South Bronx, New York, native LeSean Thomas is making anime in Tokyo partly owing to a mistake. In the early ¡®90s, he bought a video cassette of what he thought was ¡°Akira¡± but turned out to be a behind-the-scenes ¡°production report¡± chronicling the film¡¯s creation. Instead of returning it, Thomas watched it every day. When he saw director Katsuhiro Otomo and his team working through the night at their cramped desks, he thought: ¡°That¡¯s what I want to do.¡±
More than 20 years later, Thomas, now 43, is about to debut as an anime showrunner with ¡°Cannon Busters,¡± a 12-episode series based on his 2005 comic book of the same name and rendered by Tokyo animation studio Satelight Inc. It premieres Aug. 15 on Netflix.
¡°Cannon Busters¡± is a multinational project, created by an American, co-financed by Britain¡¯s Manga Entertainment Ltd. and Taiwan¡¯s Nada Holdings Inc., produced by a Japanese studio and released on a U.S.-based streaming portal.
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