Enter the Garden (PC: YouTube)
It was announced a while back in April that Goro Taniguchi the director of the popular anime Code Geass was taking part in a new anime project being produced by Web3-style anime brand Azuki and advertising company Dentsu. The first episode of the project just came out on April 30th.
The anime is different in nature from what we are used to normally seeing as it is an NFT-based project. NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens became popular in the early 2020s as a way to directly support artists and creators. The new project is not the first of its kind as other attempts have been made to create similar anime series.
What is the new NFT-based anime project?
The new project by Azuki and Dentsu is a three-part anime anthology series titled Enter The Garden. The first episode, which is about 9 minutes long and titled The Waiting Man, is already available to watch on the Azuki website and their YouTube channel. The first episode came out on April 30th, 2024.
Goro Taniguchi, whom you might know from Code Geass and One Piece Film: Red, is the creative producer of the project with the director being Junichi Yamamoto. Taku Kishimoto is the script writer and Kinu Nishimura is the character designer of the series. Azuki, Dentsu, Qzil.la, and IMAGICA Infos are the producers of the project. The cast of the anime includes Akira Kitō as Haru, Tomokazu Sugita T.K., and Jun Fukuyama in a mystery role.
Enter the Garden’s story revolves around a free-spirited girl named Haru, who one day encounters a stoic man named T.K. With his help, Haru is able to cross the bridge between our world known as Alley and the other world named Garden. The first episode of the anime focused on the two main characters meeting and entering the Garden.
How is the new project different than other anime series?
In an interview with CBR, both Taniguchi and Yamamoto revealed a few details about the anime and its creative process. They talked about how the voice actors for the characters have been chosen especially Akira Kitō who is the voice of Nezuko in Demom Slayer. Taniguchi also elaborated how the project is a bit ambitious but they wanted to team up with Azuki, which is an anime brand created by Chiru Labs to, “possibly create a new route of anime production, a new way of making anime, if you will, not just for Japan – also for the world, and not just for the production itself, but to also find ways to return or share that with everybody that is part of the project.”
Yamamoto later also explained that even though the story of Enter the Garden is new, it is set in the world of Azuki which was nurtured by the existing team and people who are part of the community. The merging of the existing world with a new street, technology forward, world is very evident in the first episode of the anime, which is now available to watch on the Azuki YouTube channel and official website. The duo also commented on how a lot of different animation styles came together to create this new project.
This news is republished from another source.
