Interview with Yoshinobu Asao (Producer / President of Geina Fukushima, Geina Corporation) x Mitsuo Fukuda (Director) x Naotake Kozato (Associate Producer) for the web animation "Princess Ai MEGOHIME".

Have you heard about the web animation "Aihime MEGOHIME" created by Fukushima Geina and Geina in collaboration with Miharu Town, Fukushima Prefecture? This unique work was produced to commemorate the 450th anniversary of the birth of Date Masamune's wife, Princess Ai, and is set in the town of Miharu, where beautiful young girls control an AI modeled after a warlord and engage in fierce battles. Currently, the second episode is available on YouTube.

The staff is a fascinating collaboration, with director Mitsuo Fukuda, known for "Mobile Suit Gundam Seed" and "Neon Genesis GPX Cyber Formula," taking the base idea developed by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto for Gaina's works and turning it into a work of art. For this interview, we spoke with producer Yoshinobu Asao, director Mitsuo Fukuda, and associate producer Naotake Kozato, who is also president of Geena Corporation and Fukushima Geena, about "Princess Ai MEGOHIME.

How Top Creators Gathered

─ Many people think of Director Fukuda and Mr. Kozato as allies from "Neon Genesis GPX Cyber Formula" and "GEAR Warrior Dendo" and think of Sunrise. Can you tell us how this teaming came to be realized for a Ga-ina work?

Asao: Fukushima Gainax, the predecessor of GAINA, was created in December 2015 as an independent company from GAINAX. Our policy at that time was to try our hand at robot animation for children, a genre that we had not done at Gainax before. However, we did not have the know-how to do so, so I consulted with Kenji Uchida, who was president of Sunrise at the time, and he connected me with Kozato-san. When Mr. Kozato joined our team and we were working on the project, we received an offer from Miharu Town, where Fukushima GAINAX was based, to do something based on the motif of "Princess Ai," the daughter of Date Masamune.

─ I heard that Yoshiyuki Sadamoto was in charge of the original concept of the work.

Asao: Mr. Sadamoto was in charge of character design when we produced a commercial for Toho Bank in Fukushima. That was one of the reasons why we asked Sadamoto-san to help us.

Kozato: Sadamoto-san was the original designer of the characters and the story, and he drew many image boards for the first episode. Mr. Fukuda then created the scenario and storyboards.

Asao: Sadamoto-san also wanted a new color in the work, so Kozato-san introduced me to Director Fukuda. Mr. Fukuda directed the film with a lot of Sadamoto-san's ideas and colors in the original concept.

Fukuda: That is my job. I wasn't particularly conscious of this, but I am glad that my color was expressed. I just directed what was required of the work as a matter of course.

───Can you tell us about the shape of Sadamoto-san's original idea?

Asao: In the beginning, I wanted to create a work that was more like a digest with elements of a longer work, rather than a work where the flow of the story is easy to understand. The initial concept was exactly the content of the first episode. For the battle scene in the second half of the first episode, Sadamoto-san wanted to see something that had never been done before, and Mr. Fukuda did a great job of cooking it up.

─ Was it difficult to fit a dense plot into a 10-minute film?

Fukuda: There was the part of how to put it all together in 10 minutes, but I was able to ask Sadamoto-san's opinion as we progressed, so it was easy for me not to have to make all the decisions about what to take and what not to take.

Fukuda──I thought the ending of the first episode was very well composed by showing pictures of the time Ai and Nene spent together as children, so that the audience could understand the reason for Nene's obsession within a limited time frame.

Fukuda: I left the ending to Sadamoto-san. Sadamoto-san did everything from the storyboard.

Kozato: Everything was done by Sadamoto-san, from the character design when she was a child to the background settings, including the cute situations. It has been a long time since I have seen Sadamoto-san's original drawings, so they are very precious.

Fukuda: I think the ending has a lot of Sadamoto-san's attention. Sadamoto-san really wanted to move the entire scene, but I told him, "If you do that, it won't end! You can't do that! It was my job to persuade him.

For the people of Miharu to enjoy

───The PV for "Ai Hime MEGOHIME" was produced before the full-length anime was produced, and if you look at the PV, the concept is quite different from the anime, with scenes of Ai Hime speaking on a game system built in a virtual space.

Asao: The first promotional video was made even before Sadamoto-san joined the project, and it was based on the worldview conceived by the people of Miharu Town.

─ ─ Is there someone in Miharu-cho who likes this kind of content?

Asao: (The person in charge of Miharu-machi) is an anime lover. Aihime is from Miharu-machi, but she only lived there as a child. So how can we make the connection between Miharu and Ai-hime, who has grown up to be in her late teens, around the age of a high school student? And if possible, I would like to show Miharu as it is today in the film. So you used the game as an interface as a methodology to depict Ai-hime at that age and connect it to the present day.

─ ─ In addition to that, the wives of warlords and women of the Warring States period are at the forefront of the motif in the main anime. It seems to me that the love-hate drama of fighting girls is a specialty of Kozato-san and director Fukuda.

Fukuda: It's not that I am good at it (laughs). (laughs) For my part, "Princess Ai: MEGOHIME" was not made as a moe anime.

Kozato: I think it is a mere coincidence, or perhaps a strange combination. After working with Director Fukuda on "Neon Genesis GPX Cyber Formula" and "GEAR Warrior Dendo" during the Sunrise era, I worked on "Dageki! Machine Robo Rescue," while Mr. Fukuda directed Mobile Suit Gundam Seed. At that time, I thought, "What kind of work do I want to do?" I thought, "What kind of work do I want to do? Sunrise already had a lot of robot movies, and there were also action movies like "Cowboy Bebop. So, as "something that had never been done before," I created "Mai-HiME" and "Mai-OtohiME," moe-like but with a burning atmosphere, in which beautiful girls fight. That flow from Studio 8 led to "Love Live! which was created by a junior producer.

Asao This work has a yuri element, which I think was actually what Sadamoto-san wanted to do. For my part, I am very glad that Kozato-san, who excels in this genre, was able to be a part of it (laughs).

Kozato: The yuri element, which Sadamoto-san wanted to do this time (?), and the yuri element, which we wanted to do this time. The yuri element that Sadamoto-san wanted to do this time and the way we got together were really coincidental (laughs). (laugh) Actually, when I was meeting with Sadamoto-san, there were times when I thought he was a creator who thought in the way of thick science fiction or historical drama, which is different from the current trends, and I love that kind of direction, so I could really relate to him.

Fukuda: What is your target audience for this work?

Fukuda: This film is to be shown at a public hall in the town, so everyone from grandfathers to children should be able to enjoy watching it. That is why all ages are targeted. There is no tit-shaking. No one will die and no blood will be spilled.

Asao: For the first episode, Mr. Sadamoto's idea was not to make the story easy to understand, but to make it cool! So it was a little difficult for the local old man to understand the story. So, starting from the second episode, Mr. Fukuda suggested that we create a flow for the story.

Fukuda: I was just trying to figure out, "Is this what you mean? (laughs).

(laughs) ─ Could you tell us how director Fukuda and Sadamoto-san explored what they wanted to create, and how they worked together?

Fukuda: The first and second episodes may not necessarily be what Sadamoto-san wanted to do. Since we were teaming up for the first time, we didn't know everything. It was natural that we would have different tastes, preferences, and ways of doing things, and I think the first episode was an exploration of how we could reconcile these. Looking back on it now, there are many areas where we could have done better.

─ ─ In the second episode, the hangar for the giant robot of the IXA system and the lasers emitted by the giant flying objects, I felt that it was very much like the Gainax works of the 80s and 90s.

Fukuda: However, for this work, I did not do any parodies or homages. I didn't think that was what people wanted.

Asao It was the idea of Sadamoto-san and character designer Arakimari-san that something bigger than a mountain emerged. So I don't think that is a parody, but rather what the two of you have been working on for a long time and what you want to do and create is something like that.

Kozato: Both Fukuda-san and Sadamoto-san are veterans and have a lot of know-how. They also have techniques on how to showcase their work. I think they are using common techniques, such as the way to express the appearance of a giant mecha.

─ ─ The appearance of a giant object when a school or a mountain breaks open is a tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation in the kids' anime and the "Yusha" series.

Kozato I think it is Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Sadamoto who make what is necessary in a "normal" way. But if you look at the cut-and-cut style, it looks like Ga-ina, or the action scenes look like Sunrise, or the cut-and-cut style of Director Fukuda! etc. I appreciate the fact that there are core people who look deeper into each of them.

Fukuda: If we focus too much on action and mechanics, the scene will collapse, so we don't put all our effort into that aspect. In fact, Sadamoto-san came up with some deeper ideas at the meeting level, but in the end, we had to make sure that the work would be enjoyed by the people of Miharu, so we are working in a direction that doesn't show an otaku-like color. We are also mostly nerds, so even unconsciously, those colors do come out, but we try to keep them in check.

Kozato: When something big appears, it moves slowly, so if you spend a lot of time (on drawing), it becomes a big problem. If we used CG, it would cost even more money. In the past, there were methods like ...... that used stop harmonies and added smoke and effects. Anyway, that is the way to show the meaning of production, and that is what "normal" means to me. But when you actually see the scene, it looks cool as a single picture!　I think this is because of the professionalism of Mr. Fukuda and Mr. Sadamoto. We production people tend to worry only about the number of cuts and shots (laughs).

Fukuda: CG is a no-brainer (in terms of budget) (laughs).

Kozato: The director had us work within the rules of budget and schedule. On top of that, he put first priority on what would please the viewers, and as a producer, I am very grateful for that.

───How is the reaction in your hometown of Miharu?

Asao: The children are very happy. Of course, the main goal of the town is to attract many people from outside to Miharu, but before that, there is the recognition of Aihime itself. Before this project started, there were very few children in Miharu who knew about Ai-hime, and the people in the town were very shocked. Now that the character has been created and an animation has been produced, a survey of Miharu children shows that almost all of them know of Ai-hime. They said that was the best thing for the town to do.

There are already hints of a third episode that I can't wait to see completed!

──I think this is a very aggressive work for a local anime in which the local government participated.

Asao: Sadamoto-san told us from the beginning that although the work is set in Miharu-machi, our main goal was not to depict the town as it is.

Fukuda But you went on location scouting.

Asao That's right. The director went with me to Miharu-cho in the middle of winter. It was in the middle of a snowstorm. So I think there are a lot of places that have a special place in the hearts of the people in the town. Especially in the second episode, the director thought of a lot of things, and the high school, the hospital, and the little three-way street where the characters talk to each other are all depicted as they are.

─ ─ In the first episode, cherry blossoms are depicted, and in the second episode, plum blossoms are depicted in an impressive manner. I wondered if this was inspired by the origin of the name of the town of Miharu, where cherry blossoms, plum blossoms, and peaches bloom at the same time in spring.

Asao Ah, that's a great reading (laughs). That is correct. The costume design also matches that.

───How did you feel when you went to the location scouting, Director Fukuda?

Fukuda: I have been there several times, and Miharu is a beautiful place. However, the location scouting was tough because of the ups and downs, which was hard on me because of my lack of exercise.

Kozato You also went to Fukushima Geena, didn't you?　That place is interesting, too.

Asao The building that houses Fukushima Gaina was originally a junior high school that was renovated after the earthquake, but due to the declining birthrate and the earthquake, the school was closed. We are using it now because it is a good place to concentrate on animation production since there is nothing around.

Kozato It is a good environment in that sense as well, since we can walk to the famous Takizakura Cherry Blossom on foot.

Fukuda: It is good for concentrating on work, and we also have a schoolyard and gymnasium. It would be a good idea to create an environment where people can sleep over and create more artworks in Fukushima. After all, the best way to revitalize Fukushima is to have a steady flow of money and people.

───Are there any difficulties that are unique to working with the local government?

Asao: It is not possible to do everything in terms of profitable business development.

Fukuda: If it is possible to establish it as a content business, it can be developed nationwide.

Asao There are also requests, such as, "Please don't destroy the "X".

Oarai-cho's "Girls und Panzer" is rather requested to be destroyed, so it is interesting that each municipality has different requests.

Fukuda I think it would be better to destroy them.

Asao In the first episode, an attack lands on a dam, but the dam does not break, only a column of water rises up. The directors thought a lot about that.

───What do you think about the music that decorates the film?

Asao: The music is another point that Mr. Sadamoto is particular about, and it is composed by ATOLS, a Vocaloid music composer. Mr. Sadamoto wanted to work with a new musician while incorporating a Japanese taste, so he himself found the music. As a musical point, the BGM in the first episode is seamless and is connected as one piece of music from beginning to end. In the second episode, I took it apart and used it as the accompaniment.

Kozato: I gave them the storyboards and had them create the music to match the images.

─ So you are using a method similar to film scoring. Finally, please tell us about the highlights and your enthusiasm for the third episode.

Fukuda: We want to make this an all-ages anime that everyone will enjoy as much as possible. We want to make good works, but this time we are taking a different approach than commercial animation, which aims to sell products and goods. That's why it was interesting and I learned a lot. We are trying to make a coherent story by the third episode, so we want to make sure that we summarize the flow up to this point so that the people in the town who support us don't say, "This is the last one! I want to make sure that the people in the town who support us don't say, "This is the last one!

Kozato I would like you to take a look at the poster for episode 2, which actually contains a big spoiler for episode 3. I was surprised too, so please enjoy it.

Asao: I want to make "Ai-hime" loved by the people of the town and "Ai-hime" that will bring people to Miharu, so I would like to make this a project that begins again from there, not ending with the completion of the animation. Thank you for your support.

Last but not least, this year is the Olympic and Paralympic year, and we are going to hold the annual science fiction convention at Bandai Atami Onsen in Fukushima, hoping that many people from Japan and abroad will come to Fukushima. We would also like to have a guest talk on the theme of local regions and anime production. Of course, we are also hoping to have Director Fukuda and Mr. Kozato come to the event as well!

Akiba Soken will continue to post an interview with Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, as well as rare original drawings and materials. Please check it out as well.

(Reporting and writing by Kiri Nakazato)