LIDEN FILMS: Tokyo Revengers and the Franchise-Adapter Studio

LIDEN FILMS was founded in 2012 in Osaka — an unusual location for a major anime production studio, the overwhelming majority of which cluster in Tokyo’s Suginami and Nerima wards. The studio’s catalog has built outward from there: Tokyo Revengers across multiple seasons since 2021, The Heroic Legend of Arslan (2015-2016), Cells at Work! BLACK with David Production (2021), the Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen Memorial Edition (2022-), and a steady supply of manga adaptations across the 2010s and 2020s.

The studio occupies a particular niche. Not a prestige house, not a franchise-vehicle giant, but a mid-tier studio that has built a sustainable production model on taking manga adaptations at TV-anime budgets and delivering them reliably across multi-season runs. The 2020s growth, driven primarily by Tokyo Revengers, has elevated the studio’s profile without changing its underlying model.

The 2012 Osaka founding

LIDEN FILMS was founded in May 2012 by Hideki Murata as a subsidiary of the Sega Sammy media holding group, with its main production office in Osaka. The Osaka location matters operationally. Tokyo’s anime production cluster has high salaries, high office costs, and intense competition for senior animators; Osaka offered cheaper overhead but required the studio to handle the geographic separation from Tokyo’s production network (most production committees, voice acting, and dubbing happen in Tokyo, which means Osaka-based studios coordinate remotely or open Tokyo satellite offices).

LIDEN FILMS opened a Tokyo studio in 2014 and has since added other satellite studios (LIDEN FILMS Kyoto, LIDEN FILMS Niigata). The multi-location structure is a deliberate alternative to the Tokyo-cluster model and lets the studio recruit from animator pools outside the capital.

The 2010s catalog grew slowly. The studio’s first lead production credit was Terra Formars (2014), a Mars-set sci-fi horror that established the studio as a competent but not yet distinctive house. The Heroic Legend of Arslan (2015-2016) confirmed the same.

The Heroic Legend of Arslan and the early adaptation work

Arslan Senki (2015-2016, two seasons totaling 33 episodes), adapted from Yoshiki Tanaka’s historical fantasy novels and Hiromu Arakawa’s manga, was the studio’s first major property. The production handled the historical-fantasy scope competently — desert palaces, large-scale battles, court intrigue — but didn’t push the visual register beyond what its mid-tier budget allowed.

The show’s reception was mixed. Fans of the source material liked it; viewers expecting Fullmetal Alchemist-level production from the Arakawa connection were disappointed. The lesson the studio took from Arslan was operational rather than creative: handle large-cast adaptations on schedule, deliver consistent quality, don’t over-commit to scenes the budget can’t sustain.

This is the franchise-adapter model. The studio’s strength is reliability — multi-season runs delivered on time, with quality consistent across the broadcast — rather than visual ambition.

Cells at Work! BLACK and the co-production work

Cells at Work! BLACK (2021, 13 episodes) is the studio’s most interesting co-production. The main Cells at Work! series was at David Production; the BLACK spinoff — a darker take on the body-as-workplace conceit, focused on an unhealthy adult body rather than the child body of the main series — was assigned to LIDEN FILMS in co-production with David.

The co-production worked because both studios understood the register. David Production’s Cells at Work! had established the visual language; LIDEN FILMS adapted that language for a tonally heavier story (alcoholism, smoking, chronic stress) without breaking continuity. The BLACK season is a competent piece of work and represents the studio at its most controlled.

The broader pattern matters. LIDEN FILMS regularly takes co-production work where another studio holds the primary property and LIDEN handles a spinoff or supplementary production. This is one of the studio’s strategic positions in the industry — useful, reliable, willing to work as a secondary partner.

Tokyo Revengers and the multi-season run

The studio’s most commercially significant property is Tokyo Revengers, adapted from Ken Wakui’s manga starting in 2021. The series has now run across multiple seasons (the Christmas Showdown arc in 2023, the Tenjiku arc in 2023-2024, additional arcs through 2025) and is the studio’s largest sustained production commitment.

The Tokyo Revengers adaptation is operationally interesting because the manga’s structure — a time-loop story with a complex gang-warfare plot — required the studio to handle multi-season character continuity, large ensemble fights, and the narrative complexity of the time-travel mechanics. The production has been consistent across the seasons, with the same core staff (director Koichi Hatsumi, character designer Kenichi Onuki) handling the run, and the visual quality has remained stable.

The show’s commercial success — Tokyo Revengers became one of the best-selling manga of the early 2020s, and the anime helped drive that — has elevated LIDEN FILMS’ profile in ways that other studios in its tier haven’t experienced. The studio is now mentioned in industry discourse as one of the rising mid-tier houses, alongside Bones and Wit at the higher tier and Doga Kobo at the lower.

Berserk Memorial Edition and the recap project

The Berserk: Ougon Jidai-hen Memorial Edition (2022-, ongoing) is the studio’s most-watched project among Berserk fans. The Memorial Edition recompiles the 2012-2013 Golden Age trilogy films into a TV-broadcast series with additional new content, and is intended as a stepping-stone for an eventual continuation of the Berserk anime story.

The production is delicate because Berserk has a complicated history — the 1997 TV anime, the 2012-2013 film trilogy at Studio 4°C, the 2016-2017 TV continuation that was widely criticized for its 3DCG, and the 2022 death of mangaka Kentaro Miura. LIDEN FILMS taking on the Memorial Edition was a meaningful choice by the property’s rights holders; the studio’s reliability is exactly what the project needed.

Whether LIDEN FILMS continues into a full Berserk continuation past Memorial Edition is the question hanging over the studio’s mid-2020s catalog. The Memorial Edition’s reception will determine that.

What the studio is in 2026

LIDEN FILMS in 2026 is the case study for how a mid-tier anime studio scales through franchise-adapter work. The studio doesn’t have a defining visual style; it doesn’t have a signature director; its catalog is not built around prestige. What it has is operational reliability and a willingness to take properties — including controversial ones, including multi-season runs, including spin-offs — that bigger studios won’t sign for.

This is a real strategic position in the industry. The 2020s anime production landscape has more manga properties seeking adaptation than there are studios with capacity. Studios like LIDEN FILMS that can handle the adaptation work reliably are commercially valuable in ways the prestige discourse around MAPPA or Bones doesn’t fully capture.

The studio’s full catalog with TMDB-verified credits is on the studio page. Tokyo Revengers, Arslan, Cells at Work! BLACK, and the Berserk Memorial Edition are the standout entries.