to be released.
• Rebuild of Evangelion certainly took its sweet time. The tetralogy of films began in 2007 and was supposed to be completed in 2008; the fourth and final film instead came out in 2021. In 2016 it was assumed that Hideaki Anno was just busy directing Shin Godzilla, but that film has been released, without further comment on Rebuild. In July of 2016, Anno apologized and insisted he had gotten back to working on it, and the film series' animation director stated in November of that year that the film's production was in progress. Almost exactly two years later, 2020 was announced as the planned release year; however, the 2019-20 global Coronavirus pandemic then happened and forced Anno to delay the supposedly completed movie to an initially undetermined date (later revealed to be January 23rd, 2021). To make matters worse, even THAT supposed release date wasn't meant to be; fortunately, the film was eventually released on March 8th, 2021 in Japan.
• Chronic with the Robotech franchise:
  • Robotech II: The Sentinels was Harmony Gold's attempt to continue the series through original animation once more episodes were ordered. The scripts for all 65 episodes were written, and production began. However, after Matchbox pulled out its sponsorship deal due to the falling Japanese exchange rate, Harmony Gold could no longer afford to continue on with the project. The completed animation was later edited together into a Direct to Video movie that ends on a cliffhanger. The remaining scripts were later adapted into novels and comic books.
  • Robotech: The Odyssey was supposed to follow The Sentinels, but the cancellation of that project resulted in this one never entering production. Some of its ideas were incorporated into novels though. Fourth and fifth sequels in the series were also whispered about, but never went past the rumor stage.
  • Robotech 3000 was Harmony Gold's attempt to continue the series in CGI. The project stalled following poor fan reception at a screening of the trailer in 2000. Then the animation production company went under. There was talk of reviving the project through traditional animation, but it was later canceled.
  • Robotech: Mars Force was revealed in 2004 by writer Greg Weisman, who confirmed that the series would be more children-focused. No updates have been confirmed since 2006.
  • Robotech: Shadow Rising was the planned sequel to Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles (the only other animated sequel to the original series to actually result in a released project). It was announced in 2007 with a tentative release date of 2009. The film entered hell with Funimation pulled out as a production partner. However, Harmony Gold still insists that the project is not dead.
  • Robotech Academy was announced in 2014 when Harmony Gold launched a Kickstarter to raise half-a-million dollars to produce a 24-minute pilot episode. When the project was only able to raise about $200k, the campaign was canceled, though Harmony Gold is still reportedly shopping the project to developers.
  • The long-mooted Hollywood movie adaptation has its own entry in the Live-Action Film section.
• Mirai Arise, an original anime by Sunrise, was announced in 2015 with a release date sometime in 2016, but for unknown reasons, no news has been heard of ever since. Uchuu Shelf has more details on this topic on his Youtube Video.
• An anime adaptation of the manga Alive: The Final Evolution was announced in 2008, however the project was canceled in 2010 due to GONZO's financial troubles.
• The sequel to Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion was stuck in this for much of the mid-to-late 2010s. The original series came out in 2011, and Rebellion in 2013. It's a Cash-Cow Franchise, so another anime installment seems inevitable. However, the original screenwriter expressed no interest in working on another Madoka project, and it's unclear whether Studio Shaft ever decided on a replacement. A new anime was finally announced for 2019... based on Magia Record, a mobile game spinoff which literally has "Side Story" in the title, so it's clearly not a main-canon continuation. Finally though, after 8 years and multiple teases for a new installment (including an infamous concept trailer in 2015), the sequel to Rebellion, titled Walpurgisnacht: Rising, would be announced on the franchise's tenth anniversary in 2021, to be released in 2024.
• This Tumblr post gives details about a Time Bokan series that ended up not being made. It was to be called Time Bokan Express Daredaman and was going to have a 1930s Western-inspired setting, with a time-traveling train that also could turn into a mecha and was used for temporal tourism. The Terrible Trio was inspired by American gangsters this time. Unfortunately, the Itadakiman series (1983) was a complete failure, so Tatsunoko pulled the plug on Daredaman and didn't come back to the Time Bokan metaseries until 2000's Kiramekiman.
• According to insiders, an anime adaptation Hannah Montana was in production in the late 2000s. It was to be produced by Toei, but it never came out. This video discusses it.
• An original anime series produced by Brain's Base titled Cho Jiku Robo Meguru was announced at the end of 2014. However, and outside of a couple of promo videos and the official website, there has been no further word of it since.
• An Anime adaptation for a cute girls fly Cool Plane F2P browser game Formation Girls was announced by its devs in 2016, with the studio in charge being Bibury Animation Studio. However, other than the setting image of the main characters, nothing has come out of it and the game itself was axed in May of 2019 due to declining interest and competition from The Magnificent Kotobuki, which had a somewhat similar premise.
• This video from anime historian Kenny Lauderdale is about Kamen Senshi Lavithunder, a planned 1986 anime whose only physical trace is a vinyl with what would have been its opening song, "The Fighter". The sequel video, however, explains that a 30 seconds proof-of-concept clip was everything that was ever produced about it, as a move to attract potential investors; no actual anime or OAV ever got off the ground.
• The second season of Little Witch Academia (2017) has fallen into this. According to an interview with Gigazine, as well as Trigger's Twitch streams, there were plans to do a second season shortly after the first season concluded, but due to lacking funding from sponsors, on top of a loss of motivation amongst the staff,^note fans also speculate the untimely and tragic passing of head writer — Michiru Shimada — to be a huge factor as well, but this is unconfirmed plans for season 2 have been shelved indefinitely, with Yoh Yoshinari moving on to direct BNA: Brand New Animal instead. While the franchise continues to receive content post series (such as Little Witch Academia: VR Broom Racing), and Trigger is reportedly still interested in continuing it, chances of a second season of the series remain uncertain for the time being.
• The anime remake of Tokyo Babylon, which was produced by GoHands, was planned to be released in Spring 2021. However, in December 2020, there were issues regarding the costume designs which happened to be plagiarized from other sources. After an internal investigation revealed more plagiarism issues, the production committee announced that the TV series was canceled and they would have to restart the project from scratch with another animation studio. As of this writing, there's no update on the new project yet.
• An anime adaptation of the light novel 20 Seiki Denki Mokuroku was announced by Kyoto Animation in 2018. One year later, an arson attack occured on the studio's main production building, causing production to be postponed.
• While Uma Musume managed to escape its development hell, the same couldn't be said about one of its spinoff manga Umamusume Pretty Derby BLUE SKY which was supposed to feature Seiun Sky. Her manga was announced alongside the Season 1 OVA in October 2018, and was supposed to be published on Cygames' manga platform Cycomi. As of October 2022, no word has come of it since.
• Yuri!!! on Ice was supposed to have a movie entitled Yuri!!! on Ice the Movie: Ice Adolescence which is speculated to be about Victor's past. Initially, it was supposed to be released in 2019 but no news came out until a short PV was posted with a notice on the delay. Then, on April 19, 2024, MAPPA announced that the movie was canceled.
• Zero Century, a film trilogy by Studio Gainax and Production Goodbook based on the Leijiverse, was first announced all the way back in 2017, with the first film centered around Emeraldas expected for a 2020 release, which would later be followed by films centering around Captain Harlock and Maetel in 2023 and 2026 respectively. However, the first film did not get released in 2020 as planned. In truth, following the death of Leiji Matsumoto, the official Twitter account confirmed in 2023 that the project as a whole ended up getting delayed amidst various circumstances, though it isn't a complete loss as it's still in active development.

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