Gachiakuta is a vibrant and incredibly stylish series as well as one of Anime Corner’s most anticipated anime for Summer 2025. This year’s Anime Expo shone a spotlight on the project, with a smattering of art from the series being featured at the Kodansha, Avex Pictures, and Crunchyroll booths and fans getting treated to a premiere screening of the first two episodes of the new anime alongside a short Q&A with the creative minds behind it.
Alongside those exciting showings and activations, we had the opportunity to sit down for an interview with Kei Urana, creator of Gachiakuta, Hideyoshi Andou, who is in charge of graffiti design in Gachiakuta, and Naoki Amano, a producer for the project. While our conversation was brief, it did give some insight into the inspirations behind the work, what led the production staff to wanting to adapt it, and what makes Gachiakuta so damn cool.
Portions of this interview have been lightly edited for clarity.
Creating Gachiakuta
Sitting down with Urana-san, Andou-san, and Amano-san, I first turned my attention to the creator of Gachiakuta herself, asking her what inspired her when it came to creating the characters and story for Gachiakuta, whether it be other works of art or things from her life. Pointing to other works of art, Urana-san said on inspiration “Soul Eater and Hellsing. Lord of the Rings; I love Lord of the Rings.”
The Soul Eater inspiration is fitting; Soul Eater and Fire Force author Atsushi Ohkubo previously noted that Urana-san was his “successor who had already surpassed” him. The Gachiakuta creator also worked as an assistant while Fire Force was being serialized in the same magazine that Gachiakuta would eventually begin in, with Fire Force ending only a week after Gachiakuta began serialization.
From the time she first had ideas for the series up until its serialization was just under 10 years. I wanted to know if anything changed from the early days of the idea up until when it was introduced to the world.
“Maybe this will go back seven or eight years ago, even maybe longer ago. I had this idea that I want to write a manga that’s set in a world that’s filled with trash — or trash manga. At the time I had no idea how to actualize this manga that’s set in the world of trash. I had no idea how to make the story interesting. So I kinda played around with the idea, and I also worked on several other manga. But then ultimately, I realized that this is the manga that I really want to write about, the one that sits in the world of trash. So I came back around to work on the story. And by then, I had some experiences in coming up with plots and planning the world and so forth. So I was able to execute it.”
For Andou-san, who is responsible for the graffiti in the series (as well as the graffiti activation that popped up across LA in the past few weeks), he noted “Mostly I draw inspiration from the music that I like” with some of those artists he gets inspired by being “Limp Bizkit, Korn, Slipknot” and a few others.
“At first, I actually started this manga series Gachiakuta alone,” said Urana-san during the Gachiakuta premiere panel. “But then, when I was just starting to work on the manga, we started to kind of talk online for you know, just work communication. And we started to say things like ‘Dude, wouldn’t it be awesome if your art was behind these characters in the background?’ So we put it together, and it actually looked awesome. And that same tension that we had ended up turning into this manga.”
While the collaboration came together into something that presents itself as incredibly smooth and organic, the two creators weren’t originally certain it would be something that would work out. I was curious about what they both thought it was (and is) about the mixture of manga and graffiti that translates into something so eye-catching and powerful for Gachiakuta. Urana-san explained her thoughts:
“I actually didn’t know if combining manga and graffiti style would really work out, but I kind of enjoy the fact that we’re working on something unknown, and that hasn’t been done before, so I ended up kind of having fun going into the uncertainty.”
Andou-san added: “I felt like maybe if two people collaborated, and perhaps if the other person was somebody like Urana, maybe this could be done in real life.”
Bringing it to Anime
The Gachiakuta anime adaptation was originally announced in 2024, with BONES and Kodansha presenting the series at last year’s Anime Expo. Amano-san, who was present at that 2024 panel as well, gave some insight into what initially attracted the production staff to Gachiakuta as a project they’d like to be involved in.
“I started to read Gachiakuta when it was only three or four chapters in, but I was quickly drawn into the uniqueness of the visuals and the characters, and how dramatic and emotional the stories are, and also things like the unique world view and like graffiti in the trash-covered world. When I look at these types of aspects, I thought to myself, this could be a really interesting project to turn into an anime.”
During the panel, Amano-san revealed that both creators “were really invested in the series [and] working with us,” offering to check the script, concept, storyboard, and character design, something which initially seemed like far too daunting a task but that they came through on. When it came to voice acting specifically, I wanted to understand Urana-san’s level of involvement in deciding on the exact voices for the characters in Gachiakuta and whether she had a certain sound in mind for these incredible characters even before finding out that the work would be adapted into anime. She explained that was was quite involved in the process.
“I did involve myself in the process of finding the voice actors. I went in great detail to describe the tones of the character and their personalities and the vibes. And then based on those types of feedback, we collectively looked for the voice actors that fit into those tones. To tell you the truth, I had several particular voice actors in mind that I brought up to the anime team to say, ‘Hey, is it possible to bring these people on board to the anime production team?'”
As far as anime adaptations go, it’s not unheard of for a series to get an anime adaptation just a couple years after serialization, especially for shonen manga. But, this is still a relatively new series that received an overwhelmingly positive response to its anime adaptation announcement, so much so that it surprised the creators and production staff at the time, something noted during the 2024 Anime Expo panel. As I concluded my conversation with Kei Urana, Hideyoshi Andou, and Naoki Amano, I asked the two manga creators how it felt for a relatively new work to receive its own anime adaptation.
“On this point, we both agree — usually when somebody tries to work on a really unique idea or something unusual, the first shot usually doesn’t sell,” Urana-san said in response. “It’s usually the second stream people who try it for the second time. Those are the ones that pop. And I really didn’t want that to happen to us. So we have been working on our series to kind of push that and to be the very first people to be doing this.”
Andou-san added: “I feel like we both talk a lot about the series. And so we have a very synced perspective of what this world of Gachiakuta should look like. This is the main reason why we feel like we can work together in this way.”
Massive thanks to Crunchyroll for helping with organizing this Gachiakuta interview with Kei Urana, Hideyoshi Andou, and Naoki Amano, and all the folks over at Anime Expo for hosting such an incredible group of creators and creatives this year. Episode 3 of the anime will be available on July 27 on Crunchyroll.
© Kei Urana, Hideyoshi Andou and KODANSHA/ “GACHIAKUTA” Production Committee
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