A talk event for "Super Kaguyahime!", the original anime feature-length directorial debut by Seigo Yamashita, known for the opening credits of popular anime such as the first season of "Jujutsu Kaisen" and "Chainsaw Man," was recently held at HAL Tokyo (Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo). The film is a musical anime inspired by the classic "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter" and will be available on Netflix on January 22nd. Its rich content, including live performances in the virtual world of Tsukuyomi featuring songs by renowned Vocaloid producers like Ryo of "Supercell," powerful action scenes, and meticulous character portrayals, has garnered attention. Director Yamashita, Hechima, who designed the characters for Tsukuyomi, CG director Masaya Machida, and CG background director Tetsuya Kusama shared behind-the-scenes details of the production with the assembled students.
Regarding the release of "Super Kaguyahime!", Director Yamashita expressed his thoughts, saying, "It's our first original title, and it's a work that we really put our life on the line to create, so it's very emotional."
The film makes extensive use of CG, including in the virtual world of Tsukuyomi and in action scenes. CG director Machida commented, "My role is to adapt to the director's curveballs. There was a set schedule, but sometimes the director would ask, 'Can't we do this part in CG?' and want to change something that was originally planned to be done with hand-drawn animation into CG. Usually, we faithfully model the design specified by the director or something created by a designer, but we created the CG from the design based on the director's request, so we were able to create something that wasn't typical CG." He also said, "The director himself uses CG, so there's no excuse for that." He added, "So I would go 150% on my ideas, even to the point where the director would say it was too much. I knew I was out if he said it wasn't enough. That's the kind of passion we were working with on set."
CG background director Kusama was in charge of the cityscape of the virtual world Tsukuyomi, the live stage, look development for the battle scenes, and backgrounds, and said, "I managed to create it while responding to the director's requests." Tsukuyomi has a futuristic, Japanese-style design inspired by the streets of Kyoto, and he explained, "Many of our staff have university architecture degrees. We paid a lot of attention to that, so I think we were able to create a convincing background."
The film makes extensive use of CG backgrounds, and director Yamashita explained the reason for this, saying, "In order to depict the battle scenes on Tsukuyomi, we needed a large stage with a radius of about 2 km. If we wanted to move the camera around during action on that scale, with hand-drawn art, we would need to draw and apply textures. That would obviously be impossible from a work standpoint. So, if we created backgrounds in 3D and organized the action in a way that allowed us to move the camera as much as we wanted, we thought we could create footage like nothing anyone had ever seen before." He said that he aimed to create action that was possible only with CG backgrounds.
Director Yamashita explained that in the planning stages of "Super Kaguyahime!", he placed importance on depicting a human drama between characters and utilizing his strengths in action, but "these two things don't go together very well. There are basically very few works that manage to achieve both. I thought about what kind of setting would allow me to achieve both, and the idea of streamers and the metaverse came up." However, adding more elements and highlights was "reckless" from a production standpoint, but he explained, "The key was how to balance the animation and the overall video. I used CG and new techniques to create it."
When the conversation turned to character design, Hechima, who created the charming characters that appear in Tsukuyomi, spoke of his commitment to detail, saying, "What I focused on was coming up with ideas that were full of character without thinking about subtraction," and "I can subtract later, so I put my ideas on the table first. Since it affects the persuasiveness of the character's appeal, I designed them from the beginning without thinking about how easy they are to move." In order to make the characters persuasive, he explained, "I made the design grounded in evidence. If I combined each individual part of the costume with something that doesn't exist in this world, it would end up being silly, so I used real fashion and designs as references." Hechima said that when designing the characters' clothing, he places importance on "doing a lot of research, taking in information, and not just thinking on my own," which is how he creates persuasive character designs.
The staff took on the challenge of creating the original anime "Super Kaguyahime!", which combines various elements, with a plethora of ideas and new techniques. Director Yamashita sent a message to the students, saying, "These days, the focus is on adapting existing original works into films, which I think is a wonderful thing in itself. However, if there are people who have the ambition to create an original IP work and turn it into a good anime, I hope they will keep that feeling and hone their fangs to one day create their own title. Anime is not manga. I would be very happy if a trend were to emerge where we constantly think about what non-manga expression is and what we should do to find value in it."
