At the beginning of last year, controversial director Kan Yamamoto released his new work "WakeUp, Girls! 》。 And from this work, the idol group of the same name was born, "WakeUp, Girls! ”。 Not only is the group still carrying out various activities, but it has also been announced that it will produce a theatrical version of Zuò in terms of animation. In such a situation, what kind of thoughts does Uncle Kuan have? In this regard, a Japanese media conducted an exclusive interview, the full text of which is as follows:

Q: This time, we will use WUG (WUG fans) as the main audience, so please tell us about your impression of them.

Yamamoto: At first, I was asked to accept the title, but I actually refused because I wanted to get one myself. But everyone coined the word WUGER, and I think it's still great. It made me feel their amazing cohesion.

Before this work, my work would always be drowned out by all kinds of insults, and Internet trolls were like locusts, gnawing away my creative garden. It ended up being so desolate that I couldn't say anything more. This work is also used for me to compete for the winner, and at the beginning, as before, no matter what the work itself is, everyone is still spraying first: Uncle Kuan is a bad guy, Uncle Kuan's things must be useless, and the painting is a mess......

It's a terrible thing to get people to focus on painting. So even if we didn't die, we had to completely revise the drawing and release the Blu-ray disc. As a result, I'm relieved that the positive reviews on Amazon have also risen recently. I'm glad that quite a few guests stayed.

To be honest, I didn't think about making a sequel. The whole industry was infected by the comments on the Internet, and I was tired of being angry there. Not to mention making a sequel, I even thought about giving up anime, closing the company back to Osaka, and opening a ramen shop. I really hate business in this industry anymore.

BUT EVEN SO, WUGER STAYED. The guests stayed with WUG and frantically shouted "A sequel!" In the future, we will continue to protect WUG and protect the girls of WUG! This thought was passed on to me directly or indirectly. Since Wuger is so enthusiastic about the sequel, I have no choice but to keep going.

Now I am able to move forward positively, thanks to the blessing of WUGER.

That being said! Since everyone is so looking forward to the sequel, I hope that this work will not be judged arbitrarily, and I don't want it to become a joke! Although I believe that the production committee of this work will not be swayed by the evaluation on the Internet, if someone in the WUGER complains and says, "Uncle Kuan, don't come to make a sequel", then the committee will also hear such a voice, so it is really not possible to make a sequel (laughs).

Realistically, if a guest is dissatisfied, the only way to do it is to eliminate it. If everyone is not happy, then they can only give up making a sequel. If I am told to get out of here, and the rest of the people can still produce works, then let me do whatever I want. But I'm the original myself, and I'm also the one who made the zuò animation, so if I'm not there, it's unrealistic to make a sequel to zuò.

I hope to be able to tell all anime fans about this. No matter how animation is used as an escapist tool, after all, animation itself is a kind of reality, so if you spray animation irresponsibly, then your favorite anime worldview will slowly collapse. I hope you can understand this.

That's the way the animation industry is today, it's really fragile.

Q: The director has already explained the first season to various media, and it has been summarized on the official website. So here, I'm just asking the director out of my most intuitive feelings. I hope to collide with the director. First of all, why did you want to support an earthquake and come up with the idea of creating an animation?

Yamamoto: I'm not sure about this question myself. I was in the area at the time of the Great Hanshin Earthquake in '95, so I felt that it was my own business. But the people around me didn't suffer any major damage. But I always felt a little restless, so the next year I made my own animation with the theme of the earthquake. The film, titled "Forgotten by the World", was exhibited at the first Kyoto International Student Film Festival. And this time did the same thing.

Why do I overreact to earthquakes? Japan has not had a war for decades, but because of the earthquake, a large number of people died in an instant. I have a fear of this. But in general, there are some things that even I don't understand.

And the psychological state of '95 is different from the present. If I have to say, at the time of the 311 Japan Earthquake, I was seriously thinking about how I would behave, and then the earthquake happened. Then I felt restless that I had to do some charity to take care of the homeless, both for my own actions and for reasons related to Kaminagi (also set in Tohoku, Japan).

In the process, I felt my own insignificance and realized how powerless I was in the face of the mass deaths of people. At that moment, I didn't know if I should continue volunteering as an individual. Or do you want to do something else...... I feel like I can't turn a blind eye. In the process of thinking about this, I realized that I had to make zuò animation.

But why would I want to work so this...... I really don't get it. I like unrealistic things. Just like a hero in troubled times, maybe only when the country is in turmoil, is the time for me to appear. In normal times, it would be difficult for me to have a philanthropic mentality, but in the face of an earthquake, maybe it was an intuition, and the instinctive part of my heart made a low noise.

Q: Why are there 7 idols?

Yamamoto: When I was talking to Ms. Doko Tota, who was in charge of the script, we talked about how many people we needed. At the time, I thought it was either five or seven. Although I think five people are better, Ms. Wakuda said, "Isn't there a work called "Seven Samurai"? Let's get seven of us. ”

Speaking of "Seven Samurai", this is a sample-level work in terms of character creation, right? I also agreed that the balance of the seven idols was the best, and since I was a fan of Kurosawa myself, I thought I'd try it with seven people.

Another reason is that when considering the formation combination when dancing, although the 3+2 mode of five people is very good, the 3+4 format can be operated with more variety.

Another point, there are thirteen people in "Idol Master", "Lovelive! There are nine people in it, so if there are too few people here, we will be complained about cutting corners (laughs). "Damn! At least seven people! ”

Q: Aside from the title, what else is there about Kurosawa's work?

Yamamoto: Seven people who have no permanent residence save a firm that is on the verge of closure...... That's basically the framework of this work. And this setting is somewhat similar to Kurosawa's work, but the main plot after that has not been affected. It's just a matter of numbers.

Q: Why did you choose a newcomer as the main voice actor?

Yamamoto: Our normal process is that we first want to make an idol work, make sure that there are seven people on the stage, then think about the plot, and finally the voice actors...... However, I guess I already wrote the words "I want to get a rookie seven" at the stage of creating the proposal book.

When I was thinking about "what should I do if I made an idol work...... there were already "Idol Masters" on the market, and "AKB48" in reality was needless to say, and I had heard about "Lovelive! >> will make zuò animated messages. The big question is, "Can my work compare to theirs?" "But even if there is such a problem, there is no way.,So I didn't deliberately care about other works.,It doesn't matter if there are differences or similarities between this anime and other works.。 I didn't think about how innovative this work is, but it's probably going to be difficult for us to invite well-known voice actors to join us.

In addition, we want to make the voice actors fully "operational", so it is naturally more suitable to use voice actors from the same studio. In addition, I also have a dream of becoming an idol P, so I thought YY, "Maybe there is a head?" (laughs)

Bringing together seven people who have no acting skills will naturally face the risk of being criticized, but we have considered many aspects, and the final conclusion is that it is definitely more "flavorful" to use newcomers. From that stage, the concept of "hyperlinks" naturally arises.

Q: What is a hyperlink?

Yamamoto: In my memory, "Haruhi Suzumiya's Stirring" is the ideal form. If you want to do it, you should follow this. The voice actors were singing and dancing at that event, and the animation was playing on the big screen behind them. Even so, their performances are still fascinating...... I don't know where the two-dimensional is and where the three-dimensional, this concept of combining virtual and real is a hyperlink. Based on this concept, since the work is a story about the establishment of an idol group, the voice actors should also form an idol group.

Q: Since it's about cultivating new voice actors, what are the difficulties?

Yamamoto: Anyway, what we're most worried about is whether they can do a good job. Without this, hyperlinks would not be possible, and they would not be covered up by the animated images.

Since the seven voice actors are all laymen, if they don't do something, they will definitely be sprayed to death. There is no doubt about that. Therefore, both Ibex and 81Reduce are full of a sense of crisis. One year after the personnel selection is completed, it will be the main drama. At first, I watched them practice there, and I felt that the course was very strict. It was also done 2 or 3 times, both physically and otherwise, in the form of Sparta. It's not easy.

That being said, when it came to dubbing, there were still a lot of shortcomings. For this reason, I racked our brains with the sound director Mr. Hiroshi Kikuta, and we used all the clever things we could (laughs).

When it came time to dub the theatrical version, we really just turned on the studio. The actual dubbing locations change throughout the day. As a result, I slowly became annoyed, thinking, "This kind of voice acting is unheard of!" And this kind of affection was also vented to Yoshioka Moyu. I yelled at her, "Give me a good crying scene, and you won't be allowed to go back until you really cry!" And so......

That guy really cried...... As long as you do it, you can still do it.

Because of the results of this hard work, the dubbing has finally come to an end, and it has not become a major flaw in the work. Although it sounds like a good reading occasionally, there seem to be many people who like this style. The people who love Bakers told me that they are okay in terms of appearance, voice, performance, singing and dancing, so I didn't particularly care, just wondered if these girls who stood out from all aspects of the inspection could further improve...... There is also whether they can form their unique aura.

There are so many real voice actors in the trailer for the next episode, and they usually cause disgust. We had some criticism at first, but the audience quickly got used to it. It is even said that because of the voice actor's appearance, he was highly praised as "so cute and charming". It made me think that it was a great choice.

But they work very hard. In the different episodes, we made everyone cry there, and Ms. Hidaka said, "It's rare to see a voice actor crying like that." "But it can't be helped, after all, all seven of them are newcomers.

Q: What kind of style does Director Yamamoto think of the songs played in the work?

Yamamoto: Naturally, the song plays a very important role in this work. We have to figure out who is going to do it, what kind of process it goes through, and for what purpose. If the music has nothing to do with the work, then it doesn't make sense.

Therefore, the music has to follow the direction of the work very much. Cheer up! The song is what WUG needs in the moment of his rise, while "7GirlsWar" and "Smile on the Gokugami" fully embody Hayasaka's fickle genius nature. The difference between the styles of Hayasaka and Twinkle is also very clear. Like "16-Year-Old God Love" and "Cheer Up! is an indomitable and straightforward genre, while Hayasaka embodies more variations. In the future, I would like to see if I can make this difference.

Also, Hayasaka is here to help WUG, and in this case, he needs to think about what songs the girls need. At the same time, I also have to think about the songs that the seven girls need in reality...... This point coincides. It's also a kind of hyperlink.

It's very painful. "What do they really need now?" This is something that I have been thinking about for a long time, and I must continue to think about it in the future. If it's the plot, then it should be done; But if you consider their current performances, then they should do that...... These thoughts kept spinning through my mind.

Compared to the time of "Kaminagi", the difficulties are even greater now. When I was making "Kaminagi", I didn't care about Haruka Tomatsu at all, and I just wrote the theme song for the anime. The song was originally intended to be a feature of "Rustic! ", but I thought again, "After all, it's Haruka Tomatsu's second single, with "Rustic! "Obviously not quite right......" (laughs), so in the end the title was changed to "motto☆派手にね! 》。 And this time it is fundamentally not the same way of making zuò, so I am facing all kinds of troubles.

Q: Speaking of Director Yamamoto, the most impressive thing for many people is the SOS group dance, and I think your expression on the dance screen has a strong charm.

Yamamoto: I think the days of drawing dancing images to generate conversations are over, and I don't plan to use it as a weapon.

Originally, the form of dancing was becoming more and more advanced, and I didn't want to be a pioneer in this field, but I just tried to do something and got the result by chance. We're still obsessed with hand-drawing, which is actually low-end and backward.

Nowadays, when it comes to dance, 3D has become the mainstream, which not only can produce long dance images, but also greatly improves the accuracy. 《Lovelive！ has already given us a glimpse of a form of completion that uses dancing as a means of popularity, and I think it's very difficult to surpass it.

The production of idol animation is a war of attrition with crowd tactics, and if the dance scene is described in hand-drawn form, then it is necessary to gather many excellent artists and increase the number of paintings as much as possible. This is very calorie-consuming and risky to do. But because I've been doing it all the time in "Haruhi Suzumiya" and "Lucky Star" and "Kaminagi", that's all I can do. Even though I'm not Yasujiro Ozu, one of his words made me feel the same way: "We make tofu, so you can't make rice bowls if you ask me." ”

From the planning stage, we didn't think about competing with 3D painting or having a dance battle. In addition to this, we want to flesh out this part of the content from the perspective of idols from the perspective of storytelling. Of course, we also want the dancing image to be a highlight of the work, but we value whether the image can achieve the effect it should be reflected in the work.

In fact, in the idol industry, it doesn't mean that dancing well can sell out. The secret of AKB48's popularity with Momoiro Clover Z is not because of the technicalities of singing and dancing, but because of the stories they have. I've been saying these things for two years, and slowly, everyone has accepted it. That's why I think idol animation should do the same. I'm going to have some objections to the idea that "if you dance well, animation is good".

Q: What is the reason why the work puts a lot of ink into the otaku Kunira Ota?

Yamamoto: There are two reasons.

First of all, idols are so good because of the participation of fans. I'm an idol myself, so I take it for granted. In this case, if you want to portray an idol work, you must reflect the fans. In the concert videos of some idols, aren't there often otaku people entering the picture?

The reason why the concert is great is not only to be able to witness the idol with your own eyes, but also to connect the fans and shout slogans together, so that the idol and the fans become one. This is the way to create a zào concert is fun and a matter of course.

Since it is a concert picture, it is necessary to have fans in terms of visuals, and in terms of relevance, fans should also be in the position of getting close to idols. However, it is impossible to get a large number of fans indefinitely, so we will launch Daejeon as a representative.

Another thing is that otaku don't want to see their own faces. Some opinions point out that otaku feel that they are a disgusting being, so they don't want to appear in the picture. But I hope that everyone will not think so, be more or less proud of themselves, even if they are photographed in the picture, they must identify with their own existence and issue "This is us, do you have any opinions!" The voice came. That's what I'm looking forward to.

Therefore, how exactly Daejeon should be set has also sparked our discussion. However, if he is a handsome guy, it doesn't look like an otaku in the real dimension, so we still want him to be a "so that many otaku people can see him as if he is looking in a mirror". So his image is that of an otaku with a whirring meat. However, when we created this character, we also defined him as a pure, rational and humane character.

Therefore, Daejeon is my ideal otaku image. Although I can imagine that many people will complain that "Uncle Kuan wants to define the dead house like this", I also have to answer: "That's it! Is there anything wrong with that? Isn't it handsome! ”

Therefore, Wuger was born by substituting his own feelings into Daejeon.

WUGER is also a part of anime and is associated with anime and voice actors. This aspect also reflects the Ota style of self-denial. Compared to other fans, WUGER is very polite and proud of himself. It makes me very happy to see this bonus effect appear.

Q: Will there be a theatrical version and then a TV series......

Yamamoto: All I can say about this is: quit! (laughs)