There seems to be a trend with Wit Studio passing to work on continuations of previous projects such as Attack on Titan, Vinland Saga, and The Ancient Magus' Bride. Is this a matter of scheduling conflicts or a change in the studio's approach to accepting projects?
WADA: For all the titles that Wit Studio has done, we wanted to create the continuations of those series. Five years earlier, for a lot of these titles, one of the biggest factors was DVD sales. As a business model, the decision to make a sequel depended entirely on DVD sales. At that time, for all of those titles that you just mentioned, we had only been contracted for season one. Then once the DVD sales results come in, we would get an offer to do a second season based on that. At that time, my management skills weren't as good as they are today so I couldn't add [the next seasons] to the schedule right away because I already had other shows lined up for funding. And of course, the fans and the publishers want to get the second season out as quickly as possible, which is what leads to it being animated by another studio.
That can't really be helped, so I think that was the right choice in those cases. So because of the increase in the number of global fans and the number of streaming platforms that are available, it allows us to make more long-ended decisions on continuing to do a series. What I'd like to do with Wit Studio in the future, is that we now have the financial basis to continue to contract for longer periods.