In the September 2023 issue of the Showa 50 Man (昭和50年男) magazine, released on August 10th, 2023, a new interview with Bikkuri-Men‘s anime staff was included. This included the anime’s director, Tomohiro Tsukimisato (月見里 智弘) and the Marketing Director from Lotte, Masaki Motohara (本原正明). The Showa 50 Man magazine is a bi-monthly magazine targeted towards older men who grew up in the 1980s in Japan. The magazine focuses on articles around pop-culture from that time period as well interviews with modern reboots and adaptations from stories created in that time.
It was previously announced that Hiroyuki Takei would be the character designer for the upcoming Bikkuri-Men anime. Since that announcement, various illustrations that Takei created have been released. An early screening of the anime will occur on September 17th, and the anime will start it’s broadcast in Japan in October 2023.
As part of the interview in the magazine, the director commented deciding the direction of the anime was their first challenge. They didn’t want to remake the original anime series, Bikkuri-man, so they wanted to take it in a different direction. They wanted to start the story back from the beginning, so they took the focus of a school drama featuring these new characters.
With the direction set, they then compiled a list of potential character designers for the series. Hiroyuki Takei, the creator of Shaman King, was on that list and Tomohiro Tsukimisato picked him as their first choice.
As part of the interview, Tomohiro Tsukimisato included this direct quote, which has been roughly translated into English below:
Takei-sensei has been active in shōnen magazines for a long time, with a constantly evolving style, so his work can really connect with our generation as well as younger people. I was wondering what would happen if we combined the burning passion of “Weekly Shonen Jump” from the 1980s, with the edgy lines of the comical characters of Bikkuri-man, and aimed towards a wide demographic. When Takei showed us, I was very surprised and excited with the chemistry we could create.
The full interview then continues with a greater discussion on the production of the anime as well how they have adapted the Bikkuriman snack line with cross-promotions. Included in the interview is some additional images from the anime as well as the production. A preview of one of the production drawings was included in a Tweet by the production studio for the anime.
The full magazine is available in a print edition in Japan, as well as a digital edition that can be purchased from retailers like Bookwalker (with no region restrictions and can take international credit cards as payment). You may also be able to read it for free as part of the Kindle Unlimited program on Amazon. The entire magazine is in Japanese.
