Commemorating the end of the broadcast! I have no regrets! TV anime "BIRDIE WING -Golf Girls' Story-" Season 2 producer Akihiro Sekiyama interview Part 1

The TV animation "BIRDIE WING -Golf Girls' Story-" (hereinafter "BIRDIE WING"), Season 1 of which aired from April to June 2022, is an original TV animation with women's golf as its motif.

Directed by Takayuki Inagaki, who worked on "Jewelpet Sunshine" and "Time Bokan 24," and featuring series composition by Yosuke Kuroda, who has created many popular works including "Mobile Suit Gundam 00," this work gained popularity for its dramatic story development, hot special shots, and shocking direction. It gained popularity for its dramatic storyline, hot special shots, and shocking direction.

Season 2, which began airing in April 2023, maintained the "BIRDIE WING" style, with the "Japan Arc," set in a Japanese school, and the "Pro Arc," in which Eve and Aoi Amawashi become professional fighters. The hot battles and the ending were greeted with excitement and surprise by viewers.

Akiba Research Institute interviewed Akihiro Sekiyama, producer of Namco Bandai Pictures, who has been involved in the project since its inception, as in the interview commemorating the end of the Season 1 broadcast. We spoke to him about the story, the characters, and even some minor details.

How much reality should be preserved and how much should be made to look like an anime?

--First of all, please tell us your frank impression after finishing all 25 episodes.

Sekiyama: Well, it was tough (laughs). As well as the drama, I wanted to portray golf itself in an interesting way, and I hope that the number of people who watch "BIRDIE WING" and think "I'll start playing golf" or "I'll start with a round of golf" will increase, even if only slightly. ...... That was how I felt at the beginning of the project, but as I got into it, I realized that I had chosen a very difficult subject matter. That is my honest impression.

Making animation itself is tough, but even though I chose the subject matter myself, there are many more aspects of golf etiquette than just the rules. I had to learn that as I went along. There are a lot of things I didn't get to, but I think I managed to bring it to a point where I and director Inagaki could think of it.

--I understand that it is very difficult to make a sports anime. When I spoke with the producer of another sports anime, he said that it was many times more difficult than he had originally planned.

Sekiyama: That's right. I myself have made soccer anime in my career, and there are parts that can be lied about and parts that cannot be lied about.

Of course, animation is a world of lies no matter how far you go. However, if you keep creating a world of lies, no one will watch it. On the other hand, if you only use realistic expressions, it would be boring. How much reality should be preserved, and how much should be fiction or animation? It is a fine line. It was difficult to draw that line, and I think it was hard to depict the realistic aspects of "BIRDIE WING".

--I think that as the story progresses, you want to make the special moves and other parts that look good in the anime more flashy. Is there anything new you have considered for Season 2?

Sekiyama: In terms of production, we did not separate Season 1 from Season 2.

However, after working on it for so long, I inevitably became numb (to the senses) and wondered if it was okay to do so. Maybe I should make it a little more fancy." I think, "Is this okay? I think the "flag pinching" (*) in episode 14 (the first episode of Season 2) was a sign of that (laughs). (Laughs.) There is no mention of "flag pinching" in the script.

It is one of the special moves used by Sarutani Sarumaru, the main character in "Professional Golfer Monkey," in which the ball hits the flag directly on the pin and goes straight into the cup. In "BIRDIE WING," Eve hit the ball at the flag with the "Orange Bullet" and it went in the cup.

-Of course, even in the film, they don't say "flag pinching" (laughs).

Sekiyama: That's right. In terms of the reality of golf, as I mentioned during the interview for Season 1, I consulted with Toru Inoue (professional coach and Japan national team manager for the World Junior Golf Championships), who supervised the golf, and set the standard as "if a professional player played 100 times, he would succeed at least once. Even if the player says, "No, this is not true," we decided to make the game "something that can be done by chance at least once in 100 attempts," and "no super shots or special moves that ignore the laws of physics.

-- "Isn't "flag pinching" physically strange from a professional's point of view? I've seen footage of players hitting the flags.

Sekiyama: Just because the ball hits the flag doesn't mean it will always go in, but if it hits the flag 100 times, it will go in at least once. The "hit the flag" part is also true: if you hit the ball 100 times, it will hit the flag at least once. That's the logic (laughs).

--(laughs). - That would be one in a thousand (laughs).

(laughs) Sekiyama: That's right (laughs).

(laughs) -- By the way, regardless of the response to Season 1, did you plan to have this shot appear in the film from the beginning?

Sekiyama: Not from the beginning, but rather Director Inagaki came up with the idea when he was storyboarding the film.

The hot development of the last shot was made up! That's how I felt.

--You had the three-part story in mind from the beginning, didn't you?

Sekiyama: That's right. As we discussed the scenario with the director and Mr. Kuroda, we decided that we wanted to depict the intersection of Eve and Aoi's lives, the drama of their coming together and separating from each other, which is the most fundamental part of this work.

In addition, nowadays, in both live-action dramas and other animated works, no matter how fascinating the characters are, we want to keep the story moving at a brisk pace; we want to make the story a little more compact, instead of taking 25 episodes to accomplish something. It is important to show the relationship between Eve and Aoi in detail, but we wanted the story surrounding Eve and Aoi to be fast-paced and develop quickly.

Mr. Kuroda suggested that we divide the story into three parts: "◯◯ part", "□□ part", and "△△△ part". I thought this would be a good idea because it had a good tempo and a very interesting structure.

--What was your intention with the second section, the "Japan Arc," where the subtitles (titles of the episodes) are like sentences?

Sekiyama: Anime scripts never come with a blank subtitle, and usually the scriptwriter writes a tentative title for the episode and submits it to the scenario editor. For "BIRDIE WING," we adopted the subtitle from the first script submitted by Mr. Kuroda (laughs).

(Laughs.) After all the scenarios were finished, the director asked, "What should we do about the sub-titles?" the director said, "What? Why don't we just take out the (tentative) subtitle?" I said, "Why don't you just take out the (tentative)? I and Inui (associate producer Yusuke Inui) also thought it was fine, so we confirmed with Mr. Kuroda and decided to leave it as it was.

Episode 15 subtitle

--Is the "Japan" part the only one you adopted as is?

Sekiyama: No, all of them. From episode 1 to episode 25. The "Japan Arc" is a school story, and I thought it would be interesting to add a sense of the girls having fun, and this title (like a sentence) just fell into place.

--So you didn't come up with the title later to give the "Japan version" its color?

Sekiyama: From the beginning. The "Nuffles Arc" ends in episode 8, and the "Japan Arc" begins in episode 9, so the subtitle was changed completely, so I think Mr. Kuroda may have had this image in mind from the beginning.

--In terms of content, Season 2 revealed the truth about Eve and Aoi's parents, in addition to the golf confrontation. How did you think about creating this area?

Sekiyama: The scenario meetings were held without the opinions of the 20-somethings (who were not among the participants), in both good and bad ways. In such a situation, when we thought about how to make it more interesting, we decided that we should try a "Daiei Drama" type of sordid human relationship, which would make a full circle and be accepted as interesting again. Korean dramas, for example, are a bit more complicated by depicting the immediate family, but the viewer is drawn into the story with a sense of "what's going to happen next? What will happen next?" That's why I wanted to create a form that wasn't too grotesque. So, I thought about what kind of relationship values I could create between the characters in order to make the story less complicated and easy for the viewers to accept.

For example, "If your father were your half-sister, would you be able to respect him? Or, "What if the setting was one where the no-good father dies?" I thought about all these things, and Mr. Kuroda and the director did a great job of putting them together. I am very happy that we were able to create a drama in which no one is disloyal, but everyone is at the mercy of their surroundings, and this is what happens as a result of living their lives to the best of their ability.

--Even after Aoi discovers that her real parents are Seira Amawashi and Reiya Amuro (Director Amuro), her relationship with them does not deteriorate, and they talk very amiably.

Sekiyama: That's right. Mr. Kuroda did a great job of building the drama without making any of the characters, including Director Amuro, who stepped down from Aoi's presence, seem too villainous, or rather, a jerk. I thought it was amazing.

--I was impressed by Mr. Kuroda's ability to build up the drama without making any of the characters too bad. Since the CV of Director Amuro is Toru Furuya, was it your intention to have him call her "Seira-san"? It seemed to me.

Sekiyama I wonder how it was. But I think they were aiming for it.

--So, how did you feel about the latter half of the story when you read the scenario?

Sekiyama: It was an original work, so the scenario from Mr. Kuroda was the first time we knew about it. I, the director, and the staff around me were all saying, "I can't wait for next week," and "I can't wait to read the next one," and from the middle of the story, it was almost Kuroda-san's sole domain. We discussed the details of the golf game and the possibility of including Momoko Ohsato and Naoki Sekifuji* in the story, but other than the minor plot points, the storyline was just "It was interesting this time, too. That's all." Most of the scenario meetings seemed to end quickly.

*The characters based on Momoko Ohsato and Naoki Sekifuji appear in "BIRDIE WING"!

https://birdie-wing.net/collaboration/collaboration10.php

--I wondered what would happen to both Eve and Aoi in the last ......, but as you said in the last interview, "It will land in a beautiful way," it was a really clean ending. Was this ending decided right away? Or did you have another plan?

Sekiyama: Mr. Kuroda gave us about three different ideas for the ending, and we decided on it together with the director and everyone else.

--So there was a bad ending where neither of you could play golf anymore?

Sekiyama: There was one. We had three ideas, including that one. But this one was beautiful, and it was unanimous.

--After Aoi collapsed on the 3rd day of the British Open, it was also a hot development that Aoi became Eve's caddy on the last day (episode 25).

Sekiyama: It's a very exciting scene, isn't it? When I read the scenario, I thought, "This is a hot development", wondering what would happen if Eve and Aoi played golf toward one goal. The director storyboarded and filmed it, so I had no regrets about how it ended, and I felt like I had completed the project! I felt like I had finished making it.

--Did you write the part where Aoi cuts her hair in your script from the beginning?

Sekiyama: No, there was no description of her cutting her hair. I think the reason she changed her hair style was because director Inagaki wanted to express the change in her feelings after he finished storyboarding.

Continue to the second part of the interview!

(Interview and text by Kenichi Chiba)