Interview | Goofy yet heartwarming, an "otokonoko anime" dedicated to graduation season

This animation graduation-project season, one work caught our attention with its comfortable pacing and humorous expression.

An upperclassman about to graduate can no longer continue his soccer career due to injury, and his caring underclassmen decide to perform a healing dance for him — but things rarely go exactly as beautifully imagined……

This animated short is My Beloved Senpai Is Graduating. (hereafter abbreviated as Senpai Grad)

Interview | Chaotic yet Heartwarming: an “otokonoko anime” dedicated to graduation season

Following the trail, we found that the previous collaborative work by some of this project's main creators, Magical Cutie, was a viral hit that racked up nearly three million views!

These two works respectively participated in the seventh and eighth editions of Bilibili Seeking Light: Little Universe, both sparking heated discussion, and the Nanliang (?) characters in both animations were unanimously beloved by audiences. By observing the similarities and differences between the two works, you can also sense the creators' trajectory of progress and their new experiments.

We secured the opportunity to interview the creators — let's hear the behind-the-scenes story of the production together!

Interviewees: Fanqiezi (Bilibili: Earth Princess Tomato Seed): Director, screenwriter, episode director

​Zheng (Bilibili/XHS: Man-Eating Toothy Bird, Weibo: Galaxy Mouth Mouth Bird): Producer, key animator, photography

​xu (Bilibili/Weibo/XHS: Riagen Deba, huh): Art

​Lan (Bilibili: Authentic Good Flavor, XHS: Gougouda): Art, animation director, key animator

​Xi (Bilibili: Water Fountain Plaza Xi-Xi Alliance, Weibo: Water Fountain Plaza Bad Friends Alliance, XHS: Oji): 3D, photography

​Annanke (Bilibili: Nanke Loves to Dream_, Weibo: Gui Yi Cheng An, XHS: Going with the June Breeze): Producer, key animator, photography

​marble (Bilibili: Luxurious Curated Big Pillow, XHS: Crazy Big Pillow, Weibo: Rampant Emperor Big Pillow): Animation director, key animator, art

​Beijibei (Bilibili: Hairy Shell Porridge, XHS: Wedge-Leaf White Birch): Key animator, photography

01 The Origin of the Project​

​Fanqiezi: The screenplay for XXB — or rather, the whole project around these kids — was inspired by this realization: "Can't die, so just live." Though these words sound negative, read from another angle they seem to contain an alternative kind of hope: "Since I can't die anyway, it doesn't matter, whatever."

Bad grades, failed relationships, repeated setbacks at work, dreams turning to nothing, the passing of loved ones — because "we can't die," because the world won't change because of it, we can still look forward.

So we created a character whose "first seventeen years of life are ruined", and opened the story from the perspective of a worried, caring onlooker.

But beyond the difficulties the senpai faces in the animation, we also wanted to explore another theme: in the face of a friend's pain, our friendship seems to have an uncrossable boundary. The person we try with all our might to help, to save, has his own life, his family, his own circle; and we are merely "a friend."

​Fanqiezi: The director is a fan of Akiyuki Shinbo, and among Madoka Magica, Bakemonogatari, Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, and Nisekoi, he chose Pretty Boy Detective Club. A dog that will spend its life making trashy, unhinged, off-the-wall films.

The planning proposal for Senpai Grad was made by my producer together with me. Let the producer-chan tell you about it.

​Zheng: As for how the style formed, it's a triple combination of aesthetic orientation + accumulated viewing + accumulated creative practice.

Quite a lot of anime/works have personally influenced me greatly. What I've been unable to stop thinking about recently are Imura no Koi and Megumi Ishitani's Fanletter (starting to recommend). The former is the pinnacle of limited-budget, money-saving animation, the one true god of budget-saving in my heart right now (saving money doesn't mean ugly — it's super fun, everyone go watch it, okay?), while the latter is a true labor of love that's perfect on every level. Fanletter's script, storyboards, character designs, and key animation have all given me plenty of inspiration.

02 So It Was a Budget-Saving Anime?​

​Fanqiezi: The classmate in charge of episode direction is a devoted stan of budget-saving animation and has always held the creative philosophy of if it doesn't have to move, don't move it. In many places, both Magical Cutie and Senpai Grad deliberately adopted work-reducing approaches in the storyboards, so that as many participating members as possible could make the animation comfortably and happily within the schedule. The number of key frames in these two films may be far lower than many people imagine.

The episode director also frequently told the key animators things like "for this cut, draw just one frame and add panning in post" or "keep key frames within 4 and do the rest in in-betweens."

​Fanqiezi: Before making Senpai Grad, the director and producer had already discussed possible ways to realize an original animation IP project. So every character in the show was setting-first, with the director drawing the original drafts and later completing them together with the classmate in charge of character design. We invited our character designer to answer this question:

​marble: Before designing the characters, the director had already determined each person's character setting and a mini-biography, and their appearances were designed according to the characters' personalities.

For example, Cheng Haicheng is an energetic little sun, so his hair flips outward, with the side hair tucked behind his ear mimicking dog ears (?). Li Jie is a loud, rambunctious kid, so her hair is very stiff and straight, with choppy bangs above the eyebrows and back hair fanning out in all directions — her head is like a little missile. She's tiny but immensely strong, a firecracker. Hu Yupei is a very introverted child, so an inward-curling round bob was used, paired with thin, downturned eyebrows.

Beyond character personality, the designs were also based on the main storyline. For example, the senpai has pre-injury and post-injury variants: before the injury, his green, leaf-like hair flipped upward; after the injury, feeling down, he no longer diligently styled his hair, so the leaves droop downward, and the color is duller than before. His facial expressions also look more constrained than before, often showing helplessness or wry smiles.

As for the "de-gendered" impression the characters give — when designing them, it felt like kids at this age are inherently gender-blurred, and deliberately making some anti-stereotype design choices gives the characters more distinctiveness. Strong contrast leaves a deeper impression on viewers and makes the characters more memorable.

​Fanqiezi: Oh, and actually the de-gendered design also has to do with the director's tastes being tomboys and otokonoko.

Attached are two character design exploration drafts from the early planning stage.

03 But It's Full of Clever Ideas!​

​Fanqiezi: On this front I only provided some vague ideas and a few anime screenshots as reference — our two art geniuses completely carried it. We invited our two art leads to answer this question.

​xu: Senpai Grad is much longer than Magical Cutie, and correspondingly, it has many more scenes, different atmosphere paintings needed, and even far more main characters appearing. As the artist, the biggest means of differentiation I could achieve was color.

First of all, there are a staggering six characters appearing, and bold colors are undoubtedly one of the simplest ways to distinguish characters. Also, Fanqie had very clear emotional directions for the atmosphere of every scene; through our exchanges we gradually became clear about what exactly we wanted to express, and so we could be bolder with the colors of each scene.

I think what matters most with color is to go all in at once: combine the requirements with your own ideas, plus existing, mature references you can find — knock out a few versions without worrying about details first, then revise in coordination with the whole. Because in team collaboration, you often have to put half-finished work in front of everyone, so everyone knows whether what they want is what the other person understands, or whether what's wanted is actually feasible and can be smoothly carried into the final film.

​Lan: The color design was entirely carried by the great xu; I only gave some tiny suggestions. However, when doing background designs, I would deliberately search for references and match colors according to the color tendency each scene needed, and this time we also tried many bolder, vivid colors. Ideally, while staying close to real life, we'd apply artistic treatment to make the whole scene's palette look balanced and comfortable, and also blend smoothly with the characters' emotions and atmosphere in post compositing! So it's also very important for the artists and the director to seek out each other's opinions and advice, and to deeply understand the emotions the script wants to convey.

​Fanqiezi: Attached are the background design drafts each of our two art leads was responsible for! Art leads, I love you both. Let's make animation for a lifetime, okay?

​Fanqiezi: Sarazanmai and Maebashi Witches. Ah, both of these are very niche, polarizing, offbeat works... but I genuinely love them, please go watch them... Sigh, once we get on this topic I'll ramble on forever — let my producer take over.

​Zheng: For the hidden-world live performance in Senpai Grad, we referenced the stage-sense staging of Sarazanmai and Maebashi Witches, hoping to amplify the kids' care for the senpai, and their hope that he'd regain his old smile, through a somewhat exaggerated, flamboyant approach. For this we specifically commissioned someone to write an original live song and choreography, hoping this "heartfelt care for a friend" could be conveyed well.

​Fanqiezi: This is entirely a story of us getting incredibly lucky.

During Magical Cutie, we posted a voice-actor recruitment notice in our school's dubbing club, and by chance we got to know a dubbing studio that was supporting student projects; both films were then completed in collaboration with the studio.

Huge thanks to Tengyun Culture for their participation in and support of Magical Cutie and Senpai Grad!

04 Words for the Juniors~​

​Fanqiezi: During the production of both films, we never recruited small helpers for in-betweens or coloring. Almost all the junior students who participated were given full participation from layout, first key, second key, through coloring, to familiarize themselves with the software and standard workflows.

At the same time, we also did more complete and careful supervision at every checkpoint — for example, writing notes on animation principles and performance/direction onto every cut's key frames.

Huge thanks to the junior students for being willing to participate and help! Without you all, Senpai Grad could never have been completed so smoothly and easily.

If there's an insight I want to share with the new cohort... rather than technical sharing, I'd rather remind everyone to do a good job on production planning, and to start planning the schedule and workload arrangements from the very beginning. Don't pin all your hopes on your future self in the final week, okay? Eat and sleep well, drink plenty of hot water and exercise, schedule rest days sensibly, and avoid working continuously for too long.

05 Closing Thoughts: A Few Observations​

Thanks to the creators for sharing! By depicting a graduation story with a hint of regret yet ultimately healing in a graduation work, this film seems to help people face the post-graduation future with more equanimity~

Finally, I'd also like to take this opportunity to share a small observation of my own.

In the past, the prevalence of silent student works was, to some extent, a deliberate or unintentional choice resulting from the lack of professional voice-acting resources. But in recent animation graduates' works, more and more pieces no longer shy away from substantial dialogue, and are no longer content to merely have non-professionals voice a few simple lines.

More dialogue doesn't just mean simply adding some lines. It allows animated works to better accommodate young student creators' expressive needs for humor, meme references, or complex narrative, letting internet slang, famous quotes, puns, OC settings, classic-work scenes, and more be absorbed by student works, giving student-work storytelling far more possibilities.

At the same time, this shift may also push character design and visual art in animation toward existing, mature American or Japanese commercial series animation styles. From this angle, the boundaries, in terms of temperament, between so-called academic student works, fan-created shorts influenced by internet culture, and some dialogue-heavy commercial animation works, seem to be growing ever blurrier.

The influence of the internet, students' diligent exploration, and professional support from the industry — under the combined effect of these three forces, a narrative trend belonging to the new generation of animation creators is gradually taking shape.

This also poses new demands on the training of animation students — in the future, if more and more student works choose to challenge more complex (or offbeat, or comedic) narratives, should more professional dialogue-writing training be incorporated into the animation curriculum? When student animation also uses substantial dialogue, what face will new-generation animated works show? Will the line between "art shorts" and "mature series" blur further? Let's wait and see.