In order to reach the moving final live performance, the men staged "Zombieland Saga: Revenge," Part 3── Interview with Munehisa Sakai (Director), Kounosuke Uda (Director), and Hisatoshi Shimizu (Director).

The much-talked-about anime "Zombieland Saga Revenge" aired from April to June 2021. This is the final installment of a series of interviews exploring the behind-the-scenes of this work!

In this third installment of the series, we gathered together with Munehisa Sakai, Kounosuke Uda (director), and Hisatoshi Shimizu (director), the central figures in the "Zombieland Saga" series who storyboarded and directed episodes 10 through 12, to talk about the last three episodes and other behind-the-scenes production details.

The live event "Zombieland Saga LIVE: Franschouche, Saga yo Kyo ni Watarimete" will be held on October 16th and 17th, and the excitement of this production is still continuing to grow.

After "Zombieland Saga Revenge," what are your respective responsibilities in the second season?

Q: How do you feel after finishing "Zombieland Saga Revenge"?

Shimizu: I was involved in the first season from the beginning, and it was challenging and fun. However, in the second phase, I was involved in another title, so I was looking at it sideways and thinking how envious I was of it (laughs).

(Laughs) Later, after I finished my own work, I joined the project and the first thing I started working on was the storyboard for the A-part of episode 12. Although I had been watching from the side, I had not been deeply involved in the project, so I was still not fully aware of how I felt about the characters and how much they had developed, so it was difficult for me.

Once I got a sense of that, the characters moved on their own. I think I was a little bit confused by the differences that I hadn't been involved in the first half of the second season. After that, we started the production of the 10th episode.

Q: The final episode was a huge volume, and the reaction from fans was amazing.

Shimizu: For my part, I was wondering what I should do since it didn't fit into the time frame at all (laughs). (Laughs.) My part alone was quite a lot of pages, so it was physically impossible to fit it in if we also considered the live performance. I tried my best to make adjustments, but in the end I just said, "Please take care of the rest! and left it to the director. ......

SakaiI would show him a picture that I thought he would understand, and he would let me go with it (laughs).

Shimizu: I knew that Mr. Uda had already entered the story in episodes 10 and 11, so I knew that I had a good idea of the excitement and the character's destination, so I just had to find a way to adjust the story and move them from where they are now to the stadium. I was just trying to figure out how to get it right and move from where I was to the stadium.

Q: Uda, how did you frankly feel after the second phase?

Uda: It took me a long time to storyboard the film, too. And we ended up going over the length of the storyboard. I threw it all to the director and said, "I'm sorry! I was like, "I'm sorry!

Shimizu: I was like that too. ......

Uda But it was simply fun. There are not many films that I can say that about, but this was one of the ones that I could say, "That was fun! I think it was one of the few films that I could say, "I enjoyed!

Q: What made you enjoy it so much?

Uda: The characters really come alive. When I was cutting the storyboards, sometimes they would start moving on their own, and there was a flow of their problems, their backgrounds, and even though they were all dead (laughs). Each character was unique, so it was easy to grasp what this girl would say or how she would act. It was the most fun to see how they would act on their own.

Shimizu: You can see what is going on, can't you?

Uda So, we exceeded the time limit. ...... (laughs).

Sakaide I think that every work has a certain character that moves in a certain way, but "Zombieland Saga" is not so much a template. The characters have their own personalities, but they don't act in the same way as they did before. I think it is because of this step-by-step progression that it is easy to move them around.

I feel that they are growing up in a realistic way. By the way, how do you adjust for overtime?

SakaïSakaiWe have accepted the fact that we will always go over the length of the film. After the story is actually written, I rethink the development of the story and the setup of the interplay.

Shimizu: Of course, I have a certain amount of thought in my mind while drawing, but I go through trial and error to see if I can brush it up a little more or if I am doing something unnecessary.

Sakaida I think about a lot of things before I put it on paper.

Uda I don't think about the scale anymore (laughs). (Laughs.) I'm the type of person who creates a film in my mind and then creates a storyboard, so I'm most careful about how to create the climaxes, the peaks, and the valleys. I would make all these calculations while I was creating the film, and when I felt that I could get there, I would make the film into a storyboard. But then things would change, and I'd end up wondering what to do (laughs).

Sakaida If the character moves on its own, it's not the right one (laughs).

Uda So, I would ask them to do something about it in the editing! As expected, the part where the character moves on its own is cut off in the editing (laughs).

Sakaida The frustrating thing is that when we run out of time, we have to start cutting parts that have nothing to do with the story. That's why the gag parts tend to be cut, and I think that's a waste of time and money.

Shimizu: Mr. Otsuka (Manabu Otsuka, MAPPA producer) also said, "That gag is the best part of .......

Uda That's what makes it so interesting.

Shimizu That's right (laughs). (laughs). We think so, too, but we had to cut ...... in order to fit it in.

We had to cut it out for crying out loud. The storyboard is often referred to as the blueprint of the animation, but the director is like the supervisor of each episode who processes the storyboard. Normally, it is better to have the same person do the storyboarding, but nowadays, due to the schedule, it is often done separately, isn't it?

Shimizu: Basically, storyboarding and directing are done by different people due to scheduling, but that has always been the case. Also, directing is sometimes meant to train newcomers, even though they have not yet reached the point of drawing storyboards.

Sakai: Basically, I think it is better to have the same person storyboarding and directing, so for this film, I tried to have the same person work on it as much as possible.

However, there are times when I have no choice but to assign a different person to direct, although I am not sure if it is correct to call it ....... I don't know if this is the right way to put it. But I think the flow of the film and the tempo of the cuts should be put into the film by the person who drew the storyboards, based on his/her own sense.

Shimizu However, it can be uninteresting if all you do is direct your own storyboards (laughs).

Uda That's true.

Shimizu This is my personal opinion, but if you only use your own storyboards, you are repeating the same thing over and over again, and you don't get to know new techniques. In the sense of being exposed to other people's thinking, directing other people's work is not like re-tuning, but it is a great learning experience.

Also, directing is a game of how well you can capture and read the ideas that led to the storyboard. At the same time, the director has to reproduce what the director wants to do. And it's not just about recreating what the director wants to do; it's also about how to add something extra to the film. So I think this is also good training for the director.

As I mentioned earlier about training newcomers, if you learn the overall flow of a project by directing the storyboards of veteran directors, you can draw the storyboards as if you had been struggling with them until then. Basically, while it is true that I do the storyboarding and directing by myself, in order to survive in this world for a long time, it sometimes works out better if I also pick and choose what I want to do (laughs).

Uda That is true. Even after having built up such a long career, it is still interesting to direct other people's storyboards.

Q: By the way, when you direct a film from a storyboard, do the storyboard artist and the director have a meeting?

Uda: It is not so much the storyboard artist and the director, but the director and the director have a meeting.

Shimizu: No matter who is doing the storyboarding, the director does the final check and passes the storyboard as OK, so it belongs to the director.

Shimizu: By the way, what do you think when you see the opposite pattern, that is, when you see someone else's direction of your own storyboard?

Shimizu That is .......

Sakaire words might get muddled (laughs).

Uda Ha-ha-ha-ha (laughs). （Shimizu, you are so honest.

Shimizu You are still young. ......

Sakaida In the end, the director's job is to understand how the storyboard is interpreted, and from that understanding, he/she can add specific direction and timing to each cut, and ultimately make the film his/her own. So, if I see that the director did not read the storyboard or did not convey his/her intention, I sometimes think, "Hmmm...".

Shimizu: I have to work hard every day to prevent that from happening. However, there are people in the industry who are good at processing.

However, as one's career progresses, one's weaknesses become apparent. When that happens, I think to myself, "Oh. I also recall bitter memories of the past and gently close the video, thinking, "I wonder if this is how they used to think of me, too" (laughs).

Episodes 10 through 12, in which the three played an active role. A look back at how Franschoux got his revenge.

Uda: For episode 10, "How Zombies Take Revenge SAGA," you were the storyboard artist and Shimizu-san was the director.

Uda: Episode 10 was difficult to structure.

ーWe had the big bombing at the stadium concert in the first episode, and we were working on the story leading up to that point in episode 10.

Uda So I felt like I was working on "Kindaichi (Boy's Case Book).

Sakai I want to solve the case.

Uda So I asked the director if I could write the date on the film. I thought that if I didn't put the date in a big drop on the screen, the viewers wouldn't understand it. After all, the previous episodes were period dramas, so it would be hard for them to follow if we suddenly talked about the present day (laughs).

(Laughs.) It was difficult to find the right point of excitement. I wondered how to make it interesting, so I raised the target age range a bit in my mind.

Sakaide But that's exactly what I was trying to do, since we had already gone through "Saga Jihen Qi No.1 and Qi No.2" (laughs).

Uda That's right (laughs).

Shimizu So when I received the storyboards, I thought it would be a bit more mature with a more relaxed storyline.

Uda I said "Kindaichi," but I remembered that in my mind I was doing it as if I was doing "Detective Columbo.

Uda: In terms of the climax of the scene, I think the part where Sakura says that they should move on their own after the long scene where Tae puts on her makeup, and the part where Kotaro apologizes, I think that was the climax.

Uda: Ha-ha-ha-ha (laughs). (laughs) There was the long scene. That was a bitter pill to swallow.

Sakai But the fact that the members of Franchouche do not rely on Kotaro but work on their own is a big part of it. Through "Zombieland Saga: Revenge," the whole trend was for the members to be active, so I think the story was about how they got the chance to do that.

I think it was the story of how the members got the chance to do that. But from that serious scene, the story suddenly burst into flames, and I thought it was like "Saint Seiya" as I watched it (laughs).

Uda It was like "Saint Seiya" or robot anime, wasn't it?

Shimizu And then there are the Sunrise animations from the 1980s.

Uda To tell you the original story, I watched a cooking anime while I was storyboarding (laughs). It was on Kids Station.

(Everyone laughed).

Shimizu: But if you trace the roots of that work back to "Mr. Ajikko," the Sunrise series is not far behind (laughs). (Laughs) I was directing the production as I thought to myself, "I see.

Q: Mr. Shimizu is the director. How did you feel when you received the storyboards?

Shimizu: When I saw the storyboard, I thought it was basically a commentary. Commentary is actually a story that needs to be told, so you can't do too many interesting things on the screen. If there is an odd cut, I think, "That's it! I think, "That's it!

(laughs) But it was still very difficult. It was also difficult to find the climax of the story. In a sense, the ending was already shown in the first episode, so it was difficult to draw the origin of the story, and I was thinking about what to do.

Sakai: The most difficult part was that the audience knew the outcome, so I had to think about how to set the music. I couldn't put on a song that would stir up the audience. The music was difficult to put together because the audience knew that the live performance was going to be a failure, so the music was not meant to encourage them, but to make them think about the outcome and see how they felt about the situation.

Shimizu: In terms of the scenario, in other episodes, there would be a few small jokes, but not so much here, so I couldn't use the technique of making the audience laugh, so I had to create the music with sincerity and care (laughs). (Laughs.) Also, I enjoyed doing the long takes.

Uda I thought it must have been difficult to check the sheets.

Shimizu But there were only so many sheets, and we didn't move them around much. Scenes like that are not interesting if you move them around too much. In other words, we wanted the viewers to concentrate and listen to the dialogue, so if we moved them too much, it would not be interesting. So we kept movement to a minimum and adjusted the timing and timing of the dialogue, so it wasn't too difficult.

So, I felt that it was very difficult to put it all together as a whole. But I knew that episodes 11 and 12 would be the hardest, so I tried not to cause any trouble while directing them (laughs). (Laughs.) I tend to try to make things more exciting and difficult, but if I did that, I would cause trouble for those around me.