"Princess Session Orchestra," an original television anime jointly produced by King Records, Aria Entertainment, and Takara Tomy, has been airing on TV Tokyo every Sunday at 9:00 AM since April 2025, with its final episode airing on March 29th. Based on a concept by Akifumi Kaneko of the "Symphogear" series, the show combines music, anime, and toys to appeal to both children and adults. It follows the "singing while fighting" style cultivated in "Symphogear," and while it boasts a staff reminiscent of a late-night anime, it is a genuine Sunday morning anime. How did this unique and challenging work come to be? We spoke with Kaneko, the original concept creator, and Yutaka Suwa, the producer at King Records.
◇Anime for "all of humanity"
--What are your roles?
Mr. Kaneko 's title is "Project Proposal Creator." In short, it's planning. It's a job where you articulate your dream of "I want to do this kind of project." It might sound a little exaggerated, but you draw up the direction and final vision of the project and then hand it over to producer Mr. Suwa. That's where it all begins.
Mr. Suwa , as a producer, my role is to coordinate how to materialize the dreams given to me by Mr. Kaneko and the other creators, and how to make them viable as a business. Also, as the music director for the label, I was in charge of the music development, working with Mr. Daisuke Kikuta, the music producer for the entire work, and everyone at Elements Garden and Aria Entertainment. I was in charge of everything from ordering songs to supporting the activities of "Orkelia," the character song unit that was born from this work.
-- How did the "Prioroke" project come about?
Mr. Kaneko's involvement began with a consultation about a different title. A very important person from King Records, with whom I had previously worked on the "Symphogear" series, asked me, "We have a project like this, how would you handle it, Mr. Kaneko?" I replied, "This is how I would do it," and that was the beginning of everything. From there, things progressed very quickly, and the scriptwriter, Manta Aisora, the character designer, Mari Shimazaki, and Suwa joined in to make it a reality.
Mr. Suwa, I joined the project when the draft that Mr. Kaneko and others had been working on was nearing completion, and what struck me most was the sheer scale of the dream they were depicting. Mr. Kaneko described it as being "for all of humanity," but for our company, it was also our first time working on an anime for Sunday mornings. I felt an intense attraction to the opportunity to take on this challenge, and I declared to the company, "Please let me do it!" and was fortunate enough to be put in charge. From there, we moved on to making concrete arrangements to create the animation, such as selecting a director and production studio.
◇Be positive and energetic
-- "For all of humanity," meaning you were aiming to create a work that children could enjoy from the very beginning?
Mr. Kaneko aimed to create a classic work that could be widely enjoyed regardless of broadcast time, gender, or age group. In other words, "It's for children, but it never ends up being childish." That was our stance from the beginning, and it's our ideal.
--Was that not a request made during the initial consultation, but rather your own idea, Ms. Kaneko?
Kaneko: Yes. This is my first project as a project planner. I'm grateful that "Symphogear," the first anime I was involved with, continued for five seasons, so I was thinking that my next project should also be something challenging. So I proposed creating a universal, classic story, but not in the late-night slot, but in the morning. And I wanted to do it for a year, four seasons.
--What was the most important thing you focused on when creating the Sunday morning broadcast?
What I like about Kaneko's works is that they are positive and uplifting. Of course, when creating a drama, there need to be valleys as much as mountains, but no matter what happens, I think that the strength to keep viewers watching with the same hope that "it'll be alright" as the princesses is just as important as the cuteness and glamour of the characters. I would be happy if, after watching each episode, children think, "Let's go play outside," and adults think, "Okay, time to get out of bed."
-- Is the reason "Prioroke" isn't a story of good triumphing over evil because you were conscious of the Sunday morning time slot?
To borrow the words of Aisora -san , who wrote the script for Kaneko-san, the main characters of "PriOke" are not the princesses, but each and every character that appears. I agree with that idea, and if that's the case, then since we're planning a long span of 48 episodes, I think it was somewhat inevitable that we would aim to tell a story that couldn't be told in a one-season series.
--There were some aggressive developments, considering it was a Sunday morning program.
This is the episode featuring the Kaneko sisters, Fuka and Toma. I think the charm of Aizora's writing lies in its substantial depth, which goes beyond just being fun and cute. It was also reassuring that during the script reading, neither Suwa nor Director Onuma (Kokoro) expressed any negative opinions like, "Children won't understand this." Even in the works I watched as a child, there were parts that I didn't fully understand at the time, so I think it was a necessary accent.
--What specific works have influenced you?
Mr. Kaneko, it's not that it influenced "PriOke," but I really love the tokusatsu series "Iron King." It depicts rebellious minority groups and anarchists who use monsters to try and overthrow the government as opponents, and even though I didn't understand the meaning at the time, it left a huge impact on me as a child. Just like the original source material for the parody, it's okay if you don't understand everything. I'd be happy if the children who watch "PriOke" suddenly realize, about 10 years from now, "Oh, that's what they were talking about!"
--Did you take inspiration from current children's anime?
Mr. Kaneko, the foundation of my own work, not just "Prioroke," is the "fun" and "interesting" things I absorbed as a child, so I don't particularly refer to your work, but I am conscious of not overlapping with your ideas (laughs).
◇ The meaning of "fighting while singing"
-- "Singing while fighting" is also a distinctive feature. Were you confident that children would enjoy it?
Mr. Kaneko, even at my age, I still love anime songs. I especially cherish the songs I listened to as a child. To put it bluntly, I have a dream of having children listen to my music and, even decades later, remember it fondly, thinking, "Those songs I listened to back then were great." And it would be fantastic if those songs were by Elements Garden.
Mr. Suwa, that point was also discussed at the production site. We hesitated many times about whether we should incorporate music that is popular with children today, but in the end, because it is an anime song delivered by Elements Garden, a leading anime song brand in Japan, and King Records, which has a history as an anime song label, we aligned our perspective with the creators with the guideline of delivering the passionate and cool anime songs that we ourselves loved to the next generation. I believe that good lyrics are those that allow people to learn and feel things like, "There are words like this," or "There are combinations of words like this," and I also wanted to deliver that kind of experience. Even the way we came up with song titles was discussed many times, and we pursued an "anime-style coolness" that is different from both pop music and children's songs. For example, "Zettai Utahime Sengen!" is a wonderful song that was born from many exchanges with Mr. Uematsu, and he fully embraced the keyword "our own style" that he mentioned.
Mr. Kaneko , I also like robot anime, and I believe the appeal of battles lies not just in the grappling, but in the clash of the pilots' inner thoughts. The strength of expressing this through song rather than dialogue is that lyrics allow us to express more primitive emotions that are difficult to put into dialogue with greater impact.
Suwa-san also delved into the visual aspects of what it means to "sing." He felt that simply opening and closing the mouth wouldn't create a truly immersive singing or battle scene, so SILVER LINK. undertook the incredibly meticulous task of creating the appropriate mouth movements for each singing scene in each episode, and precisely timing them down to fractions of a second. Assistant director Sekine (Yusuke) took responsibility for refining the lip-syncing in the singing scenes. Comparing the beginning and the latter half of the story, the direction has dramatically improved. I feel that the creators' dedication is what produced the powerful visuals that originated from the songs.
◇Reasons for hiring unconventional staff
--Director Shin Oonuma has mainly worked on late-night anime. Series composition and scriptwriter Manta Aisora is a light novel author known for works such as "Nyarko-san: Another Crawling Chaos," and character designer Mari Shimazaki is known for her designs in the "BAYONETTA" game series. All of them may be considered unusual staff for a Sunday morning anime.
We proposed the lineup of Kaneko-san , series composition and scriptwriter Aisora Manta-san, character designer Shimazaki Mari-san, and director Onuma Shin-san. Aisora-san is also a friend of mine, and he is a writer with a wonderful balance of emotional moments, passion, and comedy. When I saw Shimazaki-san's character designs for "BAYONETTA" in the past, I felt a cuteness beyond the coolness, and I asked her to bring out that cuteness in a battle heroine story. I also thought that we could surprise people by creating something completely opposite to the image they have of the character. I have complete confidence in Director Onuma because he takes great care of the original work. And above all, he is the one who creates the distinctive opening storyboards. In this work, where characters "fight while singing," it's like creating an opening every week, so I thought that his skills and sense would be put to the best of his ability.
This was the first time that SILVER LINK., the company to which Suwa-san and director Onuma belong, had worked on a four-season series consecutively. However, in addition to Onuma-san himself, SILVER LINK. also expressed interest in participating, which led to the formation of this team.
--What are your feelings now that you've been running for a year?
Suwa-san, this was a huge challenge for our company, being the first original anime to run for four consecutive seasons on Sunday mornings, but we're happy to say we've managed to pull it off. For us, who usually work on late-night anime, the experience of meeting fans that we wouldn't have been able to connect with through this project is a great asset. The broadcast is ending, but we will do our best to ensure that even more people can enjoy these 48 stories and the many songs, and to create new developments as well.
I am truly grateful to Mr. Kaneko for his support over the past year. I was able to see a different kind of response from everyone compared to late-night anime, and I myself was greatly inspired. I hope that "Princess Session Orchestra" will continue to resonate and spread in the hearts of others. (Mitsuru Anima/MANTANWEB)
