Why "Monster Strike" Anime is Distributed on YouTube - Producer Reveals Anime Strategy to Capture the Hearts and Minds of Middle and High School Students

An anime adaptation of the popular smartphone game "Monster Strike" ("MonSt"), which has more than 30 million users worldwide, has finally been realized and will finally be distributed on YouTube starting October 10, 2015. While animated adaptations of popular games are not uncommon in the past, "MonSt" is based on a completely new idea, from the creation of the work to the means by which it will reach its viewers. We asked Hiroki Kimura, general director of mixi's publishing brand XFLAG Studio and producer of "MonSt," and producer of this work, to explain how the production side thought about the animation project in order to best convey the appeal of "MonSt. Mr. Hiroki Kimura, general director of mixi's publishing brand XFLAG Studio and producer of "MonSt," and Mr. Sunao Hirasawa of Ultra Super Pictures, producer of the film. They gave us a keen insight into the media and creativity. We have embedded videos of the first two episodes of the film at the end of this article, so we hope you will enjoy watching them along with the interview.

A Royal and Differentiated Anime Based on a Game Successfully Targets a Target Audience

───How did the project for this anime adaptation first come about?

Hirasawa: It was about a year ago that I was invited by XFLAG. At the time, "MonSt" was just celebrating its first anniversary and had a lot of momentum, and they were thinking of developing an anime to carry that momentum into the next stage. So they asked me how to proceed with the actual project.

─ ─ What advantages did XFLAG see in developing an anime?

Kimura: We provide "MonSt" as a service that allows people to get together with friends and family. We believe that by watching anime, people can talk about anime outside of the game and get excited about it. We also wanted to compensate for the lack of information available only in the game. We thought that people would become more emotionally involved with our monsters, and that they would become more involved in the world of "MonSt".

─ What age range did you consider for the animation?

Hirasawa: Since this is an animated version of an application that has already gained a huge number of users, our basic policy was to present the appeal of the game in a straightforward manner and make the current customers happy. Then, we thought it would be appropriate to add elements that should be added to the Nintendo 3DS package game and anime. So, in order to get to know our customers properly, we asked XFLAG to show us their materials, and we were surprised by the extreme popularity of "MonSt" among middle and high school students. It was a bit unbelievable that many people in that age group who have smartphones were aware of "MonSt". I myself have been playing "MonSt" since its release, but I had no idea it was that popular. Because of this, we decided to focus on middle and high school students as our main target.

Kimura: As is the case with "MonSt," XFLAG wanted to reach upper elementary, junior high, and high school students with the theme of "royal battles" like those in shonen manga. Right now, there are not many anime that junior high school students watch, which fall somewhere between kids' anime and late-night anime. I discussed with Mr. Hirasawa what we should do to reach them.

Hirasawa: To put it simply, junior high school students are a very difficult age to form a mass audience. Up to the fifth grade, tastes are relatively uniform, and what is popular in class tends to be concentrated on one content, whereas as junior high school students grow older, they begin to see the value in having different tastes from others, and their tastes begin to become more segmented. So why is it that "MonSt" is so popular with them? If the target audience is that age group, I thought it would be necessary to address the issue properly. The appeal of "MonSt" as I play it is that while it is a classic battle game, each monster has abilities (special skills) in addition to its simple numerical strength, and these abilities play a very important role in conquering the stages. We were discussing the fact that the game's structure itself, in which players compete based on a strange combination of skills, may be a factor in the game's appeal to a generation that values being different from others.

Developments that will reinvigorate the evening time slot animation

───Can you tell us about character creation and story development for this generation?

Hirasawa: This was largely driven by the story and project structure of Mr. Ishiijiro and Mr. Kimura, but we thought it would be better to create a new main character for the anime and the 3DS game. The main character of the "MonSt" app game is not the individual monsters, but the players, or customers themselves, who use the monsters, so we thought that the players should be the characters in the 3DS and animated versions. Also, in creating the story, we tried to find a balance between the universal themes of friendship and victory in order to make the audience of today sympathize with the game, and we tried to do this in our own way based on our experience with user interviews. For more details, please enjoy the full-length anime (laughs).

Kimura "MonSt" is a game in which there is no "Pokémon master" in the game. There are monsters, and you control them. Therefore, if we tried to incorporate this into a straightforward animation, we would need a main character like Ren who plays MonSt. In this way, the animation and the application work seamlessly together. One new initiative is the plan to have new monsters that appear in the anime appear in the game immediately after the anime is released. I think this will further strengthen the sense of continuity between the two.

Hirasawa: To add to the storyline, I think there is still a lot of room to pursue a story for people in their late adolescent years. There are many incidents that are not so significant when we look at them as adults, but are significant for adolescents, and the reverse is also true. In order to reach today's junior and senior high school and high school students, we dug up our own memories and conducted various interviews with people of that generation. Of course, this is not to say that people of that age and older cannot enjoy the film, but on the contrary, we hope that they will recall their own youth and enjoy it.

─ ─ When you talk about it, it seems to me that you are aiming to create a kind of anime that was popular in the evening time slot from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Evangelion" was also broadcast at 6:00 p.m.

Hirasawa That is exactly right. The things that existed in that time period are now less and less available. I would be happy if people could get into it as a kind of alternative.

─ ─ For the animation company, Ultra Super Pictures, this kind of development itself is an asset, isn't it?

Hirasawa You are absolutely right. Nowadays, animations for both adults and children are designed for the purpose of getting people to buy something, so they inevitably have a strong flavor. On the other hand, in exchange for the addictiveness gained from the strong seasoning, there may be an aspect that many people can enjoy it and recommend it to their friends, so to speak, which weakens its diffusion. In this case, the title already has a large number of users, so it has the potential to be viewed by a wide range of people, and because it is on YouTube, it has the potential to be shared and spread. If this project goes well, it could play a role in a new animation production style. I feel that this is a great responsibility, and I am also very much looking forward to it.