Anime & Manga News (Interview Edition)

The British Museum is winding up their first film series (actually 2 series) featuring anime movies. One of my earlier Anime Freebies & Sales posts has a list of the movies in both series. Anime UK News recently spoke with the curator of the Manga to Anime for Families Season and Late Night Manga to Anime Film Season, author Paul Gravett (Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics). They spoke about the target audience for the series and the hope that the series will encourage them to seek out not just the anime, but the manga upon which the anime is based.

Here is an excerpt which shows Mr. Gravett’s criteria for selecting the movies for the series:

“My interest in curating this first ever season of anime at The British Museum was to show the strong connections between the two major modern artforms of Japan – manga and anime. So one of my criteria was to choose anime movies that are based on the stories, characters or concepts that originated in manga. Another criteria was to show a mixture of better known and less familiar films, all of a high quality, different and distinct. I had a very long wishlist but not everything could be sourced for this initial series and certain timeless classics like Phoenix, Barefoot Gen and Akira cried out to be included.”

Anime UK News interview:
Ninja Clash at The British Museum: talking with curator Paul Gravett
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Photo courtesy tanemura.info

Kai-Ming Cha of Publishers Weekly Comics Week, interviewed shoujo manga-ka Arina Tanemura (Full Moon and Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne) at this year’s Comic-con in San Diego. Among the topics which they discussed were the influence (or actually the non-influence) of earlier shoujo manga-ka like Keiko Takemiya (Kaze to Ki No Uta) and Riyoko Ikeda (The Rose of Versailles), if she is trying to inspire young women through her work, and why she uses comics as a medium to tell her stories (instead of novels or screenplays).

Here is an excerpt where she discusses how music and rhythm are important to her work:

“I believe that like music, when people read stories or manga they follow a certain kind of rhythm. The rising and falling—it’s all like music. One of my strategies is to make really perfect rhythm so that the reader can follow and enjoy the story. I always think about that when I draw and put in the dialogue bubbles and when I’m choosing dialogue, what the characters will say first, what will they say next.”

ANN’s Carlo Santos also was able to speak with Tanemura-san at Comic-con. Their discussion not only was about manga, but it also touched on her love of pop culture. For example:

“ANN: …I remember in Full Moon, you said that Mitsuki’s hairstyle was based on Ai Kago from Morning Musume.

AT: When Ai Kago was in Mini Moni [a spinoff group], she had this vertical … (mimics the shape of curled pigtails.)”

PW Comics Week interview:
Talking Shojo with Arina Tanemura

ANN interview:
Interview: Arina Tanemura

On the left is a self portrait by Tanemura-san, courtesy of tanemura.info. This site also features highlights from the Question & Answer panel session at Comic-con in San Diego.

Here is one of the questions from that panel with the answer…you will note the answer is given in the third person, which is probably because the answer is given through a translator:

“Q. Like Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne being based off of Jeanne D’ Arc’s time period, would you (Arina) do another historical referenced-manga?

A. She said that as much as she would like to, it wouldn’t be very popular at all, because not very many people in Japan like reading manga with stories about historical events. (Our theory is because the Japanese use manga as an escape from studying for school haha).”

Tanemuro.info highlights:
Arina Tanemura at San Diego Comic-con

Tanemuro-san was in high demand at Comic-con. Deb Aoki of About.com: Manga also interviewed her. Here is an excerpt about her future plans:

“Since Gentlemen’s Alliance is ongoing, I have no plans for a new series starting anytime soon. I’m up to seven volumes and am planning for it to continue for another three volumes for a total of ten. The series has been running awhile, so I have about 3-4 ideas for the next series already.

But if I were to serialize a new series now, it’d be a action with lots of fighting or a figure skating manga.”

About.com interview:
Interview: Arina Tanemura

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Shonen Jump magazine will be featuring the first chapter to the basketball manga, Slam Dunk by Takehiko Inoue in their December 2007 issue (on newsstands November 6). This will act as a sneak peek to the graphic novel releases by Viz Media starting in 2008. Shonen Jump’s website has posted an excerpt of an interview with Inoue-san mainly about basketball. Here is an excerpt from the excerpt:

“JUMP: We understand that your Slam Dunk manga helped increase the popularity of basketball in Japan. How does it feel to have had such an influence on popular sports culture?

INOUE: It’s a pleasure more than I, as a manga artist, could have dreamed of. I could not have imagined a life without basketball during my high school years, so I hoped I could show my gratitude.”

The website hints that more of the interview will be printed in future issues of Shonen Jump.

Below is a picture of Inoue-san with the winners from the inaugural International Manga Award competition. From left to right: Madeleine Rosca (Australia), Kai (Hong Kong), Inoue-san, Ben Wong Thong Hou (Malaysia), Li Chi Ching (Hong Kong)

Photo courtesy Madeleine Rosca (which can also be seen here)

Shonen Jump’s interview:
Slam Dunk News

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Vertical Press is a publisher that translates contemporary Japanese fiction. As they say in their company profile:

“Vertical publishes exciting titles that require no prior knowledge of Japanese culture and are not intended primarily to familiarize readers with it; we choose good reads with universal themes.”

Recently, Vertical’s former Director of Marketing and Publicity, Anne Ishii, was interviewed by bookslut.com. They spoke about the concept behind Vertical Press, the difference between them and larger companies like Tokyopop, and what is being done to better promote contemporary Japanese fiction. In the following excerpt, Ms Ishii notes that translation is a touchy subject:

“Translation is indeed a touchy subject. I’ve waxed senile on the matter before, but here’s a conundrum – monolingual readers using the phrase, ‘the translation seemed a little off/rough/inaccurate.’ Um, unless you’re able to and then do actually read the original, those statements are just posturing. I mean sure, not all translators write Halcyon-prose, but and here’s another conundrum – readers relish in using translations to provide information about Difference-capital-D, so isn’t it possible the translation is fine but prose stylings are just different chez Japan? The loudest critics are usually the most ill-fit. I’m sure that’s someone’s quote.”

Bookslut.com interview:
Bookslut’s Indie Heartthrob Interview Series – Anne Ishii

Here is a picture of Anne Ishii which she describes:

“I just took this picture with the Photo Booth program in my newly requisitioned MacBook that was originally purchased by my old employer, Vertical, Inc.”

As the first entry on her new blog states, she is now a full-time freelancer.

I highly recommend checking in on her blog…it features irreverent, yet incisive commentary on news-oriented stories.

Her blog is called Ill Iterate – Make Love, Not Warcraft.

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Speaking of translations, the following interview features someone who works with translations for anime dubs rather than for manga publication.

GhibliWorld (an unofficial Studio Ghibli website) has an extended interview with Gualtiero Cannarsi, Studio Ghibli dub director for Italian dubs. Mr Cannarsi has an impressive resume of Ghibli dubs to his credit. He has worked as scriptwriter and dubbing director for Howl’s Moving Castle, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbour Totoro, Porco Rosso, Whisper of the Heart, and Tales From Earthsea. He also worked as scriptwriter and dubbing supervisor on Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Pom Poko.

You will notice the absence of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. In the interview he tells how a poor dub of Princess Mononoke by Buena Vista Italia (mainly due to a badly handled script) lead to his involvement with future dubs of Ghibli films by Buena Vista. He also explains that the rights to Spirited Away were acquired by another company and, unfortunately, resulted in another poor dub. The upside of this was that it lead to his involvement with Howl’s Moving Castle, even though the rights had been acquired by yet another company…the Italian Ghibli fan community had petitioned that company to have Mr. Cannarsi work on the project and, fortunately, the company agreed.

Other topics he spoke about in the interview were his love for Ghibli films, the actual dub process, Ghibli quality control over foreign dubs, and a look to the future with a preview of sorts of Hayao Miyazaki’s upcoming movie, Gake no ue no Ponyo, as well as his future hopes for Studio Ghibli in Italy. He also spoke in depth about Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea), the directoral debut of Goro Miyazaki.

The following excerpt is about his observations on Hayao Miyazaki’s approach to voice acting and how he tries to use Miyazaki-san’s approach when he directs the dub voice actors for the Italian dubs:

“One thing to be said is that Mr Miyazaki Hayao has always had quite a personal view about the voice-acting of animated features: he never really liked the ‘classical dubbing style’ of Japanese animation, because he always thought it just sounded too unreal to be believed as ‘true’. On the total contrary, Mr Miyazaki Hayao wanted voice acting to bring real emotions in the voices of his characters, hence a totally different style of dubbing which he used to look for even to the point of using non-professional voice actors at times, as in the cases of Satsuki and Mei’s father in Tonari no Totoro, or Shizuku’s father in Kondo Yoshifumi’s Mimi wo Sumaseba. Particularly, in the case of Totoro Mr Miyazaki Hayao stated he was very satisfied with Itoi Shigesato voice-acting, for he really managed to make Mr Kusakabe sound like a ‘real’ father, who does not always know everything about his own daughters, but tries his best in raising them day by day. Since then, Mr Miyazaki has gone way ahead on this path, with a big turning point coming along with Mononoke Hime. We all know that movie started out someway as the supposed ‘final masterpiece’ by Mr. Miyazaki Hayao, and he really aimed for perfection in any of its parts. As for voice-acting, that one movie starred an incredible cast of Japanese stage actors and celebrities (especially Morishige Hisaya, Miwa Akihiro, Tanaka Yuko), together with some other veterans of Ghibli dubs (including Shimamoto Sumi). The result was a totally outstanding voice-acting performance, reaching such a high level of realistic and emotional acting that it sounded totally unheard of in the whole Japanese animation industry. Since that, the ‘Ghibli style of dub’ has become a class of his own, diverging from the mainstream Japanese animation dub style, as it was even more emphasised with Sen to Chihiro, where the young starring was voice-acted by the very young actress Hiiragi Yumi, a child-talent who supposedly had no experience in voice-acting and made Chihiro just sounding as a real Japanese little girl. Finally this ‘Ghibli voice-acting style’ stroke again with Hauru no Ugoku Shiro, and was someway consolidated…”

“…From a technical point of view, I think the key of this style is not to ‘overact’ every single line spoken by characters, which is something very typical of the mainstream ‘traditional’ anime dub style, where more than often cool characters tend to sound just as ‘too cool’, or cute characters sound way ‘too cute’, and everyone ends up sounding too much of any given cliché to be really believable in the ears of the public. This has been my key point in working on both Hauru no Ugoku Shiro and Gedo Senki Italian dubs, in order to always keep the characters talking naturally, in a deeply emotional and believable way, even in the most un-realistic and fantasy situations. Naturally, another key point (of any dub I would say) is to get each voice actor to really understand the emotions and feelings of his character in every scene, every line he plays. And all that is strictly necessary in order to ‘bring real life in the breath and voice of the animated characters’, which is exactly what Studio Ghibli dubs always aim to.”

Both montage photos courtesy GhibliWorld

GhibliWorld interview:
An Extensive Interview With Foreign Studio Ghibli Dub Director Gualtiero Cannarsi

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Businessweek has a short article featuring director Satohsi Kon. It is not an interview per se, rather it’s an article written in the first person by Satoshi Kon. The article describes how he approaches projects…from planning through shooting. He uses Paprika as an example.

At the end, he discusses how he originally wanted to be a manga artist:

“I never imagined I’d become an anime director. At one point, I wanted to make a living drawing manga [comics]. That led me to animation. But I have no idea where this will take me. Some chance incident may change the course of my life, and I prefer to remain open to that. I’m not ambitious. I don’t have a dream. I just want to enjoy my work.”

Dr. Atsuko Chiba in Paprika

Businessweek article:
The Future of Work – Satoshi Kon