・Leave the director once and come back again
Is editing your favorite part of the production process of "Kare Kano"?
It's not so much "I could do whatever I wanted," but more like "the work of taking all the responsibilities together was editing."
That's how I feel about it.
Record the voices as a semi-presco*, editing them so that they do not go over the fixed length, even if they are pre-edited to some extent when the voices are recorded.
I mark the start and end positions of the dialogue with a dermatograph* according to the cine tape.
At the same time, I correct the timing of the dialogue on the timesheet while checking the original drawings.
Finally, a fixed length form is submitted before dubbing and the film is handed over to the sound engineer.
We walked a tightrope like this every week.
I spent more than 4 days just editing.
I would wake up and sit in front of Steinbeck (the editing machine), work until the last minute, and then fall asleep under the desk.
I repeated such days over and over again.
It was a natural consequence, but the more I focused on quality, the more the schedule became overwhelmed.
It was quite painful, both physically and mentally.
The hardest part of the editing process was episode 10.
When the voice was recorded, it was 2 minutes, 27 seconds and 14 frames over the length of the recording.
It was difficult to shorten it to the prescribed length.
First of all, I asked the voice actors to speak quickly during recording.
I wanted to compress the information by shortening the dialogue length by even one frame.
On the contrary, episode 12 was already more than 2 minutes short in length when the storyboard was completed.
So, I added a cut to play UNO to gain some time.
The plan was to have the voice actors play the game improvising in the studio during recording, and then use the dialogue to compose the episode.
However, the voice actors had so much fun that they kept playing the game forever, and as a result, it became too long.
I wrote a new script based on it, and then re-recorded that cut the following week to make ends meet.
The only way to create work efficiently is to bear the burden of the work yourself in the end.
For episode 12, there were other problems with the schedule that prevented us from working on the backgrounds in time.
So, in my judgment, I decided to handle all the actual scenery and object shots cuts with photo-processed backgrounds.
For this, too, I made the backgrounds myself with a photocopier and a tresco machine*.
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*Semipresco: A method in which the lines of dialogue are recorded first and the pictures are added later.
*Derma/Dermatograph: characterized by a thicker core with a high wax content and a paper roll that is not made of wood. A pencil with a string at the end of the pencil that is pulled along the perforations to unwind the paper wrapped around the pencil shaft to produce the lead.
*Torres machine: A copying machine used in the era of cel animation that transfers the main lines of moving images drawn on paper to the cell in black and white. In English, it is commonly called "Xerox" or "Xerography".
Why was there no opening until episode 6?
Episodes 1 through 4 were packed with content at the time of storyboarding.
Therefore, there was no room to add an opening due to the length of the story.
I convinced the people involved that it would be better to eliminate the opening than to trim the main story and make it less interesting.
The original plan was to start with episode 5.
However, when we packed two episodes of the original manga into episode 5, there was no more room for the opening.
We ended up starting with episode 6.
The opening storyboard was completed on September 24.
I remember that Hiramatsu had a look at the drawings after he finished supervising the animation of the first episode.
How did you leave the scene after 14 episodes?
The reason for my demotion was that my methods were not accepted in the compilation that I produced as episode 14.
I left the director's position because I couldn't continue to be responsible for the content of the broadcast.
Frankly, that's part of the reason.
If anything, the main reason is to have the schedule reworked once again.
My work and methodology had become the main cause or rather the biggest obstacle to following the schedule.
I thought it best for me to step back from the production site, so I did.
I thought it would be better for people around us to get a clear picture of the situation so that I could step down as director rather than stay on as a member of the production staff.
Also, I thought it would be more useful for the staff in the future if they experienced an animation production situation, including one in which I was not the director and did not take care of the project from the beginning.
As a result, even Matsukura started to lose control, causing a lot of trouble for Sato and Matsukura.
I am sorry about that.
Still, at the time, I selfishly hoped that it would be a positive experience for them.
At that time, for various reasons, I was also involved in the production of "GAMERA1999," a documentary video about the making of the movie "Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys" (1999) with Masayuki.
Masayuki was quite nervous, so I joined him in following up while I left Kare Kano in the hands of other staff members for a while.
By stepping back from directing, or rather doing only the usual directorial work, the studio began to follow the normal production style for an anime.
I believe this allowed them to rearrange their schedule and put it back again.
But for episode 26, in order to meet the schedule, I went back to the director's job of controlling the whole process.
The way I did it was not what any sane person would do, but in order to keep the delivery schedule and the autonomy and freedom of the production staff, I would get angry and voluntarily drop out of the project.
I did it because I believed it was the best way.
Before that, the scene in episode 10 where the underwear in the main character's skirt is briefly shown, and the scene in episode 18* that became a problem, I wanted to protect his freedom of expression as much as possible by getting offended myself so as not to demotivate the staff.
(*For details, please refer to the Matsukura interview.)
I am not talking about Director Yoshiyuki Tomino, but when a director gets angry at a production site, it is usually for reasons other than emotion.
However, it was a pity that I could not protect the B-part of the original 24 episodes of Imaishi for various reasons.
In the TV broadcast, it was replaced by a compilation of my own work.
Under the circumstances, it was unavoidable.
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