Under the Dog is an ambitious take on both greenlighting and funding entirely new anime projects. Helmed by Masahiro Ando (Sword of the Stranger, Blast of Tempest, etc) and produced by Hiroaki Yura of Creative Intelligence Arts (Project Phoenix).

In seemingly the last 24 hours, the project was miraculously funded on Kickstarter, flying past its funding goal of $580,000 dollars. Currently, the Kickstarter is resting at $846,000, although they haven’t met their first stretch goal at $1.16 million, which enables the team to create a 24 minute prequel.

To be clear – the original 24 minute episode is the first in a planned trilogy, all written by acclaimed video game author Jiro Ishii. Character designs are handled by Yusuke Kozaki of Fire Emblem fame, and the bulk of the animation work is being done in house at Kinema Circus – ex-staffers who worked on cyberpunk masterpieces like Ghost in the Shell, .hack//Quantum, and so on.

Hiroaki Yura also held an AMA on Reddit, where he discussed how producing a new anime in today’s industry can be very restricting as far as creativity goes. He mentions that the politics involved with anime production committees are notorious for being afraid of taking risks, and that he is hoping the birth of Under the Dog will coax other creators to utilize crowd funding.