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The original was posted on /r/anime by /u/salic428 on 2026-05-14 03:03:58+00:00.

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Original text scanned from CONTINUE vol. 89, released May 13th, 2026.

The following text are generated by Gemini 3.1 with minor corrections. Highlights in bold by me.

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Interview Highlights:

• The "Are You Serious?" Moment: Hanada reveals his initial shock when asked to adapt GNOSIA, noting that unlike Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin, GNOSIA lacked a fixed protagonist, making it a "super difficult" hurdle for an anime script.
• The Birth of the Original Protagonist, Yuri: How the team created Yuri from scratch to serve as an anchor for the audience. They designed Yuri with a naive, boyish innocence (voiced by Chika Anzai) to ensure their actions didn't come off as having ulterior motives during the deadly votes.
• Writing the "Werewolf Game" Logically (and getting stuck): Hanada admits his "bad habit" of figuring out debates as he writes them. During the massive 15-player debate, he accidentally wrote Yuri into a logical checkmate against Racio, leaving a literal dogeza (prostration) as the only realistic way out.
• Yuri as the "Bug" (Meta-Narrative): A fascinating breakdown of why Yuri was assigned the "Bug" role. Since the original game implies the protagonist is the player's "soul" moving between save files, making Yuri an irregular "Bug" in the anime allowed them to return the game back to the fans by extracting them at the True End.
• Defying the "Strict Adaptation" Trend: Hanada praises the producer's courage for requesting anime-original drama to bridge the Normal End and True End, rather than relying on lazy game-like UI gimmicks, pushing back against the current industry trend of strictly 1:1 adaptations.

Commemorating the Conclusion of the TV Anime GNOSIA

Jukki Hanada talks about all things GNOSIA**.**

All About GNOSIA JUKKI HANADA LONG INTERVIEW

The broadcast of the TV anime GNOSIA has concluded. It beautifully visualized the thrilling negotiations of the "Sci-Fi Werewolf Game," which is the hallmark of the original game. With a sense of scale unique to anime, it told everything from the Normal End to the True End. The scriptwriter who handled the scenarios for all 21 episodes of this anime is Jukki Hanada. How did he guide this dense and profound original game into an animated series? We had him look back on the approximately four years he was involved with the TV anime GNOSIA. Text by Hidekuni Shida.

PROFILE

Jukki Hanada

Scriptwriter. Has worked on Sound! Euphonium, A Place Further Than the Universe, Girls Band Cry, and others. He also handled the series composition and script for the anime adaptation of the adventure game STEINS;GATE.

The Producer's Passion That Set a "Super Difficult" Anime Adaptation in Motion

—— How did you come to participate in the GNOSIA anime?

Hanada: Even before the offer came in, I had briefly played a few trendy indie games just to try them out. The titles I happened to be playing at that time were Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin and GNOSIA**.** After a while, I was told, "We're making an anime of Sakuna, so we'd like you to write the script." I figured an offer to adapt GNOSIA wouldn't come my way, but then Aniplex producer (Yoshitaka) Kimura told me, "I want to make a GNOSIA anime." I was like, "Where did you hear that I was playing it?" (laughs).

—— So you thought, "An offer to adapt GNOSIA wouldn't come my way."

Hanada: Since the broadcast is already over, I can talk about this... but to be honest, Sakuna has a solid story and a well-established protagonist, so I thought it wouldn't be that hard to turn into an anime. But GNOSIA is super difficult. When the offer for the anime adaptation came, my strongest feeling was actually, "Are you serious?" However, when I met with Producer Kimura, he was incredibly passionate. I felt the intensity of his desire to make an anime out of this work. I think this is a very important factor in adapting something into an anime. If there's someone with this much passion to "make an anime out of this work," I don't know how it will ultimately turn out, but at the very least, it won't be something bad. So, even while thinking it would be a difficult adaptation, I decided to take it on.

—— What exactly made the adaptation "super difficult"?

Hanada: First and foremost, it was the fact that there was no protagonist character. In anime, whether a character has appeal or not is a huge deal, and the protagonist holds an especially important position. The fact that we had to create the protagonist entirely from scratch was a major hurdle.

—— That was the first difficult part.

Hanada: The other difficult point was the structure of the game. This work connects two axes: the "Werewolf game genre" and the "time loop genre." For example, with STEINS;GATE, a protagonist clearly exists, and you can write the script focusing solely on the "time loop" axis. But with GNOSIA, we had to create a new protagonist, organize these two axes, and make it something the audience would find entertaining. I wondered if that was even possible. Due to my line of work, whenever I play games, I always play them while thinking, "How would I do this if it were turned into an anime?" But while playing GNOSIA, I kept thinking, "This is tough. If this becomes an anime, whoever the writer is will suffer" (laughs).

Adaptation Challenge Part 1: Until the Protagonist is Created

—— How was the protagonist, Yuri, born?

Hanada: The director (Kazuya Ichikawa), Mr. Kimura, and I hashed it out together. If you make the protagonist too robotic or emotionless, it sometimes doesn't work well as an anime. I knew a few examples where that caused struggles, so I didn't want that kind of protagonist. At that time, the image of the protagonist we all shared was a character the viewers could root for. Since they are endlessly deceived in the early stages, we wanted a protagonist whose appeal wouldn't diminish despite that. An image of someone who is fundamentally impossible to hate. So we gave them a boyish appearance, intending for viewers to take on the adult's perspective and want to support them. Another thing was that we wanted a protagonist who didn't seem to be acting on ulterior motives.

—— Ulterior motives?

Hanada: For example, let's say there are two women, and there's a situation where you have to choose one to send to Cold Sleep. It's not good to make that choice based on an ulterior motive. Because SQ came to their room, there was a possibility people might think the protagonist saved SQ expecting "something" in return, so we wanted to emphasize their naive, boyish innocence to avoid it looking that way as much as possible.

—— So, a character without any hidden desires.

Hanada: Right. In the early stages of the story, like a protagonist in a shonen manga, we didn't want to emphasize their masculinity too strongly; instead, we wanted to cherish the image of a young boy trying their best. Chika Anzai voiced them, and because we had that intention, even before casting the staff was in agreement that Yuri should be played by a woman capable of producing a young boy's voice.

Adaptation Challenge Part 2: The "Werewolf Game"

—— I think the "Werewolf Game" is an indispensable element in depicting GNOSIA, but are you familiar with it, Mr. Hanada?

Hanada: Of course I know about it, but rather than playing the game a lot, I was more in a state of having watched and heard about it. What was difficult about turning it into a script this time was figuring out how much the viewers knew about the "Werewolf Game." For instance, with poker or mahjong, generally, everyone knows them, but the "Werewolf Game" has a heavy skew in recognition depending on the age group. Many people in older generations don't know it. That means even if a role is mentioned, some people might not understand. What's more, the tricky part about GNOSIA is that the Werewolf Game roles have different names. The "Werewolf" is called "Gnosia," and the "Seer" who can identify the "Werewolf" is the "Engineer." Because the names are swapped, even people familiar with the Werewolf Game won't understand right away. Where do we need to start explaining? Where is the line where explaining too much becomes bad? That balance was the most difficult.

—— So you started by pursuing clarity, to ensure people could understand the "Werewolf Game."

Hanada: It's not just about getting them to understand the rules of the "Werewolf Game"; conveying its fun is also difficult. In reality, many players also play it somewhat purely on instinct. It's a game that works perfectly fine even if you just make statements like, "They seem kind of suspicious" or "I feel like they're lying." But that alone doesn't convey all the fun of the "Werewolf Game." There's also the fun of a highly logical negotiation, like a tsumeshogi (shogi mating problem). We needed to show that kind of depth as well. Therefore, we had a Werewolf professional (Fumiya Matsuzaki) participate as the "Werewolf Supervisor" to supplement the logical parts. If you properly examine the "Werewolf Games" conducted within the anime GNOSIA, they should be structured in a way that makes logical sense, making you say, "Ah, I see."

—— You analyzed the fun of the "Werewolf Game" and incorporated it into the dialogue.

Hanada: However, as I mentioned earlier...

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