Saamarthyavaan

Saamarthyavaan (सामर्थ्यवान, "Capable Man") is an Indian animated streaming television series created by Prashast Singh, who also produced, directed, wrote and animated the show. Set in AD 1500, it unfolds in an alternate historical setting and follows Samarth Mahamuni, a mentally ill, self-exiled prince with superpowers who begins a journey to undo an optical curse caused by using the powers for a violent cause.

The show began streaming weekly at Saturdays on 7:00 PM from 7 August 2021 on the YouTube channel Tantrum Network owned by Singh.

Plot
In AD 1500 India, Samarth Mahamuni, a prince, discovers he is suffering from a mental illness. When he is mistreated for this, he abandons the kingdom and escapes to a quiet life in the wilderness. Some time later, he has taken up the job of a weapon maker, and circumstances force him to use his superpowers to kill someone, and a curse granting him upside down vision. The powers make him see normally only while closed eyes and he sets out on a journey to undo the curse. The only thing is keeping his eyes closed for 24 hours, even as he faces numerous violent challenges on the way to his destination.

Production
Prashast Singh had envisioned the concept of the show as a feature-length film several months before finalizing it as a web series. Although The King Himself (live-action) was supposed to be his first series, he decided to proceed with Saamarthyavaan first and being influenced heavily by watching anime and its techniques of creation, wrote an original story combining multiple concepts he originally created for short films. The decision was made after Singh watched the superhero anime My Hero Academia, which inspired him to try and animate a show himself. He decided to draw it by hand, just like traditional animation involved in anime is, and released the first look poster on 15 May 2021, confirming the first season would start airing in 2021.

He initially thought of making it as a miniseries, but dropped the format in favor of a series with multiple seasons given the short duration of every episode. Having frequently drawn cartoon characters and some original comics as a kid, Prashast credited anime with inspiring him to pick up the pen and improve on his drawing skills. However, being unable to draw the details very clearly as originally intended to, he decided to draw and animate it in the silhouette-style, which is hinted at in the first look poster as well.

The first episode's production faced a series of delays since Prashast was hit with some personal issues, Once recovering, he completed the episode by the end of June 2021. He decided to announce the release date once he has created material worth airing for a month, i.e, about 4 episodes.

The show was initially going to feature spoken dialogue and around 5 minutes of total duration per episode, which was changed when Prashast turned it into a silent show with 2 minutes per episode runtime and intertitles in English and Hindi instead.