There’s been a major new announcement for the NEEDY anime.
As for how I feel about it, there’s nothing more to say than what I already wrote in the staff comment, so I’ll quote it here.
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As a result of pouring absolutely everything from the thirty years I’ve been alive into this project—every last element,
from self-harm to drugs, religion, and sex —got flagged during the review process.
Each time it happened,
the anime staff worked hard to keep the vision intact, insisting:
“We absolutely don’t want to let fear of regulation ruin what makes this work compelling,” and they kept pushing.
Thanks to that, the NEEDY anime has been coming together in an almost undiluted, straight-from-the-bottle form.
Seeing the staff’s passion and depth of understanding, and how strongly they believed that “the concept of NEEDY GIRL has a reason to exist in this world,” and that “there are certain expressions only this work can depict,” I’m now fully certain of this project’s value.
When the voice actors performed the scripts I’d written so nakedly and frankly, there were moments when someone, fully immersed, would start crying.
In that instant, I realized it:
what this work is depicting, in the end, is “human beings.”
A lot of people have discussed NEEDY with “the internet” at the center of it all.
As for me, I’m proud to say I wrote out, in the original game, both the sweetness and the bitterness of the internet as I’ve seen it from childhood to the present.
And because this is an anime born from that kind of work, of course we have to ask ourselves:
“What was the internet, anyway?”
Even the title of the new song I made with my friends this time is “INTERNET ANGEL.”
After releasing the game, the huge reaction to it connected me, too, to an unspecified multitude across the world.
And I was insulted at times, had admiration hurled at me at times, was loved at times, attacked at times.
Who on earth are these faceless people?
Trends, oshis, faith, sneering cynicism, call-outs and pile-ons, outrage fires, consumption, algorithms,
SNS, love and hate, influencers, pop, culture, criticism, subculture, mainstream, illustration, animation.
My conclusion was:
“human beings.”
The true nature of the internet is nothing special.
It’s simply “a gathering of human beings.”
It isn’t anonymity, and it isn’t AI.
Everything there is a collection of individuals:
First there are people, and then there is the internet.
At the end of a long history, humanity finally took a small rectangle into its hands and connected, at light speed, with people all over the world.
Faced with the first great transformation in human history, many people are tormented by both its merits and its harms.
Now, people fear that excessive power so much that smartphones and SNS are being regulated around the world.
That overwhelming electromagnetic field, too, is “human beings.”
Picking at a single word to nail a celebrity to a cross and burn them for it, or elevating a nameless girl—wrapped in two-dimensional aesthetics as she broadcasts her feelings—into an idol to be worshiped...
all of it is done by individual human beings, one by one.
The internet’s true nature was human beings.
And so, at the turning point of my mid-life, I had to depict across thirteen episodes everything I’ve experienced of “the truth, the goodness, and the beauty human beings possess,” and in doing so, sublimate that strange youth I spent together with an unspecified multitude across the world into the comprehensive art form called animation.
That comes with immense pain.
It also means we can’t avoid including extreme, blunt expressions, and I’m sure countless opinions will fly back and forth.
I think that, too, is proof that you are human.
When the Taroman film ended on the caption “Taro Okamoto: Human,” I was overwhelmed, thinking: yes.
Exactly this. Me, and you—we’re not anonymity.
We’re not anime icons.
We’re not creators, or lurkers, or streamers, or scalpers, or fans, or antis, or Toshiaki, or Anonymous.
We are human beings who feel pain.
nyalra
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Put simply: I intended to depict, as directly as possible, the things I wanted to express — to depict human beings themselves.
To depict human beings is painful. Everyone, no matter who they are, has a front and a back, parts of themselves that aren’t beautiful.
Or rather, it’s the opposite.
People live by hiding, as much as they can, the fact that they are full of ugliness. People begin to break when that balance collapses. When what they’ve patched together starts spilling out of their gut in pieces, when they lose their own sense of where good and evil balance out. And yet, even so, human beings still have to keep living.
To be honest, once or twice — no, many times — I’ve lost that balance myself. I’ve caused trouble for many people, and I’ve been criticized for it each time. This world created new rules with the arrival of the smartphone. Because it became possible to attack others through a screen without feeling pain yourself, people sank to the lowest impulses, and the internet quickly turned into a battlefield. Since the times chose NEEDY as a work representing the internet generation, this is a theme it cannot escape.
Hurting others hurts too.
That’s why people generally don’t hit each other. Not physically, not mentally. Everyone fears pain and guilt. Whether that’s what we call goodness or self-preservation, I don’t know. And yet humanity invented stones and bows and arrows, and gained the ability to kill without directly feeling “I killed a person” in their own hands. From there it continued: with guns, missiles, and now drones, people can kill without staining their own hands with blood. Smartphones are a new tool that make the same thing possible through words.
Good or evil — it all depends on who holds the remote. In the end, it all comes back to human beings. The internet and smartphones are secondary. What matters is only how humans choose to face other humans, even across a screen.
That’s what this is about.
To fully depict this theme, we needed many characters.
I’d be happy if everyone comes to love them through the theatrical advance version.
With O-Hisashiburi’s character designs, all it takes is seeing them move and speak once. For a little while longer, it can’t be helped if people think, “Who even are these characters?” But once you watch them, you’ll like them anyway. And if you don’t, then that’s simply my lack of ability.
The anime producer, Kimura-san, publicly stated that even though some of the problems surrounding NEEDY still haven’t been resolved, at the very least, nyalra and O-Hisashiburi have always given this anime everything they have, and still do now.
Engish translation
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I’m Yoshitaka Kimura from Aniplex, serving as a producer on the anime NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE.
On behalf of the staff involved in this work, I’d like to share a message here for all of the fans.
This anime project began in February 2023.
That said, that date is simply when I reached out to Mr. Saito at WSS Playground about adapting it into anime. In reality, the anime had already begun moving before then. In fact, I think this project truly began even earlier than that — on the day nyalra and Mr. Inagaki from Yostar Pictures happened to meet by chance in a café in Nakano Broadway.
And after that, many things happened.
Script meetings at two in the morning. The drafts nyalra handed over felt as though they had been written in his own blood; they cut straight into the heart. I still remember seeing him in the Aniplex meeting room, exhausted and worn to the bone, yet looking genuinely happy every time he listened to the impressions shared by Mr. Saito and Mr. Inagaki.
Then the cast auditions began. Storyboards started coming in. New sounds were created. The characters were given voices at the recording sessions. Little by little, NEEDY as an anime began to take shape.
At the time of those early script meetings, there were only four of us in the room. Before long, the number of people involved in the project had grown to over one hundred.
And after that, many things happened.
I will not speak about the details myself.
There is only one thing I want to say.
We are making this anime with everything we have.
nyalra and Ohisashiburi are currently pouring everything they have into the anime on site.
And the staff at Yostar Pictures are also creating this anime with their whole body and soul.
To those of you who have played the original NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE.
To those of you who are encountering NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE for the very first time.
Every member of the staff is doing their utmost to bring you an anime that is truly worth watching.
Together with the original team, as people carrying the same work on our shoulders, each of us is making the greatest effort we can right now and giving everything we have for the sake of this project.
At this very moment, we are gathering all of our strength to deliver this anime to you.
We would be deeply grateful if you would watch over it, and support the anime.
We will absolutely deliver an anime worthy of that expectation.
Yoshitaka Kimura (Aniplex)
February 10, 2026
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The wounds I received last year were extremely deep. Even so, what keeps me standing now is a single determination: to make it through these thirteen episodes of anime. Yostar Pictures and ANIPLEX have treated me very well. Beyond work, I truly believe we support each other like comrades-in-arms now. We’ve been doing this together for years. As for the person at the center of the problem, all we can do at the moment is believe that someday our unity, trust, and passion will reach them too.
Whatever the circumstances may have been, what we want is for people to enjoy this anime.
There was debate over whether or not to address this at all, so I can’t thank Kimura-san enough for choosing to state it openly — as an act of resolve, and as sincerity toward both the fans and toward us. To me, that too feels like proof that a human being can rise above simply being a salaryman and act with genuine feeling. I respect him deeply for that.
Kimura-san believes wholeheartedly that “if people watch it, they’ll absolutely understand its appeal,” and he’s doing everything he can to draw in even one more viewer for the advance screenings and the TV broadcast. He’s fully prepared, with the resolve to say, “If we made an anime this good and it still flops, then that’s a failure of promotion.” I’m giving it everything I have too, so I can live up to his passion and trust. Ah, what a wonderful thing that is.
By making a little joke out of all the chaos, I feel like I was finally able to approach KAngel positively again after a long while. To once again depict her moving forward by quickly turning all those wounds into self-mockery, teasing, and something she carries anyway — this video was something we hurriedly made in the spirit of the moment on set, but to me, it feels deeply meaningful. Like this is the start of a new journey for NEEDY.
So please — since we’ve come this far — I would be truly happy if you watched this crystallization of all thirteen episodes.
And lastly, let me offer all the gratitude and “likes” I can possibly send to Daia Nijinosaki.
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