If you've
been waiting for the release of Witch Hat Atelier for a long
time, you've probably heard that huge rumor that the studio had been working
tirelessly on the adaptation for seven years. It sounded like absolute madness,
and it turns out that the story was quite exaggerated. The project's
producer, Hiroaki Kojima, decided to come out and clean up the
waters and explain exactly what happened behind the scenes, confirming that
misinformation was getting a little out of control on community forums.
The True
Timeline
To
understand this entanglement, we have to go back to 2019, when the project
began to be discussed exclusively internally. Although the anime was
announced with great fanfare in 2022, the reality is that the Bug Films studio
was not involved from day one. Kojima explained that he himself officially
joined the production until 2023 thanks to good contacts in the industry. So,
the actual time in which the animators were dragging the pencil was about three
and a half years. It's still a massive time period for any series, but it's
definitely not the seven-year torture that many repeated as a proven fact.
制作期間について良く聞かれるので、
— 児島宏明@BUG FILMS (@kojima2019) May 5, 2026
なかなか詳細については言えないのですが、また裏話を少し。
アニメ化発表は2022年にしているのですが、BUGFILMSは最初から関わっていた訳ではありません。
縁があって正式に制作に参加したのは2023年〜です。
なので実質の制作期間は約【3年半】ですね。…
A level
of quality that demanded sacrifices
Three and a
half years is a real outrage if we consider that a standard twelve-episode
season is usually finished in more or less a year of hard work. This first
season has 13 episodes, which means that the team invested more than three
times the usual time to achieve that spectacular mix of 2D and 3D CGI
animation. The creative team worked directly with the original manga's
author, Kamome Shirahama, to make sure every visual and emotional
detail was perfectly tailored. That enormous level of perfectionism explains
why they decided to delay the premiere that was scheduled for 2025, moving it
to 2026. They wanted to deliver an absolutely flawless product with no quality
cuts.
In the end,
the producer confessed that this has been the most demanding project of
his entire career, but he took advantage of the message to deeply thank the
immense effort of his entire production committee. His only wish now is for
viewers to simply sit back and enjoy the art on screen. Knowing the brutal
level of detail that the original work demands.
