Commemorating the end of "BIRDIE WING -Golf Girls' Story-" Season 1 broadcast! A major shift from a "loose-fitting golf anime" to a one-of-a-kind original work! Interview with Akihiro Sekiyama, producer of "BIRDIE WING -Golf Girls' Story-" Part 1

Which of the spring 2022 cool anime did you enjoy the most? I would answer "BIRDIE WING -Golf Girls' Story-" immediately!

BIRDIE WING -Golf Girls' Story-" (hereafter, "BIRDIE WING"), an original TV anime with women's golf as its motif, began broadcasting in April 2022, and was directed by "Jewelpet Sunshine" and "Time Bokan 24" as director, and Yosuke Kuroda, who has created many popular works including "Mobile Suit Gundam 00," as series director.

The story of Eve, who earns her living by betting on golf, and Aoi Amawashi, a daughter of a large corporation and an elite golfer, was full of small fun and excitement each time, combining dramatic story development, hot special shots, shocking direction, and strange subplots.

After a hard-hitting beginning set in a slum, the second half of Season 1 took a turn toward a royal sporty storyline set in a Japanese school. The unpredictable development and the appearance of attractive characters one after another brought the curtain down on Season 1 at ......, where things were getting more and more exciting.

Akiba Research Institute features the much-talked-about "BIRDIE WING," and amidst the anticipation for Season 2, which was announced immediately after Season 1 ended, we interviewed Akihiro Sekiyama, producer at BANDAI NAMCO PICTURES (BNP), who has overseen the entire project from its inception. (BNP), who has been involved in the project from its inception. We asked him about the aims of the project, behind-the-scenes production, and the truth about the tricks and subplots that made an impact, as much time as we could spare.

At first, we were thinking of making a "loose-fitting golf animation

--BIRDIE WING" is very interesting! How has the response been?

Sekiyama: I am very happy to hear that people who have seen it say that it was interesting. I also told my friends outside the industry that it was available on Amazon Prime Video, and they were hooked and wanted to see the rest of the series.

--Golf is a well-known sport in Japan and around the world, but there are actually very few anime about it. Even if you think back to the Showa era, there are only a few "Pro Golfer Monkey," "Ashita Tenki ni Narena," "DAN DOH! and the short "Sorairo Utility. Why did you decide to do an anime about women's golf now?

Sekiyama: The project started not with me, but with Yusuke Inui, an associate producer in charge of planning and sales at BNP. I'm not the type of person who plays golf, but Inui started playing golf and got really into it, and his passion for golf got me involved (laughs). That was the corporate culture. Inui and I started thinking, "We want to do a golf animation," and we said, "Well, let's do it together.

I have made a variety of works in the past, but there have been very few golf cartoons in recent years, and I thought, "How can we make a golf cartoon? When I thought about how to shape a golf animation, I felt that I could create an interesting image that few people have seen before. I thought that just having deep green trees, greens, and blue skies would be enough to create an animation that would be pleasant to watch.

--Did you think about what exactly you wanted the content to be before you decided on the director and series composition?

Sekiyama: Yes, we did. We did a lot of internal deliberation. Actually, at first we were thinking of a "loose-fitting golf anime" (laughs). (Laughs.) It was like "K-ON! where the girls would play golf occasionally. I was thinking more of an "anime to be loved.

I was thinking more of an "anime to love"--oh my God!

But I wondered if this was really the right way to go as a company with Sunrise blood (now a brand within Namco Bandai Filmworks), and by extension, as a member of the Namco Bandai Group. I thought, "Is this really what I want to do? Many of my superiors at the time were golfers, so I went to various people to ask their opinions. I even approached Mr. Ishikawa, who was then an advisor to NAMCO BANDAI Holdings. He said, "Even if BNP doesn't create this kind of project, other companies and studios will create it. He said, "The work created by Namco Bandai should be a royal work.

I thought to myself, "We wanted to make a soft animation with girls having fun. ......" "But when Advisor Ishikawa says that, it's very persuasive. ......" Until then, it was original, and I didn't want to remove it. Until then, I had been thinking that it was an original, I didn't want to miss anything, and I was sure that I could recover a decent amount of production costs - in a strange way, I was thinking, "Let's just make it a potential hit. But when I was told that, I reworked the project, and as a result, the prototype that led to the current content was created.

--I am very proud of you, Mr. Ishikawa. Listening to you, I feel that if it had been a "loose-fitting golf animation," it would have settled for a potential hit and been buried. It is precisely because we did not go that route that we thought we had a great work.

Sekiyama: Without changing the core idea of "taking golf as the theme and having female characters," how could we make it even more interesting? How could we make it more interesting? How could we make it a title with more of a Sunrise or BNP feel, and more of an expansion of the BANDAI NAMCO Group? The three of us, myself, Inui, and the president of BNP at the time, thought about it a lot. We were asking ourselves so many questions that smoke was coming out of our heads. It was like asking ourselves the same question.

Is "BIRDIE WING" a female version of "Scryde"? Is it the "Pro Golfer Monkey" of 2025?

--I think that the content of "BIRDIE WING" is quite different from episode 8, which is set in the slums of Nafres, and episode 9 and onward, in which Eve comes to Japan and plays an active role at the Thunder Phoenix Girls Academy. Did you have both in mind from the beginning?

Sekiyama: "BIRDIE WING" was actually conceived from the beginning as a two-cour work, and at first I thought I could make a two-cour film with just the "Naphles Arc," but then I decided to make it a bit faster. Nowadays, both animations and live-action dramas are usually fast-paced, so it is possible for viewers to follow the storyline. So, when we decided to do a two-cour production, I asked Director Inagaki and Mr. Kuroda if we could rearrange the scenes and characters to have a structure with multiple short stories, instead of dragging the story along a single vertical axis.

--When I saw the names of directors Inagaki and Kuroda-san, anime lovers were excited.

Sekiyama: I don't have to tell you that Kuroda-san is a hit maker. I myself had wanted to work with him for a long time, and when we started planning this project, I had worked on "Mobile Suit Gundam 00" and "Gundam Build Fighters" at Sunrise, so I was sure that Kuroda-san would be the right choice for this project. Moreover, when it came to a script that was hard-boiled or a school story, and that could write a sharp script while portraying girls in a cute manner, Kuroda-san was the only person who came to mind. So, I asked Mr. Kuroda to write the script, and also talked to Mr. Inagaki about it.

I had worked with Mr. Inagaki on "Jewelpet Sunshine" and other productions when I was at my previous company, so I was familiar with his direction. This was an original work, and I had decided not to make it loose, but I thought that Mr. Inagaki was the only person who could cook it up well even if it turned out to be loose or hard-boiled. In fact, when Mr. Kuroda's composition came to me, the first half of the "Nafres version" had a hard-boiled atmosphere, while the "Japan version" after Eve crossed the sea was a school story that sometimes had a bit of a loose-fitting atmosphere, so I am glad I asked Mr. Inagaki to direct.

--By the way, from what stage did Eve start shouting special moves (shots) such as "Direct Blue Bullet"?

Sekiyama: She was like that from the beginning (laughs).

--When I heard that, I couldn't help but think of "Scryde" (a sci-fi action anime written by Kuroda-san and broadcast from July to December 2001) (laughs).

I honestly wanted to make the characters distinctive, like Strait Cougar in "Scryde" or Graham Acre in "Mobile Suit Gundam 00". We wanted to make the characters stand out.

--On the other hand, there were some who said that Eve makes her living by playing golf and using special moves, and that she is like a "professional golfer monkey" of 2025. How do you honestly feel about being considered as such?

Sekiyama: I used to watch "Pro Golfer Monkey," "Let's Be Sunny Tomorrow," and "Dan Doh! I used to watch "Pro Golfer Monkey," "Asatte Tenki ni Narenare! Inagaki, Kuroda-san, myself, and Inui all agreed that it was not up to the level of "Professional Golfer Monkey. Even if we were to hit a super shot, we wanted it to have the fantasy or realism of "if a pro golfer tries 100 times, he might succeed at least once. So, although I was not aiming to be a "professional golfer monkey" of 2025, I don't mind being called such a thing. The director often mentions his name, and I'm happy if that's the way people see it.

--I think it's true that it's not that kind of extra-dimensional special move. It was reminiscent of something like that, though. The "Red Bullet in the Sky" is like the "Shrike Drop" in "Pro Golfer Monkey.

Sekiyama: I think it was episode 7, but after the episode aired, I happened to see a tweet on Twitter that said something like, "You should do the flag pinch (a typical special move used by Sarutani Sarumaru, the main character in "Pro Golfer Ape")" (laughs). (Laughs.) "You're hitting right above the pin," he said.

--I honestly thought - no wonder he did something close to that.

Sekiyama: Including that part of the project, from the scenario stage, we worked with Toru Inoue, professional coach and director of the World Junior Golf Championships and Japan, as well as with employees of the Global Golf Media Group (which develops golf magazines such as ALBA and Regina), who are credited for their cooperation, and also with the staff of the BANDAI NAMCO Group, who were all involved in the development of the project. The project was supervised by people with golf experience within the BANDAI NAMCO Group. Instead of arguments such as, "This can't happen in real life," they were rather supportive, saying, "As long as it's not physically crazy, why not? They were often rather cooperative. Rather, Mr. Inoue would ask me, "Since it is an animation, why don't you do something like this? He was very helpful, even suggesting "Since it's an animation, why don't you do something like this?

--Since it is an animation, we could have gone in unrealistic directions or pursued realism, but the supervisors also made suggestions, didn't they?

Sekiyama: In terms of supervision, manners were a big part of it. Rules and manners are different, aren't they? Basically, rules can be found on the Internet or in books, and we studied them when we started working on the project, but manners were difficult in many cases, so they were very helpful.

--I heard that neither Director Inagaki nor Mr. Kuroda played golf.

Sekiyama: Yes. I read a lot of golf manga for this project, and we went to a golf course together for interviews and played a little, but that was about it.

--Did you go to see the actual tournaments and tours?

Sekiyama: Of course I did. I didn't know what golf tournaments and tours were like, how hot they were, how much walking there was, how many people were there, ...... so I went to several tournaments as a spectator and looked around.

--I think the production of the anime started long before that, so it wasn't triggered by Hinoko Shibuno's victory at the Women's British Open the year before last (2019), was it?

Sekiyama: That's right. I think the project started about four and a half or five years ago.

--So it must have been good timing for you to become the first winner since Hisako Higuchi to win the championship, and for the golf world to get excited about the event.

Sekiyama: It was great. I think it was also great that the Olympics were held in Japan and golf was chosen as an official event. I think it was a great tailwind for the project.