‘Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26’ Is a Joyously Unhinged Look Into the Young Mind of Manga’s Wildest Auteur

With rare exceptions like Star Wars: Visions and Love Death + Robots, anthologies have become a dying breed in anime. Gone are the days when studios—seemingly already at the height of their powers—banded together to make once-in-a-generation pastiches like Robot Carnival and Memories, showcasing their flair, artistry, and the magic of anime’s unique visual language.

These projects launched directors like Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), and Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust) as visionaries whose influence still shapes animation today. These relics offer viewers a kaleidoscopic portal into wildly varied tales, each with distinct tones, styles, and moods, affirming animation not as a blueprint for live-action but as a standalone art form worth marveling at.

And now that lost form is seeing a revival, spotlighting the humble beginnings and abstractive range of one of manga’s most unpredictable auteurs, Tatsuki Fujimoto.

In 2025, few creators are more visibly beloved in the anime industry than Fujiimoto. Over just two years, the Chainsaw Man legend (and unabashed cinephile) has seen his one-shot manga, Look Back, adapted into a stirring Studio Durian feature rivaling the work of Studio Ghibli, and Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc explode into a box-office hit via Mappa. Both films showcase his flair for sentimentality, whimsy, romance, and bombast. Hell, even Chainsaw Man’s first season had the unprecedented distinction of unique outros in every episode, and its openings referenced Hollywood films before the title became one itself. The dude has motion.

As if winding back the arms of a grandfather clock, Prime Video capped Fujimoto’s banner year with Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26, a vivid anthology of his pre-fame works.

Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 sees the unified effort of studios P.A. Works, Zexcs, Lapin Track, Studio Kafka, 100studio, and Studio Graph77 adapting eight short stories Fujimoto wrote from ages 17-26, before he became a household name with his first published series, Fire Punch.

Despite the conceit of the anime anthology being short stories from the same author, none of them feel like the kind of fast-food smattering of the same ingredients dressed up as a different meal. They all feel like a medley of Fujimoto’s wild, creative tempest. Clearly a mangaka student of the game, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 embodies a wild imagination that seeks—almost unconsciously—to break the fabric of tropes, turning them into exaggerated parodies or subversively inverting them.

Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 is a painter’s palette laid bare, with each story serving as a rough, radiant smear of color, revealing the early chaos, tenderness, and wild ambition of a mind destined to set the manga and anime world ablaze. Each story shows early flashes of the emotional range and genre-defying bravado that would make Fujimoto a household name. From the post-apocalyptic bond in A Couple Clucking Chickens Were Still Kickin’ in the Schoolyard to the adolescent anguish of Sasaki Stopped a Bullet, Fujimoto’s storytelling already shows signs of being unrestrainedly far-reaching, a fuse that would erupt into Chainsaw Man and Look Back.

Likewise, Love Is Blind spins romantic comedy into cosmic absurdity, while Shikaku dives into the twisted psyche of a lovesick assassin. Mermaid Rhapsody offers a tender underwater romance; Woke-Up-as-a-Girl-Syndrome explores identity beyond gender; Nayuta of the Prophecy traces siblings caught in a cruel fate; and Sisters captures the friction and growth between artistic siblings and rivals. Some stories, like Sisters and Nayuta of the Prophecy, read like first drafts of what would evolve into Look Back—Fujimoto’s viscerally tender ode to art—and the self-referential groundwork for Chainsaw Man Part 2.

Together, they form a kaleidoscope of diverse art styles and moods that are thought-provoking, deeply hormonal, and full of raw imagination. And all are a testament to Fujimoto’s uninhibited genius, unpredictability, and uncanny way of making the most obscene premise land as earnestly moving (be they to tears or laughter) even in his earliest strokes.  And that’s saying something, given these short stories are from the same man whose fame came with tales in which he asked, “What if a guy with a godlike healing factor was on fire all the time?” and “What if a teenager had chainsaws for arms and a head?”

The true beauty of Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 isn’t just in spotlighting the creator’s wild adolescent musings and alchemic ability to make the absurd somehow touching. It’s in how the anthology elevates the studios behind it—virtual unknowns even to the most seasoned anime faithful—into names worth watching.

Each studio, some under the direction of acclaimed directors like Woke-Up-as-a-Girl Syndrome‘s Kazuaki Terasawa (The Ancient Magus’ Bride), Mermaid Rhapsody’s Tetsuaki Watanabe (Blue Lock), and Love Is Blind‘s Noboyuki Takeuchi (Fireworks), pours its full creative self into every frame. Whether animated 2D with a touch of 3D or laced with live action, they all coalesce into a unified tapestry of crisp, lovingly crafted work. The visuals speak for themselves: sunsets feel like lush velvet. Depictions of agony take on a rough, sandpaper texture. Action glints like firecrackers glimpsed through squinted eyes. My favorite of the bunch is the final tale, Sisters, directed by Osamu Honma, for how rawly and tenderly it explores girlhood and sisterhood—woven together as the backdrop to artistic rivalry.

While some viewers have questioned whether Fujimoto’s contemporary works are as profound as online discourse suggests, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 invites viewers to set those thoughts aside and simply engage with the stories. Fujimoto urges us to play—to revel in absurdities like a student’s love for his teacher, defying all logic so intensely he can stop a bullet. Or how the classic coming-of-age dilemma of confessing unrequited love to a classmate can be pushed to its absolute extremes, undeterred by romcom tropes or acts of god, as if the boy might combust if he doesn’t spit it out. Some tales are short walks. Others long. But all feel like scenic routes viewers unsuspectedly get enraptured in as they waltz down memory lane of one of manga’s boldest creators.

Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 isn’t an armchair anime connoisseur’s fodder for think pieces—it’s a “let’s go outside and play” kind of fun. The kind of anime that rarely feels allowed to be endeavored anymore without a self-serious thesis to justify it. It’s pure, animated joy.

Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 is streaming on Prime Video.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.