The Spice Women and Wu-Tang Clan Nearly Had Their Personal Anime

Now, right here’s a sentence nobody anticipated to learn within the 12 months 2025: As soon as upon a time, we would have gotten to see the Spice Women and the Wu-Tang Clan in anime kind.

In a current interview with AnimEigo, Lawrence Guinness, a senior VP at Manga Leisure, distributor of anime comparable to Good Blue and Road Fighter Alpha (and subsidiary of Island Information), revealed the corporate thought of co-producing its personal works. Two initiatives he talked about would have starred the aforementioned bands, and the Spice Girls thought acquired far sufficient alongside that he had some manufacturing stills to indicate. Had it occurred, it’d have been a movie referred to as Woman Energy: The Anime, courtesy of Manufacturing I.G, the studio behind Ghost within the Shell.

In keeping with Guinness, Manga had “very superior talks” with the British pop group’s administration on the time this was pitched and would’ve hopefully appealed to followers of then-popular anime like Studio Ghibli. Even now, Guinness is assured teenage ladies “may’ve gone to the cinema to see this. The truth is, I believe you’ll’ve stood in a line for a very long time to get in to see this. This was the imaginative and prescient. Look, if that’s not woman energy in motion, I don’t know what’s.”

As for the never-realized Wu-Tang venture, a collection that will have been referred to as The Imperial Warrior, he claimed close to all the pieces was in place for the venture, besides a few of the hip-hop group’s members didn’t log off on it. His pitch to Island Information founder Chris Blackwell noticed Wu-Tang “difficult the forces of evil by their music and martial arts abilities.” The soundtrack and designs for the characters (he talked about RZA and Ghostface Killah particularly) have been “nice,” mentioned Guinness, and it could’ve been “revolutionary. That was the venture I used to be proudest of that by no means occurred.”

Over the a long time, Japanese creators have been open about their love of western music, and artists just like the late Prince and Aaliyah have impressed characters in Michiko & Hatchin and My Hero Academia. Making musicians or different celebrities into fictionalized versions of themselves for movie and TV is one other story as outdated as time, and Guinness needed these two initiatives to take off to each put Manga on the map and efficiently “synthesize anime with one of the best of western tradition.” In terms of Wu-Tang Clan, he’s kind of gotten his want, due to RZA’s involvement in Afro Samurai and developer Brass Lion Leisure’s upcoming motion recreation Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver.

As for the Spice Women, it’s a disgrace they by no means acquired their animated due—there are worse methods for a band to be memorialized than an anime film with some authentic songs and tacky motion that also holds up years after the actual fact.

Need extra io9 information? Take a look at when to count on the most recent Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TV, and all the pieces it is advisable to learn about the way forward for Doctor Who.