A shocking magical girl battle is portrayed head-on. Carrying a touch of kaleidoscopic sensibility that can be likened to robot animation -- Interview with Hiroyuki Hashimoto, director of "Magical Girl Raising Project

The shocking "Magical Girl Nurturing Project" follows 16 girls who are supposed to be playing a social game about magical girls, but are instead chosen as real "magical girls" and are drawn into a battle for survival. Many people may think of Hiroyuki Hashimoto, who directed this anime, as the director of the hit "Is Your Order a Rabbit? which was a big hit. Some were initially surprised that the director, who created such a lovable world, would now depict the end of battles between magical girls, but in fact, despite the cute magical girls, battle royale scenes danced on the screen. We asked Director Hashimoto about his approach to making this film and what challenges he faced. We asked him how he approached the creation of this film and what challenges he faced in making it.

Making use of the differences in media, the original work and anime complement each other

─ How did you come to be the director of "Magical Girl Raising Project"?

Hashimoto: "Is Your Order a Rabbit? (the second season of the series), I was approached by this production studio, L'Arche. I received the first volume of the original novel there, and the pictures were so cute that I thought, "Oh, is this the kind of work they wanted me to do? I was a bit surprised to find that the story was not like that at all (laughs).

(Laughs) ─ ─ "Is Your Order a Rabbit? series has a different atmosphere, but it has many girl characters in common. Is this something you are good at?

Hashimoto: Actually, in my career, there have not been that many works in which many cute girls appear. I originally entered the industry because I like robots and mecha, and I wanted to be involved in "Gundam" works. I used to do original drawings for a Sunrise subcontractor. That's why I sometimes wonder why I am allowed to direct cute works like this now (laughs). (Laughs.) But I also liked this kind of work as a genre, and I think that "cool" and "cute" are fundamentally not so different. They are just different in the way they are made and the way they are divided, but I think they all end up being the same.

─ ─ Indeed, I feel that there are similarities between cute works and robot animation in the sense that they both have a sense of irony. Then, did you feel that you were able to work on this work without much resistance?

Hashimoto: Yes, I think so. However, I thought it would be difficult to create it. The depiction of magic differs depending on the setting of the work, and since there are 16 characters in this work, each of them is different. Moreover, the development in which a character dies is the exact opposite of a daily life series. But I was interested in that too, so I accepted the project because I wondered how it would turn out if I tried it as a director.

─ When you read the original novel, what kind of animation did you have in mind?

Hashimoto: With all of my works, I always want to stand on the user's side. So for this work as well, I thought about what kind of animation the readers of the original novel would like to see. If you are a fan of a work, you are looking forward to seeing it animated, aren't you? So I tried to follow the original work as much as possible so that they would enjoy it. However, there is a difference in medium between anime and novels, and that makes it difficult.

───It is a matter of how to express the fun of "Magical Girl Raising Project" in a way that is unique to anime.

Hashimoto: That's right. What can be done with anime is limited compared to novels, so one of our goals is to make the original story easier to read. When reading the original work, if you know the visuals and voices of the characters, you will be able to visualize them and get into the story more easily, so I would like people to read the original work after watching the anime. On the other hand, there are some cases where the anime can cover the original work. For example, in the case of La Pucelle, in the original story, it was revealed that he died after Fab's report, but in the anime, we added the scene where he fights with Crumbley. By doing so, I thought that if people who read the novel would be able to supplement the story with "La Pucelle fought so hard," they would be able to watch the anime in an interesting way even if they already knew the original story.


─ What kind of discussions did you have with Mr. Takao Yoshioka, who was in charge of the series composition and the script for all the episodes?

Hashimoto: When I participated in this project, Mr. Yoshioka had already decided to participate in the series composition. This was the first time I met Mr. Yoshioka, and we discussed a lot about the "pull" at the end of each episode. This time, we created a total of 12 episodes, including the first volume of the original story and episodes from the short story collection, which was much more difficult than expected. In the original work, it was not clear who the main characters were at first, and characters dropped out one after another, but in the end, the two remaining characters became the main characters. Therefore, it is necessary to portray the characters in a way that makes it easy for viewers to empathize with them. But there is not enough time to do that for all 16 characters, so we had a hard time finding the right balance. It is a suspenseful story, but when a character dies, the mood becomes heavy, and it is difficult to make the viewer want to see the next episode. It is difficult to make the audience want to see the next episode. To make people still want to watch the next episode, it is important to know how they will feel at the end of the episode, so I composed the series while finding the ending point for each episode.

─ ─ Recently, it is often said among anime fans that they watch the first three episodes before deciding whether to continue watching. In this work, you made a mountain out of a molehill in the second episode.

Hashimoto: I wasn't too concerned about that; I was more concerned about whether or not each episode ended in a way that made the viewer care about the story. Sometimes people say things like, "Characters don't die in odd-numbered episodes," but I didn't realize that until after they said it (laughs).

───It just happened to be that way when you were creating the ups and downs of the entire story.

Hashimoto: That's right. The main goal is for the audience to see the work through to the end. When I structured it that way, the episode in which no one dies just happened to be there.

───How did you plan to express the depiction of characters dropping out, which is one of the main points of this work?

Hashimoto: There was a point where we wondered how grotesque we could make it for the broadcast, but we tried to do it as much as possible (laughs). (Laughs) It might have been possible to use a different technique, such as showing the sky at the moment of death, but I thought that would be no different from a novel. This is not the only selling point of the film, but I wanted people who had read the original story to see what it was like, so I wanted to do it in a way that made them want to turn their heads away from the scene.

Hashimoto: I think it was a perfect balance between shocking and making people want to see the rest of the story.

Hashimoto: I think I like to "strike a balance. I like to see a balance in terms of contrasts, such as raising the level of the film when it drops, or lowering the level of the film when it gets so much fun. This is also true for the direction of the characters. For example, the scene where Snow White and Ripple meet in episode 11 is the same as the scene where Snow White meets La Pucelle in episode 1.