[2] He showed the president of AIC, Tooru Miura, and director Ichiro Itano, and the two opted to use Umetsu's designs for all of the characters.
[3][4] J.C.Staff provided the project with director Akiyuki Shinbo, who himself was a fan of Tatsuo Yoshida (Tatsunoko Production's founder) and other works the studio had made.
A writer from Anime News Network described it as a "painful, violent beauty", with note of its "gritty realism" in style and atmosphere and "expertly told" storytelling.
[8] While Umetsu continued to work freelance (not directly belonging to a studio through employment), he produced his most major works with Arms for the next decade: a second hentai OVA (also with a cut international version) titled Mezzo Forte (2000); a sequel television series, Mezzo DSA (2004); and a sequel to Kite, Kite Liberator (2008).
He also contributed the character designs to Nakoruru: Ano Hito kara no Okurimono (2002), studio Arms' first non-hentai work.
[10] He described Kite Liberator as "hell" to work on because of the workload, saying that he spent an entire year without taking any Sundays off and sometimes sleeping at the studio for five days straight.
[11] In spite of the overwork, Kite Liberator is distinct in that it was Umetsu's first attempt to utilize 3DCG animation and a more contemporary style of work.
[10] Due to the overwork problems, Umetsu tried to allocate the labor more evenly among his collaborators in his next project, Galilei Donna (2013), which was produced at A-1 Pictures.
[11] Though he created and directed the series, and was personally involved with other aspects of it, the character designs were instead done by Shingo Adachi, and the screenplay was split to four writers.
[18] In 2021, he directed the opening to Pretty Boy Detective Club, which Shinbo said he was proud of despite the shorter production period he described it having.
[17] Umetsu's lengthy production was finally unveiled in 2024 as a film series titled Virgin Punk with its first part slated for a summer 2025 release.