This 3D Anime Could Be the Sleeper Hit of Winter 2025

CGI in anime has come a long way over the years, and though many still prefer 2D, animators like Gensho Yasuda have proven that 3D’s prevalence need not be chalked up solely to concession. After years of viral Blender animations that have garnered him millions of followers online, Yasuda’s feature-length film, Make a Girl, is poised to make that point more eloquently than ever before.

Based on Yasuda’s 2020 short film Make Love, Make a Girl became a crowdfunding success story in late 2022, receiving over 23.7 million yen, well over the 10 million yen goal set by the campaign. Yasuda also previously worked as a CG animator for video game developer Nitroplus and just recently made waves online with a series of Disney-approved anime shorts promoting Moana 2.

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A Cyber-Romance With a Dark Twist

Make a Girl follows Akira Mizutame, a young scientist who invents an advanced helper robot named Salt. Despite his great strides, however, he finds himself hitting a creative roadblock. When a friend suggests that he get a girlfriend, he takes the advice a bit too well and ends up inventing a girlfriend instead. It’s a big logical leap, the comedy of which is not lost on the film itself; neither are the darker implications of the concept, which serve as the crux of the film’s central tension.

At first, the trailer presents itself like any other love story, complete with the romantic swells of an orchestral soundtrack, before it comes to a screeching halt and switches gears. No.0 starts to question everything. She has been programmed to love Akira, and Akira himself has only created No.0 out of a dispassionate desire to gain some nebulous “upgrade” to his sense of self just by having a girlfriend. It’s a rather dark premise that sets the stage for a deeply intriguing plot.

What results is a suspenseful cyber-love story, brimming with twists and turns as No.0’s programming clashes with her burgeoning sense of self as a conscious being. All the while, Akira grapples with what he has created and tries to help No.0 as a mysterious third party pursues her. Beyond the initial bait-and-switch, the trailer seems to only hint at a fragment of what the story has to reveal about Akira, No.0, and the nature of her evolution.

This Film Looks Gorgeous

The story of Make a Girl is a strong sell, but that is secondary to what immediately stands out; the animation. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone who has followed Yasuda’s career, but even by his standards, this film is particularly pretty. As the official website states, it is “300% pure Gensho Yasuda”, a testament to what he is capable of with a theatrical budget and a skilled team at his disposal, even if only “eight people”, according to Yasuda.

It captures the look of a hand-drawn anime so well that certain shots look almost indistinguishable. Of course, in motion, that distinction is clearer, but no less captivating. Yasuda’s various animated shorts online excel at expressive, lively, and often subtle character animation, to say nothing of how he manages to create short vignettes with limited to no dialog. By the same token, Make a Girl‘s characters – the expressions they wear, their hair, and their bodies – all move with considerable grace.

From 2-Minute Short to Feature-Length Thriller

From its origins as a short film to its crowdfunding success, the roots of this film make the finished product even more interesting than its already nuanced premise. It’s rare to see an independent animator rise so boldly in such a relatively short time as to be the director and writer of a feature-length film. It brings to mind a similar story of Atsuya Uki, a character designer for Digimon who ended up directing the anime film series Cencoroll.

Cencoroll was a 26-minute short film that was then expanded into 2019’s Cencroroll Connect, which combined the first film with a new sequel story, totaling about 75 minutes. What’s most impressive is that to the best of anyone’s knowledge – apart from some in-between animation – the whole film is animated by Uki. With a third film announced back in 2019, chances are he’s still working on it all these years later.

Make a Girl Feels Special

Yasuda’s inspiring success with Make a Girl feels like for 3D animation what Uki’s success was for 2D animation. It is a mostly singular creative vision given time to be brought to fruition and then elevated further to a national stage, all because of the merits of the artist’s portfolio. Hard work paid off, and as easy as that is to say, reality isn’t always quick to concur. Gensho Yasuda put in the work, but as he states, it was his followers online who helped propel his work even further ahead:

Make a Girl debuted at the Global Stage Hollywood 2024 Film Festival on November 3 and soon afterward during the Tokyo International Film Festival. There’s no word yet on a wider international release for the film, but it would be a great addition to an already stacked lineup of anime films. 2025 will see Demon Slayer, Chainsaw Man, Madoka Magica, and more hit theaters, and it would be ridiculously cool to see Gensho Yasuda’s work among them, on the big screen, across the globe.

Make a Girl hits theaters in Japan on January 31, 2025.

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Sources: Gensho Yasuda’s YouTube channel, Make a Girl official website, Crunchyroll News [Link 1][Link 2], ANN [Link 1][Link 2][Link 3]