Withthe recent conclusionof [adult swim] and Toonami’s event horror miniseriesHousing Complex C, audiences of the legendary anime block witnessed a Halloween-season taste of its ambitions for horror anime.
Now that the series has ended, GameRant had a chance to talk with series producer, Maki Terashima-Furuta. The resulting interview touches upon everything from the original concept and influences forHousing Complex C, as well as the surprising story of how the series got off the ground.
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GameRant: It’s so great to be talking today! So, we understand that you work as producer for the American division of one of the main anime studios in Japan, Production I.G. What is kind of your day-to-day work in being a producer for the anime industry?
Terashima-Furuta: Yes! I helped start up the American branch of Production I.G., over 25 years ago. Back then I was originally doing licensing, licensing both for Production I.G. in Japan as well as for its partners. I helped get into producing properly for a series with [adult swim], actually, with the animeIGPXaround twenty or fifteen years ago. Since then, some of the other shows I’ve been producing have included a lot of other shows with [adult swim] as well, likeFena: Pirate Princessand our upcoming showUzumaki, and of course,Housing Complex C. For these more recent shows, one of the biggest things has always just been getting the right studio attached to the show and then helping to get things moving smoothly between the network and the animation production. And once the anime’s complete on the studio’s end, we always try to be hands on with the subbing and dubbing in America.
GameRant: Your work with [adult swim] and Toonami is definitely prolific. You’ve also had a strong collaboration with Jason DeMarco, who of course has played such a major role in the entirety of Toonami. How has that partnership been, and what do you typically look for when building out these projects for [as]?
Terashima-Furuta: I started working with Jason during the localization ofIGPX. Jason and Sean Akins really played a big part in getting things going during those days. Again, this was fifteen years ago, and ever since then we’ve really had a great relationship with the network. Jason’s been so active during these productions that he’s kind of like a friend, being there during the process in Japan, and in LA, and in Atlanta where Williams Street and a lot of WBD’s work is managed. [adult swim]’s strength with all these collaborations is that they aren’t just a distributor, they really get how anime works and how Japan’s animation industry is structured. It’s really easy having them as a partner since they know why certain things are and aren’t done certain ways in the system.
GameRant: So, we’ve seen all four episodes ofHousing Complex C, and to say that it was an intense ride would be an understatement, especially near that finale. What was the process like getting that off the ground, and how was the writer, amphibian, selected to pen the story?
Terashima-Furuta: Jason and I had been talking about making horror a sort of focus for Toonami. We originally intended our adaptation of Junji Ito’sUzumakito be the first installment of that, but we’ve been taking our time with it to get it to where, well, we’re really trying to take our time to give Junji Ito’s work all the detail and time it needs to really be next level.Housing Complex Cstarted as a sort of miniseries that we were working on, kind of on the side at first, but it was really something special and fitting for what we’re trying to do in that space. I had met the studio, that did the animation, Akatsuki, a few years earlier when I was actually helping out the production for the animated commercial for one of Gucci’s fragrance lines. They were good to work with, so we actually reached out to them for this other project.
GameRant: Switching from a Gucci commercial to a horror show, what a pivot!
Terashima-Furuta: Yeah! So, we had gotten the initial pitch from amphibian, and we really believed in it enough to get past the sort of barrier of it being an original project, even though adaptations of existing material are much more common in the anime industry. I’d never worked with amphibian before, but his work was great and we were thrilled with all of it. One of the big executives at Akatsuki was actually a fan of amphibian’s V-novel work, so it kind of fell into place even as an original production.
GameRant: And that momentum continued to stay strong?
Terashima-Furuta: Yeah, I was honestly a bit nervous as we got to the end, because I knew it was such a unique concept and, as everyone’s seen, it has a very information-heavy, multilayered style to it. The way it leans into certain elements of Japanese culture, in addition to the multilayered aspect of everything going on, we knew it would be a bit different from some of the shows Toonami is known for. People reacted so positively! I was looking over the reception on Twitter as the show was coming out, and the way people were up for what the series was trying to offer was really reassuring.
GameRant: Definitely, it was a unique take on a lot of different influences! What was amphibian’s process like for bringing up such a multilayered story into such a compact format?
Terashima-Furuta: He was very thorough, not just in terms of creating the story itself but sort of envisioning the whole world and setting in which this story unfolded on so many different levels. There’s so much information, so much stuff we tried to develop with the characters and the setting, that getting as much as he did into only four 30-minute episodes was really an accomplishment. And you know, running at the end of episode three, it’s so interesting to see people wondering ‘there are so many mysteries, how are they going to wrap this all up?’ Episode four, of course, there’s so much going on there and we’re happy with how it wrapped up. The response has been great, and we’re trying to keep that momentum going forUzumaki.
Housing Complex Caired on Toonami from October 1-22, 2022. All four episodes are currently available to stream onHBO Max.
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