Animating KANOSEN – My Girlfriend is a Naughty Teacher

Hello, I’m Primus, the animator of the hentai scenes featured in KANOSEN – My Girlfriend is a Naughty Teacher, which was developed by monoceros+, the same creators behind Amayakase – Spoiling My Silver-Haired Girlfriend and Shoujo Dominance – My Precious Reina –, all published by JAST USA outside of Japan.

By now, if you’ve played KANOSEN, you already noticed that some hentai scenes are animated. That’s three sets of four scenes, to be exact. It was a huge honor to be able to work with Oginbara’s art and also work directly with monoceros+ on this project. However, before I go into more detail, let me tell you a bit about myself.

I’m currently the video editor and PR assistant for JAST USA and J18. If a game doesn’t have a Japanese trailer, I create one, like I did for the KANOSEN English Trailer. If a game already has one, like YOU and ME and HER: A Love Story, I’ll just adapt it for the English release, for example, adding subtitles and the JAST USA logo.

KANOSEN was not my first venture into animated hentai scenes. The first game I got to animate was Love Ribbon, created by my lovely friend Razz. If you enjoy cute yuri love (and very detailed female genitalia animation), you should check it out, but KANOSEN is the first high profile game where I was able to be a part of the development team. You can also find some of my work on J18. I create the doujinshi short trailers and animated scenes they post on Twitter.

Getting back on track, you might be wondering how KANOSEN’s animation started. Last year, when Amayakase was released, I created a short animated hentai scene of the game and sent it to monoceros+ as a gift to celebrate their first game release. They loved the animated hentai scene so much that they started to consider adding animated scenes to their next games, being KANOSEN first since Shoujo Dominance was already in development.

Animating KANOSEN was a learning process for everyone involved in the project. It was the first time monoceros+ was creating an animated game, it was the first time JAST USA was part of the development process, and it was my first time animating a game with such amazing and detailed art. Personally, I felt right at home with Oginbara’s art. I love mature characters, especially if they have a curvy body, so Kaori-sensei was right up my alley. Also, some of you already noticed, but, these animations were not created using Live2D, they were animated in Adobe After Effects. In the near future, I hope I’ll make the jump to Live2D, but After Effects animations also have their charm and perks.

During the early stages of development, monoceros+ gave me a fully layered draft of Kaori-sensei’s standing pose. During this time we were not sure if Kaori was going to be fully animated or not, but I did a quick animation of that draft anyway and sent it to them. The reaction was positive, but they pointed out a major issue, her face was not animated, meaning no eye or mouth movement. At that time, I’d never animated any face in detail, and I knew I shouldn’t refuse their requests so I had to learn how to do it. The way I rig the layers in After Effects is similar to how Live2D layers are rigged, so I actually watched some short Live2D tutorials on how to faithfully animate anime faces. After I applied the face animation I sent them for approval, and monoceros+ loved it. So, this would be the standard for KANOSEN animations.

The draft doesn’t look smooth because it was supposed to only be a test. I created it in a couple hours during an afternoon. It was a rushed job just to understand what we could do with the final CGs. Shortly after, it was decided that standing poses were not going to be animated. We then moved onto the three CGs. I got the drafts of the planned CG I was going to animate, since monoceros+ was worried that I wouldn’t be able to properly animate the school rooftop scene and the classroom scene. Those were indeed the biggest challenges I’ve ever had in my career, due to their “camera angle”, but none of them posed a huge threat, so, I just asked them to send the final layered images once they were ready.

After I gave my opinion on all the early drafts, I got the first layered draft. It was the pregnancy ending CG. They asked me to make an animation test, to see if I was capable of handling CGs. At this time, we still hadn’t decided on how many scenes each set would contain, so, I just animated freely. Since I don’t enjoy the one-second loops commonly found on animated hentai releases, my first loops of the pregnant CG was around eight to ten seconds. I also made the (maybe rule-breaking) decision of animating everything in 1920 x 1080 (Full HD) at 60 fps (frames-per-second), to make all my animations slightly future proof if the game gets re-released some years later. I knew the animations in-game would be 1280 x 720 at 30 fps.

For these early animated tests, I did not animate Kaori-sensei’s face, since it wasn’t layered at the time. This was something I had to explain monoceros+, they really wanted Kaori-sensei to show off her emotion. I created two animations, pre-insertion, and intercourse. The pre-insertion test is actually very similar to the final version presented in the game. In this one I just wanted to make it feel that Kaori-sensei was teasing the protagonist and having fun doing it. The most difficult part was trying to show her hips moving back and forth in a realistic way. Don’t forget these are 2D images. The only depth they have are the shadows cast on their bodies.

The intercourse test clip was ten seconds long. The first five seconds was a slow thrust and the last five seconds were a fast thrust. This was my philosophy during the first half of development, since in real life during intercourse, people usually don’t keep up the same speed and position. That’s why I don’t enjoy the one-second loops, they feel too robotic. No one acts like that.

The animations were approved with just a small change. I originally animated her pregnant belly to have the same jiggle physics as her breasts, but that had to go since monoceros+ wanted a more realistic approach. With that, we move to the next step, animating the final CG.

The first final layered CG I got was the rooftop scene. Even if I was doing the final animations, the number of scenes each set would contain was still undecided, so, for the time being, I was just creating two sets, pre-insertion, and intercourse, thinking that the ejaculation would be a static CG like in some animated hentai Visual Novels. It was difficult to show off the depth of the animation due to her position and I was a bit rusty when it came to this type of animation.

The pre-insertion went fine, and it’s almost identical to what you have now in the final game, but the intercourse was again ten seconds long, with a slow thrust and fast thurst. Since she is using stockings pulled down, I wanted to have her open her legs and stretch the stockings just before the protagonists increases the thrust speed. It made the scene feel more erotic and nasty as if she’s trying to increase the pleasure for both of them. The developers loved it, and both were approved. However, they made a request to also animate the ejaculation part of the scene. I thought it would be a nice challenge, so, why not? I’d animate the ejaculation, and, if approved, we would change the standard again, and have three scenes per set.

For all of the ejaculation parts, I tried to make Kaori’s face more intense, as if she lost all of the control over the protagonist, and the protagonist is just using her for pleasure during the next few seconds. I think it worked out. Her expressions are very erotic.

Once the rooftop ejaculation was approved, monoceros+ came out with the final request and the one that would define the final standard of every animated set; divided into a slow and fast thrust. That way, each intercourse scene would be a five-second loop and it would be dedicated to specific dialogue during the gameplay, instead of having a speed up and speed down every five seconds. I agreed, divided the scene, and then we had the main animation standard for KANOSEN: pre-insertion (ten seconds), slow intercourse (five seconds), fast intercourse (five seconds), and ejaculation (ten seconds).

The classroom table scene was very time consuming due to the number of clothes that needed to get animated in a realistic way, but overall it worked out pretty well, and I hope it really feels like the protagonist is seriously penetrating Kaori’s entire lower body, especially during the ejaculation, since monoceros+ only gave me one keyword for this scene: “nasty”.

Back to the pregnant CG, this time finished and colored. I reworked my draft animations to save time since, at this point, the deadline was very close. There was still one final challenge though; what about the breast milk? I’m a huge fan of pregnant mature anime women at the end of a hentai story, so, having the opportunity to animate lactation, it had to be one of the best the hentai visual novel medium has ever seen.

At first, I manually animated the actual milk squirting presented in the layered CG. It was ok, but, it just felt boring and basic. That’s when I randomly added some particles from After Effects, to simulate loads of milk coming out (almost like a fountain). I sent this to monoceros+ just to see if I could use particle effects. They loved it and approved the footage immediately. I was so surprised, but I told them that was just a test, I was going to properly animate the lactation with realistic physics.

The overall idea and pacing of the lactation in this scene was to feel like she’s not in full control of the lactation. The milk just keeps pouring out, and at some point I wanted her to just milk her own breasts into the protagonist — and player. This scene had to feel as erotic and nasty as it possibly could. I wanted milk and pleasure pouring everywhere in the scene. Again, in the ejaculation, Kaori loses control. Even if she’s on top, the protagonist uses her to finish off, and more milk pours out of her. I loved animating this scene and it was the perfect ending for the entire project.

After everything was done and approved, I quickly started working on the announcement trailer using some of the animations I previously created, and the English end roll featured at the end of the game. This was the biggest and most important project in my entire career so far. I and the entire development team at monoceros+ and JAST USA hope you guys enjoyed the final results as much as we enjoyed creating them. Hopefully, we’ll be able to continue creating more great hentai animations for you in the future. Meanwhile, please, tell me your opinions below or over at the JAST USA Discord Server about KANOSEN’s hentai animation, and what you would like to see improved on in the next game!

If you want to buy and support the game, please get it from the JAST USA Store, or at J-List. Meanwhile, we also have an ongoing giveaway for the dakimakura cover + digital game set in this J-List Blog Post: KANOSEN – My Girlfriend is a Naughty Teacher Giveaway.