Director Morii and other key staff members talk about the secret story behind the production of "Anime GaTarisu" with full of spoilers! AnimeGatariz Roundtable Discussion (Part 1)

The TV anime "Anime Gatarisu" started in October 2017 and became a hot topic not only for its homage to various anime but also for its innovative direction. To commemorate the recent successful completion of the broadcast of all episodes, we asked the men who created "Anime Gataris" - Director Kenshiro Morii, Assistant Director Hiroshi Kubo, Mitsuki Hirota (series composition), Daisuke Tazawa (screenplay), and Hiroaki Takeuchi (producer) - to talk about the story behind the anime. We asked them to look back on all 12 episodes with some spoilers that can only be told now.

The discussion was no less enjoyable than the main anime episode. We hope you enjoy it as much as if you were at a talk event. And if you watch the Blu-ray BOX or other media to see the parts you liked, there are sure to be new discoveries waiting for you.

Akiba Research Institute is currently running a giveaway in which two lucky readers will win an autographed copy of the script by writing a review of "Anime Gatari's." For details, please click here!
For details, please click here.
⇒[ Present] "AnimeGatariz" completion and box release commemoration! Win a script signed by Kaede Hondo, Ayaka Sengi, and Nisako Tojo!

Hirota, Yonwakaraga Omoshiroi!

Episode 1 "Minoa, Anime Rookie!

Script by Mitsuki Hirota Storyboard by Hiroshi Kubo

Direction: Hiroshi Kubo Animation Director: Toshiko Sasaki

--The first episode is written by Mr. Hirota and storyboarded and directed by Mr. Kubo.

Hirota: I think episodes 1 and 2 are pretty decent, considering how much they have been popping since episode 3. We were able to fulfill our role of showing the characters, and the scene where we talk about the anime had a great tempo and destructive power thanks to Mr. Kubo's storyboarding and direction, so we were able to fulfill our role of grabbing the viewer's attention. I never dreamed that people would say "the 4th episode is the most interesting" (laughs).

Morii: The teaser PV's comment, "It's interesting from episode 4 onward," was not intended as a statement of intent, but rather as a way of saying, "If we say that, maybe people will watch the next four episodes. It was really just a prop. It was really just a prop. Of course we got a lot of flak on Twitter, etc. (laughs).

--(laughs) - Looking at it again, there are a lot of mysteries in the first episode.

Hirota: Everything related to episodes 11 and 12, such as the beret and the door, are included. We decided to just shake things up in the first episode and go on with the rest of the day-to-day anime.

Kubo Some of you may have noticed that the silver bracelet that was caught in the door in episode 11 appeared in episode 1. In the scene where Minoa takes out her beret in front of the station and feels manipulated, the bracelet is on the hand of the person who hits Don there. You can see it if you watch the frame-by-frame feed.

--I was wondering what it was and who it belonged to.

Kubo: It was Aurora (Nakano Senpai) who bumped into me. It's actually a scene from episode 1 that suggests that Aurora is the mastermind behind the whole thing.

Hirota Depending on how you look at it, you might think it's the back of a badge (laughs).

Kubo Also, to spoil the significance of the door, there is a "door," a "border," and a "cat," so people familiar with ...... science fiction will understand.

Hirota You are trying to do "Schrödinger's cat. I was impressed that someone noticed the cat when it was there.

Morii: Someone mentioned it in every mystery, didn't they? It is truly amazing that people consider them!

■Episode 2 "Tsudoe, Anime Gatari-zu

Script by Mitsuki Hirota Storyboard by Hiroshi Kubo

Direction: Hiroshi Kubo Animation Director: Takahiro Miura

--And from the second episode, everyday life begins.

Hirota: In the sense of "a coming-of-age story about a group of friends who start up an aniken and get together," this is only one episode so far. If I were to put it another way, episodes 2 through 10 are a coming-of-age story set in a school, and (the mystery) jumps from episode 1 to episode 11 in one fell swoop.

Kubo: So you don't want to take the lead from the first episode and carry it over to the second (laughs).

Hirota: "Neko-senpai talked! But the next week (episode 2), he was talking normally. I thought about whether I should start trying to recover the mystery right after that, but I thought it would be too much trouble to do so at ....... (Laughs.) Since you can see it in episode 12, I decided to just go ahead and do it. I made that cry at the beginning of episode 12, you know. I thought it would be called a "shitty anime.

Kubo As far as recovering the mystery, this is probably the worst anime ever (laughs).

Hirota: Talking about the 12th episode, I proposed the idea of "blasting out the narration" at the beginning of the episode, but it was the director who said, "Okay, you can do the narration" (laughs). (Laughs.) "If the director says it's okay, I'll do it, but is it okay? (laughs).

Morii: At first, I was supposed to play a more active role in the beginning of episode 12, but then the director said, "Isn't the director's part a little too long? Then, I decided to just do the narration and die. Then we decided to just have him die in the narration (laughs).

Tazawa: We were working on the story right after "Sanadamaru" was finished, and "narration death" was the trend (laughs).

Kubo To give you an idea of the details, in the last scene of episode 11, when the new world is exploded, the director dies in a clean explosion (laughs). If the explosion occurred "behind" the director, there should be a silhouette "before" the explosion. However, the silhouette is not in front of the explosion, but in the flame of the explosion.

Morii Going back to episode 2, Kaikai (Musashi Sakai) calls "Aurora," and then in episode 9, he says, "You've been scheming! Aurora! But the name "Aurora" is not mentioned until episode 9, "Aurora! In the end, the story is about "Nakano-senpai does various things because he doesn't like the name Aurora," so I thought I'd keep it in there for a long time.

Kubo We had talked about withholding the furigana "Aurora" on the official website.

Morii: I was told by the character designers that it was wrong not to use the furigana, and when I served the birthday cake, it was written "Aurora," so I thought it was okay (laughs).

*In the "CHARACTER (Characters)" page of the official website, no furigana is written for any character after Mitsuki Nakano. Moreover, the URL is only Nakano-senpai's last name.

■ Episode 3 "Erika, Layer x Layer

Screenplay: Daisuke Tazawa Storyboard: Satoshi Shimizu

Direction: Makoto Hoshino Animation Director: Tomoaki Kado

--Episode 3 is the time when the members of the Anime Research Club go to Akihabara.

Tazawa: The introduction of the characters has been completed, and from the third episode, we began the term of establishing each character. Also, in order for the audience to understand that "Anime Gatari's" is a story in this format, I tried to include some "Anime Aruka Jokes" and the standard movements of going to Akihabara.

Kubo: It was a lighthearted way of saying, "Let's put Akihabara in there once" (laughs).

(laughs) -- Did Director Morii not create the basis for these parts?

Morii That's right. I had no idea, so the writers of each episode had a hard time with it (laughs). (Laughs.) What I realized after doing this was that you have to decide on things like that ahead of time.

Kubo: First, I listed what kind of "anime aru aru" existed, and then I thought about which episodes to incorporate them into.

--Kubo: Was it to clearly show Erika's characterization that you suddenly took her to a cosplay store?

Kubo: That's right. Erika is an all-around character who is interested in a variety of anime, plus she is in charge of cosplay.

Tazawa: We decided not to do a maid cafe. We also thought that if she had the money to go to a maid café, she would buy anime goods. Arisu is Arisu, and there are always real maids there, so they wouldn't know how much fun it is.

Morii Also, when you take someone to Akihabara for the first time, you don't usually go to a cosplay store out of the blue. But that's what otaku are like. My own taste comes out (laughs).

Kubo: At this point, Erika's attitude is "it's fine if I'm having fun even if I don't have club activities," and she expresses that by "going to Akihabara and having a lot of fun.

--The speech in the latter half was also impressive.

Tazawa: When I thought about what you would like to say passionately to everyone, I thought of "I was able to become this kind of person through anime. Don't you want to be like this? I thought it would be "I could become this kind of person through anime. I only had to rewrite the wording a little, but it came out without much trouble.

Kubo: As for the content, it was almost a one-shot deal.