The wraparound jacket band on the most recent Kangoku Gakuen manga volume announced that the anime is only four months away.
For a critically acclaimed, award winning manga that has sold four million copies and counting, it’s remarkable how shrouded in secrecy the animation production has been. Fifteen anime series have been confirmed for the Summer 2015 season, but among them only Prison School and ‘VENUS PROJECT ‘ have yet to announce their respective production studios.
In fact, it hasn’t even been announced if Prison School will be a TV series at all, though that seems extremely likely given the massive popularity of the source. We don’t know how many episodes… all we know is that it’s happening and it’s happening in the Summer.
I’m sure we’ll hear more information any day now, but in the interest of jinxing the universe into making this information come quickly, I figure I’ll speculate a bit.
First, production studio. It is widely believed that MADHOUSE would be the perfect studio for this series as the manga has drawn comparisons to Death Note and is a similar kind of… uh… ‘hipster’ style of ecchi to High School of the Dead , which was also done by MADHOUSE. And MADHOUSE has shown on many occasions that they aren’t afraid of drawing nipples or showing shocking material. Doesn’t mean they will be the ones to do it, but you have to admit it seems like the perfect fit.
Another production candidate for the anime that might be sliding under the radar is asread, who previously animated dramatic ecchi titles with nudity such as Shuffle! and Mirai Nikki , as well as the underrated fantasy-retail job ecchi anime Yuushibu . Their ecchi anime typically skew towards serious or intense themes. I like asread, but I would prefer MADHOUSE between the two.
One other darkhorse candidate might be Gonzo, a company that is basically MADHOUSE-lite with a predilection towards intense anime with adult themes (Afro Samurai , Gantz, etc). They’ve hit hard times as of late though and I’m guessing they wouldn’t have enough pull to get a manga like this.
Then of course, you have all the ecchi mainstays like Xebec, TNK, ARMS, and 8 bit, with Production IMS recently joining the club. Of that group, Xebec and 8 bit make the most sense as they have some experience with nude ecchi anime that feature intense themes. Xebec in particular is the most likely studio from this group, given their history of adapting big name ecchi manga.
It could even be a top shelf studio like Production IG, PA Works, A-1 Pictures or SHAFT. This is a top tier manga after all.
Given the popularity of the source, there is a very real chance this anime could be planned for multiple cours too.
A couple other bits of minor ecchi news. AT-X’s website has confirmed the expected, DxD BorN will air uncensored on AT-X. The anime will begin on April 4th. Yet another OVA for the series has been announced as well, this one being bundled with the DxD Dx.2 light novel on December 9th.
I mentioned this in the Triage X post update, but in case anyone missed it… Xebec will release an OVA for Triage X after the anime completes. It will be an unaired 11th episode, which strongly suggests that the Triage X television run will only last 10 episodes as suspected. This is from the same studio and mostly the same staff as Maken-Ki! Two , so this can’t be considered a big surprise.
