Youngsters gear up to present a made-in-India anime

Ganga, an orphan on a journey to trace her roots, meets Rick along the way. Together, they build the world of

Karmachakra

, which is arguably the first homegrown

anime

movie in India. Rajorshi Basu and his friends have conceptualised and executed the Japanese-style animation, on which they have been working for years.

A pioneering effort

Earlier, two anime films, Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama and Batu Gaiden, showcased Indian stories. Both were India-Japan collaborations. Their storyboards were created in India, but the anime art was done in Japan. Karmachakra, however, is completely an Indian endeavour. “We have done everything, right from pre-production to post-production of the film. And while the earlier anime films were made for children, ours is a universal story. Through the eyes of Ganga and Rick, the film encapsulates history, human stories and several other emotions,” said Rajorshi, the brain behind the project.

Why Bengali?

Rajorshi, a student of

Berklee College of Music

, said there’s more than one reason behind it. “First, Bengali is my mother tongue. Second, it is phonetically closer to the essence of Japanese nuance and idiomatic speech. In western animation, they use around 13 shapes for mouth movement. In anime, we use about three or four. Bengali, we found, fits that better than Hindi or English.”

The film, which has been an ongoing project for four years now, features the voices of actors like Swastika Mukherjee, Sabyasachi Chakrabarty, Mir Afsar Ali, Parno Mittra, Swaroopa Ghosh, Tanusree Shankar, Santu Mukherjee, Anik Dutta, Alaknanda Roy, Shantilal Mukherjee, Barun Chanda and Shamik Sinha.

About the technical team, which is based in Delhi, Rajorshi told us, “After writing the basic script, I collaborated with two artists, Samadrita and Monideep, who did the character sketch. Later, more people joined the team. Right now, along with an assistant director, Ananya, we are a team of anime lovers. We are gearing up to finish the last bit of the production,” said Rajorshi.

Why anime?

There has been a growing popularity of anime and

manga

art among Indians in the past few years. In fact, on popular demand, two anime films,

Dragon Ball

Super: Broly and Weathering With You, were released in Indian cinemas for the first time. Now, fans are signing petitions to release Karmachakra for Indian audiences.

“After the release of animes in theatres, there was a jump in our traction. Our trailer and the episodes of the film got massive hits,” Rajorshi said. “We had an initial trailer and we replaced it with a new one. Right now we are directly approaching OTT platforms without any agents and we are in talks with a few to finalise the release. This is our dream project. We are keen to see how it is accepted by the audience,” he said.