Following A Long Silence, Under the Dog Anime Changes Production Teams

Producer Hiroaki Yura and his company, Creative Intelligence Arts, have announced that they are parting ways with Under the Dog, the sci-fi anime movie that was successfully funded last year via Kickstarter. Taking over production will be Kinema Citrus, the anime studio that was responsible for actually animating the project.

“In order to comply with certain requests from members of the UTD creative team, and to deliver an unhindered product to our backers, CIA is hereby removing itself from the UTD project,” Yura said in a press release, a copy of which can be found here.

“We were very excited to concept and develop UTD but believe this decision is in keeping with our goals for enabling creative teams to retain as much rights and autonomy as possible and to have production move forward with full force. It is also an effort to more directly link backers and fans of anime with the creators making the works that they love.”

Under the Dog was originally announced in August 2014, and was pitched as a sci-fi action thriller that would “explore what it means to live and die well,testing the limits of all we hold dear”. The last update for the project was in September, and since then, things have been rather quiet until the announcement of Creative Intelligence Arts’ departure. Following CIA’s departure, Under the Dog is being left in the hands of original author Jiro Ishii, Muneki Ogasawara (CEO of Kinema Citrus), and Koji Morimoto (who will act as the replacement producer for Yura). Here’s the full list of staff that are currently assigned to the project:

• Jiro Ishii [Original Story]
• Yusuke Kozaki [Character Design]
• Masahiro Ando [Director]
• Kinema Citrus [Animation Studio]
• Orange Co. [3D CGI Studio]
• Kevin Penkin [Music]
• Yukinori Kitajima [Script]
• Makoto Fukami [Script Advice]
• Seiichi Shirato [Military Background Research]
• EM [Mechanical Design]
• Koji Morimoto [Producer]

“This is very honorable and exciting opportunity to work with Mr. Ishii and Mr. Ando again since we did before when creating the TV Animation Series Canaan,” producer Koji Morimoto said. “I will endeavor to make the comfortable circumstances that all creative staff members can create the great movie Under the Dog as you imagined. Please keep an eye on us! We will do the best for creating one of the best movies so that we will not make you regret to be the backers of this project.”

Stuart Massie, Creative Intelligence Arts’ Kickstarter campaign manager and public relations person for Under the Dog added, “I think any time you have a significant amount of time, creativity, and money invested in a project as CIA has in UTD, it can be difficult to let that project go. You want to see it through, and I think in a way we are; it will just be without our direct involvement.”

While it sounds as though there’s been a hiccup in the production process, the film is still in development, so we’ll have more information on it as it is made available. Until then, you can learn more about Under the Dog using our tag.