10 Behind-the-Scenes Stories That Make the Anime 'The Tent of Jadugar' 10 Times More Interesting.

Did you know there is an anime where an active professional sumo wrestler voices Genghis Khan? Yes, I am talking about the currently trending anime, 'The Tent of Jadugar'.

This anime, which began airing in July 2026, features active Mongolian sumo wrestler Tamawashi playing the role of Genghis Khan, who built the Mongol Empire, and Tamashoho playing the role of a 'sturdy Mongolian soldier.' They are not professional voice actors, but active sumo wrestlers.

Honestly, when I first heard this, I thought, 'This must be a publicity stunt.' However, the more I dug into how this work was created, the more I realized that this was not a stunt at all, but merely one part of a consistent stance that has been maintained throughout.

The original author had their camera stop working in -20°C Mongolia, the director tried to depict the culture as it is today even if it meant breaking historical facts, and the Japanese actors took on the challenge of speaking authentic Mongolian lines. All of these were choices they didn't have to make. They could have just used subtitles, played it safe by following historical records, and any voice actor would have sufficed.

In this article, I will introduce 10 behind-the-scenes stories I found while researching the production of 'The Tent of Jadugar' because the anime was so good that I couldn't help but want to know more. While they may look like random trivia, they are all actually connected by the same decision-making criteria.

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1. An active sumo wrestler is voicing Genghis Khan

Two active sumo wrestlers from Mongolia, Tamawashi and Tamashoho, made their voice acting debut. Both belong to the Kataonami stable. Tamawashi plays the role of Genghis Khan, and Tamashoho plays the role of a 'sturdy Mongolian soldier,' with both of them also voicing several other characters.

The two shared their thoughts on their first voice acting challenge here (Production Committee Press Release).

If choosing based solely on acting ability, professional voice actors would be the safer choice. The reason they chose this casting is connected to the decision to 'include Mongolian language directly in the work,' which I will touch upon later in the 8th story.

2. Original author Tomatosoup visited Mongolia many times

The author of the original manga, Tomatosoup, traveled to Mongolia in the winter long before the serialization began, back when they were a university student. They visited in December. They walked the streets of Ulaanbaatar and traveled as far as the ruins of Karakorum. They recalled that when they tried to take a photo on a hill, their camera stopped working. The locals told them, 'It's actually on the warmer side today, even at -20°C.'

Even after the serialization started, they went on a follow-up research trip in May with their editor from Akita Shoten. They toured the Karakorum Museum and the ruins of Ögedei's palace, visited nomadic gers, and were treated to mutton dishes (TRANSIT.jp '#ThisIsMyMongoliaTrip').

This was not a commissioned research trip. It means they were doing all that out of pure interest before the serialization was even decided.

3. 10 years in the making. Choosing a woman with few records as the protagonist instead of an empress with many records

When the anime adaptation was announced, Tomatosoup commented as follows.

The anime I dreamed of over 10 years ago now truly exists as my own work.In an interview with an·an magazine(2023-03-27), it was also mentioned that the concept had been developing since student days, when an interest in world history began and, as preconceptions were overturned, the subject became increasingly fascinating.

Furthermore, the choice of the protagonist well represents the character of this work. Initially, the plan was to make the real-life Empress Töregene the protagonist, but based on the judgment that "a character with more movement would be better," the focus shifted to Fatima Khatun, who served her.

Fatima is also a real historical figure.There are enough records of her that a separate chapter is dedicated to her in the 13th-century historian Juvayni's 'History of the World Conqueror'.However, not as much as the Empress. Did Tomato Soup create and insert the background of her being a slave girl named Sitara into the margins between where records "exist" and "do not exist"?

If you choose the side with more historical facts, verification becomes easier. If you choose the side with less, the responsibility for the gaps that need to be filled falls entirely on you. The author chose the latter.

4. The title 'Jadugar' was Persian

'Jadugar' is neither Mongolian nor Japanese; it originates from modern Persian and means 'magician/witch.' It is the form of jādu (magic) with the suffix -gar, which denotes "a person who does."

The protagonist Sitara's birthplace is Persia, the region that corresponds to modern-day Iran. In the latter half of the story, she is absorbed into the Mongol Empire side, but the title remains in the language she was born with until the very end, doesn't it?

5. The reason the director revealed for "wanting to add Disney"

Co-director Abel Góngora said this in an interview at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

There is a bit of a roundabout path here. The same article mentions that the original manga was strongly influenced by Osamu Tezuka, and that Tezuka himself was under the influence of Disney. There, director Góngora, who is from Spain, brought back a Disney-esque style of acting. It means that Disney took root in Japanese anime via Tezuka, and after some time, it returned in a different form. It is thought-provoking.

6. Yasujirō Ozu, Wes Anderson, and 13th-century verification

Director Góngora cites the names of Yasujirō Ozu and Wes Anderson as influences on the direction. Symmetrical composition, low camera positions, shallow depth of field. He says he tried to push for a style that is a bit more artificial rather than naturalistic (MANTANWEB).

He is not crafting every cut uniformly. Conversely, in important or dramatic scenes, he uses natural compositions or extreme perspective. This means he is intentionally designing where to concentrate the density. On top of that, the director says, "I don't want to make mistakes regarding Persian or Mongolian culture either."

I will introduce the people whose names were mentioned.

Yasujirō Ozu (1903–1963)

He is a master who supported the golden age of Japanese cinema and is respected like a god by film directors around the world.

What kind of movies did he make?
He depicted the daily lives of ordinary families with a mix of humor and poignancy.
He excelled at themes everyone can relate to, such as a daughter's marriage or the disconnect between parents and children.
His representative works include 'Tokyo Story' and 'Late Spring'.

Visual Characteristics
Low angle (tatami mat perspective): He always filmed with the camera fixed at a low position (the eye level of an adult sitting on a tatami mat).
Static camera: He rarely moved the camera, as if staring intently at the scenery.
Characters facing forward: He is famous for his unique cuts where actors speak while facing almost directly toward the camera (the screen) during conversations.

Wes Anderson (1969–present)

A genius representing modern America who creates a pop world view that feels like a toy box turned upside down.

• What kind of movies did he make?

  • He excels at stories that make you chuckle and end up tugging at your heartstrings, involving slightly eccentric and clumsy families and characters.

  • His representative works include 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' and the stop-motion animation 'Isle of Dogs,' which is set in Japan.

• Visual Characteristics

  • Perfect symmetry: He thoroughly adheres to creating images where the left and right sides are perfectly aligned around the center of the screen.

  • Picture-book color palettes: He fills the screen with pastel colors or stylish colors chosen specifically for each film.

  • Lateral camera movement: His signature is a game-like camera work where the camera moves only horizontally or at right angles with a clicking motion.

7. The anecdote about the smoking scene reveals a standard of 'breaking historical fact'

This is a story I want to write accurately. A historical consultant pointed out that a character smoking in a certain bazaar scene would be impossible in 13th-century Persia. Chief Director Naoko Yamada reflects on it as follows.

In this case, the character was ultimately not adopted. But I think what's important is not the result, but the standard of judgment. The director continues to ask herself in every scene not 'Is it historically accurate?' but 'Will the atmosphere of that place be correctly conveyed to today's audience?' Historical research is treated not as an absolute rule, but as a standard that is sometimes intentionally broken for the sake of persuasiveness.

8. Japanese actors are taking on the challenge of Mongolian dialogue

In this work, multiple characters actually speak in Mongolian. According to Director Gongora, although they hired several Mongolian actors, most of the dialogue was performed by Japanese actors in a language they were not used to. The director admits that the production was 'a challenge' (IndieWire).

The reason they went to the trouble of keeping the Mongolian language is great. The protagonist, Shitala, does not understand the language spoken by the Mongolians. The production team decided that if that were the case, the audience should also not understand it. To put the viewers in the same position as Shitala, they intentionally let sounds that don't convey meaning flow on the screen. The director explains this in the same article.

9. The 'assumptions' the director noticed and the disagreement on how to depict them

Chief Director Naoko Yamada says that through the production, she realized her own assumptions. She had a harsher image of the word 'slave' beforehand. However, the protagonist of this work, Shitala, is accepted as a member of the family despite her status as a slave, and is given not only food, clothing, and shelter but also an education. Facing that setting, she reflects, 'I realized my own assumptions born from ignorance' (ananweb).

However, this portrayal has also drawn criticism from overseas reviews. One review site (Lost in Anime) took issue with the fact that the work attempts to distinguish between "good slavery" and "bad slavery" (that within the Mongol Empire). This is a critique from the context that works depicting slavery in a romanticized way appear repeatedly in anime.

On the other hand, the same review acknowledges that the story itself does not end with mere idealization. It is evaluated as having an honest, direct look at historical reality, unlike the power fantasies of isekai works.

In the story, there is a scene where another slave warns Fatima that "we have no legal rights and are not treated as full human beings," and Fatima's master calls her "daughter" when he loses his life protecting her.

The director's words speaking of realizations as a beautiful story, and the criticism pointing out the risks that those realizations might invite. I think that if you only introduce one or the other, you will misjudge the tension that this work actually holds. It respects all cultures and does not unilaterally judge good and evil. This is the production policy of the work itself, but it can also be said that the difficulty of executing that policy is reflected in the pros and cons themselves.

10. A controversy in Pakistan, praise in the West. The world does not have just one face.

The nine points so far were, so to speak, stories about what the creators chose. The last one is how those choices were received in the world. The price and the reward for not compromising are coming back at the same time.

The Pakistani English-language newspaper The Express Tribune covered this work and reported that viewers are divided over lines in the work such as "Whether a slave or not, Muslims have a duty to seek knowledge," and the combination of the title meaning "magician" and Islamic representation.

In Islam, how to deal with magical powers is itself a theologically sensitive issue, and it can be said that superimposing the title "Magician" on that was a precarious choice that was a hair's breadth away from praise.

Meanwhile, the American review site But Why Tho? gave the same work a 9/10, praising it as an "honest depiction of Islam" and saying it "does not depict Mongols as inhuman."

It is not a matter of which is correct. The same expression can be an exemplary example or a seed of controversy depending on the cultural position of the recipient. The fact that there is no single "global audience" for a globally distributed IP can be seen concretely just from the first week's reaction to this one work.

Furthermore, in June, before the domestic broadcast on TV Asahi began, this work had already been selected for the main competition in the TV Films category at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France (in the TV Series category of the same festival, 'Takopi's Original Sin' won the Jury Award. Anime News Network). Domestically, it wore the face of a "late-night anime," while overseas it was already walking with the face of a "highly auteur international work."

Thoughts

When you line up the 10 episodes, what they have in common is not talent or budget, but a accumulation of decisions that "did not compromise."

Moreover, the presence or absence of compromise always appears in the same place. How much effort was put into places no one notices. It is natural to spend budget on places that will be noticed, and the number of times effort was put into places that will not be noticed becomes the body temperature of the work.

They chose a woman with a lot of blank space as the protagonist, not an empress with many records. Instead of just having them speak Japanese and adding subtitles, they used authentic Mongolian. There are also judgments made on the side of persuasiveness, not on the side of historical fact. Even so, they did not drift toward the easy path each time.

A late-night terrestrial anime slot stands on the stage of Annecy before broadcast, and reaches newspapers in Pakistan after broadcast.

I felt that this is perhaps not because of talent or luck, but because this is a work that really has a high number of times it did not compromise. I am looking forward to the rest of the broadcast.

Keke Asahi.

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