Anime Review: Make a Girl (2025) by Gensho Yasuda
Do androids dream of human boyfriends?
After its international premiere at TIFF, independent animator Gensho Yasuda‘s first full-length animation “Make a Girl” just got its theatrical release in Japan with Kadokawa, bringing to the attention of the general public the new, incredible heights reached by 3D animation software – even more incredible if one considers that Yasuda is the one and only credited for scriptwriting, direction and animation, taking care of the creative process from beginning to end.
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Early genius highschooler Akira (voiced by Shun Horie) is at a standstill in pursuing his late mother’s research efforts, concerning artificial intelligence and singularity. On the other hand, his classmate Kunihito (Toshiki Masuda) is having the time of his life with his new girlfriend, and claims that the relationship feels like an unexpected power up, unleashing a potential he did not know to possess. Funny enough, Akira takes this statement literally, rushing back to the lab to build an android partner from scratch, which he will name Number 0 (Atsumi Tanezaki). Too focused on his mother’s legacy to take care of her, the little scientist will realize too late that Number 0 was the real power up he was waiting for, and that obscure forces are drawing near to get their hands on her.
A 2013 graduate from the Nihon University College of Art, Gensho Yasuda – actually an art nick, with the characters composing his first name meaning “phenomenon” – had a brief working experience in the gaming industry before going solo and focusing on his animated projects, using social media – six million followers as of today – for self-promotion. In fact, the concept for “Make a Girl” itself was first developed as a two and a half minute short titled “Make Love,” which made a sensation on YouTube back in 2020. While also his 2021 short “Isekai System” made quite an impression, Yasuda eventually decided to give priority to the earliest project, setting off his first crowdfunding campaign in late 2022, gathering two times the amount of the original target. Thus, a painstaking work of writing and preproduction began, whose steps were duly reported on his SNS accounts, so that followers could see how their money was being spent.
The final result is a visually stunning and pleasantly unusual work of sci-fi, accounting for the author’s dedication to the 3DCG medium and the free-access creative suite Blender – which, until not long ago, was associated with advertisement and the videogame industry, rather than narrative-based filmmaking. Indeed, compared to films from a few years before deploying a similar technique, such as Takashi Yamazaki’s “Lupin III: The First” or Studio Orange’s series “Land of the Lustrous,” “Make a Girl” might lack a distinctive and captivating character design, but their body movements and facial expressions feel fluid and way less sketchy, allowing the viewers to immerse themselves in the story without that off feeling of videogame cutscene. Specifically, a quite amazing job has been done with light effects and surface textures, whose degree of realism is arguably unprecedented for a fully CGI animation.
That being said, while visually intriguing, “Make a Girl” takes too many narrative detours, with a main plotline – that of Number 0 and her progressive realization of Akira’s egotism masked as love – not fully developed, and a secondary one – that of the shady bad guys, with an unexpected yet unnecessary from-friend-to-foe twist – that is delayed until the very end. Even the most interesting, promethean implications of Number 0’s blending into society, with her becoming more and more human to the point of resenting her creator, is not brought to a point of existential questioning – where does one draw the boundary between man and machine, and so on.
Overall, though, “Make a Girl” is a worthwhile watch, if anything as a testimony of what an artist with a clear vision and an excellent technique can achieve on their own. And while Gensho Yasuda might still be waiting to see if a distribution beyond national borders is feasible, he already succeeded in setting a precedent in terms of production, that is likely to inspire more younger animators to follow in his footsteps.
TagsAtsumi Tanezaki Gensho Yasuda Land of the Lustrous Lupin III: The First Make a Girl Shun Horie Toshiki Masuda
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