The Indie Way: Towards Galaxy’s End at Anime NYC
Over the weekend at Anime NYC I had the pleasure of interviewing many Black indie anime developers, manga artists, and studios. Luv Letter Studios has worked on major projects in the anime industry such as Dandadan, Fate/strange Fake, and Re: Zero – Starting Life in Another World, but they also have multiple original projects in the works, including Towards Galaxy’s End.
I was able to sit down with studio founder Kennedy Freeman and talk about her journey as an animator, founder and fan of the magical girl genre.
Confetti: So first and foremost tell me a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your projects!
My name is Kennedy or Kenzie, and I run the first black owned anime studio called Love Letter Studios. We’ve been around for three years, and we’re currently branching out to make our own original content, but we’ve worked on stuff like Jujutsu Kaisen, One Piece… if you could think about it, we most likely worked on it!
How did you get into the business of animation? Tell me about your journey!
My friend introduced me to Soul Eater, and that was it! My favorite character from the anime is Soul and I definitely do not have his headband in my bag, right now [lol]. Then afterwards, I found out what PreCure was, specifically HeartCatch PreCure!, and that’s when I said “Oh, cool!” I learned that the character designer for HeartCatch PreCure was the character designer for Magical DoReMi, and that’s when I fell in love with magical girls and anime and wanted to do it myself.
What was your first magical girl series?
Magical DoReMi on 4KidsTV! Back when I was going to dance school they would always play it at like 8 a.m., so I got a chance to watch that and then Winx Club. It was around the sixth grade I got into Soul Eater. At first I was like “oh, I don’t know if I’m going to watch anime”… and then I watched it and I was like, “oh, I think I’m gonna keep watching anime!”
Did you go to school for animation?
So at first I went to BMC, which is the Borough of Manhattan Community College. I did two years there and majored in animation and motion graphics. Then I attended the Savannah College of Art and Design, which is also known as SCAD, and I did three years there. At that point, I ended up going to Dreamworks as an intern, then straight to Disney as an intern, and then Titmouse. At some point I said, “cool, I don’t want to be a PA anymore,” and I made my own studio.
Working for Dreamworks, going into animation, being an intern at Disney, these are spaces where you don’t see a lot of Black Girls, what challenges did you face going through your programs?
Covid was a big challenge, I didn’t get a chance to actually go into the studios. I did get a chance to meet the teams and see the studios after the fact, but trying to do that and network was difficult, especially since they can’t see you. You’re across the country in New York or Georgia while they’re in California. That was one of the hardships that I faced.
But then, another thing that I realized was there aren’t a lot of black creatives in the industry. I remember I had a conversation with one of my directors when I was at a studio, they advised me that when ever I was designing my black characters, always design the character two shades darker because the execs are going to change them. And that stuck with me. So now I’m just going to keep designing my characters darker and darker.
Have you had mentors through your experience?
I’ve had three mentors, shout out to Roxanne, Crystal and Lindsay!
Let’s talk about Towards Galaxy’s End! What can you tell me about the series?
Towards Galaxy’s End is about a girl named Amina [Ami], who dies in a car accident after saving her best friend. However, she gets the chance to come back to life under the stipulation that it’s an extinct species. So she chooses a weird space-vampire, and finds out there’s six other girls like her and says, “oh cool, I’m going to form a magical girl group with them!” And they go on wacky Studio Trigger-esque adventures.
Recently I made a post about dark skinned magical girl representation, and that really inspired me to come here to Anime NYC and highlight projects like this, because we want to see ourselves in the media too! So tell me how important is representation for you?
Extremely. I feel like everyone should be able to see themselves in the media. And the fact that we don’t have that is still pretty crazy to me. I remember when I was making the other character for Towards Galaxy’s End [TGE] and she’s half Cuban and half Spanish, one of my friends came up to me and said, “Kennedy, I don’t think you realize how special this is to me because we don’t have any Cuban magical girls”. Then another friend of mine who is Scottish told me, “We don’t have any Scottish magical girls”. It’s little things like that where I realize a lot of people don’t have these representations that they need. And I’m like, “well, why don’t we just make it?” We can do it, so just do it.
There’s a lot of dark skinned representation in TGE, and you have characters from different diverse backgrounds. I also wanted to ask about queer representation, how that shows up in your project?
Our stories are slice of life in a sense, so we delve into learning about the characters, how they interact with others, because they have a second chance at life. You pretty much need to learn more about the characters and how they function, and how they got from point A to point B. That is one of the things that I like to focus on.
But yes, we do have characters that identify as non-binary. We do have characters that are bisexual or gay, you know, like all the colors of the rainbow! Our main character is aromantic, and Ami’s not looking for a relationship. She just wants to have fun with her friends and to make a magical girl group! She’s not thinking about anything else.
I’m also asexual, so I wanted to have a character where it’s just we focus on a character that’s just kind of going throughout their life. They’re not really thinking about anyone romantically. They’re just happy and living their best life!
What were some inspirations for your characters? Did you pull inspiration from other magical girl series or cartoons, or maybe real life?
So our show really has a mix of HeartCatch PreCure!, Magical DoReMi, Puella Magi Madoka Magica [a lot of Madoka as a hint, hint hint, nudge nudge], when it comes to the characters. I went to a predominantly mixed school and also went to a Catholic school, so a lot of times I kind of just pull from what I see from my interactions with people and also what I know.
I care a lot, but sometimes I might be jumping the gun and I might not always be correct with figuring stuff out, but my heart is in the right place. I have that same mindset with some of my characters who have their heart in the right place, but they’re not necessarily doing the right thing; or characters who might have depression or are trying to figure stuff out. I really want to delve into that kind of thing with my characters, and that’s how I pull from the human experience in general.
Do you have any other upcoming projects and how can we support you?
So we actually have four projects in development. Towards Galaxy’s End is one, but we also have another series in development called X Marks the Spot, which is about a clone who is going to find the original so that she can kill her.
Another project is called Symphony Witch’s Orchestra, which is actually my longest running project – I’ve been working on that for over ten years. It’s another magical girl show about a girl who’s trying to figure out who killed her mom and dad. However, her mom is kind of a villain because her mom was a demigod that killed another god. Because her mom killed a god, the other gods are now trying to kill that entire bloodline and get rid of them, so now she has to figure out who killed her parents without dying.
The fourth one is called Lost Girls, which is a spin on Peter Pan. Essentially it’s about a girl who is a runaway. She was a Russian ballerina, and she wound up running away from her group in the US, joined an orphanage, found two girls, and now they’re going across the country to return the youngest one to her mom.
Do you have an ETA for when an episode is going to premiere?
Episode one of Towards Galaxy’s End, which is 1.1.1 is coming out during New York Comic Con on October 9th. But we’re going to premiere it on YouTube a little bit later that month. The other three are in development right now, but we have a good chunk of really big people helping us out right now. So just, you know, keep an eye out for the host. For TGE we have Zeno Robinson, Anairis Quinones, A. J. Beckles and we have Christina Vee, who we haven’t announced yet!
Do you have any advice for little Black girls who want to do what you do or who want to get into anime professionally?
Honestly, if someone says you can’t do it, just go do your own thing. Just do it!
Support Luv Letter Studios today on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and directly on their website. You can follow Kenzy directly on Instagram.
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