ANN: So My Hero Academia is a long-running shonen series with many chapters of manga. Usually, these stories are not adapted with high-quality animation in split cours like this. What is your production philosophy on adapting a long-running manga to Bones's animation standards?
Wakana Okamura: When I first tried to put this project together, to create an anime version, I saw the potential of this IP becoming a mass hit. I know that shonen anime tends not to have such high-quality production, but I saw it differently, and I saw that this anime can be both high-quality and shonen. Because I believed it could have a wider audience, from kids to adults, that was the one thing I really wanted to focus on in creating a high-quality shonen anime from the get-go. I had previously worked with Studio Bones on
Blood Blockade Battlefront. That show targets an older audience, but I saw the potential in Bones to create shonen anime with such quality that it can have a wider reach internationally and domestically as well. So that's one of the reasons why I chose Bones for this project, and also why I ordered that from the director as well.