・How do you feel after 20 years?
Why did you use music from "Shotaro March" and "Space Battleship Yamato"?
"Shotaro March*" was played in the prologue scene before the opening of the TV anime "Tetsujin 28-go," which I watched as a child and which is one of my earliest memories.
So, for me, this song is the best music to play during the prologue scene before the opening.
Two songs from "Space Battleship Yamato" were also used in the prologue scene before the opening.
The prologue scene before the opening of episode 10 is especially good.
The song from "Ultraman" is a battle song, so I was allowed to use it in the episode of the compilation.
The song from "Ultraman Returns" has the image of the trailer, but we dared to use it in the prologue scene that plays before the opening.
Tsuburaya Productions kindly allowed us to use all of it.
Oh, speaking of kindness, we also used "Totoro" in the first episode.
I called Suzuki (Toshio) of Ghibli and asked for permission in order to accurately depict the story according to the original work.
I wanted to put a copyright mark in the text, but he stubbornly refused, saying that it would be not cool.
Hiramatsu directly asked Sato (Yoshiharu), the original animation director, to do the original drawings.
*Shotaro March: One of the songs used in the TV animation "Tetsujin 28-go".
Why did you choose "Polovtsian Dances"?
It has always been one of my favorite songs, and I wanted to use it if I had the chance.
I remember that I had made an early offer to Sagisu (Shiro), thinking that Kare Kano would be a good fit.
Most of the other classical pieces were selected by Hiramatsu.
The ending "Yume no Naka e" has been one of my favorite songs since I was in junior high school, and I wanted to use it if I had the chance as well.
Actually, I had one more song prepared, but for various reasons we decided not to use it, which is a pity.
The music by Sagisu was really good.
The balance of the music, both as music played in the play and as music on its own, was excellent.
There is a rich variety, and I think this is one of the pinnacles of Sagisu's music.
I like it so much that I listen to it over and over again.
It would be a shame to use Sagisu music only for Kare Kano, so I asked him to write a new song as a variation of the motif for EVANGELION:2.0 YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE.
Did you participate in only 18 episodes full of spirits?
The only participation I had was to impose the concept of visual depiction.
I asked Imaishi to create the entire film using "images taken from the original drawings" and "gekimation".
You were in the studio when the staff was copying and coloring the original drawing.
Even after I stepped back as director, I stayed at the studio and helped with various things.
The reason why I recommended to Imaishi the method of using the footage of the original drawings was because I was very impressed with them made by Kenji Horikawa (production desk), which was used in the next trailer of "Eva" episode 4, which had a strange flavor.
Normally, the film is shot on photocopy paper without coloring, but he painted it with color pencils.
This was interesting.
He was just working on it while he was waiting for the next shot, because he thought it was tasteless without color.
It was so interesting that I composed the next trailer using the footage of the original drawings.
I wanted Imaishi to recreate the fun of that primitive little technique.
I wanted to put one together in a way other than using a painted cell with a painted expression.
So I entrusted that ambition to Imaishi and others.
I thought they would probably do whatever they wanted.
In addition to that, I thought it would be even more interesting if there was also gekimation.
However, if you know from the beginning that the finished product is going to be footage of the original drawings, you take a certain amount of care and apply beautiful color pencils to the finished product.
That was a bit out of my expectations.
The momentum of the line, not the surface, was also important.
Original drawings are good because the information of the lines drawn by the animator is directly shown.
If the animation traces the lines of the original drawing with uniform lines, its goodness is diminished in any case.
How do you feel now about the "Kare Kano" of 20 years ago?
Last year, due to some circumstances, I reviewed it for the first time in a long time.
It had been about 10 years since I saw the film at the time of delivery.
It was interesting.
I thought it was well done.
So I sent an email to Hiramatsu and Imaishi to say thank you.
Is "Kare Kano" the only film you haven't seen in that long?
No, none of them are.
I don't look back at my own work when I'm done.
I only check them occasionally to confirm the technical processing.
I watched the TV series "Eva" again after it had been on the air when it was re-released on renewal DVD, and I finally thought it was interesting from an objective point of view.
What did you think when you heard that Kare Kano was going to be a Blu-ray box set?
Even though DVDs have been released twice before, and even though the video is available through video distribution services, we are once again able to release a Blu-ray box.
I think it is a good thing for the work, and I would like to thank all the fans who support it.
For various reasons, we were not able to publish the book, so I am also grateful that a 10-page booklet is enclosed in this way.
Thank you very much.
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