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The image of a band like Oasis—working-class stars, seemingly twisted at first glance—singing “you can be anything” over a violin melody… that’s really something wonderful.
The café that appears from time to time in the anime is based on a certain real café in Ueno. Try finding it.
A simple composition, with the characters placed left and right, but one that still needs movement.
This is also the last time we see Kache in these clothes—blonde, and still carrying a little bit of that student-like feel.
Sometimes Kache is actually the one doing Michika’s nails.
Michika hates the atmosphere where you’re expected to make small talk while getting your nails done, so when it starts feeling unbearable, she asks Kache instead.
What is this adorable scene!?
Then I realized I’d properly written, “she wraps up her legs and runs away.” What a faithful recreation.
Everyone, in their going-out outfits.
When all these visuals were finally lined up, I remember thinking, wow, an anime really is being made. It started to feel like a proper original anime that had built itself up episode by episode. KAngel is barely even in it.
For the themes I wanted to write, I knew KAngel would end up shining in a way different from the game—but at this point the scenario could only really be called original. That’s why the beginning had to go full throttle, to make the rule clear: this is very different from the game. I’d anticipated all kinds of reactions before people settled into the idea that the anime is the anime, but by the time we reached episode 5, I think we had finally managed to establish the anime’s own rules. Judging from people’s reactions, it feels like we’ve passed beyond the phase of “wait, what is this new development?” and people are now enjoying the anime on its own terms.
And seeing the screen flow along so naturally—just these new characters cheerfully bustling around—I felt strangely moved, like, we really have rowed our way into the middle stretch now.
So yes, this is the Lollipop episode.
Overall, it has a pretty moe sort of feeling.
Apparently Hirata Katsuzo from MagiPoka and Director Nakajima were doing fantastic work on the animation here.
There’s this faint nostalgic feeling of an old-school late-night bishoujo anime, and that’s part of the charm. Thanks to Lollipop running all over the place, it feels even more “anime” than episode 4 did.
Before that, though, the short anime.
I fell in love with Czech stop-motion works and knew I absolutely wanted to try something like that for NEEDY too, so I asked Dwarf Studio to make it happen. It was so absurdly cute that all I could do during recording was laugh. I only tweaked the dialogue a little—it was already a perfect one-minute piece from the start, just from how adorable and ridiculous it was. This really is an anime made joyfully with all kinds of creators.
As for the short anime, conceptually it’s meant to feel like this kind of stream is happening, but if people just take it as a little interlude to reset their mood, that’s perfectly fine too.
Because it’s cute.
Kache changing clothes.
Lollipop’s fixation on fashion starts showing up around this episode. The reason, as I’ll mention later, is Michika and Nechika.
I want to go to a shop decorated in Mondrian style too.
And so, punk Kache is born.
Actually, this version is more like the “original” Kache. Ohisashiburi’s character designs felt a little too mature, so from there I worked backward and the slightly younger-looking, two-tone-haired early Kache was born. Kache, in her own way, also has a resistance to being “normal,” and had that kind of youth where she’d listen to punk and rock. Compared to Michika, it’s a slightly healthier kind of distortion.
And then suddenly, out pops this moe girl.
She might honestly be the most moe-moe character in the entire anime.
The order was “a slightly country-bumpkin-ish otaku girl,” but Ohisashiburi reinterpreted it in their own cool way, and combined with the purple motif it turned into a wonderfully balanced design.
At the end of the day, she’s a fan-girl for KAngel too. Cute.
What is this subculture girl who looks like she spends all day on 4chan?
A girl who’s deeply interested in fashion and self-realization, but still can’t take that one last step, ends up meeting a very weird girl.
At this point, the two of them were already getting some attention online but were still smoldering a little, so they had that youthfulness that made them jump on the momentum of this suddenly appearing, denpa-ish chuuni girl. Boldness matters. If Lollipop hadn’t been there, then even with the potential those two had, maybe they would have stayed buried as nothing more than slightly-polished amateurs.
The toughness with which they gradually recognize the purple girl as their leader—sensing all that—is part of their vitality too, that so-called “female intuition.”
I ended up splitting the essence of my novel Spider between Lollipop and Kache.
The reason Ame was being weirdly proactive was because, from the start, she was basically in a mood like, that fan of mine from the talk live looks down, maybe I’ll tease her a little. Ame was always like that from the beginning. In her own way, maybe she was just a little lonely too.
I think from around the arcade scene in episode 5, the way the motifs were being scattered—so that NEEDY could step outside the world of just Ame and P—finally started to become visible.
Kache’s motif starts being used more in the inserts now.
Punk.
I also felt that the staff were gradually getting more comfortable with making all those inserted materials look cool.
A strange anime that becomes visibly more refined with every episode.
As for the ending, Director Nakajima apparently worked incredibly hard on it, and the musical direction of Lollipop’s character song, “Crime and Punishment,” came from Nakajima’s request. And at last, this is where Haraguchi’s compositions make their appearance. It was fun, building Synth-chan together while also entrusting him with the Karamazov girls, the two of us going back and forth over all of it.
And so Aiobahn, Tatsuya Kitani, and Sasuke Haraguchi—friends I’ve been playing around with all this time—have all gathered into the thick trunk that is the NEEDY anime. Thank you, everyone. And to our new ally, DEDE-MOUSE: I get the feeling of the music that played during the Karamazov parts this time…! Wonderful.
There was actually an idea to push this episode a little later, but apparently I casually said something like, “I want to deliver dreams to girl viewers even one second sooner” (I don’t remember saying this at all), and Director Nakajima seemed impressed by that policy, so it stayed as episode 5. In truth, more than the girl at the end, I think I just wanted to show Kache’s outfit-change scene as early as possible. Why? Even now I’m not sure.
As for the lyrics of this song, they’re weirdly dark compared to the image of Lollipop within the main story—but that darkness is part of Lollipop’s inner self too. Even if it isn’t directly depicted, it was meant to feel like that’s the kind of thing anyone carries before Karamazov is formed. Also, to be blunt, I was extremely depressed during anime production, so bright lyrics were never going to come out of me anyway.
I love Tabun Ningen-sensei’s art too.
I worked on the “Crime and Punishment” MV ( ՞. ̫.՞) I’m so happy because I’m a big Lollipop-chan fan! I worked really hard on it, so please give it a watch ꒰⸝⸝› ‹⸝⸝꒱
I was sure that if I asked them to do Lollipop’s MV, some wonderful chemical reaction would happen, so I absolutely had to.
─────•✦•───── Purple Lollipop ✨Figure Announcement✨ ─────•✦•───── One poison strike straight to an otaku’s heart ♡ The deadly toxic denpa girl ☆ Purple Lollipop is now in production as a 1/7 scale figure! Stay tuned for more updates 🧬
So that’s how it was, apparently.
Channel-san, thank you as always…!
I love Channel-san’s illustrations, and when they ended up liking the new characters too, I was just bouncing around purely as a fan.
After all that, episodes 4 and 5 had settled into being relatively “normal” episodes, and the story had moved forward little by little, so I’d been watching with the sense that things had calmed down for a moment—
—but now, thanks to the savings from having done normal episodes, we were finally able to go wild.
Episode 6 is Michika’s episode.
It’s intense in every possible sense, and for some people it will absolutely become thirty minutes they never forget...
Even at the preview stage, I was shocked, thinking, is it really okay for an anime like this to be unleashed into the world?
Please look forward to it.
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