It's not a new question for director Akitaroh Daichi. It's a question caused by the success of the Fruits Basket anime he directed, a question raised ever since the last episode aired on Japanese TV at the end of 2001: will there ever be another animated Fruits Basket series? As far as Daichi knows, the answer is no - he won't be directing another such series, and he knows of no other plans for more Fruits Basket. Besides, Daichi has kept busy with other series since then, including Bokura ga Ita, a different kind of high school drama that aired in Japan in 2006. Most of Daichi's series, including the two versions of Jubei-chan, mix comedy and drama in an unique manner. "It all depends on how I choose the staff on how to best approach a series that's either comedy or serious," Daichi said through an interpreter at a Sakura Con interview session. "Series that combine humor and seriousness are my strength." But, when an anime series is based on an existing manga, that approach has to be done with the look and intent of the manga's creator, he said. That sort of collaboration also is one of Daichi's strengths; as with Alfred Hitchcock, who used existing stories for his movies, Daichi has a way of adding his style to his animated manga adaptations. But a Daichi series that broke that pattern was Now and Then, Here and There, the story of children swept up into a brutal war that had been started by adults. "I was trying to portray that the kind of things in war that draw in children as well," he said. "It was hard to portray children killing each other. It was a scenario that was part of my imagination, but the civil war in Uganda inspired that."

If Daichi gets lots of questions about Fruits Basket, animator and character designer Yukata Minowa gets questions about Vampire Hunter D, the series for which he reworked the original designs. While there's no talk of more Vampire Hunter, some of the people who worked on the most recent animated episodes in that series also have worked on the forthcoming animated Highlander. Minowa said he was a animator on the new Highlander, but not the character designer. Minowa has kept track of the trend where American and European animation, such as Avatar, the Last Airbender and Totally Spies, are using anime designs and styling cues. When he went to the studio that produced Avatar and saw their pilot episode, "I noticed that there were many young people on the animation staff who were influenced by Japanese animation. I don't think it's good or bad - I  don't have any particular opinions on the subject." Having said that, Minowa said he enjoyed the art styles used in American comic books, would like to try drawing in that style one day, and enjoys the stylistic differences in art from both sides of the Pacific. "I think it would be boring if America and Japan were the same, I like to see things in different styles."