u/DoseofDhillon

The goal of this post is not to present any opinion. The goal of this post is to inform people what the production of Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave, so we can all understand this better when discussing and to clear up any misconceptions.

Fire Emblem: Fortunes Weave Credits

Fire Emblem Engages Credits

Fire Emblem 3 Houses Credits

Fire Emblem Shadows of Valenia

Moby Games Fortunes Weave Page

Other sources will be linked as the post goes on

Who Worked on Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave?

There were around 35+ companies that are credited in Fortunes Weave in various roles. I will be highlighting 5 of them. Intelligence Systems, Nintendo, O-TWO inc., D.A.G inc, and Shirogumi who seem to make the core development staff on the writing, visual, gameplay, and production of the game.

Intelligent Systems Before Fortunes Weave

This is IS’s first fully developed game in the Fire Emblem 3 Houses universe. Fire Emblem 3 Houses was a Koei Techmo game through and through. For a refresher, Excluding Special Thanks, Executive and General Producers Roles, 18 people are credited in IS roles, mostly in music, art and direction. Warriors games are all KT.

For more information here is my Fire Emblem 3 houses Proudction Post

Fire Emblem Engage was the first game since Shadows of Valentia that was fully made with Intelligent Systems in all creative leads. Engage was at least content finished in the summer of 2021, as we can see. According to both the Aussie Classification Board and the USK in Germany. It can be guessed full-scale development for FW started before or around then.

The company as a whole in 2025 had 208 employees as of 2026 the company sits at 223 employees. 98 graphic designers, 71 programmers, 26 planners, 11 sound creators, 3 hardware engineers, and 14 in accounting and sales

For more information on Engage, please read my Fire Emblem Engage Production Post

Intelligent System, O-TWO inc., and D.A.G inc

Only three men have been credited as head writers AND directors on a Fire Emblem game. Shouzou Kaga the creator of the franchise. Kouhei Maeda, the director of Fates and Awakening, and Toshiyuki Kusakihara, the director of SoV, 3 Houses, and the head writer and director of Fortune's Weave. Kaga and Kusakihara are the only people to be sole directors and sole lead writers on the same game.

Masayuki Horikawa is listed as a Game Director Scenario in Binding Blade, but without another scenario credit, and based on his previous credit for Thracia, I am assuming he was just the writer. He was a director for FE9, I would assume he did have a lot to do with the story as he came up as a writer, but he was not credited under head scenario so its best speculation. Kouhei Maeda was credited as both scenario and director for Awakening and Fates; however, there were other scenario writers credited, and he is not listed as a head writer on Fates. It should also be noted, Kusakihara is the first director to get the lead credit in a Fire Emblem game since Kaga. As every other game listed the producer first, this game listed the director first.

As for the rest, the producers are mostly the same leads, with Higuchi, Genki Yokota being moved from director to producer and new to the franchise but a longtime producer on other Nintendo games, Shinya Saito. The director of Engage, Tsutomu Tei, was project manager and a “Game Director” by Yuya Ishii. A role that's hard to pin down what it means, but it seems like Kusakihara games have some sort of ‘game director’ type role, whether it's “Game Designer and Lead Planning" in SoV or “Lead Game Designer" in 3H.

As for the rest of the team, with a focus on the leads, 9 leads had never been a lead on a Fire Emblem game before, and 15 had, mostly Engage. I didn’t check everyone because I got lazy. From the looks of it its a lot of the same names from Engage with new faces in minor roles. I do have the list for leads; it will be in the comments.

Overall there are 128 total IS employees, not counting executive producers and special thanks roles that worked on this game. This is up from the 85 in Engage. This, although a bigger team, is smaller than the typical AAA studio. In just the art department, God of War 2017 had 77, Breath of the Wild over 220, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has 160+ in its environment, lighting, cutscene, character, facial, animation, VFX and UI artist alone. This is where a lot of smaller companies that worked on the project and D.A.G inc, a studio specific for animating characters in games, help.

Naoya Inui, Tomomi Tanigaki, and Shoichi Kanehisa, the other 3 scenario writers, have never written a Fire Emblem game as well or any game since 2008. With Inui, text support for Engage, the only one that has ever worked for IS. O-TWO inc. also has employees with various writing credits and 4 designers. They are the only company to have writing credits outside of IS; in what capacity, we do not know.

Nintendo

Nintendo historically did a lot of what they always do, worry about bigger macro things, such accessibility, delays/release dates, along with marketing, and translating the game, ect. However, there was a CLEAR CHANGE in how Nintendo treated this game. An example of how it might have worked was in Engage. In the Engage Nintendos 'Ask the Developer' we can see that IS were asked to tone Alear's personality down and in the past would manage what was happening in the game on a macro level.

With Yokota, a Nintendo employee, moving to a producer, this is the first Fire Emblem game since Radian Dawn with a sole director, and there has been an internal change in how Nintendo operates with the franchise as the publisher. Yokota from ask the developer on Fortune's Weave.

Yokota: “For this game, we wanted to create a different gameplay experience while maintaining a connection to the world of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. That’s why we established a new development structure with Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. I think this allowed us to fully realize the world that Kusakihara-san wanted to depict, much as we did in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, while making use of the experience and knowledge we had gained from our previous projects.”

What was that change? We are not sure as of now; the best we can do is speculate.

Shirogumi

Shirogumi is an animation studio based in Japan, primarily known for their Academy Award-winning visual effects on Godzilla Minus One and for their work on Shin Ultraman. They did the CGI cutscenes for Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave. They have also worked on various games from Bandai, Capcom, Square, and Nintendo. They have done many CGI trailers for various Pokemon Games, Elden Ring, Tears of the Kingdom, and more.

Hopefully this post clarifies some misconceptions about who did what during the development of the game. If you have any questions or concerns, or if you think this post contains any heavy bias writing or wrong information, please feel free to correct me.

Thanks for reading and have a great day.

NOTE: Jojo and Re Zero are not finished anime so I dipped into 51 and 52. I’ll give shows at least 2-3 months after completion before I count them as "official members” for this list.

About 9 months ago I was going to watch Legend of the Galactic Heroes after Gintama when I noticed I had about 15 entries, 3 of those being movies from being done with the MAL top 50 after about 15ish years of watching anime on and off again. With a combination of manga, anime, and a single-minded devotion to do this, I decided to finish everything on the list, leaving LotGH last as my carrot on the stick.

This is a rather weird thing to do and something to add to a list that's constantly updated. Living and breathing is not worth it for most, but it's something I did and had fun doing it. I have watched every anime in the My Anime List Top 50. Apologize if this comes across as self important but I would like to share at least my perspective on the experience of watching the most beloved anime of all time on the internet's most infamous site for rating anime.

THE GOOD

I am a natural-born cynic; you’d think I would be the most negative about this, but to my surprise, whenever I said I was doing this, everyone else I talked to was way more negative about this than me. Well, I’m here to say the MAL Top 50 is by FAR from perfect, but it's better than you think.

As of right now, I count about 18 entries. I have no issue with them being there under any circumstances, maybe not in my personal top 50 but I wouldn’t have any issue if they were. That's way more than I first thought going into this, where I’d guess maybe 10? That's pretty damn good. About 17, I don’t think should be on the list, and the rest are indifferent about them or at least have a borderline case. That's honestly way better than I thought, trust me. The top 10 is also overall really solid

The MAL top 50 is also nowhere near the worst top 50 of publicly voted-on lists I could find that have some notoriety in the English-speaking fandom. Anilist top 50 is about the same, with I’d say just worse ranking for the shows that do overlap with MALs. Anime New Network's top 50 feels like a guy that stopped watching anime in 2012 besides 1 or 2 mega-popular ones, and IMBD’s personally speaking, is uhh, unique. The only one better than it for my money is AniDB's.

There's actually a decent amount of variety on the MAL top 50. It's very impressive. I went from Bleach to Fruit Basket to Kingdom, to Clannad to Ippo to Frieren. I did intentionally divide this from an “emotional show” to "non-emotional show," but the fact I could even do that is really impressive and fun as a media variety enjoyer. I’m someone that's willing to watch anything as long as I don’t think it's cringe; I just need a real motivation or feeling to do so, and doing this got me to watch a lot of these cool franchises.

THE BAD

The recency bias on these lists is pretty insane. Only 16 shows from pre 2015 are on this list, 10 from only pre 2010, 3 from pre 2000s, and 21 from the 2020s. Joe, LotGH and Bebop are all great shows, but the gap between them and the second-best shows from their eras shouldn’t be THIS big. Shows from 10-15 years ago are all over the top 10. If you were to look at video games or movies and tell someone only 2-3 games or movies from pre 2000’s belonged in the top 50, you’d likely get a negative reaction to it. We just don’t have any solid anime history in the west so most people lack appreciation.

I do understand we have a lot of people that will say “things get better with time” or "it's only natural" or "art and sakguga." Maybe not the crazy sakuga frames of Studio Bones, but the visual techniques of older anime still do an excellent job of keeping you engaged, especially in the good shows, by using animation to draw emotion out of the viewer. These uncs shows aren’t bad visually. Romeo Blue Skies, Gundam, Heidi Girl of the Alps, Future Boy Conan, Gunbuster, Perfect Blue, Utena, Rose of Versailles, and Berserk 1997s have all done this through their directing techniques, not just a race to frame counts. Hell most of the shows I listed also look pretty damn good too.

My best example isn't from an older show; it's actually on this list, Love is War Kaguya-sama Ultra Romance. That show is in the MAL top 20, beloved by many yet it implements every late 70s to mid-2000s anime direction technique in the book. Postcard memories, triple takes, sunlight from window atmosphere shots, and lens flares. That, my friends, isn’t some new school directing; that's Osamu Dezaki,and if I could even be prude, a copy cat, not the original. Those techniques work on dramas too; just check out Ashita no Joe 2.

I would also add, people absolutely adore when someone's death is being undone. I’m not even just talking about like gunshot fade to black; I’m talking about scenes where its filmed under the context of them actually dying or written to make sure you think they are dead only to walk it back. There are some famous BELOVED shows that do this. People really just want the stakes of death but they want nothing around why death matters and the power of permanence and finding the strength in moving on—just that people died and that's sad, but its fine afterwards; just a mid-show nap its fine. It's contextual and circumstantial and individuals could argue X and Y, but boy does it happen a good amount.

People really love roller coaster rides over actual substance in there writing. Which makes sense but is sad to see in real time.

THE NOT THAT UGLY BUT I THINK IS A BUMMER

Survivorship bias—that's what we’re looking at. The audience that remains for later seasons is mostly made up of fans who already like the series. Since only the "survivors" are rating later seasons, sequel scores tend to be inflated compared to what you'd get from a random sample of all anime viewers. Built with the sunk cost and you have the mess that is the MAL top 50. In other words, Glazers stay and Glaze.

14 series currently on the MAL top 50 are the first animated entries, 3 of those being movies and another 3 being 48-50, and most likely off the list by the end of the year. Likely replaced by more sequels with 2 separate courses of Apothecary Diaries and a movie, Boochi S2, CSM S2, Bleach, and, in 2027, the One Piece reboot.

The pinata for this is normally Gintama, and I would say, yeah, Gintama does probably have too much representation on this list. My personal example is that BOTH versions of Attack on Titan ending are in the MAL top 50. They're the same thing barring one after-credits scene; at least Gintama movies remaking arcs are nowhere near the top.

This trend will continue; if i had to guess, Ippo will be off the list in 3-4 years, and then we'll be at only 7-9. There will be plenty of sequels that will populate the list as anime fandom gets a lot more polarizing and tribalistic. For every Apoth season 1 comes 5 more sequels, some of them being its own, as fan bases post their favorite series' MAL score on Reddit and claim its peak fiction before its even done and review bomb the others.

Take it from someone who had to actually care about MAL ratings to do this: they are dumb and not worth the time.

OKAY BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ACTUAL SHOWS

O-Oh right the anime. NOTE: I am not an average anime fan. I think I watched more 70’s anime than 2020 anime this decade, including every 70’s mecha and loved it. One of my top 3 anime of all time is The World God Only Knows. I can’t even name you 15 isekais before I ask, “If Devil as a Part Timer doesn’t count, can i split Garzey's wing and Aura Battlers Dunbine?" I know there's a popular one with discourse about perv shit called MT. Motoku Tencent or some shit? Idk really Just look at what I named my screenshot files.

Just take my opinions with a grain of salt. Your validation for your favorite anime is to know it's on the list and it's beloved by a lot of people and a critical darling. That being said, I do provide what I think are viewpoints very unattached to fandom and hype cycles. I’m not apart of any of these shows' fandoms besides being semi into two. I have no baggage going into any show that I’ll be talking about, besides maybe one series as a scorned manga reader. No one's completely unbiased; we all have a taste for something over another but even the shows I’m not high on just show I watched and wasn’t keen on, and thats it.

Here is an Imgur album and NON-SPOILER reviews with every anime listed on there, June 12th 2026 ranking, with context where in the franchise I am. In the description are my extended thoughts. I try not to go on too long so some things are vague to avoid spoilers. Praise and Criticism ahead

And here are my top 10 shows in alphabetic order if you're interested in just a smaller sample.

Ashita no Joe 2: Joe Yabuki is my favorite anime protagonist ever and the show's directing is fantastic. Never fails to draw emotion out of me

Cowboy Bebop: The best 2-cour anime in anime history. Looks great, sounds great, and still holds up super well today. Also goes out with a bang

Frieren Season 1: A beautiful show from top to bottom, and fantastic characters, and how it handles the themes of loss are masterful.

Gintama Season 2: The best comedy anime i may have ever seen, and front to back constantly great, also fantastic serious arcs.

Gintama Season 4: The payoff to a shit ton of build-up that lives up to the hype and an arc after that is just as good, if not better.

Hunter X Hunter: Some of the highest peaks in battle shounen and such a long stretch of a fantastic peak and all-time great moments

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Borderline perfectly constructed world and fantastic characters complementing a series that's so well written and conceived on every level.

Mob Psycho II: As close to a perfect anime as you can get. Some of my favorite character arcs ever and a fantastic finale. Reigan bros for life

Monogatari 2nd Season: Hitagi End is special goddamn arcs, and not far behind are other all-time Class Monogatari arcs. Kaiki also is a fantastic character, my goodness

Vinland Saga season 1: Askeladd. I could get into the world, and action, the tension and other characters. But FUCKING ASKELADD.

With that said, thank you for reading this post. For anyone that read this and rolled their eyes in exhaustion at what I said, hey, I get it. I feel the same thing about reading takes I find cringe too, and now I'm the potential cringe one and IDK how to apologize for that LOL, just hopefully you have fun and take care no matter what.