Anime Gatari's special feature! Series Composer Mitsuki Hirota tells the truth - it could have been like that idol work!

The original TV anime "Anime Gatarisu" is currently airing on TOKYO MX and other popular TV stations. Akiba Research Institute has picked up this remarkable work, and interviews with the cast and staff members are featured in this report.

This work depicts one year before the short animation "Anime Gatari," which was originally shown in movie theaters during the interval of the screening. The members of the anime research club, including the main character Minoa Asagaya, Arisu Kamiigusa, Miko Koenji, Mitsuki Nakano, Tadashi Musashisakai, and Erika Aoyama, are all unique individuals. The program is full of highlights, including passionate anime discussions, explanations of anime terminology, and numerous homages scattered throughout the program.

This time, we interviewed Mitsuki Hirota, who is in charge of series composition. We asked him about how this work was created, what he specifically kept in mind, and other various topics.

⇒2017 Fall Anime

It was an anime about fighting against the school that was forcing the anime research club to close down!

--First of all, please tell us how you came to be in charge of the series composition of this work.

Hirota: I was a writer for each episode of "Time Traveling Girls: Mari Waka and the Eight Scientists," which was produced in 2015 by Woworld (the animation production company for this work) (I wrote the scripts for episodes 5, 6, 11, and 12).

I was invited to be a series writer for a new project that was in the works. I was invited to be the series director. But I hadn't heard from him for more than three months, and I thought he had stopped talking to me, but then he suddenly said, "I'm moving forward" (laughs).

(laugh) -- Did you ever have anything to do with director Kenshiro Morii or your previous work "Anime Gatari"?

Hirota: No, there was not. I was allowed to see the film because it was a continuation of "Anime Gatari," but I just thought, "Oh, I've seen that before.

--What was your impression of "Anime Gatari" when you saw it?

Hirota: I wondered how he could pick the corners of such a heavy box. At first I thought that the director must be a very detailed person, and that I wouldn't be a good match for him (laughs).

--(Laughs) - Even though there is a previous work, this is a completely original work. I heard that Director Morii gave you the basis for the story, and you brushed up on it.

Hirota: First of all, I saw the brief proposal that Director Morii made. At first, however, the direction was different. It said something like, "An anime research club that fights against the school that is trying to force them to abolish the club," and "We kidnap Alice (Arisu), the daughter of the school principal, to fight against the school" (laughs). (Laughs.) "How should we make this last for 12 episodes?

After consulting with the director and producer, we decided that if we were going to focus on "telling an anime story," it would be better to use the framework of the royal road. So, we decided to base the story on the members who reestablished an anime research club that had been discontinued and worked hard to get it back up and running.

-That nuance is still present in your communication with the student council.

Hirota: There is still a bit of "I'm going to crush the Anime Research Club" in there (laughs). But at first, the school side said, "Let's destroy the whole school," and the conversation went as far as "protecting the Anime Research Club is protecting the school. ...... I think that would be a pretty downer way to start. Instead, we decided that if we were going to carry on the worldview of "Anime Gatari," we should go in a more open-minded direction.

--The details of the story are not important, but the initial setting seems to be similar to a certain popular idol anime. ......

Hirota: We all thought so. Protecting the school?　Will there be tanks?　Like, "Are there going to be tanks? When I asked the director about it, he told me that he had seen a very popular idol anime right before he made the film (laughs).

--(laughs). - As you might expect, he didn't go that far (laughs). (laughs) So you had a discussion and came up with the current form?

Hirota: Yes, that's right. We said that we would not make the word "otaku" prominent in the story. The underlying idea was to convey the idea that "anime is wonderful," even if it is a bit cheeky. With other works, we often take a risk and step on the brakes, but we were willing to go to a point where we had never gone this far with anime before.

--But we decided to go into a direction we had never gone this far before in animation.

Hirota: I did not steer the project, but I did submit some ideas for the vertical axis at the beginning. For example, "The anime research club protects anime, but the aliens who see the protected anime say, 'Earthlings are dangerous people with dangerous ideas,' and in the end, they attack us with a UFO. Rather than adopting one of them, we extracted elements from them.

--I see that some of the ideas were quite outlandish.

Hirota: The producer and director came up with the idea of turning the school into an "animation school" or "animation department" during the meetings. It was like we were all shooting guns out of the barrel and used the elements that stuck with the director and producer. The meetings were really lively, and there were times when we didn't make any progress for about three hours (laughs). It wasn't so much that someone took the initiative, but rather that we all talked about it and came up with a form. We all talked about it together and created a form.

--The director also told us at the event that the script was quite off-topic during the script meeting.

Hirota: The director made it sound like "we" derailed the story, but that's not even a lie! It is true that we have talked about the derailment, but it was Director Morii who pulled the rail to the third sector! (Laughs) We were about ...... to just change the point a little and go back around the next station, but before we knew it, the place where we were running had changed. It was definitely the director who got sidetracked!

--But didn't you sometimes come up with the source of the material that appeared in your work?

Hirota Of the 100 stories I had, about 0.5 of them came to me, but that's less than one. Most of the stories ended up being like tea-bags (laughs). (Laughs.) The digressions were fun, but I think all the people who were present at the script writing meetings were probably scratching their heads as to whether or not they were beneficial to the work.

--For example, there are animations in the play that resemble the titles of the works that Mr. Hirota has been involved with, aren't there? Wasn't that your idea at the meeting?

Hirota: That's right. I didn't say, "Let's do it this way," but rather, when we were working on the plot, I thought, "This could be included. I just added the pieces that I thought would be easy to understand. I was asked "What's this?" because the director did not know the story of the film I was working on. (laughs).

(Laughs.) Opinions were split down the middle as to whether or not to mention the name of the work in a realistic manner.

--I would like to ask you about the specific number of episodes. Mr. Hirota was in charge of the script for the first half of the film, episodes 1 and 2. What points were you conscious of?

Hirota: As you know from ......, this work is supposed to be "interesting from the 4th episode" (laughs).

*In the teaser PV, "It's interesting from episode 4, so check it out in the rear tie!" was said.

-at the event, they said "Episode 3 is also interesting" (laughs).

Hirota: Episodes 1 and 2 depict the characters' first appearances and the formation of the team, so the real "anime story" really starts from episode 3. In such a situation, we tried not to make the viewers say, "Wow!　I tried not to make the viewer think, "Wow! I felt that if the production side was transparent through the characters, the audience would be turned off, and if I made them look smug, the characters would be disliked.

However, if I did something simple and safe, it would be like, "Oh, so they went for a safe place, even though it's called a "storytelling" or something. It was very difficult to find the right balance.

--What exactly did you mean by that?

Hirota: One of the easiest things to understand is that it took a lot of time at the beginning to decide whether or not to say the titles of the works that would appear in the film in a realistic manner. That was the most difficult part. Naturally, the creators of each work have their own thoughts and rights, so it would be dangerous to mention their names in a realistic manner. That was one of the reasons why our opinions were split down the middle: "If we don't give out the title properly, it doesn't mean we've gone too far," and "But what if we do? But what about the fact that we went into it?

--What was the most difficult character for you to work on?

Hirota: Arisu. Minoa is a character who "stands from the viewer's point of view and is learning about anime from now on," but you can't have Arisu and the other characters say things from the creator's point of view, "We know what we're doing. In that sense, we had to be very careful about how much pressure we put on the gas pedal.

I didn't want Minoa to end up being just a protagonist who doesn't know anything about anime. For example, in the second episode, she is the one who can blackmail Arisu by saying, "That's not true! She is the kind of girl who can blackmail Arisu and say, "That's not right! If I don't make her a character who gets involved but is not a child to be swept along, she will be a character who has no background when Minoa takes action in the future. So I was very conscious of the sense of balance in terms of her position and how she interacts with the characters around her.

--Hirota: So there were a lot of hardships involved.

Hirota Yes, we had to show each character in the first two episodes, and at the same time, we had to introduce the main character. It was also difficult to put the major theme of "anime storytelling" into these episodes. We also had to make sure that the story would not be cut off after only one or two episodes. （There was even talk of cutting off the third episode (in episode 3) (laughs).

(laughs). ......I worked that hard, but I was told, "It's interesting from the fourth episode" (laughs).

--(laughs). But in the comments on Nico Live for episodes 1 and 2, there were many people who "decided to continue watching.

Hirota: Ha-ha-ha-ha! After all, when you hear something like that (in the teaser PV), you feel you have to watch up to episode 4. Actually, the staff sent a follow-up e-mail to me and Tazawa-san (Daisuke Tazawa who wrote the script for episode 3). He said, "The teaser PV will look like this, but please don't worry about it" (laughs). (Laughs). We were not angry, in fact, we were laughing, but I thought to myself, "I should not reply to this e-mail. I heard that Mr. Tazawa did not reply to the e-mail either (laugh).

At a subsequent meeting, I said to Director Morii, "This is Hirota and Tazawa from episodes 1, 2, and 3," and he kept saying, "Please don't do that~" He had his head in his hands (laughs).

--I was thinking, "Stop it!" He laughed. -It would be bad if they cut us off before we got to the fourth episode, so even the third episode is important.

Hirota That's right. I had more drinks with Mr. Tazawa because he said, "It's interesting from episode 4 onward.

Episodes 4 through 10 are interesting, so check out the rear tie!

--Director Morii said, "We have stereotypical characters." Who is your favorite character, Mr. Hirota?

Hirota: It's Nakano-senpai. （While he seems to be a close friend (to the members of the anime research club), you can see a strange blackness in him (laughs). (Laughs) I like the bit of venom that comes out every now and then. He doesn't look human, but I think he is actually the most human of all.

He is difficult to position, isn't he? Arisu, Miko, Erika, and Chump are very easy-to-understand characters, and they are the types who do things that make you do things in their respective duty times. But I wondered what Nakano-senpai would do wrong. However, I thought it was necessary to have a character who could say to Minoai, "Your pivot point is right here," and I asked Nakano-senpai to take on that responsibility. Of course, there are times when he is on duty, but at the moment he is a very nice person with a little bit of a black side that I think is interesting in this worldview.

--What did you think of the performance of Nakano and the rest of the cast?　I assume you had an image in mind when you were writing the script.

Hirota I don't think the image we wrote is the correct one, but the voice that came to us is the correct one (laughs).

(laughs) I can feel from the video that the cast worked just as hard as the characters, and I am grateful for that. It's a very good feeling. I can only express my gratitude for the enormous amount of "anime storytelling" that you have done so vividly. There are some outrageous developments that come up, so I was hoping it wouldn't be too hard for you to write. Then, when I met him at an event the other day, Setsuo Ito, who plays Musashisakai Chunk, said, "Thanks for that. I thought, "Oh, so episode 6 (the part where the lump is on duty) is over" (laughs).

--I was wondering if you could give us some keywords that would give us a hint for episode 6.

Hirota: In many ways, the important things are "light" and "being yourself as you are," and I think that's what episode 6 is about. Please enjoy what I am saying!　I'm finally going into the forbidden part.

But when you said, "There is light," I didn't know what you were talking about at first. I confess, I too am looking at it from a perspective similar to Minoa's. When I heard the explanation, I thought, "Oh, you mean this" (laughs).

--(Laughs.) - How does the second half of the story unfold from there?

Hirota: Rumor has it that the first 10 episodes are the most interesting. By the way, I am writing episodes 11 and 12 (laughs). 4 to 10 is interesting, and that's what "Anime Gataris" is all about.

--I think that's what "Anime Gatari's" is all about.

Hirota: Episodes 1, 2, 11, and 12! (Emphasis added.) But I think I was able to fulfill my role as series director. We even talked about making episodes 11 and 12 special features of the Blu-ray box set. We even talked about making episodes 11 and 12 special features for the Blu-ray box set (laughs).

--I'm curious to see how the mystery will turn out.

Hirota: We've already done a little bit of that in the first episode. What is Neko-senpai anyway?　I don't want to say that I'm trying to solve the mystery, but I'm working toward it. However, ...... Director Morii doesn't feel the need to "start summarizing," or rather, he is in the mood to say, "There's no point in summarizing" (laughs).

--(Laughs.) - If you haven't summarized it, then there must be more to come, right?

Hirota I don't think so, but if there is, I will say, "The second season is more interesting" (laughs). (Laughs.) "The second season will be interesting, so check it out in rear tie-up!" (laughs). It would be great if they did, like saying that the second season is interesting.

--I don't know what will happen, but I can tell that the second half of the show is going to be fun as well.

Hirota: I always work with the idea that "only the creator should have fun," but it was fun after all (laughs).

--(laughs) - Finally, do you have a message for our readers?

Hirota: It really is "interesting from episode 4 and up to episode 10," so please check it out in real time!　I am Hirota, the series director who wrote episodes 1, 2, 11, and 12. We hope you will look forward to it.

(Reporting, writing, and photography by Kenichi Chiba)