THE REFLECTION

The project stemmed from director Hiroshi Nagahama's roughly 20-year ambition to work with American comics; his outspoken love of comics eventually earned him a meeting with his idol Stan Lee, who then invited him to co-create a project around 2010.

An earlier version of the anime, with completed characters and story, was fully planned around 2010 but got cancelled for unspecified reasons before production could start.

When Stan Lee later revived the project, producer Gil Champion asked Nagahama to bring a business partner, so Nagahama recruited producer Kazuki Noguchi from Studio Deen, whom he had worked with before, to co-produce despite budget challenges.

Stan Lee initially intended only to contribute ideas due to his age and busy schedule, but became so invested that he insisted on writing the treatment himself using an old-fashioned 'Marvel Method' plot structure, before eventually handing full scripting and series structure over to the Japanese team at Nagahama's request for a more modern, Avengers-style narrative.

The project was announced as 'THE REFLECTION WAVE ONE' at Comikaze Expo 2015 in Los Angeles on October 30, 2015, before the title was shortened to 'THE REFLECTION' in June 2017.

This was the first time in Studio Deen's 42-year history that it produced an anime broadcast on NHK General TV.

Since Stan Lee passed away in November 2018, the year after the show aired, The Reflection became the last anime he was personally involved in creating.

The character Mr. Mystic is explicitly modeled on Stan Lee, who also voices him in the English dub, while Lee appears as himself elsewhere and narrates the show, ending previews with his catchphrase 'Excelsior!!'.

To emulate the look of American comic books, the animation deliberately avoided fine digital detail, keeping shapes simple so the viewer's brain would fill in the gaps, sometimes adding comic-style effect text like 'POW!' and 'ZAP!'.

The four members of the J-pop group 9nine voice animated versions of themselves as the 'Ninth Wonder' team of Japanese schoolgirl heroes, appearing in every language version of the show rather than being redubbed.

Music producer Trevor Horn, known for his work with Paul McCartney, Yes and Pet Shop Boys and dubbed 'the man who invented the '80s', both scored the series and performed the in-story hit song 'Sky Show' as himself, also voicing his own English dub cameo.

Nagahama envisioned the series as just the entry point to a larger 'Stan Lee Universe' he hopes to keep expanding, noting that only about 3% of the overall backstory material he and Lee developed was depicted across the show's 12 episodes.