Bones Says Gachiakuta’s Graffiti Aesthetic Pushed the Studio to Its Limits

Gachiakuta looks like it crawled out of a spray can and dared TV to keep up. So when Studio Bones — the My Hero Academia and Mob Psycho 100 crew — said they were turning this thing into an anime, the big question was obvious: how do you animate chaos without sanding off the edges?

'The uniqueness of the art was a challenge when working on this series. But that was also the charm.'

Bones vs. the junkyard

Naoki Amano at Bones said the quiet part out loud: translating Kei Urana's heavy linework and grimy, blown-out world into motion was a beast. And that junkyard vibe is the whole point. The lead, Rudo, lives in a landfill of a society stitched together from things the world literally tossed. The manga reads like it was drawn to a beat — because it kind of was. Urana builds scenes while looping music that matches the mood, which is why panels feel like they're vibrating.

Working with Bones, Urana tweaked her ultra-detailed designs so they could move quickly on screen without losing what makes them pop. Less fussy when it needs to be, still cool when it counts. The anime doesn't just trace her pages; it performs them.

Street art that actually matters

Enter Hideyoshi Ando, the series' graffiti designer. His fingerprints are all over the show's attitude. He pulls from artists like Mike Giant and Tribal Crew, and he approaches the job with a simple philosophy: stop trying to cram graffiti into a box — art is art. That mindset is why the tags and scrawls in Gachiakuta aren't wallpaper. Every smear and flare of color is deliberately placed to say something about the world or the character in it.

Ando didn't just consult; he delivered real graffiti assets and laid out how to use them. Amano credits that handoff as a game-changer, because it kept the show's street textures from turning into generic 'graffiti-ish' brushstrokes.

Analog soul, digital pipeline

Bones built the look the hard way: a mix of hand-drawn animation, CG where it helps, and layered post work to keep the grime intact. Even with a digital workflow, a surprising amount of key art still started as pencil on paper. Both Urana and Amano are on the same page about why: analog lines have a mind of their own. You can feel the wobble and the pressure in a way clean digital strokes struggle to replicate. Bones chased that by deliberately preserving human imperfection in the finished frames.

The crew that gives it its look

• Kei Urana (creator): Builds scenes to music; adjusted her intricate designs with Bones so they animate fast without losing attitude; swears by the 'soul' of analog linework.
• Hideyoshi Ando (graffiti designer): Inspired by Mike Giant and Tribal Crew; rejects strict genre labels; supplied actual graffiti elements and detailed guidance so the visuals do more than decorate.
• Naoki Amano (Studio Bones): Calls the art style a real challenge — and the source of its charm; pushed to replicate analog imperfections in a digital pipeline.

So… does it work?

Yeah, it kind of rips. The fights and abilities are as messy and unpredictable as the art — on purpose — and you can feel the same graffiti DNA in every punch and spark. Episodes are already catching fire on the major apps, and viewers are rating it high on places like IMDb, especially for the look and raw energy.

If you want to see the experiment in motion, Gachiakuta is streaming on Crunchyroll right now. It is not trying to be pretty; it is trying to be honest. And somehow, Bones took that headache of a brief and turned it into one of 2025's most distinct anime.

Did they keep the soul of the manga while letting it move? Or did the polish creep in around the edges? Tell me what you think.