Up next in the My Conquest is the Sea of Stars TOWN MOOK is a collection of comments from various staff members, including character designer Okuda Matsuri and mechanical designer Naoyuki Katō.
Other translated sections of this book can be found HERE.
Eight key staff members who participated in the anime version of Legend of the Galactic Heroes: My Conquest is the Sea of Stars spoke about the planning intentions, directing methods, etc. We hope you will listen to their stories of hard work and internal affairs that only the staff can tell!
Planning: Yutaka Wada
(Tokuma Japan)
Legend of the Galactic Heroes has been published in book form by Tokuma Shoten for about five years, and with each volume, the number of readers has steadily increased, with many enthusiastic fans. For that reason, there were voices of opposition to the anime adaptation from people with strong preconceived notions about the work.
Nevertheless, we decided to make an anime adaptation because Legend of the Galactic Heroes is a wonderful novel series written with a grand and bold vision that is rare these days, and because we were impressed by Tahara-san’s passion for the project at Kitty Film. Without him, it would have been difficult to make an anime adaptation of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and it is no exaggeration to say that his driving force led to its success.
As you know, the anime boom has been going on for over 10 years since the huge success of Space Battleship Yamato, and the boom is approaching another peak. The number of fans has gone from increasing to remaining the same, and the age group is gradually getting older.
So Tahara-san and the rest of the staff thought seriously about what anime should be like in the next era. Rather than adapting popular manga into anime or popular TV anime into movies, we decided to take our time to create an anime based on a solid original work, without being bound by too many restrictions. We thought that it would be a good time to create an anime in a way that is close to the ideal that it should be.
Therefore, I would say that this Legend of the Galactic Heroes project is a proposal for a new era of anime.
As another new endeavor, we plan to continue producing the Legend of the Galactic Heroes anime as a video series, and we would also like to challenge ourselves to see how affordable we can make these releases.
Planning: Hideo Ogata
(Tokuma Shoten)
At Tokuma Shoten, we have a policy of producing one full-length film and two or three short films per year. Naturally, this leads to the question of what original work to choose as the basis, but fortunately, we are a publisher, so we have no shortage of material. However, the question is whether an original work is suitable for animation, and whether it has the power to warrant the risk of making it into an anime.
So, this year, Legend of the Galactic Heroes suddenly emerged as a candidate for an animation produced by Tokuma Shoten. This work is a full-fledged space drama, so the subject matter is suitable for a space-related anime, plus it is also a best-selling novel series. While we had our eyes on making Legend of the Galactic Heroes into an anime, Kitty Film approached us about doing so. As you know, animation production requires a huge amount of financial capital. Therefore, the Legend of the Galactic Heroes anime will be produced as a joint partnership between Kitty Film, Tokuma Shoten, and Tokuma Japan.
Thanks to you, the film was a huge success at the box office and plans for a video series are currently underway.
Since this film is centered largely around Yang and Reinhard, and the battle between the Imperial Fleet and the Alliance Fleet, I am personally looking forward to seeing the many female characters appear in the future and for the story to develop into a more human drama with some romance as well.
Character designer, animation director: Okuda Matsuri
I was in charge of character design and animation direction for Legend of the Galactic Heroes, but what I was most concerned about was the character design. The reason is that each character in the original novel has their own fanbase, and it was also made into a manga, so I personally tried to design characters in accordance with the content of the original work, without being bound by the fans’ attachment to the characters or the manga.
I think the characters that fans were most interested in were probably Yang and Reinhard, but both got the OK almost on the first try. It was actually characters like Mittermeyer and Attenborough who were the ones that we struggled with.
The most difficult thing for me as animation director was how to express the characters’ feelings. Usually in anime the characters’ movements and lines are exaggerated to a certain extent to express their feelings. However, in the case of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, I had to suppress that as much as possible and convey the characters’ feelings only through facial expressions and the like, which was a challenge.
I also thought about how I could make the difference in atmosphere between the Empire and the Alliance side clear, and tried to make the Empire side seem more theatrical, while the Alliance side seem as free as possible.
Mechanical designer: Naoyuki Katō
Since working on Space Battleship Yamato over a decade ago, I haven’t been involved in full-fledged mechanical design for an anime. So I’ve built up a lot over the years, and I have a tendency to go over the top, but I had to stop myself from going too far on certain parts this time.
The original work does not have many depictions of mecha, but Yoshiki Tanaka-san, the author, is particular about some points. For example, there is a scene where a ship is refueled, and I like that kind of thing. However, things such as the method of space travel and other aspects are quite different from what you’d realistically imagine, so I was unable to create those in my own way even if I wanted to. For instance, in the original work, they are referred to as “battleships,” so naturally there is an image of a “ship.” A ship moves forward on the sea, so the shape is inevitably fixed. However, in space, there is no up and down, left and right, front and back, so I wanted to take that into account, but if I did that, it wouldn’t look good animated. Also, for Iserlohn Fortress, I imagined the ship entering from the bow and creating ripples all around, but that was difficult to draw, so in practice, it entered as if it was gliding along the water.
In terms of the design of the battleships, since I had already illustrated them in the novel, I essentially designed the Empire side and Ishizu-kun from Studio Nue designed the Alliance side. We worked together by checking each other’s work.
I also draw illustrations for the original novels, so I tried to stay true to the image of those illustrations as much as possible. But when it came to the anime, it was difficult to handle the relative positions of things, so I had a lot of trouble with that. However, compared to illustrations, with animation, you can come up with detailed ideas for various parts, and you don’t have to clean up and finish the picture yourself, so for me it was very interesting.
Music Director: Setsuo Sasaki
My main job is as a classical music critic, so this is my first time working as a music director for a film.
Specifically, my job involves reading the original novel and script, listening to the staff, and selecting the music that best suits each scene. From the very beginning, I was told that all the music would be classical, with the main piece being “Boléro.” I think “Boléro” is certainly perfect for the battle scenes in space, a vacuum that is normally silent, and I tried my best to select the other pieces of music so that they would not be outdone by it.
The most difficult part of the song selection was the opening and ending. I wanted to find cool songs that fit the scenes, so I played a lot of songs while reciting the opening narration myself. The one that ended up being the coolest was Mahler’s “Symphony No. 3”.
Another is Nielsen’s “The Inextinguishable” symphony, which had never been performed in Japan before, and the sheet music was not available in Japan either. However, this piece was composed by Nielsen with the hope that humans are inextinguishable, even in a country exhausted by World War I, so I really wanted to use it. Then our producer Tahara-san contacted the copyright management organization for this piece overseas and borrowed the sheet music, and so the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra performed it for the first time in Japan. In addition, there is a scene where soldiers of the Imperial Army are singing in a bar where they gather, and that song is from a record I was involved in before. However, because the record company was different, I couldn’t use it as it was, so I transcribed it, listened to the German lyrics, wrote them down in katakana, and had the voice actors sing it and record it. It took a lot of work.
Another thing I struggled with was that when it comes to songs that evoke a space-like image, they tend to be from modern times. But newer songs are often subject to copyright restrictions and are difficult to use freely. That said, I didn’t compose new songs or use synthesizers, and there were plans to put out a record later, so I had to choose from relatively popular classical music.
For me, this job was very interesting, I felt good about it, and I gained a lot from it. As more works are made in the future, I will be thinking about what kind of songs would suit those scenes.
Unit Director: Akio Sakai
Although my job for this film was directing, Ishiguro-san was the main director, so I was only there to assist him. Specifically, I was in charge of some of the storyboards and key animation, and checked the layout composition and movement. Since the original work is a grand epic, I tried to convey its scale in a 60-minute time slot. Also, even though it was a space battle, the enemies and allies never met face-to-face, and the character movements were limited by the environment, so I tried to make the movements as static as possible, not dynamic, and to avoid exaggerated emotions and expressions. I also thought that keeping the character movements subdued would highlight the battle between the battleships outside.
Producer Tahara-san is very passionate about Legend of the Galactic Heroes and has many detailed requests, so it was difficult to respond to them. It was the first time I’ve had a producer check the genga. However, when creating a work such as an anime that requires a group of people, it’s very important that one person is passionate, as that can become the driving force behind the creation of a good project.
However, the original novel has passionate fans who are loyal to it, and each of them has their own preferences. So while it was rewarding to try and change for the better, even if it meant going against those preferences, it was also quite difficult not to be able to make major revisions.
Personally, I really like the character of Reinhard designed by Okuda-san. In the initial setting, the character design was like a shoujo manga, but gradually more frame elements were added, and he became more distinct from other beautiful characters, so I think he is very well designed.
Art director: Hidetoshi Kaneko
My job this time was to decide the setting and color scheme for each scene, have the background artist draw them, and then check them. However, for the mecha and mecha-related scenes, I was tasked with deciding the colors for those drawn by Katō-san of Studio Nue.
So, since I wasn’t entrusted with all the settings, I had to be careful not to conflict with Katō-san’s scenes. Also, Katō-san draws the illustrations for the original work as well, so even though you could say the illustrations and the anime backgrounds depict the same things, they are quite different in character, so that was quite difficult too.
Additionally, we had to create a huge, heavy feel for places like the Iserlohn Fortress’s command headquarters, and since there are many scenes with a dark, heavy tone overall, we paid particular attention to how we could make the unfolding of those scenes clear.
Specifically, the most difficult part was the setting of Iserlohn Fortress, and the battle scene on the planet Legnica, in terms of how to depict them. Since the surface of Iserlohn Fortress is like a sphere of water, it looks like a silver mirror ball floating in space from the outside, so we hung a model that producer Tahara-san made and brought himself in the dark to visualize it. Also, in the Legnica scene, the entire planet is made of something like clouds, so we had a lot of trouble making the airbrushed clouds look like they were moving.
Mechanical animation director: Norifumi Kiyozumi
I’ve worked on four or five collaborative projects, but this is the first time I’ve worked on a project like this. I was the mechanical animation director, but the actual work I did was mainly about how to animate the work of Katō-san, the mechanical designer. I also made some small corrections to the mecha designs, fixed any missing parts, and cleaned up the rough designs that came in. However, I only helped out a little with the designs themselves.
The novel doesn’t have many descriptions of the mecha, so I tried to maintain the original atmosphere. However, on the other hand, if you emphasize the atmosphere too much, it will lose its realism, so I was careful about that. Also, even though it’s a battle scene, it’s not like a battle between warships, but more like group combat or a skirmish, so the hardest part was figuring out how to depict that well. After all, in the original novel, when the ships are deployed, the distance between one ship and next is more than one kilometer, so it’s impossible to show that on screen due to the huge number of them, and it was a question of how to show it all in a single frame.
During this, I got the strong impression that it was a political drama centered on the story of Yang and Reinhard, but since there will be a sequel, I would like to depict aspects that were not fully shown this time, such as the movements of warships and the daily lives of soldiers.
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(Interview and editing by Tetsuo Daitoku)