The anime industry has never been perfect, but the perceived problems today aren’t the same as they were 10 years ago, and this is emblematic of a Kickstarter Project calledUnder The Dog. Disgruntled anime fans hyped up this crowdfunded anime OVA as an opportunity to revitalize and save the industry, yet it never made it past a single episode.
It all started in August 2014, when a Kickstarter was launched with a goal of $580,000, all to fund a single episode that would hopefully be the start of a full series/ feature film. Hiroaki Yura, the founder of Creative Intelligence Arts, stated that they decided to pursue crowdfunding to ensure total creative freedom. They wished to produce a masterpiece on par with the classics that inspired them,likeGhost in the ShellandAkira.
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What Is Under The Dog?
The original treatment forUnder the Dogwas written in the mid-90s by Jiro Ishii and was meant to be a full 26-episode series. Its premise is one of a unique dilemma. The main characters are gifted young women who are part of a special ops group and those closest to them are effectively held, hostage. If they run away, their loved ones die. If they fail, their loved ones die. If they die, their loved ones die.
The story was modernized and reimagined for today’s audience, set in 2025, five years after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics when a terrorist attack changed the world.A unit comprised of students with special abilitiesknown as the Flowers is formed by the United Nations to combat a new threat called Pandora. And at the center is Anthea Kallenberg, a young Scandinavian girl with incredible talent in the field.
It’s hard not to see why the project got so much attention, from its bloody and explosive trailer to the staff attached to the project. It would be animated by Kinema Citrus (Made in Abyss). It was directed by Masahiro Ando, the director ofBones' cult classicSword of the Stranger. The character designs were by Fire Emblem’s Yusuke Kozaki and the music was composed by Kevin Penkin ofShield HeroandMade in Abyssfame.
Creative Differences
The funding was a success two days before it stopped accepting backers and by the time the campaign ended, it had raised a whopping $878,028, and they were already in talks with Netflix andCrunchyroll to distribute the project worldwide. However, only a few months later, Creative Intelligence Arts departed the project over creative differences.
In the official statement released, Hiroaki Yura was fairly diplomatic about the split, but in a long-since deleted tweet, he was reportedly more furious about the matter. It was a big shake-up that reasonably worried backers, but the creative staff was largely unchanged, and Kinema Citrus had complete control, which seems more or less the point of the project in the first place.
After the change in leadership, updates to the now-defunct official website were actually more consistent as the production continued throughout 2015. In April 2016, a release date of August 1 was announced, albeit exclusively for backers of the project. There was no word yet abouta larger release or a debut on streaming. To this day, there is no legal way to watchUnder the Dogunless you get your hands on one of the Blu-ray copies that were made.
The Release
For all the excitement, promises, and endorsements by people like Hideo Kojima,Under the Dog’s release seemed to come and go, and the reception was unfortunately mixed. Fan expectations were certainly a factor, especially because Anthea, the protagonist of the trailer that was made to promote the project, was only a minor character, and none of the footage from the trailer was in the episode.
“Episode 0” follows Hana Togetsu, another member of the Flowers whose mission is to retrieve a boy named Shunichi Nase, who unknowingly holds hope for the Flowers' salvation. Unfortunately, when the military swarms the schooland a strange monster appears, Hana’s mission hits a snag, forcing her allies to offer support, including Anthea
For what it is worth, the action and music were well done, and it was an effective premiere that drew you in, making you want more. It’s a tragedy of sorts that establishes the stakes of this war without making it quite clear what the war is even about. If there were a second episode around the corner, it would be a stellar start to a series. The problem is that there wasn’t one… and there hasn’t been since.
A Jumbled Mess
Backers had given money to a team to produce an original animated work that was meant to launch a series and potentially a franchise, but only had one 30-minute OVA that wasn’t even legally available. When the news finally did break about what was coming next,it wasn’t exactly what fans were anticipating.
A new Kickstarter was launched, not by Kinema Citrus, but by EXIT TUNES, a music company, looking for $50,000 to make a live-action short and music video. The purpose of this was to bundle together the OVA, live-action short, music video, and a chibi short titled “Anthea-chan” into a theatrical release calledUnder the Dog: Jumbled.
Jumbled, an aptly-named reflection of the production of this OVA, is the last notable update on this project, and one that the staff believed to be the next step towards a full series. An international Blu-ray release was discussed but never happened. It’s been almost five years since the theatrical release, and to many,the project is all but dead.
The Flower Wilts
Why did anime need to be “saved” anyway? Well, there was a lot of cynicism in the fandom for a multitude of reasons. There was criticism of production committees amidst a rise in cheaper, critically divisive light novel adaptations that were banking on popular and replicable trends. Such trends continue to this day and a common critique of the industry is that there is frankly too much anime being made.
So why didUnder the Dogfail? Creative freedom was as good a reason as any to pursue crowdfunding to get it off the ground, but revisiting the OVA today, It’s hard to imagine a show like thisnotbeing able to be made. It’s violent, butnot so much that a Netflix Originalwould have been unthinkable. Perhaps its narrative content might have been debatable, but we’ll never know.
The project aimed to reach international audiences, yet in the time since the project began, anime has achieved that regardless. Anime is a major force in pop culture,making millions at the U.S. box office, to say nothing of its prevalence in streaming. It’s tough to say butUnder the Dogmight just have been made obsolete by the march of time.
None of this is to say that anime “saved itself” and doesn’t still have problems or a need for more creative freedom. However, it’s safe to say that even if everyone woke up tomorrow to an announcement of a full series ofUnder the Dog, it wouldn’t necessarily change the playing field. Plenty of fans would surely love to see what it might have been, but even if they eventually do, it won’t stop this tumultuous journey from feeling like a waste of time.
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