Manga Thought Impossible To Animate Now On Crunchyroll

Bye Bye, Earth is set in a world where everyone is some type of anthropomorphic animal except for Belle Lablac (Ai Fairouz) who is just a plain human. She feels alone in her community, and longs for connection. To try and find a place where she fits in, Belle heads with Runding, a great sword as big as her, out into the world and tries to find somewhere she belongs.

Bye Bye, Earth started as a novel written by Tow Ubukata. In addition to writing fantasy novels, he is also a screenplay for several anime, including Psycho-Pass 3, Heroic Age, Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie, and RWBY: Ice Queendom.

The novel Bye Bye, Earth consists of two volumes and was first published in 2000. Later, in 2020, there was a manga adaptation of the story. However, it wasn’t until 2024 that an attempt to animate the story was made. Linden Films (Kotaro Lives Alone) decided to take on this challenging story, with Yasuto Nishikata (Black Butler: Book of the Atlantic) as the director and Hiroyuki Yoshino (Magi: The Kingdom of Magic) as the scriptwriter.

Though there’s no information specifically on why Bye Bye, Earth was considered difficult to animate, fans have some ideas. Some stories, like Uzumaki by Junji Ito, are considered hard to animate because the art style is heavily detailed and yet so integral to the overarching feeling of creepiness. Other stories are deemed nearly impossible to adapt due to the heavy exposition and complex story, like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, for the longest time until an animation team decides to challenge themselves.

It appears Bye Bye, Earth falls into the second category. Because the original story was a novel, there aren’t detailed art styles or complex characters that would make animating them difficult. However, the story is rather dense and full of lore and backstory. In an anime with limited episodes, the focus is more on the actual story and action, as exposition can draw away the attention of viewers and take up valuable time.

Unfortunately, in Bye Bye, Earth, a lot of this detail can’t be ignored. There are valuable story elements in all that exposition. If those long, slow parts of the story are cut out, it makes for a pretty but ultimately confusing anime. At the moment, the series has an average rating of 6.52 out of 10 on My Anime List, with the complex storyline at fault for some of the negative reviews.

If you want to see if you can keep up with this anime and see if it’s truly as unadaptable as it claims, you can watch Bye Bye, Earth on Crunchyroll.