How Was the 1998 Orphen Anime Made?

The first Orphen anime was made by J.C.Staff, directed by Hiroshi Watanabe, who had already run the same genre for the label's other flagship as the director of the Slayers television series. It aired on TBS from 3 October 1998 to 27 March 1999, twenty-four episodes, and it is built the way the first novels are built: one continuous pursuit of the Bloody August, ending in the Tower's own halls.

Japan noticed. In Animage's twenty-first Anime Grand Prix, published in June 1999, Orphen was voted the second favourite male character of the year, the series placed eighth among anime titles, and its ending theme, Last Kiss by Tanpopo, ranked sixteenth among theme songs. The score is by Hatake of the rock band Sharam Q, which is why the show sounds like late nineties Japanese television in the best way. The season tells its own compressed version of the Azalie story rather than the novels' longer road, a difference the 2020 remake was later created to close.