Studio BONES president Masahiko Minami recently spoke with ComicBook.com about the studio's long-term collaboration with creator Kohei Horikoshi. The discussion touched upon the potential for future My Hero Academia content and the studio's push toward original works.

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The decade-long bond between Masahiko Minami and Kohei Horikoshi

Studio BONES has spent over ten years animating the vision of Kohei Horikoshi, producing the primary My Hero Academia series along with four feature films. According to ComicBook .com, Masahiko Minami was immediately captivated by the themes of the shonen series when he first met the author over a decade ago.

This partnership has allowed the franchise to expand through specialized content that explores the characters beyond the main plot. Recent examples include an animated special delving into the adult life of the protagonist Deku and another feature focusing on the character Eri, demonstrating a continued appetite for storytelling within this universe.

From adaptations to the risks of Metallic Rouge

While Studio BONES is widely recognized for its high-quality adaptations of established manga, the studio is increasingly investing in original intellectual properties, such as the recent release Metallic Rouge. masahiko Minami noted that creating original stories is significantly more difficult than adapting existing source material because the production team must build the entire world, lore , and character arcs from scratch.

Despite these crreative and fiancial hurdles, Studio BONES remains committed to pushing creative boundaries. The studio views the production of original animation as a necessary evolution to avoid becoming a mere factory for existing properties,emphasizing a production style that prioritizes originality.

The streaming-driven pressure on Studio BONES' production scale

The global rise of streaming platforms has made anime more accessible to a worldwide audience, but Masahiko Minami warns that this accessibility creates a dangerous demand for volume. As reported by ComicBook.com, Minami believes that because animation cannot be manufactured like a standard industrial product, there is an inherent limit on how much content can be created without sacrificing art.

To avoid a dip in standards, Studio BONES must now work more meticulously to balance the scale of global demand with the necessary attention to detail. This tension between quantity and quality is a constant concern for producers who refuse to treat animation as a disposable commodity.

Will Class 1-A return as adults in a new feature?

Fans are currently searcching for confirmation regarding a potential new movie focusing on the adult versions of Class 1-A, but Masahiko Minami has remained tight-lipped on the matter. While he did not explicitly deny the possibility, he stated that nothing is currently set in stone, leaving the future of the My Hero Academia animated timeline unconfirmed.

This ambiguity comes at a time when creator Kohei Horikoshi is diversifying his own portfolio. The mangaka is set to release a new horror story in the coming days,signaling a shift in his creative focus toward different genres, which may influence how future My Hero Academia projects are conceptualized.