Concorde, the supersonic commercial aeroplane, is a famous example from the world of engineering. The Book of Disquiet, an unfinished factless autobiography by Fernando Pessoa, is an artistic version of the same phenomenon. In June 2021, at MAPPA’s 10th Anniversary Event, the studio released an awe-inspiring trailer for an original movie – a limitless anime project called the Illusion Factory. However, over a year later, nothing has been heard since. So, what happened to Alice to Therese no Maboroshi Koujou? This is a story of the greatest anime never released, highlighting the growth, and potential future crash, of Japanese animation through the lens of one of its biggest studios.
The Extraordinary Rise of MAPPA
In just 10 years, MAPPA transformed from a creative studio to an anime behemoth, with the financial strength to match. However, the origins of MAPPA were anything but financially sound. The studio was created by Masao Maruyama, an incredibly experienced anime producer. Previously, he had co-founded Madhouse, one of the leading action anime studios of the 2000s. At that time, Maruyama felt that Madhouse had become too commercialised. He and his colleague, director Sunao Katabuchi, were struggling to produce a film set in Japan before the war. In the end, Murayama created MAPPA, and the two of them left Madhouse behind with the ambition of creating this film together. However, they still had no money to produce the film they wanted. While launching a crowdfunding campaign for the movie, Maruyama used his industry connections to produce some TV series, including Shinichiro Wantanabe’s Kids on the Slope, one of MAPPA’s first-ever productions. Years passed, and while MAPPA had arrived on the scene as a small anime studio, they were still crowdfunding to get Katabuchi’s film produced. Eventually, a whole five years after MAPPA was formed for that very reason, the film was released – In This Corner of the World. From that point, MAPPA had liftoff. The film was a critical success, and the studio had been praised for its excellent TV series beforehand. Maruyama, having achieved what he wanted to do, stepped down as the CEO and handed the reigns of MAPPA to the much younger Manabu Otsuka. From around this point in 2016, MAPPA skyrocketed from a successful anime studio into the all-conquering juggernaut it is today. MAPPA went out to recruit the best talent and stockpiled shows to the point that it sometimes struggled to produce episodes on time. However, the quality never dropped. Hit after hit came out of MAPPA’s factory, and eventually, all the big stories were being adapted by MAPPA. MAPPA’s unbelievable growth came to the fore in 2020, a year before Alice and Therese’s Illusion Factory. In that year, Attack on Titan dramatically changed studios for its fourth and final season. The hit series had become one of anime’s biggest international hits under Wit Studio, but the producers believed only MAPPA could handle the increasing scale required for the final season. Then, in December 2020, MAPPA announced that they would be investing their own capital into adapting the wildly-popular Chainsaw Man manga. This was a largely unprecedented move from an anime studio, which is usually brought into a project as a minor partner. MAPPA had firmly arrived at the top table of Japanese animation studios and was starting to throw its creative and financial weight around. However, they didn’t get there without cost. As fans were becoming increasingly aware of the amount of work that goes into anime, MAPPA was one of the most heavily criticised studios when it came to how it treats its staff and freelancers regarding pay, turnaround pressures and working conditions. However, MAPPA continued to press on, and its 10th Anniversary Event a year later was the perfect opportunity to show the world what a big player it had become.
Alice to Therese no Maboroshi Koujou’s Limitless Trailer
MAPPA’s 10th Anniversary Event in June 2021 was the perfect theatre for MAPPA to project itself as anime’s leading studio. During the event, they released Chainsaw Man’s first trailer, a new visual for Attack on Titan’s final season, and a smaller collaborative project, with Madhouse, titled Takt op. Destiny, which would go on to be another visually excellent series. Then, they released a trailer for a mysterious original film they were producing, titled Alice to Therese no Maboroshi Koujou (which can be translated as Alice and Therese’s Illusion Factory). The trailer, which you can see below, showed a level of detail that few had ever witnessed before. This trailer has since become the fourth most-viewed video on MAPPA’s YouTube channel, only beaten by Chainsaw Man. Fans were hugely excited to see what this film could be. However, according to reports at the time, MAPPA emphasised that they could not reveal a release date. In fact, they revealed almost nothing about the movie. The official website, a common marketing tool for Japanese anime, is simply a landing page with nothing except some notes by the director, Mari Okada, who had previously directed A Whisker Away. In those notes, Mari says that MAPPA CEO Manabu Otsuka asked her to make the movie she wants to see, regardless of popularity or, crucially, budget. And so, we have the aptly-named Illusion Factory – an anime MAPPA sees as unbound by outside interests and freed from the shackles of financing issues from days gone by. However, in chasing this anime utopia, MAPPA became the eye of the very storm that its founder Masao Maruyama, and arguably Japanese animation as a whole, was trying to run away from.
Will Alice to Therese no Maboroshi Koujou Ever Be Released?
From the outside, Japanese animation’s future looks very rosy. Theatrical releases continue to set box office records and more TV anime are being produced than ever before. However, there are problems brewing underneath. With more anime and more competition, margins are being squeezed, and animator pay rates are not improving fast enough. There are a growing number of stories about Japanese animators moving to other industries, such as video games, or leaving Japan to animate in countries like China, due to better pay. There’s a risk that MAPPA and other studios, so focused on chasing those breakthrough, money-spinning hits like Chainsaw Man, are losing sight of what really makes anime tick – the animators. Many of the comments underneath Alice to Therese no Maboroshi Koujou’s trailer question the working conditions of the animators on the project. An infinite budget might allow for more of them, but if they’re not being paid well, why wouldn’t they use their skills elsewhere? And so Japanese anime finds itself at a crossroads. Exceptional growth has got studios like MAPPA to the point where they can produce an effectively budgetless movie, but if young, promising talent continues to leave, films like the Illusion Factory may remain just that – illusions. Now, we don’t know why there hasn’t been any news on the movie since, so there’s no evidence that these problems have hit this production. Just as how MAPPA started with In This Corner of the World, in a few years’ time, we may well see Alice and Therese’s Illusion Factory released. However, if we do see this movie, the question of ‘at what cost’ will surely be raised once again. Maybe, Alice and Therese’s Illusion Factory will be anime’s Concorde. A limit-defying project that meets with incredible acclaim. However, when seen in the cold light of day, it might be achieved at a cost so high that it is never repeated again.
