In April, a report by 38 North revealed that multiple works of animation had sections that had been unknowingly outsourced to North Korea. Among the titles named was the upcoming anime Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start with Magical Tools, which prompted the announcement of an investigation.
The newly announced results don’t confirm the involvement of North Korean animation studios, but instead say that it is unable to deny the possibility. What the investigation did determine was that Typhoon Graphics, one of the animation production studios of Dahlia in Bloom, had originally subcontracted some work to another Japanese company, which then passed it to a Chinese studio. The Chinese studio then sent some of the workload to another studio in the country.
A request for lists containing the names of staff who had worked on the anime was made to the subcontracted companies, but one company did not comply with it, leading to the current conclusion.
The statement added that the relevant parts of the anime will be redone by Japanese staff, and that the proper production process will be strictly adhered to from now on.
A separate statement said that the anime will still premiere in July as planned.
38 North had learned of the outsourcing situation via files on a “misconfigured North Korean Internet cloud server” that was originally discovered by the North Korean Internet blog’s Nick Roy. It wrote, “Often the files contained editing comments and instructions in Chinese, presumably written by the production company, along with a translation of those instructions into Korean.”
In 2022, the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Treasury, and the FBI issued an advisory warning of “reputational risks and the potential for legal consequences, including sanctions designation under U.S. and United Nations (UN) authorities, for individuals and entities engaged in or supporting DPRK IT worker-related activity and processing related financial transactions.” Mentioned in the advisory was “graphic animation.”
Source: @dahliya_anime