Talk Event "Our Future -Anime no Oshigoto-", What Happened to the Anime Industry with the Corona Disaster?　Exclusive long interview with Emi Ogata

The entertainment industry has been hit hard this year by the Corona disaster. Amidst this situation, Emi Ogata, who is active in a wide range of fields including voice actor and artist, held a talk show hosted by herself with the idea of "saving live music clubs! She hosted a live talk show with the theme, "Save the Live Music Houses!

The talk show, titled "Our Future - Anime Work -," was held at Shibuya Loft 9 over a three-week period from the end of July to mid-August, with creators and producers at the forefront of the anime industry, whom Ms. Ogata herself had called upon, taking the stage for each of the three sessions. The talk live sessions were held on Shibuya Loft 9. Akiba Research Institute asked Emi Ogata, the organizer of the event, about how she came to plan this event, her thoughts after the event, and what is happening in the animation industry today.

For more details on this event, please refer to the following article.

⇒ The talk show "Our Future -Anime no Oshigoto-" will be held for three consecutive weeks, where Emi Ogata and anime industry people will discuss the "present" and "future" of the anime industry!

The talk live event was planned out of a sense of crisis that "if things continue as they are, HAKO will go out of business.

─ ─ Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule today. I had the opportunity to see your event the other day, and I thought it was quite meaningful as it gave me a real insight into how everyone in the animation industry was spending their time here at Corona Disaster. First of all, can you tell us how you came up with the idea for this event?

Emi Ogata (Emi Ogata): First of all, since March of this year, there has been a real lack of event-related activities. I myself lost 7 events in March alone, and from April to June, I lost everything except for my own non-participant live concerts, so I was like, "Well, what should I do? The venue for this event, Loft9, was the venue where I used to hold a monthly event called "Ogatameshi de Omotenashi," in which guests and customers would listen to the stories of the guests while having a one-spoon tasting of the food I prepared. One of the reasons why I planned this event was that I was asked if I would be interested in doing some kind of distribution event.

Another reason is that although I am a voice actor, I have a strong creator's mindset, and I had been discussing various ideas about the future of the animation industry as a whole and what we should do over dinner with the various staff members. However, that kind of thing has stopped happening, so I thought, ......, why don't we talk about the industry at Corona Disaster, which is the most interesting thing right now, on stage as part of our work? (laughter)

When I first mentioned this to my dinner companions, they told me that while it is quite common for staff members to get together to talk about their work, there are not many opportunities to get together and talk about the same industry. I said, "Well, if you can arrange it, would you be interested in participating? I said, "Of course I will," and he readily agreed. I then asked everyone I thought "I want to talk to this person! In the end, we had three producers, three sound directors, and three animation directors from each of the animation production companies, and we decided to have them talk about the current situation in the field in three sessions.

───We were surprised to find that the cast members were all so well-known. I was surprised to see such a large group of people when you say a few words to them (laughs).

Ogata: That's not true!　The pressure may have been strong (laughs). But I was really grateful. For example, Mr. Kenji Horikawa of P.A. Works lives in Toyama, and I thought it would be a bad idea to ask him to come to Tokyo when it was so difficult for him to visit, but my desire to meet him got the better of me and I took the plunge (laughs), I contacted Mr. Horikawa at that time, and later in July, when the number of infected people in Tokyo increased again, I said, "Mr. Horikawa, it will be fine if you appear remotely," but he came out. I was really grateful.

─ ─ It was interesting to see how different people from different positions in the animation industry, even in the same industry, spent time at the Corona Disaster and how they viewed the event. The producers were concerned not only about the animation production, but also about human resource training, and the sound directors spoke frankly about the problems they are facing in the field today. On the other hand, the animation directors were more positive. Of course, the voice actors, including Ogata-san, had different ways of spending their time at the Corona Disaster, didn't they?

Ogata: I think the voice actors were the worst. First of all, we lost a flurry of events and performances. I myself had to stop my live tour in the middle of the tour, and my stage play was cancelled on the second day, even though it was open to the public only on the first day. Overseas, I was supposed to go to Canada, China (Shanghai), Germany, Russia, and the U.S. (New York) this year, but all five countries were cancelled. Of course, the situation is the same for myself and the voice actors close to me. To be honest, it's hard to make a living just from the money I get from my voice-over work, so everyone makes a living by doing events, etc., but now that it's all gone, I'm in a situation where I'm like, "What am I going to do! But now that all of that has gone, the situation is like, "What are we going to do? And while individuals are also having a hard time, voice actor agencies are also having a hard time because of the decrease in work, as well as refunds for the time they were unable to open training schools.

─ ─ Voice actors are also having a really tough time. In terms of events, musicians are also having a hard time because live houses are not open, and I really sympathize with Ogata-san's attitude of trying to protect the "hako" (live houses, theaters, etc.) somehow. There are already several live houses that have closed, and I think this is a very serious problem.

Ogata: It really is. ・・・・・・ The staff is also having a really hard time, as is the Hakko. We were doing an acoustic live tour from February to March this year, but after the prime minister's declaration on the 26th, we were unable to do the Koriyama concert three days later on the 29th. At that time, we had no choice, these things happen, anyway, let's bring cheer to the people! We did a studio live performance with free delivery, but that is far away now. my birthday concert was scheduled in June, but it would be easy to stop, but simply stopping would kill the staff, musicians, and the hall. But I couldn't get the audience to come. I thought about how I could do it, and decided to raise funds through crowdfunding and make it happen in the form of a free live broadcast.

The live performance itself was not a cause for concern since the members had worked together before, but there was a period of about two months when none of us, including the PA and other staff, had been "on the scene. The moment we got together for rehearsals and played the sound, I felt that something was different. I think it was probably a very subtle difference, but everyone there had an air of "what the heck" about it. Each of us had done the recording on our own. But there was a kind of subtle "error" that you notice only because you are a professional among ...... professionals in terms of the feeling you get when you play with live, especially live drums, and everyone there was surprised. I was relieved to get back to the original feeling on the third day of rehearsals, but I was a little scared of what would have happened if the "period of not doing it" had lasted for half a year or so.

─ ─ I guess that's what happens when you don't have the time to actually play together in real life.

Ogata: But I got back to it right away, and the joy of performing with everyone as usual was exceptional. The venue was WWW X in Shibuya, which holds about 700 people, and as soon as I got on stage, I thought, "I see, there's no audience," and "What? I was like, "I don't know. At first I thought it would be like singing on TV. But with TV, the camera that is currently on the screen has a light on it so you can see the audience on the other side of it, but a live-streaming camera doesn't have that. In a usual live performance, I would look at the audience with a gun and try to hit them with words (laughs), but today, where on earth was I supposed to point ......? But today, I was not sure where I was supposed to point .

Also, although it was called a no-show, there were actually about 50 people in the audience, including delivery staff, managers, etc. They were watching quietly, trying not to make any noise because it was a delivery. Especially when the performance was over, they were prepared to make a scene. The moment they finish singing "Burn! the moment when you think, "I did it! Usually, there would be a "whoosh! The sound in the space disappears with a "shuffle" and closes. That day, I realized how much I was doing the live performance with the audience, and that I was standing here because I was being carried along by the audience. I realized that it was hard for me to deliver without an audience anymore. If I was going to do it, I wanted the people involved to at least say, "Yes! (laughs).

(Laughs.) Because of this, it was difficult to hold a live music broadcast, and I have been searching for the best way to do it ever since, but I thought a talk show might work. However, if we could have at least three guests who are well versed in the industry and good at speaking, and have Yuko Gitake as MC and assistant, I am sure it would be very exciting. I thought the audience would be satisfied, so I decided to do it this way.

At Corona Disaster, we cannot steal techniques in the field. Training young people is a major issue.

───If there are any key words or stories that left a strong impression on you after the talk live this time, please let us know.

Ogata: All of the people I asked to participate in this event are very positive by nature and aggressive in their work, and I was very happy to see how they are thinking about how they will work from now on in their respective positions. It was great to see how everyone was thinking about what they are going to do in the future from their respective standpoints. What they all said in common was that the two major problems they face today are the inability to train people and the inability to promote their work.

───Everyone said the same thing about not being able to "watch senior staff work onsite and steal their skills. It may be possible to make animation even with remote work, but young people are not being nurtured. I thought this was indeed a big problem.

Ogata: The same is true for voice actors, and for animators who draw pictures, they can draw pictures at home, but young animators can learn a lot just by going to the studio and peeking at what their seniors are drawing. Even if the lines are just a little different, the finished product will be totally different. You can see and steal that kind of feeling. Mr. Horikawa of P.A. Works said that this is very important, and I thought that was very true.

To be frank, when sound production companies train new production staff, as long as they take them to the site, they can quickly understand who is doing what kind of work, what kind of people they need to pay attention to, and what they need to do in order to proceed well. The situation is that you are not allowed to go to the field as much as possible. So I heard that the new employees are also spending their days at the company facing a computer, unable to go out to the field. We want to train people who can quickly take over the field, but we can't take them to the field. They don't get to meet the people onsite, so they gradually become stale.

─ This is probably the same problem in all industries, but I think it is especially true in the animation industry. What about voice actors?

Ogata: It is the same for voice actors. Voice-over work requires a lot of output, and there are not many opportunities for input in the work. Once I receive a script, I face it alone and express myself in a one-shot competition within the drawers I have. In such a situation, one of the few opportunities for input is at the postrecording studio of an anime. I would watch my seniors perform from behind and say, "Oh, I see. This is a valuable opportunity for us to learn from the younger members of the team, as well as from the younger members of the team.

When people are talking to others, they are rarely speaking with the intention of speaking this way. What the person in front of you says, the expression on their face, the atmosphere of the moment, and so on, and when you try to respond in some way, it just happens to be the right word. That is the original language of conversation. In general, if you try to speak in this way, you will fail. A typical example is "I'm going to confess my feelings to my girlfriend today. You know what you are going to say, but you have a hard time saying it because of the timing and the atmosphere. But when you try your best to say it, your voice turns inside out like, "I love her! and usually I fail (laughs).

Laughs ] ─ That's a common situation (laughs).

Ogata: It is almost the same in acting. When I try to say something like this, it often becomes stiff. The "words" that happen to come out in response to the other person's words, gestures, and atmosphere should be the "lines. This is, of course, the same for actors who show their faces. And in the original postrecording, all of these subtle atmospheres are put on the microphone. Nowadays, however, voice actors record their lines separately, so it is impossible to feel that atmosphere. Everything is broken up, and we can no longer learn from the work of our seniors, and to put it bluntly, it is harder and harder to have a conversation. This was mentioned by the sound directors at the meeting, and one sound director went so far as to say, "A whole culture has disappeared. The ability to perceive people's hearts and minds is going down as you stop meeting with people. You become duller and duller. ......That is what is happening now at the postrecording studio.

─ ─ In the end, what the voice actors are doing is acting. If they were to record separately, it would be difficult to make it work as a play, wouldn't it?

Ogata: Of course, the voice actors who are used to this kind of situation remember what it is like to be in the scene, and they can imagine how they would act, so there are no major problems. It is very difficult to explain in words.

In fact, I started a free private school last spring, with 21 members selected from about 1,000. I have been training those kids since last summer, and I thought they were getting pretty good by about February of this year. I think they are doing pretty well. We had some of them pass auditions for new works, and some of them won awards, so we were happy. After a two-month break, we had to switch to Zoom remote classes, and then this past July we were able to resume face-to-face classes for the first time in a while, and it was like, "Why are you so bad at ・・・・・・? It was such a real change. We had originally planned to put on an experimental performance in May, but the performance was canceled, and even if we had postponed it, there was no way we could pull it off at this point, so we are now trying to pull it up by force. Being young, they absorb things quickly, but at the same time, they also become poor at it (laugh). ...... but that's the newcomers. (laugh) But that is the newcomer. I myself realized once again that this is what it means to "stop. It can't be helped that they are still so immature that even they are unaware that their own senses have become dull.

I could go on and on about voice actors, but what all the production people and the art directors are saying in unison is that "we are no longer able to train young people. And the motivation of the young people themselves has also fallen. It is not just that they are losing motivation, but that they have lost sight of what they are doing and what they should be doing, and some of them are quitting. But we don't know what to do about it either. When we heard from various people, they all said that they did not know what to do. Now, little by little, we are moving toward increasing the number of people at each site and the number of participants, but we are still far from being back to normal.

What I also miss is that there are no more launches (laughs). When I finish this job, I don't feel like it's over without everyone saying, "That was great! (laughs).

─ ─ If you record separately, you don't see each other in the first place, and there is no sense of collaboration, is there?

Ogata: That's really true! We don't see each other at all on set, so even the people we are supposed to be working with are like, "We're working on that film together, aren't we? Like that (laughs). Some of the fall-cool productions were recorded in the pre-Corona and post-Corona seasons, and while we were meeting each other to record the first half, we were recording the second half separately, and I could hear the sound director saying "I'm going to die! On the contrary, "Jishibu Shonen Hanako-kun," which aired in the January season this year, was good. The last postrecording was at the end of February, so it was the last work that we were able to record with all the members gathered just in time for the final episode.

─ But you didn't have a launch party? (laughs)

Ogata: Yes. No launch (laughs). So in March, when the situation was still not so serious, I invited some of the actors to my house for dinner. We opened the windows of our house to create an open-air environment. That was my only memory of the fun "Minna Gohan" (everyone eating together) in the early days of the Corona disaster (laughs).

───Having heard all these stories, it must have been really tough.

Ogata: Yes. But when it comes to this, the way of doing things in the first place itself changes. Many animations produced overseas are not postrecording, but prescreening, in which the actors first act out the scene, and then the pictures are added later. In Japan, the method is different. Instead, the actors act out the scene in sync with the pictures. ...... is said to be a "divine trick" overseas (laughs). This method is certainly difficult, but as I mentioned earlier, a sense of atmosphere comes on board, and I think this is one of the beauties of Japanese animation. But if the current situation of recording in pieces continues for a long time, we may see a change to a presco-like method of production. ...... Well, in recent years, due to problems with actors' schedules, there have been more and more productions that have been done sound-first, so it was already becoming semi-presco-style.

──As Toshiki Kameyama mentioned in the sound director's session, the production of drama CDs was already hell. I was impressed by the fact that he said that he didn't know what to do with the Drama CDs since there was nothing to do with them, while the animation was fine because there were still pictures.

Ogata: Drama CDs are the ones where you can tell how good or bad the actors are.

─ ─ Is the recording process different for games?

Ogata: Games are originally recorded separately. However, even in games, there is a huge difference between voice actors who are able to capture the atmosphere of the characters and their interactions and those who are not able to do so. In games, the screen switches, so it's hard to notice. But back in the mid-90's, when the game voice recording was still very difficult, there was a line "Thank you" (......), and I asked the sound director, "What kind of 'thank you' is this? I asked the sound director, "What kind of 'thank you' is this?" He told me, "It's a generic type, because the number of files is limited.

─ A generic type! (Laughs)

Ogata: There is no such thing as a generic "thank you! It is totally different depending on whether it is a "thank you" in tears or in anger, whether it is to a boss or a child. ...... But if it can be accomplished by words spoken without thinking of the other person, then it is no longer necessary for people to speak. There has been a technique for dubbing Western films for a long time now, where the voice of the main actor is sampled and made to speak in Japanese, but we have not used this technique because ...... of course there is a budget problem, but it was because it is important to have a live human conversation. If you want flat nuance, that's already .......

─ ─ AI.

Ogata: It may really just be AI one of these days. Something like "general-purpose humanoid AI" (laughs).

The important things will remain the same. While inheriting the good aspects of Japanese animation, I would like to incorporate new ways of doing things.

───What was the reaction of the audience to this talk live?

Ogata: There were many comments from the audience, such as "I didn't understand how difficult it was, but I could understand that it was a big problem," or "I think what you are talking about is the same thing that happens in my work or at my school.

But even in that situation, in the third week of the supervision session, I was told, "We don't have a choice. We have to do it. It's our job to make animation." Mr. Kishi said that we all had to find a way to make it work under the circumstances we were in. Everyone has been thinking of different ways to do things. We voice actors are on the receiving end of orders, as we have been for some time (laughs). (laughs) I believe that the people who participated in this event will think about various things while worrying about the future, and will create a path forward.

─ ─ In that sense, I think the selection of the speakers was excellent. I thought everyone was very positive, even in such a difficult situation. Each session was interesting to watch without being too gloomy.

Ogata: That's partly because all the people who participated in this year's contest were so positive. Especially Mr. Kishi (laughs). There are many different types of directors working hard on the Corona Disaster, and some of them are having a hard time following instructions precisely because they can't meet the animators, but I think everyone is still trying to make something good in the situation they are in. I think everyone is still trying to make something good under the circumstances they are in.

─ ─ This may be a difficult question to answer, but what do you think will happen to the animation industry in the future?

Ogata: It is difficult to say. But I believe that there will be a way and that it will open up. The situation is very changeable now, and it is difficult to predict the future. Just when restrictions were about to be lifted, the cluster infection broke out and cancellations were made, and even 10% of the audience for other performances were cut off. ...... The stage was full of reservations until last week, but when something happens, the number of reservations suddenly drops. There is no guarantee that this will not happen again in the future.

However, animation is something that is made over a longer span of time, so there are other difficulties as well. As Director Masaomi Ando said at the live event, I wonder if it would be a good idea to have high school students suddenly start wearing masks in the animated films they make in the future. In the case of live-action dramas, it may be possible to change the script or direction to accommodate the situation, but in the case of anime, there is a good chance that the situation will have changed by the time it is completed and released to the public a few years later. It could be something like that. As I half-jokingly said at the talk live, in the future, there will be fewer daily school works that take place in a realistic time frame, and science fiction, historical, and parallel world works will be okay in that respect, so there may be an increase! (Laughs)

What doesn't change won't change, and what can't change won't change. What is important does not change. The soul as a creator, the craftsmanship, and so on. While keeping that "ism" somewhere, we will take this opportunity to incorporate new ways of doing things, including digitalization and remote work. I believe that we have been given a chance for such a change, and I and all the participants in this event agree. For now, I am just trying to make enough money so that I don't die (laughs), and I would like to continue this kind of inheritance at .......

─ ─ Finally, Ogata-san, do you have any plans for your future activities?

Ogata: It is difficult to make announcements these days because decisions on various things are in flux, but I think the release date for the last "Evangelion" will probably be announced in a little while (*Note: This interview was conducted in early October). (*Note: This interview was conducted in early October.) We are making steady progress!

─ ─ We are waiting for you! (Laughs)

Ogata: I am also working on an album. In the midst of this Corona Disaster, I chopped up the figure that kept shouting "Let's live! and I have engraved it on the album (laughs). I hope to release it around the beginning of the new year. Thank you very much for your cooperation. Also, we are planning to hold a full band concert at the end of the year with a small audience for the first time in a while, so please let us know if you decide to do that as well!

─ ─ I wish you all the best for the various events. Thank you very much for your time today!

(Interviewer: Takeshi Kamada, Editor-in-Chief of Akiba Research Institute)

＜Event Details

Our Future -Anime no Oshigoto- (The Work of Animation)

Date: July 31, August 7, and August 14, 2020 (every Friday) 19:30-21:00

Location: Pay-per-view from Shibuya Loft 9

MC: Emi Ogata

Writer/Assistant: Yuko Gitake

Guests:

<Night 1> 7/31 Animation Producer

　　Animation up to now, animation in the future. To keep on making them"

　　　Kenji Horikawa (P.A.Works), Kazuya Masumoto (TRIGGER), Yuji Higa (Larche)