Interview with Yoh Yoshinari, Director of Little Witch Academia: Magic Parade

In 2013, "Little Witch Academia," an original anime planned for the Agency for Cultural Affairs' animator training project "Anime Mirai," was received with great acclaim by fans. The film's director, Yoh Yoshinari, is an animator whose work on "Neon Genesis Evangelion" has won him acclaim from fans and top creators alike. With Yoshinari at the helm, the film is not only of high visual quality, but is also a universal magical girl work that both adults and children can enjoy.

In the same year, a plan for a sequel was announced, and a crowdfunding method was adopted to raise funds online from fans around the world, which quickly became a hot topic. What kind of work is "Little Witch Academia: Magic Parade"? When we interviewed Director Yoshinari, he explained that his approach to creating works as a creator and the relationship between fans and his works are strongly expressed in his work.

Motivation as a creator is superimposed on the characters in the film.

─ This film was produced through crowd-funding, which is still rare in Japan. What do you think was the reason why you were able to gather support from all over the world?

Yoshinari: There are many fans of Japanese animation around the world, and I think they have always wanted to contribute to Japanese animation in some way. I think it was under such circumstances that we happened to be the first to call out for this kind of project, and many people responded and flocked to the event. The other day, I visited an event called "Anime Expo" in Los Angeles, and they were very positive and eager to have fun, and they were very pleased. You shouldn't take it too seriously that we are winning because of this situation (laughs). When asked about other popular works, the titles mentioned were almost the same as the latest Japanese productions. They like works that have a Japanese anime feel, and if Japanese people try to appeal to foreign audiences in a strange way, they will probably be out of sync. I think that is the difficulty.

─ ─ What did you aim for in this work?

Yoshinari: This is true for domestic fans as well, but if the setting is too specific, it will be difficult for them to understand the story. So, for example, I tried to make it easy for our parents' generation to understand. I wanted to scale up the previous film, but place more emphasis on the drama than the action, and make it interesting enough to be seen by the audience.

─ The screenplay is credited to Mitsuru Shimada, but did you and the director work together on the development of the film?

Yoshinari: It wasn't just me. At first, the entire studio was involved in the discussions. When we started to fill the screenplay with everyone's ideas, it became too big to fit in the screen. So we asked Mr. Shimada to help us by bringing in someone from the outside to judge the project dispassionately. He is a veteran, so he was able to neatly organize the drama development and time calculations. There is another reason why we asked Mr. Shimada to help us. In the story, the main female characters have a quarrel with each other, but when we tried to describe their feelings with only our male staff members, it ended up being a male fight (laughs). (Laughs.) Since a boy's fight is different from a girl's fight, it would be more convincing if a woman wrote the story of what kind of emotional differences lead to the fight.

─ ─ In the previous work, there was a certain overlap between the situation of the creators of the "Anime Mirai" project and the story depicted in the previous work, in which young people jumped into a new world.

Yoshinari: The crowdfunding I mentioned earlier is exactly the same, and the climax of the film is related to the fact that it is supported by the fans. Without the support of the audience and their enjoyment, entertainment is not possible. The same is true for the initial motivation of the main character. It is easier to create a story that reflects a problem we can relate to or have in relation to our own situation. If we don't know why they are doing what they are doing, we can't move the characters. For example, even if we come up with a device such as a robot, that alone is not enough to tell a story, and we cannot proceed unless we first decide what this person wants to do. It is easier to grasp such an internal motivation if it is a problem that we are facing. Even if the story eventually becomes a big story about protecting the earth, it is difficult to proceed successfully unless the starting point is such a place.

─ ─ You can draw grandiose things if you want to, but you need a foothold to do so.

Yoshinari That's right. Without that, I don't think the audience will be able to get into it. They will sympathize with what the character wants, or they will want to see what will happen to them, or something that will pull them along.

──That kind of thinking rooted in internal motivation seems to be the corporate culture of TRIGGER, the production company, and of GAINAX, to which everyone in TRIGGER used to belong.

Yoshinari I think so. I joined Gainax because I saw "Royal Space Force" (Gainax's debut film: released in 1987). I thought that the creator's feelings were expressed very well in the way that a young man who had no goal but to work hard at something as seemingly meaningless as making a rocket fly, worked so hard to achieve it. I think "Evangelion" is also a strong reflection of director Anno's life, and I think it is easier for both the audience and the creator to get on board if the film is made in that way.

─ ─ When did you see the film for the first time?

Yoshinari: It was when I was in junior high school. However, at the time, I may not have understood exactly how it felt. When I joined GAINAX, a project called "Aoki Ur," a sequel to "Royal Space Force," was in progress, and we were reworking it and collecting ideas from various people. The "Royal" was created by a very large number of people sharing ideas, so the depth of the story and the world were amazingly well-developed. There was a lot of material available, and I knew that this was how that great work was created, and it was imprinted in me like a foundation for making animation.