{"id":1835142,"date":"2025-05-31T23:30:06","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T23:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/anime\/1835142\/"},"modified":"2025-05-31T23:30:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T23:30:06","slug":"meet-the-creators-of-madhouse-anime-madhouse-mind-probe-complete-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/anime\/1835142\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Creators of Madhouse Anime | Madhouse Mind Probe Complete Series"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\"  width=\"580\" height=\"385\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XnF3P5LQDT4\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<br \/>\nMeet the Creators of Madhouse Anime | Madhouse Mind Probe Complete Series<br \/>\n<br \/>\nHuh&#8230;wait. Who am I already? I\u2019m Masao Maruyama,<br \/>\nand I ran Madhouse ages ago. He is one of the most prolific producers in the anime industry, well-known for kickstarting the careers of many world-renowned directors&#8230; &#8230;and for founding animation studios Madhouse and MAPPA: Masao Maruyama. Let&#8217;s dive into his mind and learn more about how Madhouse&#8217;s masterpieces were created. Back then, almost nobody here<br \/>\n knew about Japanese animation. And I&#8217;d never even heard of a company<br \/>\ncalled Mushi Pro making animation. We didn\u2019t even use the word \u201canimation\u201d. But someone who knew [Osamu] Tezuka told me<br \/>\n to lend a hand at Mushi Pro, and so I did. Back then, there was only T\u014dei making<br \/>\none animated movie every three years. Tezuka suddenly announced he was going to<br \/>\nmake Astro Boy into a weekly animated TV show. Most people thought he was crazy. It seemed impossible,<br \/>\n but Tezuka did it anyway. He gave his all and opened<br \/>\n the path for everyone to follow. I think he was the driving force<br \/>\nof Japanese animation, at least on TV. In those days, animation work<br \/>\nwasn\u2019t clearly divided up like it is today. Everybody just did whatever they could do.<br \/>\nThose who could draw, drew. Those who couldn\u2019t draw wrote the story,<br \/>\nor worked as production assistants. In the most extreme cases,<br \/>\n they cleaned the place. My only strength was<br \/>\nthat I wasn\u2019t picky about work. I wasn&#8217;t qualified to do anything,<br \/>\nbut everything I could do, I did. Back then you had to take on whatever<br \/>\nyou could do, and I guess it fit my character. To be honest, Ashita no Joe wasn\u2019t<br \/>\nMushi Pro\u2019s typical animation style. It definitely wasn\u2019t the type<br \/>\nof work they wanted to make. That\u2019s why there were so few<br \/>\nMushi Pro staff working on the project. The studio\u2019s most notorious members were<br \/>\nworking on other projects. Then again, it might be<br \/>\nbecause Joe was so marginal&#8230; &#8230;that its staff worked so hard, right? After Joe, we made an anime<br \/>\ncalled Kunimatsu-sama no Ot\u014dridai. Mushi Pro went bankrupt right around that time. So we built Madhouse with the<br \/>\n  Kunimatsu-sama staff, mostly from Joe. But it\u2019s not like we formed Madhouse<br \/>\ndirectly from Joe\u2019s production either. When Mushi Pro went under,<br \/>\na company called S\u014deisha was born. Now it&#8217;s known as Sunrise. I worked as assistant to one of its founders,<br \/>\n[Yoshinori] Kishimoto, on some Wonder 3 episodes he directed. He told me about his plan to launch<br \/>\na new company if Mushi Pro went under. His studio would have producers only<br \/>\n and recruit animators for each project. So he wasn&#8217;t going to take the animators<br \/>\nand the rest of drawing staff. I wondered what would happen to the Kunimatsu staff,<br \/>\nlike [Osamu] Dezaki and [Masami] Hata. They were all going to lose their jobs. I wanted a place where I could<br \/>\nwork alongside creators like them. So, after consulting with Dezaki,<br \/>\nwe created Madhouse. Dezaki was difficult to work with,<br \/>\nbut that\u2019s what made it fun, you know? He and I, we liked to hang out,<br \/>\nand we played mahjong together a lot. As far as I recall, we had plenty more<br \/>\nprivate talks than work interactions. We mostly had pointless discussions,<br \/>\nwhat we liked, disliked&#8230; [Akio] Sugino isn\u2019t like that at all,<br \/>\n he\u2019s very work-focussed. I don&#8217;t know if he likes anything besides work! Compared to him, Dezaki and I\u2026<br \/>\nit\u2019s not like we weren\u2019t serious about work. But we liked to spend our<br \/>\nfree time doing dumb stuff. Ashita no Joe played a big part<br \/>\nin the origin story of Madhouse. And because the 1st season ended halfway<br \/>\nwith the death of Rikiishi \u2013the protagonist\u2019s rival\u2013 &#8230;some people at Madhouse wanted<br \/>\n to adapt the rest of the manga. For Dezaki and Sugino in particular,<br \/>\n Ashita no Joe was the starting point of Madhouse. And they didn\u2019t want to leave<br \/>\n the sequel to anybody else. But I just didn\u2019t want to<br \/>\nmake the Ashita no Joe sequel. I told them \u201cIf you want to make<br \/>\n Ashita no Joe 2, go ahead without me.\u201d They ended up leaving<br \/>\nto establish studio Annapuru. And I stayed at Madhouse<br \/>\nworking on other projects. I agree that Ashita no Joe 2<br \/>\n is better made than first season. The animation quality is way higher. But I still think the 1st season is more emotional. Animators who were used to Tezuka\u2019s abbreviated<br \/>\n style struggled to create something so realistic. That&#8217;s why the quality<br \/>\nof the episodes is uneven. But their attempt to do the impossible<br \/>\n resulted in incredible energy&#8230; &#8230;that flows in Dezaki\u2019s amazing directing. So, even if the animation<br \/>\nquality doesn\u2019t really compare, &#8230;the 1st season is emotionally more powerful. I thought this energy was better left unpolished. I told Dezaki to leave and take<br \/>\nthe Madhouse animators who he needed. So, our most skilled animators left for Annapuru. I was left with the remaining staff. After consulting with a few people<br \/>\nwho weren\u2019t at the studio yet, we put together the \u201c2nd generation Madhouse\u201d. [Yoshiaki] Kawajiri was working from home back then,<br \/>\nand I asked him to come help us at the studio. I told him that with Dezaki and Sugino gone,<br \/>\n we desperately needed him. Thus, the Maruyama-Kawajiri system was born. Regarding the \u201csettei\u201d (design) credit,<br \/>\nno one really knows what it means. I don\u2019t think the job actually exists. It\u2019s a convenient credit you slap on someone<br \/>\nwho\u2019s done a bit of work here and there. As far as I\u2019m concerned,<br \/>\nit\u2019s mostly related to writing. But it\u2019s not an actual position. If you look it up in the dictionary,<br \/>\nI don\u2019t think any actual job description turns up. It exists as an anime term, I guess. Sometimes things don\u2019t go as planned, right? Like, if the scriptwriter suddenly falls ill, someone has to take their place<br \/>\nso we can stay on schedule. This sort of work is almost never<br \/>\nstuff I wanted to do in the first place. Mostly Dezaki just asked me to do this or that, and I complied happily. But I don\u2019t think I was ever scriptwriter material. Harmagedon was born of Rintar\u014d\u2019s will to change<br \/>\nJapanese animation, using [Katsuhiro] \u014ctomo&#8217;s art. As for \u014ctomo, he had taken an interest in animation,<br \/>\nalthough he was in the middle of a manga serialization. I met him recently, and he talked<br \/>\nabout all the energy he had back then. He spent three days on manga,<br \/>\nand three on animation. He said &#8220;Now I have to choose one&#8221;. But he was young back then,<br \/>\nand he wanted to do both. His character design on Harmagedon<br \/>\nwas the opposite of what I wanted, though. He hadn\u2019t really drawn manga<br \/>\nabout psychic powers yet. He was more into realistic depictions<br \/>\nof war, or downtown drifters\u2026 Naturally his art wasn\u2019t \u201cpretty\u201d. But I thought that women<br \/>\n in animation had to be pretty. I asked him to make the princess Luna cuter, with bigger eyes. \u201cThat\u2019s animation\u201d, I said! We argued constantly. Although \u014ctomo is definitely great<br \/>\n at drawing boys or old men&#8230; In the end, he refused to change Luna&#8217;s design any<br \/>\nfurther, and Rintar\u014d asked me to cut him some slack. So we settled on the appearance<br \/>\n you see in the movie. After that, he continued to dabble in animation<br \/>\nand his designs improved a lot. I think the power of his art,<br \/>\nits sense of realism, went on to be a major influence for Japanese animators,<br \/>\nlike K\u014dji Morimoto or Takashi Nakamura. When Harmagedon was over,<br \/>\n\u014ctomo still wanted to work on anime for a bit. So I let him pick a short to direct in the Neo Tokyo omnibus,<br \/>\nwhich became \u201cThe Order to Stop Construction\u201d. He said that he chose it because it was<br \/>\nthe one story in there he could make. I think he picked up some confidence,<br \/>\nbecause then he wanted to direct Akira himself. We couldn\u2019t do it at Madhouse, though,<br \/>\nso Tokyo Movie, a much bigger company, took charge. Back then, the American youth<br \/>\nhad taken a liking in Japanese animation. I\u2019d say being suddenly hit with our violence-focused<br \/>\nanime caused a bit of a culture shock. They found it interesting. Some of our Madhouse staff were particularly fond<br \/>\nof this kind of things, and had made it their specialty. Kawajiri\u2019s work, like Wicked City,<br \/>\nwas especially sensational. It had heads flying and blood<br \/>\nspilling all over the place. It was a work brimming with young<br \/>\n energy and recognized as such. We were searching for new forms of expression,<br \/>\nsomething beautiful and breathtaking. This resonated with young Hollywood directors,<br \/>\nand they began to like Japanese anime. But originally, it was Hollywood live-action movies<br \/>\nthat influenced Kawajiri and Rintar\u014d. I find it interesting that there\u2019s this relationship<br \/>\nof mutual stimulus between them and us. Even now, when it comes<br \/>\n to business, I\u2019m completely useless. So, calling me a producer\u2026 I can\u2019t say I\u2019m innocent on all accounts,<br \/>\nbut I don\u2019t think it\u2019s quite right either. A producer takes care of financial<br \/>\nmatters and oversees the pipeline. But I\u2019m mostly clueless at managing money<br \/>\nand time, so I can\u2019t call myself a producer. Like, at my current Studio M2,<br \/>\nthe actual producer would be [Tar\u014d] Maki. I\u2019m only involved in the \u201cmaking things\u201d side of<br \/>\n production, so I call myself a \u201ccreative producer\u201d. It\u2019s become my selling point \u2013<br \/>\nI\u2019m all about creation, and I don\u2019t care for the rest! There wasn&#8217;t any specific &#8220;Madhouse&#8221; style. We\u2019d basically just get requests from publishers<br \/>\nor authors, and then choose what to go with. It\u2019s not like we had specific policies<br \/>\nat one or another time in the studio\u2019s life. There might be clusters of similar works in<br \/>\nMadhouse&#8217;s history, but I never paid any attention to it. I just thought \u201cWhat would work for Kawajiri?\u201d<br \/>\nor \u201c[Morio] Asaka could do this one\u201d, and picked projects accordingly. But I always hated the idea that<br \/>\na Madhouse anime &#8220;had to be&#8221; this or that. I\u2019d accept whatever request we had coming in, and I didn\u2019t have time to think about<br \/>\nwhat I wanted to do personally. The requests kept coming without<br \/>\na break, so we kept doing our best. As much as possible, I want everyone<br \/>\nto get behind the director\u2019s vision for their work. But of course, not all directors are prodigies. You also have the beginners, working<br \/>\nhard to become full-fledged directors. I can&#8217;t leave them on their own, obviously. Of all the projects I\u2019ve worked on,<br \/>\n Perfect Blue was among the hardest. And I felt like I needed to get that across. This wasn\u2019t something<br \/>\nI could do with regular animation. I was thinking it might be better to entrust it<br \/>\nto someone who wasn\u2019t an anime director. Just then, I came upon Satoshi Kon, a reputedly<br \/>\nbrilliant mangaka doing some animation work. I met him and it turned out he was eager to make<br \/>\nhis directorial debut, so I gave him Perfect Blue. In my opinion, it ended up being<br \/>\n a great and stimulating movie. Before it was even finished, we were<br \/>\n already discussing the next one&#8230; Millennium Actress turned out amazing. Even if we hadn&#8217;t recouped<br \/>\nthe costs for the previous film, or even finished the project,<br \/>\nwe were already planning the next one. There was always this challenge of making<br \/>\nsomething different, new ideas with new developments. We got along great, so we<br \/>\nnever stopped moving on together. All of his works put us in the red, though. That&#8217;s why he was always on a new<br \/>\nproject before the current one was over. But still, he wanted to continue creating, and I wanted<br \/>\n to see what he would create, so we went ahead anyway. Thinking back, it seems like he was in a hurry&#8230; He declared that since<br \/>\nwe always lost money on his films, he&#8217;d make an anime series<br \/>\nwithout wasting any resources. \u201cI\u2019ll supervise the series,<br \/>\nbut leave everything to our young directors, so it will be done in the blink of an eye!\u201d,<br \/>\nhe said. I was like, \u201cOK, let\u2019s do it!\u201d,<br \/>\nand we settled on Paranoia Agent. But he took charge of more and more stuff himself. I kept reminding him of his promise. And he&#8217;d say \u201cIf I don\u2019t do a little more,<br \/>\nit\u2019ll be too hard for the youngsters\u201d. Eventually I think he left one episode<br \/>\nto Rintar\u014d and did the rest himself\u2026 Getting tricked by Kon was a kind of routine,<br \/>\nbut one that I liked! For The Dream Machine, the original idea<br \/>\nwas to make a robot anime movie with battles. But then Kon said he wanted to do a musical&#8230; &#8230;with a red, yellow and green robot,<br \/>\n so I guess it&#8217;s still a robot anime&#8230; But he passed away, and<br \/>\nthe project came to a halt. I thought about entrusting it to someone else,<br \/>\nbut Kon had already completed some sections. Of course we had to use those parts.<br \/>\nIt was his movie, so it was only fair. But if someone else completed the movie,<br \/>\nit would no longer be Kon\u2019s work. And Kon&#8217;s work would be<br \/>\na nuisance for the new director. Eventually I abandoned this project altogether. For Kon&#8217;s sake, I decided<br \/>\nnot to make this movie. I first came upon Mamoru Hosoda watching<br \/>\n his episodes of Ojamajo Doremi Dokkaan!. I was so shocked that I called him right away. I said \u201cIf you do that on TV, the quality difference<br \/>\nwith the other episodes is too obvious! You should save that stuff for movies!\u201d To which he replied \u201cMind your own business!\u201d But it\u2019s my job to meddle<br \/>\nin other people\u2019s affairs, right? Anyway, when Kon was making Paprika,<br \/>\nI went to visit the book\u2019s author, [Yasutaka] Tsutsui. I didn\u2019t know if the movie would perform well. So I asked him to let us adapt<br \/>\njust one more popular novel of his. We settled on<br \/>\nThe Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Then, I remembered Ojamajo Doremi. You see, Hosoda\u2019s Doremi had<br \/>\n a character voiced by actress Tomoyo Harada. She also played the protagonist in Nobuhiko \u014cbayashi&#8217;s<br \/>\n live-action adaptation of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I thought that if I was to make the book<br \/>\ninto an animated movie, Hosoda was the only one I could ask. I convinced him saying \u201cIt\u2019s like<br \/>\nOjamajo Doremi but for adults!\u201d We came to an agreement and started<br \/>\nworking on The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. If not for Doremi, I probably wouldn\u2019t have asked<br \/>\nHosoda to make The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. At some point, Madhouse got too big. There were too many people<br \/>\n for me to handle by myself. So I decided to start again<br \/>\n from zero and created MAPPA. But in the span of five years, MAPPA got too big,<br \/>\nso I entrusted it to the young staff members. Manabu \u014ctsuka was just about<br \/>\nthe age I was when I founded Madhouse. So I left him the company and asked<br \/>\n him to take care of it like it was Madhouse. I established this Studio M2,<br \/>\nand I\u2019ve been here since. There\u2019s only so much energy<br \/>\none person can muster throughout their life. I\u2019d like to leave the rest to the next generation,<br \/>\nlike \u014ctsuka at MAPPA or Shintar\u014d Maruyama here at M2. I\u2019m gonna kick back and<br \/>\nenjoy the rest of my life! When Mushi Pro shut down, we gathered the Dezaki<br \/>\nsquad and made a new team called Madhouse. We were, in a way, the opposite<br \/>\nof a company making products. I can\u2019t say we always came out on top financially,<br \/>\nbut we were all about making anime. I think that\u2019s what still ties us all together. Osamu Tezuka is the reason I\u2019m here, and<br \/>\nthe reason Japanese animation itself got so far. A lot of people who got their start at Madhouse went on<br \/>\nto create their own companies and their own works. Now, they make for an important<br \/>\n part of Japanese animation. I\u2019ll be happy if they can all<br \/>\ncontinue to create interesting work. I hope to be the bad role model that helps them find their<br \/>\nown method, since that\u2019s how I see Osamu Tezuka. This concludes our interview with Madhouse founder<br \/>\nMasao Maruyama. In the next episode, we\u2019ll dive into the mind of one of<br \/>\nthe very directors he helped rise to fame, one who contributed a lot to the worldwide anime boom. Want to learn more about studio Madhouse? Make sure to subscribe to the channel<br \/>\nso you don\u2019t miss the next interviews! A place that has created legendary anime for over 50 years. A home to some of anime&#8217;s most famous creators: MADHOUSE What makes this place and the people<br \/>\nwho have been there so special? I\u2019m Yoshiaki Kawajiri, an anime director. Although I haven\u2019t really directed<br \/>\nanything in the last ten years or so&#8230; &#8230;I\u2019ll continue storyboarding anime<br \/>\n as long as offers keep coming. He is a founding member of Studio Madhouse and a director&#8230; who was on the front lines the first American anime boom with works such as Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, and Vampire Hunter D: Yoshiaki Kawajiri. While he started working on anime in the late 60s,<br \/>\nhe is still active today, storyboarding episodes on beloved shows<br \/>\nsuch as Frieren, Overlord, Sonny Boy, and Jujutsu Kaisen. Let\u2019s dive into the mind of<br \/>\nthis legendary anime director. Well, I\u2019d liked drawing ever since I was a kid. So I thought about doing something<br \/>\ndrawing-related, like becoming a mangaka. But first, I needed to get better,&#8230; &#8230;and that&#8217;s when I heard of a company<br \/>\nmaking animation, called Mushi Pro. I thought I\u2019d do my studies there,<br \/>\nand then move on to becoming a mangaka. Osamu Tezuka is god. He&#8217;s the reason the manga and<br \/>\nanime culture in Japan has come this far. Even today, nobody can rival him. There was a time when a salaryman reading<br \/>\n manga on his commute would get mocked. But today, manga is considered<br \/>\na normal hobby, not different from movies. This could never have happened if Tezuka<br \/>\nhadn\u2019t drawn such a wide range of works. As a director,<br \/>\nI wanted to make movies for adults,&#8230; &#8230;since Tezuka\u2019s own works weren\u2019t<br \/>\ntailor-made for children. They could be enjoyed by adults as well. I guess I wanted to take on<br \/>\nthat legacy myself, in a way! That&#8217;s why I tackled adult genres:<br \/>\nTezuka was doing it too. Working in animation, I started to get<br \/>\nthe appeal of movement and time. They were what made filmmaking fun. Eventually, that became more<br \/>\ninteresting to me than manga. In the beginning, basically<br \/>\nI just loved making animation move. Like, that&#8217;s what animation<br \/>\n is supposed to do, right? In this regard, I found T\u014dei movies like<br \/>\n Orochi, the Eight-Headed Dragon&#8230; &#8230;or The Little Norse Prince fascinating. I too wanted to make this kind of<br \/>\nconstantly moving animation. Osamu Dezaki\u2019s style made<br \/>\nheavy use of freeze frames. It\u2019s a really cool limited animation technique<br \/>\n that isn\u2019t found in overseas production. But whenever I saw a freeze frame in the storyboard,<br \/>\n I couldn\u2019t help but make it into moving animation. That was really reckless of me, but<br \/>\n Dezaki had a big heart, so he mostly let it slide. He\u2019d say, \u201cWell, that\u2019s good too\u201d,<br \/>\nand let me do as I wanted. I guess I just loved movement too much.<br \/>\nCouldn\u2019t be helped! When Mushi Pro was about to go under,<br \/>\na few of us gathered to establish a new studio&#8230; &#8230;a place where we could make<br \/>\n animation the way we wanted to. At the time, I was working at Mushi&#8217;s studio in Shakujii,<br \/>\nwhere we made Kunimatsu-sama no Ot\u014dridai. Basically, the Shakujii staff<br \/>\nall moved on to Madhouse. In my case, I had a lot of respect<br \/>\n for Dezaki and [Akio] Sugino. So when they invited me to join their<br \/>\nnew studio, Madhouse, I gladly accepted. Dezaki was this amazing<br \/>\nup-and-coming director, you see? I still remember the blast I felt when<br \/>\nI first watched Ashita no Joe\u2019s pilot film. As for [Masao] Maruyama, I\u2019ll admit<br \/>\n I never really understood his role in this! He was credited for settei (designs),<br \/>\nbut I have no idea what he was doing exactly. Even in the early days of Madhouse,<br \/>\nhe was actually doing settei rather than production. When Dezaki, Sugino and others left,<br \/>\nit was like half of the studio suddenly fell apart. But then Maruyama decided to start anew<br \/>\nwith fresh members, with me atop that list. That\u2019s when he became<br \/>\nthe studio\u2019s president. The first work of this new Madhouse was<br \/>\nthe anime adaptation of Natsu e no Tobira. It&#8217;s a sh\u014djo manga by Keiko Takemiya. Maruyama basically came up to me saying,<br \/>\n \u201cWe\u2019re doing this, so lend us a hand\u201d. Back when I worked at Mushi Pro, everyone was<br \/>\nsuper skilled, so there was no need for a layout system. But for Natsu e no Tobira,<br \/>\nMaruyama asked me to rework the entire film. So I drew layouts that took some liberties<br \/>\nwith director Mori Masaki\u2019s storyboard. I guess Masaki\u2019s storyboard had<br \/>\na bit of a masculine touch to it. And Maruyama wanted me to<br \/>\n bring out Takemiya\u2019s style a bit more. But then, if I only drew layouts for some parts,\u00a0<br \/>\nthe whole thing would be unbalanced. So I ended up drawing the layout and<br \/>\n first key animation of each cut of the film&#8230; alone. Wow, that\u2019s amazing! Well, I had a lot of energy back then.<br \/>\n It wasn&#8217;t that big a deal. Later, I handled the layout system<br \/>\nagain on Wicked City. On Midnight Eye Goku,&#8230; &#8230;I left the layouts to [Hiroshi] Hamasaki<br \/>\nsince we were making the movies together. But other than that, I took care of<br \/>\nthe layout system for most of my directorial work. Compared to now, the film stock<br \/>\nhad terrible sensitivity back then. Not to mention there were few<br \/>\ncolor options for painting the cells. At their best, even Ghibli probably didn&#8217;t<br \/>\nhave more than 200 to 300 colors available. Madhouse in Wicked City\u2019s<br \/>\ntime had around 40 to 50 colors. So we had to weigh our options<br \/>\ncarefully when deciding on colors. Blue is where we had the most options and it was<br \/>\nthe most visible color on film, so we used it a lot. Especially in Wicked City, where the color blue<br \/>\nconveyed the \u201cdark atmosphere\u201d of the cold city. When it comes to the lighting,I tried<br \/>\ndifferent live-action film inspired techniques,&#8230; &#8230;and some worked especially well. Effects of metal and glass, for example,<br \/>\n printed well on film, so I used them often. The original Wicked City novel had<br \/>\nrather erotic representations of demons. That kind of became its selling point. I thought about how to show<br \/>\nthis aspect in anime, and well&#8230; I was 36 at the time, you know. I wanted to make animation that<br \/>\npeople of my generation would want to watch. So I drew erotic scenes<br \/>\nthat would work as animation. I grew up watching<br \/>\n Hollywood movies and TV series. So I wanted my work to impact<br \/>\nthe people who made and watched those. All of this became Wicked City. I always made sure the setting was<br \/>\naccessible to international audiences. Even Vampire Hunter D or Ninja Scroll were accessible<br \/>\nwithout any knowledge of Japanese period drama. You could always understand<br \/>\n the plot just by watching. Vampire Hunter D was actually<br \/>\n supposed to be released in English only. So the music, sound direction and effects<br \/>\nwere handled directly by an American staff. The picture was entirely<br \/>\n produced in Japan by Madhouse. And a San Francisco-based<br \/>\nstudio took care of the sound. But we were kind of concerned by the differences<br \/>\n between Japanese and American sound effects&#8230; &#8230;and the fact that the American staff<br \/>\nweren&#8217;t used to anime. A Japanese sound director<br \/>\nended up joining the American team. But there were still some things<br \/>\nwe had to correct ourselves in Japan. When I was a kid, I loved John Sturges\u2019<br \/>\nThe Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. To me, THAT was cinema. Then I got really into<br \/>\n George Roy Hill\u2019s movies, like The Sting&#8230; &#8230;or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. When I was older, I saw the release of great stuff like<br \/>\n Blade Runner, Raiders of the Lost Ark or Mad Max. I especially love John McTiernan\u2019s<br \/>\nmovies, like Die Hard or Predator. We\u2019re the same generation,<br \/>\nhim and I, so I can relate to his works. As for Japanese period drama,<br \/>\n I\u2019m a big fan of Hideo Gosha\u2019s work. He has a very unorthodox style&#8230; &#8230;with sexy characters, men and women alike! I\u2019d recommend Bandits vs. Samurai Squadron<br \/>\nor Hunter in the Dark. Well, I am a man of pictures to the very end. So I try as much as possible<br \/>\nto handle the chara design on my works. Until Vampire Hunter D, I almost<br \/>\n always did the original chara design at least. I don\u2019t think you can fully express<br \/>\nan image through words alone. To me, the way I draw my characters<br \/>\n is key to understanding them. This way, a full-fledged character designer can look at<br \/>\n my original draft to understand my intention and refine it. As Madhouse grew bigger, new creators<br \/>\nlike [Yoshinori] Kanemori began to rise. As a result, the whole studio<br \/>\nshifted gears to doing series,&#8230; &#8230;and new projects emerged that<br \/>\nweren\u2019t related to me. Madhouse was handling more and more works<br \/>\nthat didn\u2019t really seem to fit my style, like CLAMP\u2019s. I met with CLAMP\u2019s [Nanase] \u014ckawa a lot. I think she had a lot of<br \/>\nconcerns about me at first&#8230; &#8230;probably because she knew me<br \/>\nas the director of Wicked City and stuff. But I\u2019d drawn key animation on<br \/>\nworks intended for female audiences&#8230; &#8230;not to mention Natsu e no Tobira&#8217;s layouts. So I managed without much trouble. And even though \u014ckawa and CLAMP<br \/>\nin general probably had their doubts about me,&#8230; &#8230;they mostly let me do it my way. In the end, animation is mostly<br \/>\n adaptations of pre-existing works. So my ability to handle the original work relies<br \/>\npartly on things I\u2019ve learned over the years,&#8230; &#8230;ever since working as a key animator. The director has the essential role of<br \/>\nbringing out the best of the original work. So I always made the most of<br \/>\nwhat was interesting in the original. This way, both the authors and<br \/>\nthe fans are happy. There, it doesn\u2019t make a difference<br \/>\n if the author is male or female. There are genres I\u2019m less<br \/>\ncomfortable with, though. Like, I never got any offer<br \/>\nto adapt a gag manga! So I think I\u2019d struggle with that. Oh right, I haven\u2019t talked about [Morio] Asaka yet,<br \/>\n but I think he is incredibly talented. I&#8217;ve always thought I\u2019d love to see him<br \/>\nmake an original animated movie of his own. But he\u2019s slow, you know! In fact I only joined<br \/>\nthe 2nd Cardcaptor Sakura movie. Because he came asking for my help<br \/>\nto finish the storyboard on time. On the other hand, I think his sense<br \/>\nof the delicate is absolutely unmatched. Yeah, I worked on Frieren not long ago. Also, The Gene of AI,<br \/>\nthe one on the poster over there. Actually I worked on everything on this wall! Keiichir\u014d Sait\u014d is interesting, I think.<br \/>\n He\u2019s definitely got a unique sensibility. I first noticed him on<br \/>\n[Shingo] Natsume\u2019s Sonny Boy. I found there was a kind<br \/>\nof new sensation to his work. And I wondered how he would handle<br \/>\na work such as Frieren, if he could do it, even. But he did, and brilliantly so.<br \/>\nIt turned out amazing. Madhouse occasionally takes<br \/>\nthe color of its main directors. Most recently, there is the director of<br \/>\n Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom. She brings a new color to the studio. Frieren\u2019s Sait\u014d is also of a different type. I\u2019d say the works we make here<br \/>\n reflect the style of their directors. When Madhouse was smaller,<br \/>\nroughly from Natsu e no Tobira to Goku,&#8230; &#8230;the productions revolved<br \/>\nmainly around my works. Then we started making more series. By the time I was working<br \/>\non Vampire Hunter D,&#8230; &#8230;there were so many series that even<br \/>\nI couldn&#8217;t tell what it was that we were making! I was still sort of in the loop,<br \/>\nlike someone would come to me and say,&#8230; &#8230;&#8221;Hey, this is [Mamoru] Hosoda,<br \/>\nhe\u2019s directing our new movie\u201d. But quickly, works were getting done<br \/>\nwithout me knowing anything about it. My position as main director faded<br \/>\nas the studio grew bigger&#8230; &#8230;and started making all kinds of different anime. Maruyama too wanted to gather promising<br \/>\nnew directors around a wide range of works. So a lot of directors made<br \/>\n their debut at Madhouse. [Satoshi] Kon made his first feature film at Madhouse,<br \/>\nand if I remember correctly, Hosoda as well. This place did end up kickstarting<br \/>\nplenty of directors&#8217; careers, I guess. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever properly<br \/>\ntaught anyone the ropes of animation. It\u2019s something you get<br \/>\nby watching others draw. You can learn a lot looking at key frames. Plus today, it\u2019s become easy to play videos<br \/>\non repeat or slow-motion,&#8230; &#8230;so I don&#8217;t think I have much to teach! But it\u2019s true that [Takeshi] Koike has<br \/>\ndeveloped a style close to my own. I think his visual sense is better than mine,<br \/>\n his pictures are more refined. But yeah, he might be the closest<br \/>\n there is to my way of animation. Like, if they were to make a Ninja Scroll sequel,<br \/>\nI think he\u2019d be the best choice to direct it. Oh, there\u2019s also [Tensai] Okamura, who was animator<br \/>\n on most of my movies. He always did great work. Lately he\u2019s been directing<br \/>\na My Hero Academia movie. I hope he\u2019ll continue to deliver! I can\u2019t believe Madhouse<br \/>\n is still at it after 50 years! It\u2019s amazing that we managed<br \/>\n to stay in business this long. Although I can\u2019t tell who<br \/>\npulls the strings anymore. It\u2019s a place that has seen many directors<br \/>\n grow and many works come to life. It&#8217;s even become a reference<br \/>\nfor fans overseas. In a word, Madhouse is a company<br \/>\n that has made a lot of anime! In the end, I think that\u2019s the most<br \/>\n remarkable thing about Madhouse. This concludes our interview with the legendary anime director Yoshiaki Kawajiri. In the next episode, we sit down with a director known for his extensive research and attention to detail: Sunao Katabuchi. Want to learn more about Studio Madhouse? Make sure to subscribe to the channel<br \/>\nso you don\u2019t miss the next interviews! So, we\u2019ve been told you love dinosaurs! Can you explain why? Oh, yeah! Well, it\u2019s not like I have a favorite or anything. But the simple fact that creatures<br \/>\nlike this existed is fascinating to me. I felt the same watching<br \/>\nSpielberg\u2019s Jurassic Park. Like, \u201cWow, they were really here!\u201d No human ever saw a live one, of course, But to think such gigantic<br \/>\ncreatures once roamed the Earth&#8230; It&#8217;s kind of amazing, right? A place that has created legendary anime for over 50 years. A home to some of anime&#8217;s most famous creators: MADHOUSE What makes this place and the people<br \/>\nwho have been there so special? I\u2019m Sunao Katabuchi. At Madhouse, I\u2019m mostly know for<br \/>\ndirecting Mai Mai Miracle and Black Lagoon. But this is far from the only work<br \/>\nI did under producer Masao Maruyama. Sunao Katabuchi, an anime director known for<br \/>\nthe quality of his stories and his great attention to detail. He worked alongside director Hayao Miyazaki<br \/>\non Kiki\u2019s Delivery Service at Studio Ghibli before joining Studio Madhouse<br \/>\nat the president\u2019s request, where he directed beloved works such as<br \/>\nBlack Lagoon and Mai Mai Miracle. Let\u2019s learn more about how he creates<br \/>\nsuch compelling stories! I was actually supposed to<br \/>\nmake movies at Mushi Production. But for various reasons, it didn\u2019t work out. So I joined Studio 4\u2103, which had the same<br \/>\n ambition of producing animated movies. The studio&#8217;s co-founder Eiko Tanaka was the line producer<br \/>\nwhen I worked on Kiki\u2019s Delivery Service. We\u2019d gotten along very well,<br \/>\nso I joined her at 4\u2103. There, I met K\u014dji Morimoto. Morimoto knew Katsuhiro \u014ctomo<br \/>\nfrom working on Akira. And he invited me to join the<br \/>\nproduction of \u014ctomo&#8217;s Memories at 4\u2103. So I hopped on midway for<br \/>\n the third short, Cannon Fodder. One of my jobs was providing<br \/>\ndesign material for the main cannon. Everything went through \u014ctomo, of course. Cannon Fodder is 20 minutes long,<br \/>\n but all in a single cut. And it seems I was about the only one<br \/>\n capable of handling that kind of camera work. Apparently, Tanaka had that<br \/>\nin mind from the start. Anyway, that\u2019s how I got to<br \/>\nparticipate in the production of Memories. Masao Maruyama happened to be<br \/>\n looking for me around the same time. Memories is an omnibus. 4\u2103 did the first and third short films. But Madhouse made the second film. And Maruyama was quite<br \/>\n surprised to find me there! He contacted me through a mutual<br \/>\nacquaintance and asked to talk with me. He was dealing with<br \/>\n various storyboards and scripts. He first asked if I wanted a job checking them. But I wanted to be on the<br \/>\ncreators\u2019 side of the production. So he showed me Madhouse&#8217;s projects<br \/>\nand asked, \u201cWhich one do you want in on?\u201d So I chose Azuki-chan, a show about<br \/>\nthe daily life of an elementary school girl. It was close to what I\u2019d been doing<br \/>\nuntil then, so I decided to start with this. I\u2019m not sure how I should tell<br \/>\n the tale of director Masayuki Kojima. But we worked side by side a lot on Azuki-chan. Not only that, but on several other anime series,<br \/>\nincluding Card Captor Sakura. Back then, it was a given that Kojima, Asaka,<br \/>\nor I would get the new series going. We were usually all present<br \/>\non the first three episodes. I also did a lot of storyboarding on<br \/>\n Kojima&#8217;s later series. You could say we think alike, in a way,<br \/>\nso working with him went smoothly. Back then I was also working on<br \/>\n Chibi Maruko-chan at Nippon Animation. I went to Nippon Animation in the morning,<br \/>\nMadhouse at noon and back to Nippon Animation. I must have been traveling 60 miles a day! Asaka Morio isn\u2019t very outspoken,<br \/>\nbut he has Maruyama\u2019s complete trust. Card Captor Sakura was actually supposed<br \/>\nto be the very first Madhouse-born project. Before, Madhouse only made anime as<br \/>\n a subcontractor for other companies. So this was going to be historic. It\u2019s telling that Asaka was<br \/>\nentrusted with this responsibility. It shows how much Maruyama<br \/>\nrecognized his &#8220;vitality&#8221;. Madhouse threw its all into this project. We were told not to spare<br \/>\na single animation frame. Later other companies got involved and<br \/>\n the number of frames per episode was cut back to 4,000. But at first, we were told that we<br \/>\ncould draw 8,000 frames per episode. On episode 3, I still had this leeway,<br \/>\n so I thought I\u2019d go up to 10,000 frames. But I ended up way overboard<br \/>\nwith 12,000 frames. Azuki-chan was about 4,000 frames an episode. So I took it to heart to make Sakura special. That\u2019s why there\u2019s so much movement in episode 3. Both Azuki-chan and Sakura show<br \/>\n the romance of an elementary school girl. But they\u2019re two different works, so I thought<br \/>\nI had to express this in different ways. So I showed Sakura being in love<br \/>\n in a way that I believe fit her. It might look there\u2019s a big emphasis on it,<br \/>\nbut I think that\u2019s what suits Card Captor Sakura. Back then, rather than emphasizing<br \/>\nmy own style&#8230; &#8230;I prioritized finding an approach<br \/>\n that matched the original work. For each work, I\u2019d browse through my own<br \/>\npossibilities to see what matched the work\u2019s range. Madhouse produced very different<br \/>\n types of anime at the same time. So I naturally came to realize that<br \/>\neach work called for a different approach&#8230; &#8230;and that I needed to find within<br \/>\nmyself the approach that fit best. Thanks to Madhouse, I was able<br \/>\nto develop this potential within myself. When I got my start, animation<br \/>\nwas still mostly aimed at kids. There was always an encouraging<br \/>\n message that \u201cEverything\u2019s gonna be OK\u201d. That&#8217;s because the audience<br \/>\nof children had yet to experience life. But it also meant that this<br \/>\n target audience would grow up. And for some people, life doesn\u2019t<br \/>\nturn out like they thought it would. You have to consider them as well. To me,<br \/>\nthat\u2019s exactly where Black Lagoon aims at. Rock is a disillusioned Japanese salaryman. Chang is a Hong Kong police officer<br \/>\n turned gangster. Balalaika dreamed of<br \/>\nbeing an Olympic shooter&#8230; &#8230;but had to go into the army<br \/>\nand later joined the Russian mafia. They couldn\u2019t live the life they wanted&#8230; &#8230;and come crashing into Roanapur,<br \/>\nan imaginary city in Southeast Asia. It\u2019s a city full of people who<br \/>\nnever got to be who they wanted to. Revy says of them, \u201cThey\u2019re all dead\u201d. But in truth, there are actually<br \/>\n people who live like this. I found it necessary to show<br \/>\n this sort of thing as well&#8230; &#8230;.given that the target audience<br \/>\nof anime was getting older. I originally planned to handle the series<br \/>\ncomposition and scripts for the show. Black Lagoon can take many<br \/>\n different colors depending on the episode. So Maruyama wanted to let<br \/>\ndifferent directors try it their own way. But while writing the scenario, I realized that&#8230;. &#8230;those stories were<br \/>\nin fact tightly linked together. So I figured a single director would work<br \/>\nbetter and took on that responsibility. During pre-production, Black Lagoon<br \/>\n author Rei Hiroe visited us at Madhouse. We sprawled out on sofas in a meeting room<br \/>\nthat felt like a parlor and talked about various stuff. The manga doesn&#8217;t depict much of<br \/>\nthe backgrounds, especially landscapes. I particularly needed to know what<br \/>\nkind of scenery Roanapur would have. I wanted to find out Mr. Hiroe&#8217;s ideas,<br \/>\nso we discussed this a lot. For example, it&#8217;s hard to know where the city<br \/>\nwas supposed to be without a \u201csymbol\u201d. So I suggested we add one.<br \/>\nWe discussed a symbol like the Statue of Liberty, but liberty is so frail in Roanapur. Mr. Hiroe said, \u201cSince it\u2019s in Thailand,<br \/>\nhow about a Buddha with no face?\u201d Back then, the manga<br \/>\nwas still around its 4th volume. So the manga hadn\u2019t yet featured this statue. The statue first appeared in the anime<br \/>\nand later made its way back to the manga. It became the symbol of Roanapur<br \/>\nin both the manga and anime. If I remember correctly, I went location scouting<br \/>\nsome time after we brainstormed with Mr. Hiroe. I went scouting with Maruyama. One of his hobbies is staying<br \/>\nat many different hotels. We went to Hong Kong and southern Vietnam. Then we went to Cambodia on one of Maruyama\u2019s<br \/>\nimpulses, and Hanoi in northern Vietnam. I remember in Cambodia,<br \/>\nwe bought some&#8230;not durians&#8230; We bought local fruits that<br \/>\nwe ate while walking around. I have fond memories of that trip. In the manga, Roanapur gives this<br \/>\n\u201cend of the Vietnam War\u201d kind of vibe. So I first took inspiration from Saigon. I have a friend who has done<br \/>\na lot of research on battleships. He has many foreign documents on the subject. I borrowed photo books of<br \/>\n Elco PT boats and U-Boots&#8230; &#8230;from this researcher,<br \/>\nhis name is Yoshifuru \u014ctsuka. I also know someone who has drill purpose guns. They&#8217;re real Russian guns that have<br \/>\n been altered so they can&#8217;t be fired. Another person had gear<br \/>\nto protect soldiers from&#8230; &#8230;neutron or hydrogen bomb radiation<br \/>\nin case of World War III. I tried the gear on. It felt really symbolic. I had Balalaika and her subordinates<br \/>\nwear the gear in episode 21. I tried to remind people of modern,<br \/>\neven current historical events&#8230; &#8230;like the war in Afghanistan. I wanted the anime to<br \/>\nbear the weight of this reality. Mr. Hiroe himself thought a lot<br \/>\n about the series\u2019 backbone,&#8230; &#8230;and helped flesh out elements<br \/>\nthat didn\u2019t appear in the manga. I couldn\u2019t really handle<br \/>\nBlack Lagoon all by myself. So I was looking for people<br \/>\nI could rely on to support me. Tetsur\u014d Araki turned out to be an amazing help. He handled episodes 8 through 10 really well. But then Maruyama took him<br \/>\naway to work on Death Note! It was way harder with him gone. Episode 9 was his first time<br \/>\nstoryboarding by himself on the series. So it took quite some time. I\u2019d point out where he was off<br \/>\nand go over every scene cut by cut. Explaining what needed<br \/>\ncorrections took roughly a day. Then, he\u2019d work on it for one or two days<br \/>\nand bring me a brand-new version. That\u2019s how it went for the car chase scene<br \/>\nwith Roberta in episode 9, for example. In the end, I think he really found<br \/>\nhis own approach to Black Lagoon. Animation allows us to draw<br \/>\nthings that don\u2019t actually exist. Some people take photos and<br \/>\nget pictures using only tracing. But you can draw what doesn\u2019t exist,<br \/>\nso at first I wanted to create fantasies. However, say you\u2019re talking about<br \/>\na fantasy land. You\u2019re wondering what a house is like in this land. You end up basing the design<br \/>\n on something that really exists. Then I started thinking,<br \/>\n isn\u2019t reality more interesting? I realized another possibility of animation: To draw things that once<br \/>\nexisted but were lost to time. The Mai-Mai Miracle novel states that<br \/>\n\u201cA thousand years ago, the capital of this land stood here\u201d. But it\u2019s doesn&#8217;t explain what that city was like. However, with animation, I could show it,<br \/>\nor rather, I wanted to. So I did, and I felt an amazing<br \/>\n sense of accomplishment. That\u2019s why I\u2019m currently working<br \/>\non a movie depicting the Heian era. I hope it\u2019ll bring me a new kind of satisfaction. Mai-Mai Miracle is set in Yamaguchi prefecture,<br \/>\n and I&#8217;d never been there. But unlike the fictional city of Roanapur&#8230; &#8230;there are people<br \/>\nwho live or were born in Yamaguchi. So I had to get a clear grasp<br \/>\nof what life there looked like. Except the story isn\u2019t set in<br \/>\nthe present time, but in 1955. So in order to properly recreate<br \/>\n the scenery from this time&#8230; &#8230;I did a lot of research. Specifically, that\u2019s when I<br \/>\nstarted researching the Heian period. In the original novel, Shinko\u2019s grandfather says<br \/>\n to her \u201cNow, only wheat fields stretch around here&#8230;&#8221; &#8220;&#8230;but a thousand years ago,<br \/>\nthere stood the capital of the land of Su\u014d\u201d. If it was a thousand years ago,<br \/>\nthen it was during the Heian period. So I needed to know who ruled the land<br \/>\nof Su\u014d at this time of the Heian period. As it turns out, it was Kiyohara no Motosuke,<br \/>\n the father of court lady and writer Sei Sh\u014dnagon. By chance, the house where<br \/>\nhe lived during his time in Su\u014d&#8230; &#8230;had just been exhumed when<br \/>\nwe went location scouting. You could see the holes of the six pillars. And I got a good look at the house where&#8230; &#8230;Kiyohara no Motosuke<br \/>\nand the young Sei Sh\u014dnagon lived. The head of the H\u014dfu city library in<br \/>\nYamaguchi was a dialect expert, actually. He read out every line in<br \/>\n the movie in the Yamaguchi dialect. We recorded him and<br \/>\n had the voice actors listen. He even came to the recording sessions<br \/>\nwhen he could make the time. One day he couldn&#8217;t come, but he still checked<br \/>\n the recordings and pointed out the mistakes. But the voice actor for this part wasn\u2019t available,<br \/>\n so I had to replace him in some places! This is an Edo period commentary<br \/>\non The Pillow Book. You can see the commentaries up here. In the thousand years since The Pillow Book\u2019s writing, the commentaries kind of piled up. Still today, we feel the urge<br \/>\nto write new commentaries, as if the previous ones suddenly seemed off. Pretty much everything here is commentaries. This is The Pillow Book<br \/>\nI used for research on Mai-Mai Miracle. It\u2019s full of sticky notes&#8230; They were for Kotringo to use as references<br \/>\n when writing the movie\u2019s theme song. She did end up using several words<br \/>\nstraight out the The Pillow Book in the lyrics. My projects at Madhouse were all made<br \/>\none at a time with roughly the same team. So for example [Shigeru] Fujita<br \/>\n would for sure be involved. At Madhouse, each project would only<br \/>\nget started once the current one was over. So Mai-Mai Miracle had a lot a staff just out of<br \/>\nBlack Lagoon, like Fumie Muroi or Kunio Katsuki. I entrusted them with<br \/>\ndirecting parts of Mai-Mai Miracle. Working together on the same projects is what<br \/>\nI\u2019d called the \u201cMadhouse way\u201d of production. Back then, Madhouse subcontracted<br \/>\n a lot of work to DR Movie. At some point, they too<br \/>\nstarted making their own works. Maruyama and I went to South Korea<br \/>\n to share some advice with them. We talked with them on several occasions and<br \/>\nwent to Korea to watch rushes of their productions. In a way, the people at DR are also part of<br \/>\n this \u201cMadhouse family\u201d that did everything together. Their president, Mr. Jeong, often came to visit us<br \/>\n at Madhouse, and we\u2019d grab a meal together. I was supposed to work at Madhouse<br \/>\non a project called MM9, but it was hard to make for various reasons. So in its place,<br \/>\nI suggested In This Corner of the World. This was just after Madhouse was<br \/>\nbought out by Nippon Television. So Maruyama and I left<br \/>\nthe studio and set out to establish MAPPA. If I didn\u2019t end up joining MAPPA,<br \/>\nit was actually on Maruyama\u2019s advice. At his suggestion I established my own studio, Contrail,<br \/>\nand through it work on MAPPA\u2019s projects. The Madhouse I knew is very<br \/>\ndifferent from the current one. Because back then, Maruyama was<br \/>\nat the heart of the studio\u2019s creative process. He always checked every script and storyboard,<br \/>\nand went to every recording session. In a word, he had total creative control. As for me, the trust I put in him was<br \/>\n the reason I joined Madhouse altogether. It\u2019s also why I moved on to MAPPA<br \/>\nwithout a second thought. Our interview with Sunao Katabuchi<br \/>\nhas come to an end. In our next episode, look forward to an interview with the director behind many blockbuster anime: Death Note director Tetsur\u00f4\u00a0Araki! I said, \u201cBut why?! My storyboard<br \/>\nis way funnier than the script!\u201d And Maruyama replied, \u201cIf your storyboard is<br \/>\nthis funny, then the script is THIS funny!\u201d I ended up crying at the all rush. I said, \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be like that!<br \/>\n It should look much cooler!\u201d I felt like if I were a Death Note fan,<br \/>\n I wouldn\u2019t accept this anime version. Mustering all the humanity left in me, I stopped<br \/>\nmyself and kicked some cardboard instead. Hirao came up with this great scene where<br \/>\n the movement of each boob avoids bullets.\u00a0 It was really stupid! A place that has created legendary anime for over 50 years. A home to some of anime&#8217;s most famous creators: MADHOUSE What makes this place and the people<br \/>\nwho have been there so special? I\u2019m Testur\u014d Araki, an anime director. I\u2019m mostly known for Death Note,<br \/>\n Guilty Crown, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress\u2026 &#8230;and season 1 to 3 of Attack on Titan. Before achieving unprecedented success with Attack on Titan season 1 to 3, Tetsurou Araki got his start at studio Madhouse, and first made a name for himself as the director of Death Note and Highschool of the Dead. How did he climb the ladder to world-wide fame? Let&#8217;s ask him! Madhouse is the first anime company<br \/>\nI worked for. I spent ten years there,<br \/>\nand it taught me what \u201canime\u201d is. It\u2019s a place brimming with energy and I loved it. It\u2019s filled with precious memories. When I joined Madhouse, I was assigned to the Cardcaptor Sakura team. I learned directing under [Morio] Asaka. I didn\u2019t know him before I joined Madhouse. That\u2019s when I realized<br \/>\nhow wonderful his works were. I learned a lot from him as director. Asaka\u2019s style is delicate and lyrical. And it makes for a great sense<br \/>\nof drama and high-quality layouts. He does carry on Madhouse\u2019s<br \/>\nlegacy of high-quality mature anime. But he adds his own catchy touch,<br \/>\nhis sense of cute and fun. He took the traditional techniques of Madhouse&#8230; &#8230;and translated them to accommodate<br \/>\n the taste of current anime fans. He makes high-quality work,<br \/>\nbut in a way that will please the viewers. That\u2019s the role his works came to play, I think. On Cardcaptor Sakura, Masato Takayanagi<br \/>\n worked for Asaka as a sort of assistant director. He went on to direct several<br \/>\nGalaxy Angel series. Basically, I learned directing from those two. I mean stuff like how to read<br \/>\n and fill out a timing sheet. Or, how to use a stopwatch<br \/>\nto time the dialogue. At first you don\u2019t know when to push the button. So really the most basic of basic techniques. But Asaka and Takayanagi<br \/>\nwere masters of this. So I always applied their teachings to the letter. People told me,<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019ve never seen such a clean timing sheet!\u201d All I did was use a ruler,<br \/>\nbut strangely, a lot of people didn\u2019t do that. The timing sheet conveys<br \/>\nthe intent of the director, you see. I learned that by watching Asaka work. It\u2019s not like he was telling me<br \/>\nto do things a certain way, though. For example, piles of production material<br \/>\nwere laying around in the studio. I learned a lot by going through them. I think it was episode 1 of Chobits. Asaka did the timing sheet himself. I went through the episode<br \/>\nfrom the first to the last cut. And I was surprised by what I noticed. Say the last cut is 7 seconds and is only<br \/>\ndescribed in the storyboard as a zoom out. But actually,<br \/>\nthere\u2019s a still shot at the end. Looking at the timing sheet, I\u2019d see that<br \/>\nit does end with a 2-second still shot. I looked at this stuff thoroughly. It became the foundation for<br \/>\nmy own directing methods. The basis I learned from Asaka and<br \/>\n Takayanagi still makes up 70% of my methods. The other 30% are the product of<br \/>\nmy own ingenuity. Even when I worked as a production assistant&#8230; &#8230;I was drawn to storyboarding and directing. Like, if I had to write a notice saying<br \/>\nthe parking lot was unavailable for the day. I\u2019d always try to make it funny or cool looking. People would say, \u201cWho wrote this one?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cThat\u2019s Araki, what an idiot!\u201d I did it to make people laugh. I\u2019d draw an exploding planet&#8230; &#8230;and the guy being blasted delivered<br \/>\nthe message. They must have been funny enough&#8230; &#8230;because people suggested<br \/>\nI try storyboarding. It was just small bits here and there,<br \/>\nbut that\u2019s how I got started. In the end, I managed to move on to<br \/>\nepisode direction early in my career. I was just getting started as an episode director. I didn\u2019t have the skills to improve<br \/>\n the quality of a storyboard yet. But I was in my early twenties,<br \/>\nand I knew how to make fun gags. Nowadays viewers might not find<br \/>\nthem so funny. But back then I knew neither fear nor doubt. I believed that anything I found funny,<br \/>\nthe viewers would for sure find funny too! It\u2019s important not to hesitate too much. On Galaxy Angel,<br \/>\n I liked that I was mostly left alone. I was even allowed to fail. One time I made a terrible episode,<br \/>\nnot funny, not cool, not anything. I apologized,<br \/>\nand I got away with a simple warning. It\u2019s not often you\u2019re given this many chances. I love Galaxy Angel so much because<br \/>\n it helped me mature as a director. [Masao] Maruyama\u2019s check was strict. So going through it was always a big deal. I was the type to change what was<br \/>\nwritten in the script without much care. When directing a comedy&#8230; &#8230;there are times when it\u2019s better<br \/>\nnot to follow the script exactly. But I was just plain rude to the scriptwriters. I didn\u2019t have a clue what<br \/>\nthey\u2019d decided on during the meetings. I changed stuff that everyone had approved. Now I can talk about it like this&#8230; &#8230;but back then, it pissed me off that<br \/>\n Maruyama would correct everything I did. Now, I get his point. When he didn\u2019t like the script,<br \/>\nAraki just changed everything and caused trouble. It\u2019s true, we fought all the time! I said, \u201cBut why?!&#8221; \u201cMy storyboard is way funnier than the script!\u201d And he replied, \u201cIf your storyboard is this funny,<br \/>\nthen the script is THIS funny!\u201d Like five times funnier, you know! \u201cWhy won\u2019t you just respect the script?!\u201d,<br \/>\nI asked. I told him what he found funny, I didn\u2019t. It was unconvincing and lame.<br \/>\nI made him redo everything! I was young and I hated<br \/>\nbeing always told what to do. I\u2019d try to compromise, saying<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019ll correct this, but let me do that my way\u201d. But he just wouldn\u2019t budge. He was like,<br \/>\n \u201cCome on! Just follow the script!\u201d I always said, \u201cYou don\u2019t have to follow the script<br \/>\nif you\u2019re funnier, but you\u2019re not!\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re not even on the same level.\u201d Well, he really is the one<br \/>\nI had to fight with the most! I just resented him more and more every time. He\u2019d leave post-it notes<br \/>\nwith corrections on the storyboard. Like, \u201cIs this gag necessary?\u201d Or, \u201cThis comes out of nowhere, I don\u2019t get it.\u201d Later, I worked with [Yoshiyuki] Tomino<br \/>\non Gundam: Reconguista in G. He had the same post-it note system. When I saw the notes, I got nostalgic. It had been a while! Tomino and Maruyama are the same age&#8230; &#8230;so I figured it must be a generational thing. But anyway, I was grateful for it. I started directing on comedies,<br \/>\nand it turned out to be a lot of fun. But originally, I wanted to make realistic<br \/>\nanime with a lot of cool and scary stuff. My first opportunity to do so was Gungrave&#8230; &#8230;which is a work I care deeply for,<br \/>\n it has a lot of substance. But I think my skills weren\u2019t up to the challenge. There\u2019s this thing called the \u201call rush.\u201d Everyone gathers to watch<br \/>\na completed episode. On Gungrave, I\u2019d end up<br \/>\ncrying at the all rush for my episodes. I said stuff like, \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be like that!\u201d<br \/>\n \u201cIt should look much cooler!\u201d Anyway, it was really frustrating. So I worked twice as hard on Black Lagoon after this. When I directed episode 9, the one on Roberta, I realized a lot of things. Those are lessons that<br \/>\n have stayed with me to this day. I understood that quality<br \/>\nisn\u2019t born from genius&#8230; &#8230;but from the accumulation<br \/>\nof relentless efforts by serious people. I could really feel that on Black Lagoon. Because I don\u2019t think there was a single<br \/>\n genius on the staff of this series, me included. But they were all serious<br \/>\n people doing serious work. And this effort suddenly gave birth<br \/>\nto the creature known as \u201cquality\u201d. This was an important experience for me. Wait, no, [Sunao] Katabuchi is a genius. But I\u2019m not, is why I\u2019m saying this. Maybe the last 10% of my process<br \/>\nrelies on a flash of genius. But the first 90% are just honest efforts. As I recall, Madhouse had<br \/>\na lot of anime on its plate that year. All our directors were busy. So I said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you let me direct it?\u201d Back then I didn\u2019t have the career<br \/>\nof someone you\u2019d entrust Death Note with. So the discussion ended on<br \/>\n \u201cNo way that\u2019s happening!\u201d But several weeks, maybe months later&#8230; &#8230;I was called in and asked<br \/>\n\u201cYou\u2019d really do it?\u201d I said, \u201cOf course\u201d and became the director. If someone like me ended up<br \/>\n in charge of Death Note&#8230; &#8230;it meant the Madhouse staff<br \/>\nalready had their hands full. But it was my directorial debut,<br \/>\n it wasn\u2019t going to go perfectly anyway. I thought I was bound to fail,<br \/>\nso I just dived in. The circumstances didn\u2019t matter<br \/>\nas long as I could direct the series. Plus, [Masaru] Kitao joined as<br \/>\ncharacter designer, and he\u2019s reliable. So I jumped into this without any hesitation. I\u2019d always fuss over the storyboard,<br \/>\n even if it meant messing up the schedule. That crunched the time available<br \/>\nfor animation and what came after. Each episode spent roughly<br \/>\n a month in the making. All because of me. I thought it was my role as director<br \/>\nto live up to the viewers\u2019 expectations. And I felt that, if I were a Death Note fan,<br \/>\nI wouldn\u2019t accept this anime version. And that\u2019s really important. Stuff like a messy episode,<br \/>\nor an unsatisfying picture&#8230; I just couldn\u2019t bring myself to air it this way. I\u2019d go to Kitao, the chief animation director,<br \/>\nand ask him to correct entire cuts&#8230; &#8230;or else the episode couldn\u2019t air. For the storyboard I\u2019d say, \u201cIf this scene isn\u2019t powerful, there\u2019s no point in animating it.\u201d Caring about this is normal, but there wasn\u2019t enough time in the schedule. That production deadline would be<br \/>\nunthinkable by today\u2019s standards. Everybody is shocked when<br \/>\nthey learn how tight it was. They can\u2019t believe it. Given the popularity of<br \/>\nthe Death Note manga&#8230; &#8230;you\u2019d except a carefully made anime. Nowadays, the preparation<br \/>\nwould be way more thorough. I never wanted to give<br \/>\nDeath Note a comedy tone. I always tried to make it a cool entertainment. But one day it hit me. Overdoing it actually made<br \/>\nthe whole thing really funny. So I started to lean a bit<br \/>\ninto this direction, visually speaking. You\u2019d have a serious scene, with like a murder,<br \/>\neverybody talking about important stuff&#8230; But for some reason,<br \/>\nyou\u2019d feel like bursting with laughter. At some point, I realized<br \/>\nDeath Note had moments like this. I mean the manga.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s how I felt reading it. And I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a misinterpretation.<br \/>\nIt truly made me laugh! That\u2019s where my experience<br \/>\nin comedy anime proved useful. I\u2019ve worked with [Takayuki] Hirao on my most<br \/>\n important pieces and was always happy with it. On Death Note, he directed episode 36,<br \/>\nthe second to last episode. That episode turned out really funny. I\u2019d never seen anything that was<br \/>\nso serious yet made me laugh so much. I like it to the point that I\u2019d probably<br \/>\n choose it to represent the whole series. I later worked with Hirao on<br \/>\n Highschool of the Dead, etc. He\u2019s one of my closest colleagues. As for [Kentar\u014d] Hashimoto,<br \/>\nhe was always extremely talented. He was a talented young producer<br \/>\nat Madhouse. That\u2019s probably why he<br \/>\nwas assigned Death Note. I still think very highly of him, but back then,<br \/>\n we actually fought all the time! It\u2019s the only thing I remember us doing.<br \/>\nI couldn\u2019t bear to even see his face. So Death Note was probably<br \/>\na disheartening experience for him too. Speaking to him pissed me off so much&#8230;<br \/>\nOne time, I grabbed his phone. I thought pulverizing it against<br \/>\n the wall would sure be refreshing. Mustering all the humanity left in me, I stopped myself and kicked<br \/>\nsome cardboard instead. So yeah, things got pretty heated. But looking back on it,<br \/>\nthose are actually good memories. Later, when I had trouble on some work,<br \/>\nI\u2019ve called out to him for help. I\u2019ve grown to like and respect him a lot. But at the time, we didn\u2019t get along. When I was at Madhouse, we didn\u2019t make a lot of stuff designed<br \/>\nto catch the eye of anime fans. And Maruyama wasn\u2019t<br \/>\nthrilled about this project. But I said, \u201cI\u2019ll do it!\u201d There was this great anime back then, Toradora. And I loved Masayoshi Tanaka\u2019s work on it. So when he reached out to me,<br \/>\nI didn\u2019t hesitate. We worked on Highschool of the Dead<br \/>\nas an actual duo, back to back. That\u2019s a memory I still cherish. It\u2019s not only his pictures which are great. He\u2019s also a leader for the on-site staff. He understood my intent as a director<br \/>\n and showed me better ways of achieving it. And he\u2019d always check on the animators<br \/>\n under him, sharing advice around. He\u2019s an all-rounder who excels<br \/>\nat everything, communication included. I was sure he had a big career<br \/>\nahead of him, and that didn\u2019t miss. He was something else! I took a lot of inspiration from<br \/>\nZack Snyder\u2019s Dawn of the Dead. Since I was making a zombie anime,<br \/>\nI watched a lot of zombie movies for reference. The original manga draws a lot<br \/>\nof inspiration from those as well. But in terms of action scenes<br \/>\nand sense of speed&#8230; &#8230;nothing beats Snyder\u2019s Dawn of the Dead. It became my go-to film whenever<br \/>\n I had to explain my taste in action. Like during the early meetings<br \/>\nfor Attack on Titan. It has a great color scheme and is both realistic<br \/>\nand stylish, with a great overall balance. It\u2019s one of my favorite movies. On Highschool of the Dead,<br \/>\nI used it to show how I wanted things to look. More than action, though,<br \/>\n Highschool of the Dead is about boobs. I said to the staff of every episode:<br \/>\n\u201cShow me boobs as a form of art.\u201d I also discussed it with Hirao<br \/>\nand Sayo Yamamoto. And Hirao came up with this great scene<br \/>\nwhere the movement of each boob avoids bullets.\u00a0 It was really stupid! But being able to have fun like this<br \/>\nmade the production more lively. I knew it wasn\u2019t gonna be<br \/>\nan easy work either way. So I thought a little joking<br \/>\naround would be welcome. During the action scenes,<br \/>\nI rapidly switched between short cuts. I also added some slow motion<br \/>\neffects that I held really long. The most important thing<br \/>\n to me was the overall tempo. Same for the works I directed<br \/>\nafter Highschool of the Dead. It\u2019s the thing I care the most about. It might be because at Madhouse, [Yoshiaki] Kawajiri\u2019s style seemed<br \/>\nto follow the same principles. His sense of speed,<br \/>\nwith rapid changes of pace&#8230; &#8230; is extreme compared to a regular tempo. So I tried my hand at this too. If I had a 1-second cut, which is already short, I thought, \u201cKawajiri would do it in 6 frames.\u201d This is a part of the Madhouse legacy<br \/>\n I came to love and inherit. I didn\u2019t leave because I was unhappy there. It\u2019s just that for most people in this industry,<br \/>\n the endgame is directing an original anime. And the occasions are scarce. At Madhouse, I had directed<br \/>\na few manga adaptations already. But I was beginning to wonder<br \/>\nwhen I\u2019d get my first original. That\u2019s when I met<br \/>\nTetsuya Nakatake and George Wada&#8230; &#8230;two producers from IG<br \/>\nwho left to establish Wit Studio. They reached out to me<br \/>\nwith an original anime project. It was simply good timing. I\u2019d directed three manga adaptations already. I felt like it was time to do an original. With that said, I left Madhouse. This original anime project<br \/>\nbecame Guilty Crown. I still have a chat with<br \/>\nMaruyama once in a while. We left on good terms. There are a lot of things about<br \/>\nMadhouse I only realized after leaving. I knew we made a lot of anime. But it wasn\u2019t always like that. This only dates back to the late 90s\/early 2000s. That\u2019s when I joined the studio. Compared to others, Madhouse was<br \/>\na bit reckless with this massive workload. It had its good and bad sides&#8230; &#8230;but I\u2019d say mostly good ones. Anyway, it was an exciting place to work. Our interview with Tetsurou Araki<br \/>\ncomes to an end. Did you enjoy learning more about<br \/>\nthe beginning of his career? In the next episode, we interview<br \/>\nRyousuke Nakamura, a director known for his own on studio Madhouse&#8217;s series in the 2000s, such as Monster, Nana, and Hajime no Ippo. Ryosuke Nakamura has made a name for himself in the anime industry by directing works such as Psychic Schoolwars<br \/>\nand Grimgar: Ashes and Illusions, as well as openings to many fan favorites<br \/>\nsuch as Made in Abyss and Your Lie in April. But before that,<br \/>\nhe got his start at Studio Madhouse, working on cult classics such as<br \/>\nHajime no Ippo and Monster, before making his director debut with the eerie and intriguing series Mouryou no Hako. Let&#8217;s dive into the mind of this genius! I do direction and Nakamura\u2026 Woops, messed up already! I\u2019m Nakamura, I do direction and scriptwriting. I worked at Madhouse for 10 years,<br \/>\nstarting in 1999. A place that has created legendary anime for over 50 years. A home to some of anime&#8217;s most famous creators: MADHOUSE What makes this place and the people<br \/>\nwho have been there so special? I met [Tadashi Hirayama] back at<br \/>\nour university\u2019s children literature circle. It was something we both enjoyed a lot. We basically just met and talked about<br \/>\nchildren&#8217;s literature works with each other. Since many of them were turned into animation,<br \/>\nthe subject of anime often came up. But actually, I\u2019d almost never watched anime. I only knew of stuff like Doraemon<br \/>\nor Sazae-san, that ran in the afternoon. But there, I learned about late-night shows,<br \/>\nOVAs and old anime movies. A lot of great stuff! Two works stuck with me more than the others. First was Junichi Sat\u014d&#8217;s OVA series\u00a0<br \/>\nMagic User&#8217;s Club. I didn\u2019t know what an OVA was before watching it. I was amazed that such anime<br \/>\n existed beyond what aired on TV. The second one is the very well-known Evangelion. The TV run was already over back then\u2026 So I got up to episode 20 from a video rental store. Later, I learned that episode 21<br \/>\nand onward were being remade. Part of that was in the movies. And I enjoyed the first 20 episodes so much! But I could never find episode 21<br \/>\nand beyond to rent. That\u2019s how I remember Evangelion. When I started to watch late-night anime, it felt\u2026 &#8230;a bit like &#8220;kamishibai,&#8221;<br \/>\n the traditional storytelling using illustrated boards. Evangelion is a good example:<br \/>\nthe movement is narrowed down to a few points. That felt weird at first. But the more I watched it,<br \/>\nthe more I understood this. Actually, it allowed the animation<br \/>\nto be much more expressive. There\u2019s a sense of life to this style<br \/>\n that exists because it doesn\u2019t move too much. I think that\u2019s the first thing<br \/>\n I came to enjoy about anime. I never had the intention<br \/>\n of working in anime, though. Writing was my strong suit. And I wanted to become a sports writer. But I was so confident in my skills that I thought\u2026 \u201cI can become a sports writer whenever I want!\u201d In the meantime, I\u2019d go see<br \/>\n other industries were about. Specifically: anime, movies and games. My plan was to spend about 3 years<br \/>\nin each field, learn what I could, meet people\u2026 &#8230;and then become a sports writer. But when I first saw anime<br \/>\nin production, I found it so interesting! And I still do, which is why<br \/>\n I\u2019ve stayed in this industry. Back when I got the job though, I had no idea. As a student, I had no sense of<br \/>\n what anime production was like. To think I\u2019d do it for so long! If I was going to work in anime,<br \/>\nI was aiming for director. And Hirayama, always the researcher&#8230; &#8230;said that it was easy to<br \/>\nbecome a director at Madhouse! I had my doubts,<br \/>\nbut it turned out that yeah, it was easy! But I was still in the<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019ll test this out for 3 years\u201d mindset. In the interview, I was asked<br \/>\n \u201cWhat Madhouse anime do you like?\u201d I panicked, because I hadn\u2019t researched it! I thought I\u2019d failed for sure. But apparently they were short<br \/>\non staff and all applicants got hired. And so I joined Madhouse! Our generation isn&#8217;t big<br \/>\non long careers at the same place&#8230; &#8230;and anime studios have a lot of early quitters. So they thought our number<br \/>\nwould go down&#8230; But it didn&#8217;t. There wasn&#8217;t anything to<br \/>\ndo but answer phone calls! We didn\u2019t have seats,<br \/>\nso we were wandering around the office. When the phone rang,<br \/>\nwe jumped on it! It became a game. At some point, [Takayuki] Hirao figured out&#8230; &#8230;that the light on the phone<br \/>\nflashed just before it rang. Now he\u2019s an amazing director, you know? But back then, he was the guy<br \/>\nwho figured out the phone light! Answering faster meant nothing,<br \/>\nbut we didn\u2019t have anything else to do! Back then, MASTER Keaton\u2019s<br \/>\n run was already over&#8230; &#8230;but the bonus OVAs were still in production. There was this producer on one of those. One day, he didn\u2019t show up. Just as we were wondering why&#8230; &#8230;someone opened his desk<br \/>\n drawer and found a resignation letter. And so I was put in charge in his place. It\u2019d been about 6 months<br \/>\nsince I joined the company. I was just so happy to have something to do! Everybody was like<br \/>\n \u201cNice&#8230;! So how did you get ahead?!\u201d But they all gave me a hand. Madhouse was chaotic,<br \/>\nwithout any proper training system. Which might actually be why<br \/>\nemployees managed to climb up the ladder. At least, that\u2019s how I got my first job. One of the reasons it was a great experience is&#8230; &#8230;MASTER Keaton\u00a0<br \/>\nwas still animated on cells. The shift to digital&#8230; &#8230;was a huge leap in widening<br \/>\nthe range of expression for animation. But the process of sliding cells<br \/>\non acrylic-painted backgrounds&#8230; &#8230;and shooting frame after frame,<br \/>\nwell more like 2 or 3 frames at a time. But I was lucky to see<br \/>\nanimation being made like this. I\u2019m glad I could see that. Hajime no Ippo was my first directing work. Same for slightly older staff like<br \/>\n [Mitsuyuki] Matsuhara and [Kenichi] Kawamura. The series director, [Satoshi] Nishimura,<br \/>\nentrusted a lot to us new faces. He was quite amazing,<br \/>\ntaking the time to watch over us. I think a lot of great directors got their start there. I\u2019d like to return the favor someday. He did this great thing whenever<br \/>\nan episode\u2019s first rush was done. Basically the edit was<br \/>\nmade from rough key frames. It\u2019s used for the voice actors\u2019 recording session. When Nishimura checked the rush, &#8230;he had me dub my episode,<br \/>\nand I think he did the same for others. I think he wanted to see how deeply<br \/>\nthe director understood their own episode. Nishimura said I did<br \/>\n an impassioned performance! Apparently I did a different<br \/>\nvoice for each character. Seeing this he told me,<br \/>\n \u201cI understand your vision.\u201d I probably sucked as a director,<br \/>\nbut I was delighted that he got my vision. I&#8217;d worked as a production assistant<br \/>\nand assistant episode director&#8230; &#8230;but I was interested in scriptwriting. As I said earlier, I\u2019m a curious guy&#8230; &#8230;and I wanted to see how the script gets made. Hajime no Ippo is a very<br \/>\n well-crafted work to begin with. It was a good training ground<br \/>\n for aspiring scriptwriters. That was [Masao] Maruyama&#8217;s thinking. It wasn\u2019t just me. A lot of aspiring scriptwriters<br \/>\nin production tried their hand at it. Anybody was welcome to try, really. The main writer, [Tatsuhiko] Urahata,<br \/>\ngathered a team of young scriptwriters.\u00a0 He was to scripwriters what director<br \/>\nNishimura was for episode directors. That\u2019s how I got to write<br \/>\na bunch of Ippo episodes. I&#8217;d thought scriptwriting meant<br \/>\nreproducing the original work. But I learned that it&#8217;s about<br \/>\ncreating the story arc&#8230; &#8230;and adjusting the density of the dialogue. Hajime no Ippo is<br \/>\nan amazing story to start with. Understanding why helped me<br \/>\n to improve my own writing. I\u2019m glad for this. After that, I did a lot of episode direction on&#8230; Uh, what\u2019s the name\u2026<br \/>\nHanada Sh\u014dnen-shi! The manga is great to start with. And the combo of [Masayuki] Kojima on direction<br \/>\n and [Yoshinori] Kanemori on chara-design was nuts! It\u2019s a work I came to love very much. But at first, Maruyama stopped me,<br \/>\nsaying I wasn\u2019t fit to be a director. Because I couldn\u2019t<br \/>\ndraw at all, I was terrible. For example, [Tetsur\u014d] Araki and [Takayuki] Hirao<br \/>\n had amazing drawing skills. I think Araki could\u2019ve been an animator. In contrast, I didn&#8217;t even<br \/>\nhave amateur drawing skills. You couldn\u2019t even tell<br \/>\nwhat it was I was drawing! Maruyama said it would be hard for me to become a director at Madhouse. He said, \u201cYou\u2019re good at writing.&#8221; So you should hone this skill<br \/>\nand follow in Urahata&#8217;s steps. But I refused. Directing looked fun and I wanted to try it. I&#8217;d been invited on Hanada Sh\u014dnen-shi. Maruyama said &#8220;Whatever&#8221;,<br \/>\nand I joined the production. I\u2019m a big fan of director Kojima\u2019s work. There&#8217;s a kindness to his artwork. His kindness comes across in his pictures. Just looking at his MASTER Keaton<br \/>\nstoryboard gives me tears. It\u2019s not like he\u2019s pushing for tears. He brings out emotions with a great balance. There are subtleties of the human heart<br \/>\n that don&#8217;t come across in the script. But you can feel those<br \/>\nemotions in Kojima\u2019s storyboard. I couldn\u2019t quite put it into words back then. But now that I\u2019ve matured,<br \/>\nI understand what it is. I think it\u2019s quite similar<br \/>\nto the style of Clint Eastwood. And so I kinda clung to Kojima&#8230; &#8230;without really knowing<br \/>\nwhat made his work so great! I think of him as my master. Not like we\u2019d agreed on anything like that. I just decided on my own that I\u2019d follow him. But even though he didn&#8217;t<br \/>\nclaim to be my mentor&#8230; &#8230;he did watch over me. We\u2019ve spent years working back to back, literally. I learned A LOT through that. My own directing style<br \/>\ncomes most from Kojima. Monster was already a completed story. So there was a rule not<br \/>\nto change a single line in there. We did remove some lines, but that\u2019s it. It\u2019s that good a manga. So as episode director, my job<br \/>\nwas to deliver those lines with impact. I think Maruyama, Kojima and<br \/>\n the series writer Urahata thought the same. The manga itself had<br \/>\na cinematographic quality to it. \u201cThere is no single right answer for a director\u201d. That was Kojima&#8217;s catchphrase,<br \/>\nthat I&#8217;ll take for myself here. Monster seems like you could make<br \/>\nthe animation by copy-pasting the manga panels. But it doesn&#8217;t work. That&#8217;s because it&#8217;s created as a manga,<br \/>\nwith a cinematographic nuance. It\u2019s not like a frame by frame of a film. So my role was to make sure<br \/>\nthis nuance would come across. But in using an approach born from<br \/>\nmy own reading as a director. So I had this absolute rule whenever<br \/>\n I drew the storyboard for Monster. I never made a cut that exactly<br \/>\nmatched a panel from the manga. Not that it would have been bad,<br \/>\ndirector Kojima did it and it worked great. But an inexperienced episode director<br \/>\nlike myself&#8230; &#8230;wouldn&#8217;t be able to resist the pull<br \/>\nof the original work if not for this rule. So I challenged myself to bring out<br \/>\nthe qualities of the manga on film\u2026 &#8230;without ever using<br \/>\nan image from the manga. The last episode I directed<br \/>\nis about the death of Grimmer. And I read the manga over and over again. I used the manga panels for two scenes<br \/>\n because I just couldn&#8217;t top those pictures. When Grimmer goes berserk before<br \/>\ncoming back to his senses, and when he dies. Those panels were just better<br \/>\nshots than I could\u2019ve made. Can I brag a little? The author [Naoki] Urasawa<br \/>\ntold me this was his favorite episode! I was so happy, I felt I&#8217;d<br \/>\nbeen able to convey my vision! I feel like I can tell<br \/>\nthis story more easily now. When my son was two years old&#8230; &#8230;I said I wanted to take a break<br \/>\n from work to raise him. Which surprised everyone! It felt like I was missing out<br \/>\non a time that would never come back. And the more I thought about it,<br \/>\n the more frustrating it got. I keep saying this, but it&#8217;s<br \/>\nsomething I wanted to experience! So my wife, a hospital nurse,<br \/>\nwent back to work full time. I was a stay-at-home<br \/>\n dad for about two years. A lot of people told me it\u2019d<br \/>\nbe hard to go back to work! Even Maruyama said<br \/>\n &#8220;You&#8217;re taking a leave?&#8221; &#8220;You&#8217;ll have to give up<br \/>\non becoming a director.&#8221; I answered, \u201cI&#8217;m not giving up,<br \/>\nbut I\u2019m still taking my leave!\u201d M\u014dry\u014d no Hako&#8217;s director didn\u2019t<br \/>\nget along with Maruyama and left. There wasn\u2019t much time<br \/>\n to find a replacement&#8230; &#8230;and they needed someone<br \/>\nwho knew how Madhouse worked. Some people argued<br \/>\n I was the best person. But Maruyama said I&#8217;d taken<br \/>\na leave to raise a kid&#8230; &#8230;and he wouldn\u2019t give the weight-bearing<br \/>\ndirector seat to someone like that. But despite his opposition, I got the job. When production was over,<br \/>\nhe actually praised my work. Anyway, I met with the previous director&#8230; &#8230;and some storyboards were done. And by famous guys, namely my mentor Kojima&#8230; &#8230;Hiroshi Hamasaki and [Morio] Asaka. This line-up of legends had<br \/>\nmade amazing storyboards&#8230; &#8230;and I had to figure at what to do with them. But you can\u2019t figure out M\u014dry\u014d no Hako<br \/>\nvisually just with a script. It was especially hard to handle<br \/>\nthe overall story development. So having these director-level<br \/>\nstoryboards was a huge help! I think Maruyama was behind it actually&#8230; &#8230;but it really helped me. In animation, the camera<br \/>\nsometimes breaks real-world logic. Suddenly you\u2019re on the frontier<br \/>\nbetween reality and fantasy. This borderline is ambiguous in M\u014dry\u014d no Hako,<br \/>\nwhich makes it interesting. Hamasaki, Asaka and Kojima<br \/>\nhad different approaches to this&#8230; &#8230;which gives the series a rich personality. And I was lucky to see three<br \/>\ndifferent storyboards in advance. I had more ideas to inform<br \/>\nmy own storyboard for episode 1. So, M\u014dry\u014d no Hako\u2019s high-level direction<br \/>\n stems from those three storyboarding. Also, the other episode directors<br \/>\nwere all talented senior staff. For my directorial debut,<br \/>\nI was truly blessed by fortune! Asaka\u2019s episode is the one<br \/>\nthat surprised me the most. To put it into words, it\u2019s simple and poetic. But not poetic as in soft-hearted. Poetic with a stoic feeling to it. Not many people can pull this off. It circles back to what I said<br \/>\nabout showing a world beyond reality. That\u2019s exactly the kind of feeling it creates. I directed one episode of Asaka\u2019s<br \/>\n Gunslinger Girl some time before. And I remember being amazed<br \/>\nby this \u201cstoic lyricism\u201d of his. Like there\u2019s this climax scene where it\u2019s raining,<br \/>\n and one character is pointing a gun. I thought the way the rain<br \/>\nwas falling being really cool. Seeing his storyboard for M\u014dry\u014d no Hako<br \/>\nbrought back this very feeling. Kojima\u2019s episode feels very<br \/>\n Twin Peaks to me. Oh you thought so too? Kojima loves David Lynch. I\u2019ve seen some of his works as well,<br \/>\n and his sense of the irrational\u2026 &#8230;isn\u2019t very Kojima, I think! Which isn\u2019t to say his<br \/>\nstoryboard turned out bad at all. In fact, I got to discover<br \/>\na new side of his style. CLAMP drew the original<br \/>\nchara-designs for M\u014dry\u014d no Hako. Apparently, they weren&#8217;t happy with the way chara-designer [Asako] Nishida handled them. There, I had a talk with Asaka. I&#8217;d told Maruyama that the chara-designer<br \/>\nshould decide what was right for the series. I got rather heated. But then Asaka told me: \u201cI\u2019ve worked a lot with<br \/>\n[Nanase] \u014ckawa on Cardcaptor Sakura\u201d. \u201cShe\u2019s a very reasonable person,<br \/>\nyou should trust her.\u201d Hearing this, I thought about why<br \/>\nshe wasn\u2019t satisfied with Nishida\u2019s input. What was different between<br \/>\nthe original designs and Nishida\u2019s.\u00a0 I needed to hear her detailed opinion. So I visit the house where<br \/>\nCLAMP gathered to work back then. There I heard \u014ckawa\u2019s explanation<br \/>\nfirst hand, and I understood her point. As well as the trust Asaka had in her. It wasn\u2019t so much a compromise as<br \/>\n it was a new take on M\u014dry\u014d no Hako. That&#8217;s what I talked about with Nishida. She was very understanding<br \/>\nabout making changes to her designs. And she did an amazing job<br \/>\nthat clearly has her touch. In the end, I think it turned out to be<br \/>\n a high-quality work for those involved. As a director, I couldn\u2019t be happier. For the Blue Literature Series,<br \/>\nwe each picked a classic novel\u2026 &#8230;and work with a mangaka from<br \/>\n Sh\u014dnen Jump on the original chara-designs. The project allowed us<br \/>\nto express our own sensibilities. I wanted to work with Takehiko Inoue. I wanted to do a black and white adaptation&#8230; &#8230;of Kan Kikuchi\u2019s Beyond the Pale<br \/>\n of Vengeance, but it didn\u2019t work out. Then I saw that nobody had<br \/>\npicked Run, Melos!. On chara-design was The Prince of Tennis\u2019<br \/>\n Takeshi Konomi, and it looked like fun. But, there was already a Melos anime movie,<br \/>\nwith [Hiroyuki] Okiura on chara-design. I couldn\u2019t just do it again, so I remember<br \/>\nsaying I\u2019d only do it as a story within a story. From what I\u2019ve heard, everybody<br \/>\nbut me suffered on Blue Literature. In fact Melos was supposed to release in last. But apparently [Atsuko] Ishizuka couldn&#8217;t<br \/>\nget Maruyama\u2019s approval on her segment. So the order was changed. I\u2019d thought Melos from the ground up<br \/>\n and was very attached to it. So I insisted on storyboarding both<br \/>\nepisodes and drew up the schedule accordingly. But a month before the scheduled release,<br \/>\n I was told about this change. I was sweating, we barely made it! I\u2019m very attached to M\u014dry\u014d no Hako as well. But I kind of came on board halfway. There\u2019s stuff in it I would\u2019ve changed<br \/>\nif I could\u2019ve checked everything. So I vented on Melos instead. When I look at the other Blue Literature Series<br \/>\n segments, I feel like maybe I went overboard! It\u2019s not that I wanted it to stick out,<br \/>\nit was just a very important work to me. This seems like a good occasion<br \/>\nto tell the story honestly. As an employee, there came a point<br \/>\nwhere I was told \u201cNext, you\u2019re directing this.\u201d But I refused, and<br \/>\nthis time it wasn&#8217;t gonna fly. I had a chat with Maruyama<br \/>\nabout what it meant to be a director. I don\u2019t mind helping out,<br \/>\ndirecting an episode here and there. In fact it\u2019s mostly a fun experience<br \/>\nand a good way to learn. But when it comes to directing a work,<br \/>\n I\u2019m the one who should get to decide. And I don\u2019t want to direct<br \/>\none series after an another. I told Maruyama that I wasn\u2019t that type of director,<br \/>\nand I wanted time to think about my work. But he said \u201cWhat are you saying,<br \/>\nyou\u2019re an employee here!\u201d \u201cThen I quit!\u201d<br \/>\nAnd that was it! Of the long and prestigious<br \/>\nstory of Madhouse I only know ten years. But the Madhouse I know is a chaotic place. But that\u2019s why we took on anything,<br \/>\nwith a broad-minded outlook. You need certain skills to work<br \/>\n in animation, like being able to draw! And I joined knowing none of those! I get worked up during interviews and talk a lot,<br \/>\n but I\u2019m actually pretty clueless! I&#8217;m often on a completely different<br \/>\ntempo from everybody else! Anyway, I probably didn\u2019t look<br \/>\nlike I\u2019d fit in the anime industry. And yet the people at Madhouse thought<br \/>\nI was interesting, that I could make good work. They took me in. There, I made irreplaceable friends. And I learned a lot through my work. I have nothing but gratitude for Madhouse. The ten years I spent<br \/>\nat Madhouse were truly wonderful. It was kind of a miracle really! A lot of staff from my generation grew into directors,<br \/>\nso I\u2019m often asked how we were developed. But I have to answer that there<br \/>\nwasn\u2019t anyone to formally teach us. And I go on with racing to the phone stories! In the end, there\u2019s more to maturing<br \/>\n than a proper training system. That\u2019s what I realized working there.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s the Madhouse I know. Our interview with Ryosuke Nakamura<br \/>\ncomes to an end. In the next episode, we highlight a very successful director who conquered the hearts of fans&#8230; &#8230;with anime such as No Game No Life and<br \/>\nA Place Further Than The Universe: Atsuko Ishizuka. I\u2019m an illustrator to the core&#8230; &#8230;and I wasn\u2019t so familiar with the animation system.<br \/>\nI just thought, \u201cThis is beautiful, let\u2019s go with it\u201d&#8230; And suddenly I was breaking the rules. I dared to say Sakurasou was my favorite,<br \/>\nand the higher-ups encouraged me to try it out. Even though they had projects<br \/>\n they wanted me to work on! Madhouse is amazing, right? Nana was made in such a rush,<br \/>\nI had no time to sleep or eat. I lost \u201cnana\u201d (seven) kilos during Nana. That only works in Japanese\u2026<br \/>\nI hope you can translate it! A place that has created legendary anime for over 50 years. A home to some of anime&#8217;s most famous creators: MADHOUSE What makes this place and the people<br \/>\nwho have been there so special? I\u2019m Atsuko Ishizuka from Madhouse. Overseas fans might know me from No Game,<br \/>\nNo Life or A Place Further Than the Universe. Recently, I directed the original movie<br \/>\n Goodbye, Don Glees! An art university graduate, Atsuko Ishizuka<br \/>\nfirst worked on independent animation, before quickly joining studio Madhouse,<br \/>\nwhere she remains to this day. There, she learned the ropes as<br \/>\nassistant director on Nana, and attained world-wide success directing<br \/>\nhit anime\u00a0No Game No Life&#8230; &#8230;and\u00a0A Place Further Than the Universe. For this episode, we hear the story of one of the most beloved directors of today&#8217;s Madhouse. I used to make independent animation,<br \/>\nbut I didn\u2019t start because I liked anime. In college I had no direction for my life,<br \/>\nso I was looking hard for something. I just happened to get my hands on a computer. Since I studied art, I was good at drawing. And I liked to write and draw stories,<br \/>\nplus I\u2019d always been into music. So combining all of this together,<br \/>\nanimation felt like the way to go. But I didn\u2019t know the first thing about animation&#8230; &#8230;or that you could make it on your own.<br \/>\nTo me, anime meant TV stuff like Doraemon or Sazae-san. So I started looking for a company<br \/>\n that made those kinds of works. I didn\u2019t see myself as an auteur. I just thought, with my skills&#8230; &#8230;I might be able to make TV anime. When I joined the industry, others may have seen me as having a strong personal style. But I never thought of myself that way. But I knew I\u2019d had a different<br \/>\nintroduction to anime from most. Actually, I\u2019ve only known the digital<br \/>\n animation pipeline, including coloring. When I joined Madhouse, the cells<br \/>\nand papers they used to work on&#8230; &#8230;were already on shelves collecting dust. I\u2019m the first generation of<br \/>\nwhat you\u2019d call &#8220;digital natives\u201d. Back then,<br \/>\ndigital coloring was already normalized. But the compositing would<br \/>\n always have this digital sheen to it. I feel like we were still at the stage of figuring out&#8230; &#8230;how to properly blend digital<br \/>\npaint and analog backgrounds. I didn\u2019t know the first thing about animation. I did a lot of research when<br \/>\nI started looking for a job in the industry. My favorite anime was Doraemon,<br \/>\nor rather, the only one I knew. But I didn\u2019t know if I\u2019d be able<br \/>\n to make the stuff I liked right away. So that intimidated me. I didn\u2019t even fully realize that Doraemon<br \/>\nwas a \u201cwork\u201d made by actual people. I took anime for granted,<br \/>\nlike it was just here for me to enjoy. Few people watching anime are<br \/>\naware of the tremendous efforts behind it. I was the same&#8230; So I started looking up the staff<br \/>\n behind the anime I\u2019d enjoyed. And it just so happened that<br \/>\nMadhouse had made a few of them. I don\u2019t remember precisely&#8230; &#8230;but there was a lot of stuff like<br \/>\n Yawara! that I recalled enjoying as a kid. Madhouse looked like a studio that<br \/>\n made anime for all ages and tastes. It gave me the impression<br \/>\n of a studio with a flexible identity&#8230; &#8230;where I could work on anime that fit me. When I joined, I realized Madhouse<br \/>\nactually had a VERY strong and unique identity! I didn\u2019t watch anime as a hobby. I watched as much as I could to learn. I wasn\u2019t going to make it in the industry<br \/>\nwithout any knowledge of anime. So whenever I had time,I studied the classics. I watched a lot of [Osamu] Dezaki\u2019s work. As a prospective Madhouse director&#8230; &#8230;it was essential to understand<br \/>\nanimation techniques from the cell era. So I watched stuff like Treasure Island,<br \/>\nwhich was super cool. I started to learn the industry lingo<br \/>\n by watching old anime. I picked up how to tell stories<br \/>\n and draw storyboards. Madhouse or not&#8230; &#8230;I liked to watch masterpieces<br \/>\nnot as a consumer, but as a student. I watched a bunch of anime like this,<br \/>\nonly to study their style. The first thing I noticed when<br \/>\nI joined is how energetic Madhouse is. It\u2019s the only studio I know,<br \/>\nso I don\u2019t have anything to compare it to. Don\u2019t misinterpret this,<br \/>\nbut the people here are like children. They\u2019re straight-forward, single-minded,<br \/>\nand love making anime a bit too much. Even when everyone\u2019s tired<br \/>\nand sleeping at the office, they still enjoy it. Creating can be excruciatingly hard. But when all is done,<br \/>\nyou can tell they\u2019re happy they did it. That\u2019s what I mean by \u201cenergetic\u201d. The number of women working at Madhouse<br \/>\nwas finally on the rise when I joined. There were already many women<br \/>\n in coloring and in-betweening. But far fewer were working in production. Almost half the new hires in my year,<br \/>\nabout 40% actually, were women. The number of women started<br \/>\nincreasing 1 or 2 years before I joined. This might make me sound like a loner,<br \/>\nbut I don\u2019t hang out much with colleagues. I\u2019m too focused on my own stuff! I dove head-first into this world filled with talented staff,<br \/>\nwithout knowing the first thing about it. Despite being a complete amateur,<br \/>\nI immediately made the Tsuki no Waltz MV. So I had no time to look around. Of course I didn&#8217;t know what to do,<br \/>\nand I asked a lot of people for help. Mostly senior, more experienced directors. They taught me a lot,<br \/>\nand they still look out for me today. I was sure I wouldn&#8217;t be allowed to accept an offer<br \/>\nfrom NHK, so I turned down Tsuki no Waltz. But NHK insisted on talking<br \/>\n it over with Madhouse directly. Surprisingly, the producer I was working with<br \/>\nfound it amusing and greenlit the project! We\u2019re a company,<br \/>\nso we have to make money. But he just kinda went,<br \/>\n\u201cWho cares, let\u2019s do it!\u201d I think that\u2019s really amazing. Of course, it\u2019s not like I drew<br \/>\n all of Tsuki no Waltz myself. A lot of veteran animators I was<br \/>\nworking with on Monster joined in. That included the great [Yoshinori] Kanemori,<br \/>\nwho\u2019s been there to help me since. It might look like a solo project&#8230; But far from it! It has some tremendous animation. Kanemori was the first animator<br \/>\nto take me under his wing when I joined. He\u2019s a bit of a father figure to me. I ran to him with questions,<br \/>\nlike \u201cDaaad, I don\u2019t understand this!\u201d His daughter is about my age, actually. So that made me kind of<br \/>\na &#8220;work daughter&#8221; for him to look after. He taught me everything. On the Blue Literature Series&#8230; &#8230;I knew [Masao] Maruyama<br \/>\nexpected a lot from me. I was worried about disappointing him<br \/>\nwith my storyboard, especially the action scenes. I went to Kanemori for advice<br \/>\nlike a kid asking their dad to rescue them! I had the Monster manga at home. My two older brothers had lots of manga<br \/>\n that overflowed into my room. I\u2019d read it back then, but without<br \/>\n really taking the time to appreciate it. To me it was a sort of<br \/>\ncult classic everybody knew of. I joined the industry as a complete amateur,<br \/>\nand the first director I met was [Masayuki] Kojima. Directors are responsible for<br \/>\nmost judgment calls and decisions. So I figured they were people with strong opinions. To put it bluntly,<br \/>\nI thought they were pretty selfish. \u201cArtist\u201d types with strong individuality,<br \/>\nwho never listen to others\u2019 opinions&#8230; But working on Monster,<br \/>\n I witnessed Kojima\u2019s directing style. Actually, it wasn\u2019t so much technical desk work. Rather, he made sure everything ran smoothly,<br \/>\nand then put it all together. That\u2019s the kind of director<br \/>\nI saw when I looked at him. He is really balanced as a director. He has a clear picture of what he wants to do,<br \/>\nbut still listens to his staff. Instead of finding faults in people,<br \/>\nhe draws out their potential. Same goes for [Morio] Asaka. He has an incredibly personal sensibility,<br \/>\nbut he believes in his staff. Watching those directors at work<br \/>\ninspired me to be like them. And that is still my goal today. I first worked with Asaka on Nana. We were absolutely swamped back then. Madhouse ran a ton of anime at the same time. And production volume was<br \/>\nincreasing at other studios as well. Everybody was busier than ever. So there\u2019s a lot I didn\u2019t<br \/>\nhave a chance to ask Asaka. He couldn\u2019t afford to be teaching younger staff. So I observed him as thoroughly as I could. Nana was made in such a rush,<br \/>\nI had no time to sleep or eat. I lost \u201cnana\u201d (seven) kilos during Nana. That only works in Japanese\u2026<br \/>\nI hope you can translate it! I was so busy I couldn\u2019t go home,<br \/>\n the work never seemed to end. I was still fairly new,<br \/>\nso I had to learn a lot on the spot. Everyone was drowning in work,<br \/>\nand I ran around helping wherever I could. If Asaka was in a tough spot,<br \/>\nI jumped in to assist him. I was young, so I pushed my body to the limit. I helped direct the entire series,<br \/>\nepisode by episode. Since I was involved in all aspects of the series,<br \/>\n I was credited as assistant director. It was in appreciation for my support. It wasn\u2019t supposed to be my role at all. But since I stuck my nose everywhere,<br \/>\n I was bumped up to assistant director! Back when I\u2019d just joined Madhouse<br \/>\nand didn\u2019t know anybody\u2019s name&#8230; &#8230;I was summoned to<br \/>\ndinner with [Satoshi] Kon. I was a newbie oddity,<br \/>\nso I guess he wanted to meet me. I was aware of his work,<br \/>\nof course, but I\u2019d never talked to him. Plus I didn\u2019t know anything about<br \/>\nanime or the philosophy of making one. And here I was, sitting in front of Kon! He asked me stuff like,<br \/>\n \u201cWhat works do you like?\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s your vision?\u201d I couldn\u2019t answer, so I tried<br \/>\ncoming up with clever things to say. I started talking about an author I knew<br \/>\nhe liked, saying I\u2019d read them too. He asked for my thoughts, but I had nothing<br \/>\ndeep to say and I went with \u201cIt was interesting\u201d! He seemed really disappointed,<br \/>\nand he told me we\u2019d never work together! We left on that note. But 1 or 2 years later I got a chance<br \/>\n to talk with him at Madhouse. He said he was rooting for me<br \/>\n and made a friendly gesture. I felt like he\u2019d accepted me,<br \/>\nwhich made me really happy. He was intimidating at first,<br \/>\nbut then I saw him working at the studio. I realized he had a sincere<br \/>\n love for making anime. I wasn&#8217;t casually greeting him in the morning. But I didn\u2019t find him scary.<br \/>\nHe did look a bit frightening, though. At the time, light novels were trending in Japan. Madhouse hadn&#8217;t really tackled<br \/>\nthe otaku-core late night anime genre. More and more staff wanted to give it a try. Coincidentally, the company<br \/>\nwanted me to start directing a series. We decided I\u2019d try my hand at a light novel<br \/>\n adaptation, and several candidates emerged. People came to me with different propositions. Just then, a J. C. Staff producer<br \/>\ncontacted me with an adaptation project. So I had to choose between<br \/>\nthe novels Madhouse had on the table&#8230; &#8230;and J. C.\u2019s project,<br \/>\nThe Pet Girl of Sakurasou. I dared to say Sakurasou was my favorite,<br \/>\nand the higher-ups encouraged me to try it out. Even though they had projects<br \/>\n they wanted me to work on! Madhouse is amazing, right? I\u2019d hardly read any light novels,<br \/>\nonly bits of Slayers. So I read and compared them. As someone unfamiliar with light novels&#8230; &#8230;Sakurasou felt way more familiar<br \/>\nthan isekai and fantasy battle stories. For starters, it took place in the real world. And I was a former art school student myself. That narrative about youngsters<br \/>\n dealing with creation hit close to home. I loved the writing style as well. I figured if I was to direct the adaptation,<br \/>\n I should go with the work I related to most. It\u2019s not like I brought Rintar\u014d along, though. I was facing a new workplace and people,<br \/>\nworking with a different method. For the ending&#8230; &#8230;I thought an author-type who could handle<br \/>\n storyboarding would be welcome. At which point Madhouse<br \/>\ntold me Rintar\u014d was available. So they went to ask him, and he said yes! It was unbelievable timing. Without him to take charge of the ending,<br \/>\nI think I would\u2019ve been in trouble. I love Rintar\u014d\u2019s style. I wouldn\u2019t say it influenced me<br \/>\nin a way that made me want to imitate him. But I think we\u2019re on a similar wavelength. It\u2019s presumptuous, but I\u2019d say<br \/>\n his sense of fantasy is pretty close to mine. We probably like to make<br \/>\nthe same kind of compositions. On Sakurasou and No Game, No Life,<br \/>\nI didn\u2019t have a specific awareness of the strong colors. They\u2019re light novels, so I already had illustrations to work from. I found them really beautiful<br \/>\n so I tried to recreate the color pattern. Color schemes are systematized in Japanimation. So obviously there are rules and trends. But I ignored them, since I didn&#8217;t know them! At first there was some resistance<br \/>\nfrom the coloring department. My coloring scheme was<br \/>\ntricky to balance and broke all the rules. So I had a hard time convincing my staff. At first I wasn\u2019t sure what to do,<br \/>\nand I caused a huge hassle over this. But I just didn\u2019t know how this stuff worked!<br \/>\nI liked the illustration colors. I\u2019m an illustrator to the core&#8230; &#8230;and I wasn\u2019t so familiar<br \/>\nwith the animation system. I just thought, \u201cThis is beautiful, let\u2019s go with it\u201d&#8230; And suddenly I was breaking the rules. I gave my staff a lot of headaches. I wasn\u2019t doing all this irregular stuff on purpose. It\u2019s just that I didn\u2019t know the formula<br \/>\n for regular animation, I think. I started to realize this when I worked on<br \/>\n A Place Further Than the Universe. It wasn\u2019t an anime for people who love anime. Rather, it was for parents and kids who like<br \/>\n to watch movies or documentaries together. Since I finally had a shot at human drama,<br \/>\n I didn\u2019t want to fall back on anime visual tropes. I wanted it to feel like a live-action<br \/>\n movie shot with actual cameras. So I decided to drop all anime visual tropes<br \/>\n and direct as if it were a movie. And I threw in symbolic shots<br \/>\nto challenge the viewers. This time, I actually had a clear style in mind. I think it all started when I was working on<br \/>\n No Game, No Life, or maybe the movie. Anyway, the script had just been completed. We hadn&#8217;t actually started the production,<br \/>\n but the team went out to dinner together. I was with the scriptwriter and<br \/>\n Kadokawa producer. The discussion shifted to my next project. I was far from done on my current work,<br \/>\nbut we started talking about a future series. I said, \u201cNext, I\u2019ll make something about<br \/>\n a school club, with a female lead\u201d. And they seemed to approve. That\u2019s how A Place Further Than<br \/>\n the Universe was born, over dinner! For real! Normally, you\u2019d have a project proposal<br \/>\n passed around within Madhouse. Ideas are solicited from employees&#8230; &#8230;and then discussed with the prospective<br \/>\nmakers and the production committee. In my case, we just came up<br \/>\nwith the proposal over dinner. Since I\u2019m an employee, I\u2019m asked to use<br \/>\nstaff selected by Madhouse if possible. It\u2019s my job to adjust to<br \/>\nmy staff\u2019s schedules and routines&#8230; &#8230;although for most people the pace stays<br \/>\nthe same regardless of the project. But say you have a director with<br \/>\na specific style that requires unusual skills. In that case, the company may call in<br \/>\nanimators who they know can handle the job. Also, if the director really wants,<br \/>\n let\u2019s say a specific chara-designer&#8230; &#8230;and they whine enough about it,<br \/>\nthe company might give in. On A Place Further than the Universe,<br \/>\nI worked with scriptwriter Jukki Hanada&#8230;. &#8230;because I loved what he did on No Game, No Life.<br \/>\nI wanted to work with Hanada again. And it so happened he really wanted<br \/>\n to work on an original anime. That\u2019s how we ended up at the dinner talking<br \/>\n about making an original anime together. We thought a lot about<br \/>\nwhat the two of us could do. We quickly settled on female leads,<br \/>\n the kind you\u2019d want to root for. In a way, this project was born because<br \/>\n I went to a dinner with Hanada. I told you earlier about wanting to make<br \/>\nA Place Further Than the Universe look like a movie. I wondered about making it as an actual movie. I\u2019ve never really been into animation TV series. So I actually feel closer to the movie format. I was dining with the Kadokawa producer again,<br \/>\n and he said, \u201cShall we make another, then?\u201d And that\u2019s how Goodbye, Don Glees! was born. To me, Madhouse is where I belong.<br \/>\nSo, Madhouse is My House! It\u2019s such a comfy place. But it\u2019s why I can\u2019t let<br \/>\nmyself depend on it, you know? If I got complacent, I\u2019d be<br \/>\nunable to pursue my own way. Fortunately, Madhouse is an environment that<br \/>\n allows me to challenge myself with original works. At the moment, I need to think hard<br \/>\nabout the kind of work I\u2019ll make next. So for now, I\u2019ll take advantage of this<br \/>\ncomfortable environment to focus on the future. Probably my own personality is at fault&#8230; &#8230;but I don\u2019t like to think about my surroundings. Stuff like invoices, taxes,<br \/>\nmy day-to-day schedule\u2026 I just can\u2019t do it. Whenever I\u2019m making something,<br \/>\nI don\u2019t want to be doing anything else. I\u2019m the type who can\u2019t tell<br \/>\nwhat day of what month it is. So there\u2019s no way<br \/>\nI could survive as a freelancer! Plus, I\u2019ve been at Madhouse for a while now. It\u2019s a wonderful place filled with<br \/>\n the people who helped me grow. I don\u2019t have any desire to set out<br \/>\n and make a name for myself. A place like Madhouse where<br \/>\n I can be fully focused on my work&#8230; It&#8217;s the perfect fit for me. Our interview with Atsuko Ishizuka<br \/>\ncomes to an end. This marks the end of the first season of Madhouse Mind Probe. What was your favorite episode? What would you like to see next? Tell us in the comments! Don&#8217;t forget to like and subscribe<br \/>\nto help the channel grow&#8230; &#8230;and do not miss upcoming videos.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nEver wondered what goes into the production of your favorite Japanese anime? Join us for a series of exclusive interviews as we pull back the curtain on Studio Madhouse, the animators of popular works such as &#8220;Cardcaptor Sakura,&#8221; &#8220;Death Note,&#8221; and &#8220;One-Punch Man!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Full Madhouse Series Playlist<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Madhouse Mind Probe Series\" width=\"770\" height=\"433\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/videoseries?list=PLPQjCKqZf_CT6L0kczj8s5kv6bZqLW2B1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ep#1: Masao Maruyama<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Anime Living Legend: Masao Maruyama Interview | Madhouse Mind Probe #01\" width=\"770\" height=\"433\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4Hdi-bv-dt4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ep#2: Yoshiaki Kawajiri<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"This director changed anime: Yoshiaki Kawajiri Interview | Madhouse Mind Probe #02\" width=\"770\" height=\"433\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2KpbbfVzGjI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ep#3: Sunao Katabuchi<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Devil in the Details: Sunao Katabuchi Interview | Madhouse Mind Probe #03\" width=\"770\" height=\"433\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mBvaMKY-xOQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ep#4: Tetsur\u014d Araki<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"This Director Never Catches An L: Tetsur\u014d Araki Interview | Madhouse Mind Probe #04\" width=\"770\" height=\"433\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BCSva9VI3MQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ep#5: Ry\u014dsuke Nakamura<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Made In Madhouse: Ry\u014dsuke Nakamura Interview | Madhouse Mind Probe #05\" width=\"770\" height=\"433\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-XL1ZwfnPeY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ep#6: Atsuko Ishizuka<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"No Anime, No Life: Atsuko Ishizuka Interview | Madhouse Mind Probe #06\" width=\"770\" height=\"433\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uZIREbGtm1U?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>FRAMEN Website Here!<br \/>\nhttps:\/\/framen.jp<\/p>\n<p>fullfrontal.moe Website Here!<br \/>\nhttps:\/\/fullfrontal.moe\/<\/p>\n<p>Timestamps<br \/>\n00:00 Masao Maruyama<br \/>\n26:18 Yoshiaki Kawajiri<br \/>\n52:42 Sunao Katabuchi<br \/>\n1:18:41 Tetsuro Araki<br \/>\n1:46:49 Ryosuke Nakamura<br \/>\n2:21:10 Atsuko Ishizuka<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meet the Creators of Madhouse Anime | Madhouse Mind Probe Complete Series Huh&#8230;wait. Who am I already? I\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1835143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[593413],"tags":[922341,922342,922343,656353,135,318826,946733,211928,755,111568,1493,26563,946734,2836,6112,4240,388,9,682584,30213],"class_list":{"0":"post-1835142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-2025-winter","8":"tag-2025-winter","9":"tag-2025-winter-anime","10":"tag-922343","11":"tag-animation-studio","12":"tag-anime","13":"tag-anime-industry","14":"tag-anime-interview","15":"tag-anime-production","16":"tag-death-note","17":"tag-interview","18":"tag-japan","19":"tag-japanese-animation","20":"tag-japanese-animation-studio","21":"tag-madhouse","22":"tag-mappa","23":"tag-no-game-no-life","24":"tag-otaku","25":"tag-9","26":"tag-682584","27":"tag-30213"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/wakoka.com\/@anime\/114605870781335054","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/anime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1835142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/anime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/anime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/anime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/anime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1835142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/anime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1835142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/anime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1835143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/anime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1835142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/anime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1835142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/anime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1835142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}