Just before the screening of "Space Battleship Yamato 2202: Warriors of Love" Chapter 4, Tensei-hen! Interview with Tomohiro Yoshida, sound director of "Space Battleship Yamato 2202: Warriors of Love"!

Space Battleship Yamato 2202: Warriors of Love Chapter 4 - Tenmei Arc" will be screened in theaters from January 27, 2018 (Saturday). The series has reached the halfway point, and the unique development of "Space Battleship Yamato 2202" will finally become more intense from this film, which is different from the movie "Farewell Space Battleship Yamato: Warriors of Love" (1978) and the TV series "Space Battleship Yamato 2" (1978), on which the remake is based. Following up on our interview with composer Akira Miyagawa during the screening of "Chapter 3: Jun-Aihen," Akiba Research Institute decided to interview Tomohiro Yoshida, the sound director who is a key staff member for the sound of the film.

What does a "sound director" do?

───Tell us about your work as sound director on "Space Battleship Yamato 2202," for which you are in charge.

Yoshida: I am in charge of the overall sound, music, sound effects (SE), cast (voice acting by voice actors), and so on. From the formation of the overall image to planning, recording, and operation, I consult with the director and other staff members to ensure that the work is completed in accordance with their intentions. ......

For the music, we first listen to the director Nobuyoshi Habara's intentions, check the scenario, and imagine the music that is needed. From there, we create a menu for ordering music from composer Akira Miyagawa, attend the recording session, and decide which music will be used for which scene. The music, sound effects, and dialogue are then balanced and combined with the film. In the case of "2202," the music for "Farewell" and "Yamato 2" was already in existence, so the premise was to carry on that image. Furthermore, since it is a sequel to "Space Battleship Yamato 2199," the flow and image from the music of "2199" must not be destroyed. ......, we will work within this framework.

Music design unique to "Space Battleship Yamato 2202

─ Isn't it a very difficult task to create a new work while inheriting the music of "Farewell" and "Yamato 2," both of which have strong images?

Yoshida: As was the case with the previous work, "2199," our basic approach was to retain the music by Yasushi Miyagawa that was used in each scene of the previous work. For "2202," I would like to ask Akira Miyagawa to fully demonstrate his new musical style for the new settings, new explorations, and new changes. I myself have been a big fan of "Yamato" since the days of the old series, and I can feel that Director Habara and Series Composer Harutoshi Fukui have tried to carry on the good scenes of the old series. Even just reading the scenario, I can feel their intentions, and the music from the old films naturally starts playing in my head, so it is not a difficult task, but rather an enjoyable one (laughs).

(laughs) However, there are actually more than 200 pieces of music that were recorded for "Saraba" and "Yamato 2," including songs that are not used in the film and those that have not been recorded or released on CD. Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki, the original author of the film, had a production policy of recording a huge number of songs, without regard to whether or not they would actually be used in the film. For the movie "Space Battleship Yamato: The Complete Works" (1983), there were 10 hours worth of new songs recorded for a 2.5 hour movie (laughs). So it was a difficult task to figure out how to incorporate 200 songs into "2202" and how to make the most of them. I narrowed it down to 60 songs, focusing on the music that came naturally to me after reading the scenario. However, considering that music for "2199" and new compositions were to be added to this list, there were still too many. Both in terms of Akira Miyagawa's workload and the recording budget. So, after further weeping and crying, we finally decided to remake (re-record) the music from "Saraba" and "Yamato 2" to the music of "2202", which was about 40 songs. 1/5 of the total.

──It was one pleasant surprise for the fans that the music was not so-called BGM music, but music from the old LP record work "Symphonic Suite Space Battleship Yamato" (1977/Nippon Columbia) was used. ......

Yoshida: When I read the scenario, I could tell that director Habara wanted to reproduce the Yamato launch scene from under the sea in "Saraba" as it is in ...... (laughs). Then "THE BIRTH - Birth" from "Symphony Suite Space Battleship Yamato" used in that scene would be necessary. I could hear the scatting naturally when I read the opening title, so I thought it was time to re-perform and re-record the first two songs of "Symphonic Suite Space Battleship Yamato" together with "OVERTUNE - Overture" and proposed it to Akira Miyagawa, who was very enthusiastic. I had the scores for these two songs that I had with me when I performed them again at the concert.

─ ─ Speaking of scores, you said that for "2199," Akira Miyagawa transcribed the score by "ear copying" because there was no score of the old piece left.

Yoshida Yes, that is correct. As I said, there was no score left, so I asked Akira Miyagawa to score the "narrowed down 40 songs" from the score. However, for "2199", we aimed for a "complete copy" including instrumentation and detailed nuances, whereas for "2202", Akira was flexible enough to add or re-arrange any parts that he felt were lacking in the modern sound. Akira Miyakawa's work is a very important part of the project.

Akira Miyagawa's arrangements are the best in the world. Of course he can write beautiful melodies, but he also has a wonderful sense of how to make the most of them in a variety of arrangements. I feel that this is a talent he inherited from his father. In "2199," there was a song called "Yamato Uzunaka e (Into the Vortex of Yamato)," which was a new arrangement of the theme song "Space Battleship Yamato." I still remember the moment when Mr. Miyagawa waved his baton in front of a large orchestra and the melody of the Space Battleship Yamato that we all know and love resounded with a completely new impression. I still cannot forget it. In the music for the movie "Yamato yo Eien" (1980), there is an arrangement of the theme song, "Yamato Advancing through Unknown Space," and I asked Akira Miyagawa to create a song that would surpass it. The answer was "Yamato Uzunaka e" (Into the Vortex of Yamato). He did a wonderful job of meeting and exceeding our expectations by taking a melody that had been arranged over and over again in the old work, and going so far as to ....... The new songs for "2202" are also available in a variety of different arrangements.

However, compared to our experience with other animated films, the music for "Yamato," which has a high level of perfection and a strong image, is rather difficult to match with the images. The naturalness of the flow of the music and the naturalness of the flow of the images sometimes do not match well. How to synchronize this is the key to the music selection process for "Yamato. In other works, the music can be easily edited to match the length of the scene, and in many cases, the music was originally created that way, but this is not the case with "Yamato. We are constantly pursuing the extent to which we can match the flow of the scene without being musically unreasonable (......).

─ It gradually became clear from around the third chapter that the Imperial planet Gatlantis has a completely different civilization structure from that of Earth humans and Gamilas.

Yoshida: In the music for the first TV series "Space Battleship Yamato" (1974), there were songs that evoked the image of Deshler, but none that reminded us of the nation of Gamilas. In "2199," Akira Miyagawa added the wonderful motif of the Gamilas nation, "Praise Forever My Light. On the contrary, "Farewell" and "Yamato 2" have a strong musical image of the "White Comet Empire" but no music that evokes the image of Zoeder the Great. We were conscious of preparing new music for Zhoder and emphasizing him, using the opposite argument to that of "2199.

Also, the pipe organ music that was so impressive as the theme of the White Comet in the old film, the idea of having it appear in the story as the actual sound of the servitors "playing" was proposed by Director Habara in the very early stages of the film.

─ ─ At a previous talk event at the theater, you yourself mentioned that you "change the mix of music depending on the situation of the scene in which it is used.

Yoshida: Usually, the background music is a multi-track sound source with the sounds of each instrument recorded on separate tracks, which are then mixed down for theatrical use or CDs as needed. In some scenes, music clashes with sound effects or dialogue, and I have no choice but to lower the volume of one or the other. .... That is how I use it. This is actually a very time-consuming and labor-intensive process, so I think it is something that other sound directors would never do. It is a part of Yamato's unique approach that I am very particular about.