news culture The studio behind Attack on Titan and Jujutsu Kaisen is making a new anime about… Shampoo!
Breaking news of the day: MAPPA, the hottest Japanese animation studio of the moment, has just produced an animated short to promote… a shampoo brand. The result is amazing.
MAPPA, your favorite animation studio’s favorite animation studio
If you’re into Japanese animation, you can’t get past MAPPA over the past few years as the animation studio has turned the anime landscape upside down. Developed in 2011 by Masao Maruyama, co-founder of legendary studio Madhouse, MAPPA quickly established itself as the benchmark for Japanese animation. The studio is a hit and now takes on almost all important manga adaptation projects such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Attack on Titan, Chainsaw Man, Vinland Saga or Hell’s Paradise.
Now an indispensable figure in Japanese animation, MAPPA is fighting on all fronts, so much so that one wonders how the studio teams are managing to stay the course, so fast is the pace of releases. But lately, it’s a more modest project the studio has been talking about: an advertisement for men’s skincare products.
An unexpected project
MAPPA is making headlines with this rather unexpected project. The studio therefore produced an advertisement for NatureLab’s Japanese brand MARO17… a shampoo for men. The long version of this ad is available in the reader at the top of the article and we follow the brief everyday life of a kind of fringe living amid jewelry of all kinds. When he runs out of dry food for his dog, he decides to get ready and obviously takes the time to wash his hair.
The pitch of this advertisement, as simple as it may seem, above all allows MAPPA to show all his talent. The light and color effects are stunning as always. Takeshi Sato, who directed some episodes of the anime Chainsaw Man, directs this short film, while the chara design goes to Nao Otsu, also character designer of the BEASTARS series.
Lead dubbing goes to Yoshimasa Hosoya, best known for lending his voice to Reiner in Attack on Titan. Finally, the main theme is interpreted by the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra group. A very strange project, but an absolutely flawless end result.
