By AnimeEv 1 year, 9 months ago
To top off the Otakon weekend, Sunday morning featured an intimate and relaxed round-table discussion with various Japanese guests that took place in front of the stage in an absurdly massive panel room. All the members of the panel were quite humorous, amenable, and gregarious about the topics they discussed , and in a refreshing fit of happenstance there were jokes told, laughs made, and fun interplay between the attendees and the staff.
I had expected a brief and circumspect chat, but we ended up covering a ton of topics at a ridiculous pace. I have condensed my general notes here so that I can convey the nature of the group discussion for those of you who were not fortunate enough to be in attendance. It was an absolute blast and an enlightening experience.
Our cast of creators:
Producer Tomonori Ochikoshi
Director Koji Masunari
Madhouse Director Koujina
Madhouse Producer Mr Mika
Some initial topics discussed included the nature of physical character dynamics in Read or Die, as well as the workload of animators. The directors noted the relationship between physics and its impact on characters, as well as how the nature of their character is portrayed through the animation of their physical interactions with the environment around them.
One audience member proceeded to blow old school minds by asking Koujina the question “What did you animate in Crystal Triangle?” Koujina’s response was classic: “I forgot. It was such a long time ago!”
AND WE’RE OFF!
There was a discussion about the allocation of budget and how it affected the final product. What went to what in what form? How much of the budget was for animation? Where did the majority of the money go?
The producer from Madhouse, Mr. Mika, stated elliptically: “Money, finding the right director, getting the staff together… sometimes you can get away without having to spend too much money on a project. In a Madhouse title there’s a lot of lines that we have to draw so it takes a lot of money.”
Mr. Ochikoshi said “Budget is an important factor in coming up with the quality of work. If you have the budget you can come up with the incentives to let animators work long hours at your place which is very important. However, a good working environment doesn’t ensure quality, it’s really the animators themselves that guarantees the quality of work. The majority of it does go to paying people.”
Koujina followed up with “When it comes down to it, it’s not the time or the money you spend, it’s the creators. If you give them a month they’ll do the best they can until the very last minute. If you give them a week, they’ll do the best they can until the very last minute. So it’s not really about time or money.”
The interpreter asked the group if they felt the animators were like the spice miners in Dune, causing the panel to erupt in laughter.
Masunari stated “We’ve always appealed to the good conscientiousness of the animators. I try to take them out for yakiniku.”
In addition, according to one panelist, the actual budget changes depending on the nature of the project.
With regard to worries about losing staff to the video game industry, a group member expressed that it would’ve been the trend 4 or 5 years ago, but the animators who absconded have started to come back to the anime industry.
Mr. Masunari: “I can only speculate, but maybe the video game industry was less welcoming in terms of environment. It’s possible that they felt more accomplishment working on anime than in a video game cut-scene.”
When asked about how they felt about American fans versus Japanese fans:
Masunari stated that “American fans are much less shy about asking straight questions. It makes things easier for me.”
Somebody mentioned that the American audience reacts “50% more” than a Japanese audience.
Ochikoshi chimed in, saying “but if they laugh too hard at the end of Welcome to the Space Show, they miss the point of the ending!”
Koujina is part of a group that trains new animators. He feels that training new animators is something that is very important to keep the industry going as he has seen dizzying amounts of change in his 28 years in anime.
For his part, Masunari stated that he believes that his predecessors brought the skills and the format of anime to what it is today. He also said that in the past 10 years the storytelling skill has become a more uncommon trait in younger animators. He lamented that the ability to make people “feel” through anime is being lost, despite the increase in animation skill and ability.
I asked the panel if they felt that the degradation of storytelling comes from only watching anime, and not looking at classic films like older directors did or may have done.
Masunari: “You can say there’s an element of that but it’s not in the storytelling as much as the ability of animators to portray those qualities as animators. Because, in respect to the storytelling, that would be the responsibility of the director and the writer, which is a whole different department to worry about.”
Madhouse producer Mika: “I have to agree with Masunari; that may be true but in order to teach or raise young animators I’ve got a project going on now of creating a show using just the younger talent. So when you let young animators just work and freely create you get some really imaginative creations from them. A place like Madhouse has a lot of upper staff with a lot of experience and talent and letting them grow is hard to do, so hopefully if this project happens you can see them here at Otakon in 2 years.”
Group consensus was summed up with the statement that “It’s entirely possible that young animators just don’t know what to do, so it’s our responsibility to educate them.”
Ochikoshi stated that he hadn’t heard about a recently announced foreign animator training program in Japan, but that the anime industry was not restricted to only Japanese nationals. At the same time communication is vital to the animation process, so they necessitate a mutually intelligible language to participate in the project.
“We also need to have employees who are capable of communicating with these workers in foreign markets.”
With regard to night-time blocks created for female fans, Ochikoshi laughed and said “I haven’t written off the late night female-oriented block, but they may have written me off. The goal of the block, to me, is to make an animated show that is like a live-action drama. We need to make the show as accessible as possible to a non-anime audience.”
Another panel member stated that they had worked on a gyaku moe block, meaning “reverse moe”, because it’s all men in their shows.
Questions were asked about the impact and effect of digital distribution on the industry.
Ochikoshi stated that visual works were mutable in that they could be ported to a variety of formats and platforms. He feels that the supposed intent behind distribution is to reach a wider audience, so digital distribution could be self-defeating in that it may run the risk of shrinking the market and thus preclude competitive wages for workers. He specifically meant a decline in revenues, as it would directly affect the industry.
Mr. Maki stated that “you’d have to re-address the publicity because of the nature of the medium… you can just passively receive advertising from the TV itself. With digital distribution, it’s different and more involved.”
The digital nature of the current animation production system was discussed vis-à-vis its hand-drawn predecessor, although Masunari wished to relay the fact that it was still hand-drawn in the initial stages. Koujina noted the time-saving effects of using digital technology for things like fire and water, which used to be very time-consuming, but he also missed the aesthetics of the hand-drawn effect. Mr. Mika talked about the value of the digital medium in that you have to be able to maximize your time until the last moment.
Masunari also mentioned that there was an increase in the need for specialized technical staff to produce this type of animation, especially technical directors. Time is a major factor in coordinating between technical directors and camera departments. Mika noted the directors of photography, in the digital age, have had to learn a lot of actual directing skills. This has muddied the process in terms of workload and requisite skill set requirements for directors of photography in the industry. The panel also let us know that there were concerns over possibly degrading the creative side of the overall process by using digital production, thus negating its benefits.
Before moving on, we discussed the discrepancy between high and low-selling titles and the impact of Blu-ray on the market. Ochikoshi noted that he has to take advantage of the new technology as a member of the industry.
A panel attendee asked about socializing between companies. Masunari stated that “we go out drinking all the time, but situations like this don’t normally come up in Japan.”
I asked about how they felt with regard to the animation and fandom paradigm differing between celebration in America and consumption in Japan, using Otakon and Comic Market as contrasting examples. Mr Masunari answered.
“It is something that I hear about, that American cons are more like a general gathering, which is what you may be describing, whereas Comic Market is more about the fulfillment of individual desires. I’ve actually not been to comic market, but I’ve heard about fans spending 1-1500 at comic market every day, so they may not have the opportunity to communicate. Otakon is more like a Japanese festival that people can enjoy… perhaps they’re too busy enjoying it to buy things!”
The overall takeaway from this portion of the discussion was that the American market might need to enlarge itself through sales if it is to remain viable. Moderators called time at this point, and everybody dispersed, enriched from the experience and stoked about the insight.
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The creative team here at Ani.me would like to thank both the staff of Otakon, the guests, and the translators who made this article possible.
bleachfreak73
10 months, 1 week agointeresting read