Animator Tomoken Kogawa also participated! Interview with Screenwriter & Series Composition Nakagawa Daichi in commemoration of the broadcast of the second episode of Takashi Murakami's anime "6HP"!

6HP (Six Heart Princess)" ("6HP") is an animated television series directed by Takashi Murakami, president of Kaikai Kiki and a contemporary artist, and character designed by PONCOTAN Sapporo Studio representative creator mebae.

The first episode, broadcast at the end of 2016, was aired unfinished. The documentary that was aired at the same time attracted a great deal of attention for its unprecedented structure, in which Takashi Murakami himself appeared and talked about the circumstances of the production.

About a year after that shocking event, the second episode of "6HP" will be broadcast on December 23, 2017.

Will it be aired successfully? What is the production intention of this work? Mr. Daichi Nakagawa, scriptwriter and series writer, answered these questions!

6HP" is Takashi Murakami's revenge on his youth!

───Idon't mean to interrupt, buthow is the production of thesecondepisode of......going?

Nakagawa: At the moment, we are working on retakes until the very last minute before the broadcast date, but it looks like we will be able to air the episode with all the pictures and sound. At least we are not in a situation like the first episode broadcast at the end of last year, where the first 7 minutes were not completed and replaced with a storyboard show!

Nakagawa: Is it because you have accumulated know-how in production?

Nakagawa: The starting point for this project was a short film that was shown at Murakami's solo exhibition at the Palace of Versailles in 2010. To turn it into an animated TV series, we created a studio called Ponkotan and completed the first 30-minute episode in full CG in 2012. However, when it was finally made in full CG, the quality was far from the ideal that Murakami had envisioned at the time, so the work was put on hold.

───Afterthat, you started over again with the production by Ponkotan, right?

Nakagawa: Yes, in 2015, we brought in Taiga Nakazono, a producer in the live-action field, and he produced the film, even though he caused a firestorm with the comment, "We won't make it in time, we may have to broadcast the film as line drawings! and causing a firestorm, the first episode of the unfinished version was broadcast on December 30, 2016.

In fact, the line drawings were not left on the air, but the entire 7-minute introductory segment was reduced to a storyboard with a voiceover narration. Subsequently, in June 2017, the old episode 1 of the full CG version, which had been put on hold in 2012, was broadcast, and on September 23, the new episode 1 of the complete version, with the first 7 minutes and the transformation bank replaced with the original scenes, was broadcast.

So, in fact, the first episode has been aired three times since its first broadcast at the end of last year, and we have finally reached the second episode. ......

─In terms of the volume of the work,you are aiming for the content of a one-cour anime, aren't you?

Nakagawa: That's right. It was Mr. Murakami's strong intention to make a one-cour animated TV series. From what I have been able to observe, it is Murakami-san's passion to make an animated TV series that lies at the core of the project. This work is a reflection of Murakami-san's passion for making TV animation. I have heard on various occasions that this work is fundamentally motivated by a desire for revenge against his youth.

─ ─My impression after watching thefirstepisode is that this is an anime from another era.

Nakagawa: That's exactly right. This work is an homage to the visual memories of postwar TV animation that you have seen, or rather, it intentionally emphasizes and incorporates old-fashioned expressions that are different from the current context.

───Thedirection and deformationare in the style of80'sanime, but the look itself is that of today's magical girls. So, I have the impression that it is asomewhat strange anime.

Nakagawa That's right!　We were told repeatedly at the production site to bring out that "strange anime feel," and even though the elements are all familiar, the key to this work is how strangely they are combined to create a unique worldview.

Why is "6HP" a "magical girl anime"?

─ ─ Please tell us about the production intention of this work.

Nakagawa: As Mr. Murakami has said, the origin of the "witch girl" animation lies in a longing for the American model of the middle-class housewife, as embodied in such imported dramas as "The Wife is a Witch" during the high-growth period. This led to the creation of "Sally the Wizard," "Witch Girl Meg," and other "Everyday Magic" type witch children that bring comical magical powers to everyday life.

As women began to advance in society, transforming magical girl characters such as "Minky Momo" and "Creamy Mami" appeared in the 1980s, in which women grew up to become self-actualized adult women in their professions.

This was followed in the 1990s by "Sailor Moon," in which beautiful girls fight to protect the world, following the style of team battle stories for boys.

In the 2010s, "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" critically reinterpreted the euphoric magical girl anime worldview of "Pretty Cure" to create a darker counterpoint.

In other words, throughout the ages, the "Magical Girl" genre has sublimated Japan's postwar yearning for and complex about the American lifestyle, and embodied the "Western fantasy" as a girl's dream, which is the theme of Murakami's artwork.

─I see.

Nakagawa: You jumped into the American contemporary art market, a scene that virtually does not exist in Japan, by yourself, and although you were beaten down, you were able to enter the ring with your "super flat" concept and succeed in a rare way.

This success coincided with the cultural impact of Japanese animation abroad, especially after the 1988 "Akira" film, which later formed the context for the Cool Japan movement.

The intention of the "6HP" project was to condense the memories of 20th century images that Takashi Murakami had received, and to reinterpret the legacy of postwar anime for the world.

───Thecharacters have the look of children's cartoons, but in the transformation and battle scenes, they instantly become sexy,which I felt was very "Takashi Murakami".

Nakagawa: Certainly, the concept of Takashi Murakami's works, in which he has explicitly pursued otaku-like eroticism in his figure works, is common to all his works. However, in addition to this, the exquisite fetishism of the character designer/illustration director, mebae, is strongly expressed in this work. Mr. Murakami thought this was interesting, which is why he chose mebae as the character designer.

Japanese animation is the opposite of the gender-free works of recent years, such as Disney's "Baymax" and "Zootopia," which are politically correct, and are very backward in terms of their value standards. It has a gender-fixed character.

The interesting thing about Japanese otaku culture, however, is that the pursuit of heterosexual desires, which are supposed to be divided from each other, have sometimes intersected, resulting in expressions that appear to be gender-equal, such as battle bishojo.

For example, "Sailor Moon" is basically a self-realized longing of girls, while male viewers usually looked at it from a sexual perspective.

In the first place, "moe" itself, if we trace its origins back to the history of manga, is an expression that was created after shounen manga adopted the shoujo manga style of design sense and psychological depiction. Rather than being rationally and consciously controlled as in Western feminism, Japanese content is a way in which women are infected by men's erotic desires and vice versa, and as a result, even with a low level of consciousness, a circuit is sometimes created that is highly satisfying for both men and women.

─ ─Is it like you are creating a scenario that makes sense of your image?

Nakagawa: Yes. Basically, Mr. Murakami gives me an order to enumerate images of scenes, saying, "I want this kind of scene," but my intention is to reinterpret the unconscious meaning behind those images as a "Takashi Murakami critique. In other words, I would respond to Murakami's worldview by saying, "This is what would happen if I redesigned it and expressed it as a story," and Murakami would respond, "No, it's not like that.

─Is the scenario already finished?

Nakagawa: Yes, it has been completed to the very end, not only by me, but also by a team of screenwriters. I mean, this is my first attempt at writing a script, so the director and everyone is correcting me all the time.