Interview! June 2, Netflix distribution begins prior to the start of the film! Summer Anime "GREAT PRETENDER" is a story built with the length of a movie in mind──Directed by Hiro Kaburaki and Ryota Furusawa (script and series composition).

The TV anime "GREAT PRETENDER" will begin airing on Fuji TV's "+Ultra" and other stations on July 8, 2020, and will be distributed exclusively on Netflix starting June 2.

Directed by Hiro Kaburaki of "91 Days" and "Onikan no chitetsu" fame, with character design by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto of "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and "Nadia of the Secret Garden" fame. Ryota Furusawa, who has written the scripts and composed the series for the dramas "Confidence Man JP" and "Date: What is Love? STUDIO, the production team is a lineup that is exciting just to hear about.

Hiro Kaburaki, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Ryota Furusawa, and WIT STUDIO have created the most exciting crime entertainment featuring a group of credit fraudsters (Confidence Man). The self-proclaimed number one genius fraudster in Japan, Edamura Masato (a.k.a. Edamame), gets caught up in the "con game," a game of deception of extraordinary proportions that takes place on the world stage. ...... In anticipation of the broadcast, we will be presenting interviews with director Hiro Kaburaki and Ryota Furusawa.

⇒WIT STUDIO's new anime "GREAT PRETENDER" will air on Fuji TV's "+Ultra" in 2020! Staff comments also arrived!

The story is told in the volume of a movie, taking advantage of the goodness of the script.

--I had a chance to watch the first half of the episode before I interviewed you, and I was really drawn in by the content. Speaking of credit fraudsters (Confidence Man), a subject that you also dealt with in the drama "Confidence Man JP," how did you come up with this film?

Furusawa: I was invited to work on this film many years ago. The producer, Mr. Taketsugu Wada (WIT STUDIO), first asked me about making an original anime, and we both had a common understanding that we wanted to make entertainment that everyone, young and old, could enjoy, and I had always been interested in a story featuring a con artist. I had always been interested in a story featuring a con artist, so I suggested this kind of work to them.

--I was originally interested in a story featuring a swindler, so I suggested this kind of work to him.

Kaburaki: I got the impression that it was very well written (laughs). I was convinced by what I read, and there are a lot of parts that don't go according to plan. Of course, there are some parts that are promised, but I got the impression that he threw a pitch that was not based on that grammar, and I thought the structure was very well done. I thought he was very good at composition. He also thought about the structure of the story and made some changes, and I thought he was very good at it.

--This work is not a complete story, but rather a series of several episodes that develop as a single "CASE. When writing the script, how did you consider the structure of the story?

Furusawa: I think the best way to make the story more watchable is to foreshadow, collect, and end the story within the episode, but it is difficult to mass produce such a story within 30 minutes. So I wrote the story as if it were the length of a movie, with the image of creating four movie-volume stories.

Kaburaki: Normally, the way to make an anime is to put the beginning and ending in 20 minutes (excluding commercials, OP & ED). If you divide it into 4 or 5 parts, you wonder if the middle part of the story will hold up (laughs). (Laughs) So I was careful not to make it look like it was just a series of episodes. I used the power of the characters and the direction to liven things up, but I also managed to make use of the goodness of the original script so that it would make sense if you go through the whole thing.

--I heard that you originally wanted to be a manga artist, so you must have had a desire to work on an original anime someday.

Furusawa: Yes, I did. I wanted to do it someday. As a newcomer, I was taught a lot of things and was able to work with a very fresh mindset.

--I think there were things about the characters that were unique to anime. How did you create the characters for this film?

Furusawa: Edamame (Edamura Masato) is Japanese, but the other characters are foreigners. It was fun to create characters that were foreign, and to be able to entrust each character with a national identity. The story is structured to delve deeply into the background of each character, so it can be enjoyed as a human drama as well.

--How did the director portray the characters that you wrote in this way? What, if any, changes did you make?

Kaburaki: If there is an original story, it is easy to derive from it and expand it, but this work was written by Mr. Furusawa from scratch, so I wondered what I could add to it to make it seem more human. It is not enough to simply act in accordance with the story, but we have to think about the play and reaction pictures while the story is being told. On top of that, if there is no growth of any kind by the time of the final episode, there is not much point in their existence. That is why I was conscious of gradually changing the goal to say that Edamame started out this way, but has become this kind of character. If you look at the story as a whole, everyone has grown in some way, and I feel like I am interpreting and translating that in a way that is easy to understand.

--I was also very impressed with the direction and dynamic movements of the characters. Is there any particular direction or character movement that you would like us to see, director-wise?

Kaburaki: My personal favorite part is when Abby gives the middle finger (laughs). Since I did it the first time, I thought I would do it all the time, so I included it after that. I wonder what will happen when it airs in the U.S., though.

--Did you start giving the middle finger when you were writing the script?

Furusawa: No, I didn't. (laughs).

Kaburaki: I thought Abby would do it (laughs). That kind of vulgarity is the part I added, so I will say that Mr. Furusawa is not the one who thinks about that kind of thing (laughs).

--By the way, I heard that you draw your own illustrations when you create characters.

Furusawa: I did, but that was really in the early stages. I was doodling from my imagination at a stage when I had no pictures or anything.

--I was just doodling in my imagination. - Of course there were differences from what I had imagined, but how was it when you saw the characters moving in the animated film?

Furusawa: I was really impressed by Sadamoto-san's drawings. The richness of the facial expressions was very much alive.

--You had already seen the anime that Sadamoto-san drew, right?

Furusawa Yes, I did. I had seen "Neon Genesis Evangelion" as well as "Nadia of the Mysterious Sea" because of my generation. That is why I was nervous at first. I thought, "It doesn't have to be someone so famous.

Kaburaki: When I went to Anime Expo, Mr. Sadamoto was very popular. There were people crying.

I realized that animation is "a mass of the creator's intentions.

--I was also impressed by the unique touch of the backgrounds. I was impressed by the unique touch of the backgrounds. What was your intention with the backgrounds?

Kaburaki: Normally, I would have thought the subject matter would be super realistic. But I thought it would be buried in the background, so I thought I would go for something a little different. I thought about using prints, but I decided that they were pretty ordinary, so I asked a young man named syo5 to draw an image board based on the prints as he liked. When I showed the image board to Mr. Takeda of Bamboo (art director Yusuke Takeda), he said, "That's interesting.

--I was amazed at how well the characters looked against this background.

Kaburaki: Normally, the characters would fight each other, but Yuko Kohari, the color designer, took a lot of effort to find the right balance. She did a professional job.

Furusawa: When she showed me the background, I thought it was really cool. I thought it would be stylish and new.

--I think that regardless of this film, there are times when the actual image differs from the image you had when you were writing the script.

Furusawa: Live-action films are full of restrictions, so things don't always turn out the way you imagined. In fact, there is a way to enjoy the happenings that occur on site. I don't say anything just because I don't like it.

--On the other hand, animation has fewer restrictions, and you can do things that would not be possible without using CG in live-action. What are your impressions after working in animation?

Furusawa: I felt once again that in animation, only what is intended can be seen on the screen. In live-action, there are many unintended things that appear on the screen. But in animation, every single facial expression, every single movement, and everything in the background is depicted (with intention).

Kaburaki: Well, that is true.

Furusawa In that sense, it is a "mass of the creator's intentions. And I was impressed because it was very close to what I imagined while writing the script.

Kaburaki: The basis of your book is a human drama, so I tried not to miss that point. However, what scared me a little was the "air race" that would appear in the future (laughs). (Laughs.) The air race is so calorie-intensive that normally everyone would stop even if I tried to do it. But since I had already written the script, I had no choice but to do it (laughs).

Furusawa: It's just a plane flying, so I don't think it's that big a deal. If it were a live-action film, I couldn't do it, but if it were an animated film, I could do it, right? It's like, "I can't do it if it's live-action, but I can do it if it's animation, right?

--(laughs). - With animation, you feel like you can do anything you want.

Kaburaki: It was extremely difficult. But in the end, it turned out fine and looked great, so I am glad we did it. I was also able to learn how heavy it is in terms of calories, so I thought it would be good for my future studies.

--I think one of the charms of your scripts is the light-hearted interaction between the characters. In that sense as well, how was the cast's performance?

Kaburaki: They are all professionals, so we had no problems. I even wondered if I made a mistake in giving instructions to the cast (laughs).

Furusawa That's right. I went to see the show once myself, and I didn't feel any different.

--I was not surprised at all. - Perhaps it was my preconceived notion of him as a con man, but I couldn't help but think that all his lines sounded suspicious.

Kaburaki I think so, especially Laurent.

Furusawa But the director also changed a lot. He added some interesting lines.

Kaburaki: That was a collaborative effort (laughs). (Laughs.) I thought about what I thought the character would say, and what I thought would be good to say.

--So the characterization became stronger through the collaborative process.

Kaburaki That's right. In this way, the characters grew on their own. Each of the directors would think and move the characters around, so we had to decide whether to control it all or just enjoy it. I think it is necessary to control the characters to some extent, but not too much, and have fun playing with them. In this work, I am looking at the playful part quite a bit.

--I think there is a lot of foreshadowing from the first episode. How do you put in such foreshadowing?

Furusawa: I don't do it in a calculated way, but I think about it as I write. When I was writing the back part of the story, I kept going back to the beginning and thinking that it would be better to have this scene at the beginning, and then I would go back and fix it.

--Lastly, do you have a message for those who are looking forward to seeing the film?

Furusawa: This work can be enjoyed by everyone, young and old, men and women, even those who do not usually watch anime, and I think it will cheer you up. I hope you will enjoy it as if you are adventuring around the world with Edamame.

Kaburaki: First of all, I would like you to see it, and after you have seen it, I would like you to make a pilgrimage around the world to the holy places when this situation subsides (laughs).

--(laughs) - I would love to see you organize a tour and push people who are hesitant to go back.

Furusawa I think it would be a great travel time.

Kaburaki It's a pretty quick trip. It's love, love! (Laughs)

(Reporting and writing by Kenichi Chiba)

Production Information
TV animation "GREAT PRETENDER

＜Broadcast Information
Broadcast on Fuji Television Network's "+Ultra" every Wednesday from 24:55 on July 8, 2020.
Broadcast on BS Fuji and other stations
Broadcast dates and times are subject to change.

Exclusive prior distribution on Netflix starting June 2, 2020
CASE 1 (episodes 1-5) June 2
CASE 2 (episodes 6-10) June 9
CASE3 (episodes 11-14) June 16
CASE4 Coming Soon
Distribution dates and times are subject to change.