Just as anime director Tatsuki accepted an anime of the year award for Kemono Friends, the show’s producer took Twitter to announce its creators would not be back, bringing to an end this year’s biggest anime controversy.
Lead image: Crunchyroll
Tatsuki was pulled from the second season of Kemono Friends, the unexpected hit that he wrote and directed. Fans protested and complained. One even shaved his head.
The staff-change decision was contentious, and among Kemono Friends‘ viewers, is likely to remain so.
Originally a mobile game, Kemono Friends follows of the adventures of animals anthropomorphized into anime girls. Since it’s January 2017 debut, the anime has racked up millions of views on NicoNico, with the first episode surpassing a record-breaking ten million views.
突然ですが、けものフレンズのアニメから外れる事になりました。ざっくりカドカワさん方面よりのお達しみたいです。すみません、僕もとても残念です
— たつき/irodori (@irodori7) September 25, 2017
“It’s sudden, but I have been removed from Kemono Friends,” Tatsuki wrote in a tweet (above) that has been retweeted over 300,000 times. He added that he had received notice from Kadokawa. “I’m sorry,” he wrote, “I’m also extremely disappointed.”
Kadokawa, the company in charge, issued a statement explaining why Tatsuki was taken off the second season:
For Friends not in Japan, I summarized the statement by KADOKAWA on Tatsuki’s leaving from Kemono Friends.#kemonofriends #Tatsuki #KADOKAWA pic.twitter.com/cKwL1Rrxvi
— はゃゃ (@hayaya0126) September 27, 2017
In October, Kadokawa honcho Shinichiro Inoue announced on Twitter that he was in talks about the issue and the show’s future.
Today, Kemono Friends producer and Yaoyorozu exec Yoshitada Fukuhara wrote on Twitter that negotiations had failed. “This will be a final report regarding being pulled from the second season, but we were unable to overturn [that decision],” he wrote. “We tackled it with all our might, but we were defeated, and I’m truly sorry for being unable to make that happen.”
Fukuhara also added permission was granted for the disputed Kemono Friends use, even getting the ok from character designer Mine Yoshizaki for a Comiket doujin, which makes the decision to remove Tatsuki and his team even more oblique.
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One response to “The Biggest Anime Controversy Of 2017 Comes To An End”
Tatsuki didn’t just write and direct, he also created a large number of the CGI models for the show’s characters. This show had so much of this guy in it and because the team was so tiny to begin with and his many roles well known people knew just how much of its success was down to just a handful of people. Tatsuki and his tiny team breathed life into a series that was dead on arrival and I honestly have Zero expectations for the second season. It may be good but I doubt it’ll have that weird mysterious charm Tatsuki slowly injected into the series that set it apart from other questionably animated CGI kids shows.