Ichiro Okouchi（Screenwriter）

　In the creator workshops, creators working on the forefront of anime are invited as lecturers. Ichiro Okouchi, a screenwriter who has worked on various hit series such as the CODE GEASS Lelouch of the Rebellion series and Valvrave the Liberator taught the lecture on screenwriting. What Okouchi told the participants first is that “scripts for anime are a team battle”: anime is created by various creators joining forces. Scripts, which serve as the blueprint for this process, are reworked through trials and error until they reach the final draft. The script that is completed through such development is filled with creative ingenuity as well as the passion and the torments of the creator.
The workshop used episode 6 of CODE GEASS Lelouch of the Rebellion and episode 1 of PLANETES , written by Okouchi, as subjects. While the intention and the aim of the scripts for each scene and each cut were explained in details, the workshop was carried on by deciphering the script in real-time. The commentary was specific yet practical, with the know-how and techniques that Okouchi had cultivated within his daily creative work being presented freely. These pieces of information given by Okouchi covered a wide range, such as: methods to incorporate your idea into a script; how to draw a character in an appealing manner; the roles that A-part and B-part have respectively, to always be conscious of the development of the emotion of the viewers; the difference in the attitude between the script for each episode and the series composition; and the difference between novels that contain only written information and the characteristics of anime. What was revealed through analyzing scripts from Okouchi’s perspective was the perspectives and mentality that a screenwriter should have. Okouchi stated, “A meaning is always included in all scenes and depictions. The plot should be captured not through its content but through its structure. Just watching anime while analyzing this will enable you to learn the technical aspect of screenwriting.”
The participants had submitted the script for the B-part of one of the series in advance. Okouchi gave remarks on each submitted script during the workshop. In addition, a Q&A segment was allocated at the end of the workshop, during which many enthusiastic questions came from the participants. The question that left the strongest impression in particular was, “Will there be a case in which the script you wrote becomes reflected onto the screen 100%?” To which, Okouchi responded by saying, “What is fun about anime scripts is that their world expands wider and richer than you could have imagined with the involvement of others. Whether it’s PLANETES or CODE GEASS , the actual products are better than my script without a doubt. I continue working with scripts because I find this to be very enjoyable. Working with people doesn’t mean having less than 100%.”

Writert：Tetsuya Hoshi

Ei Aoki（Director）

　The lecturer for the creator workshop/direction class was Director Ei Aoki, who worked on Kara no Kyōkai: The Movie, Fate/Zero , and ALDNOAH.ZERO , the original robot anime that will be broadcast this summer. The workshop adopted the format of a talk session conducted with Yuma Takahashi from Aniplex.
The lecture started with Director Aoki describing the path he took until he ended up in a directorial position. Director Aoki recounted that his career path started with product assistant, then moved to digital photography and assistant director before moving up to become a director. He gave a realistic account, in which Aoki also described the setbacks and doubts that he felt at the time. The moment he felt a setback for the first time was when he started drawing up storyboards as an assistant director: “Despite having images of scenes I would like to see, stories I would like to develop, and characters I would like to draw, I wasn’t able to make it to such ideals. I lacked the skills so I wasn’t able to render the images I had into storyboards. I was struck by the gap between my ideals and my actual skills.” The solution strategy for overcoming such setbacks was to continue drawing up storyboards regardless. Director Aoki went on to describe, “I had to accept that I wasn’t able to do it. Although this may sound bad, it is good to have a completed dud than an unfinished masterpiece. If you don’t finish a work of anime, you will not develop your insight. If you can reflect on your work, this will be carried over to the next work. The only thing you can do to grow is to repeat this process.”
The discussion extended over to the production of ALDNOAH.ZERO , which presented two major challenges for an anime director since it was the first original work and robot anime he will be directing. He described the difficulties and thrills of plotting out the story from scratch and the joys of creating fiction. When asked by a participant what is the secret for making a good work of anime, he responded with the following:
“The manner in which people experience amusement depends on each person and there is no correct answer. However, I think it is important for people to have the criteria of what is “interesting” at least within oneself. One should have something that one cannot compromise no matter what while incorporating the opinions of others. I believe this will become one’s individuality.”
　A task was given to the participants at the end of the workshop. Each was handed a script of a scene from Kara no Kyōkai1/ Fukan Fūkei and from episode 24 of Fate/Zero , character settings, and storyboard sheets. The task was to actually draw up a storyboard based on the resource material. Director Aoki gave the following advice to the participants: “Read the script thoroughly. It is important to turn the world the script wants to depict faithfully into a moving image.” Later, I the author tried my own hand at drawing a storyboard. I was astonished when I saw the storyboard drawn by Director Aoki, which was handed out later as one possible interpretation (a sample answer). It was imbued with massive imagination that filled the space between the lines in the script while illustrating the world depicted in the script in a vivid manner. What was depicted was not a “faithful” visualization. And I felt once again that after all is said and done, animation is illustrations.

Writert：Tetsuya Hoshi

Masayoshi Tanaka（Character designer & Chief animation director）

　The lecturer for the animator workshop was Masayoshi Tanaka, who did the character design and served as an executive animation director for Anohana: Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai and Toradora! In addition, Kenji Suzuki from Aniplex, who was responsible for the advertisement of Anohana , also took the stage, serving as the moderator for the workshop.
Tanaka aspired to become a manga artist since he was in high school, and used to submit his work to major publishing companies. Although he did attend a university at one point, he dropped out eventually since he couldn’t give up on his dream. Among all the jobs that involved drawing, the one that he selected was working for the anime industry, which was the most practical and seemed to be easier to enter. “My baseless confidence that I could draw was immediately obliterated when I entered the industry,” said Tanaka laughingly. “But thanks to that experience, I was able to realize the things that I was lacking. There are a lot of people who can draw well. It is frequently said that working as an animator is a tough job but I thought that I was fortunate, given the fact that I was able to make a living from my drawing. I had no negative feelings whatsoever.”
When he was starting out, Tanaka scrounged the garbage of the senior employees who drew well in order to learn their drawing techniques. He gave the following explanation behind such behavior: “If you want to see a good drawing, you can see the finished illustration published in magazines. What I wanted to see and steal was not the drawing but the drawing method. Rough sketches and rough drafts are filled with drawing techniques that you cannot learn from the finished drawings.”
As the workshop progressed in this manner, a live illustration editing session was conducted in the second half of the workshop. In this session, and in front of everyone on the spot, Tanaka corrected the Anohana illustrations of the workshop participants that were submitted in advance. Things to be careful of when, secrets for improving, and other pieces of knowledge Tanaka had earned from the garbage bin of his seniors were generously passed on to the participants as he actually drew up a rough sketch. The following list is just a portion of the advice he gave in the workshop: “First, focus on the overall balance. Final touch-ups on fine details are done later,” “draw by looking at the actual object,” “drawing is 40% of an animator’s job. The rest is studying,” “Having one good drawing is no good. Animators draw movements,” “Parts that are not noticed much, such as the tips of the hands and feet, should be the parts that are drawn with care. Things that can be expressed in such parts are surprisingly significant,” “The drawing method you learned from others is how that person draws. It is important for you to draw a lot while being aware of your objective and find your own methodology,” and many more. Numerous pieces of advice were given to the participants, to the extent that there is not enough space here to recount them all.
What the audience felt from Tanaka’s workshop is that Tanaka still to this date continues to hold insatiable curiosity and an inquiring mind. Tanaka himself stated that he always tries to use new expressions during his everyday work. “A picture is just a method of expression. The job of an animator is not to draw but to express something using that drawing,” explained Tanaka. At the end of the workshop, all the submitted illustrations were returned to the participants. All the illustrations had corrections made by Tanaka, treating them to an animation director’s inspection. It is not hard to imagine that these corrected illustrations will be cherished by the participants.

Writert：Tetsuya Hoshi

Nobuhiro Osawa（Producer）

　What are the roles that producers fulfill in anime production? And what are the keys behind creating a hit? Nobuhiro Osawa, a chief producer and the corporate executive officer at GENCO INC., which was in charge of planning and producing series such as the Sword Art Online and Accel World , came to give a valuable talk on anime planning with information that normally one can rarely find.
Firstly, what is referred to as “planning” is “not that easy,” as the title of the workshop suggests. Before an anime producer can draw up a single plan, he or she has to collect and investigate information from magazines that cover rankings of products, bookstores, anime shops, and the Internet. Thereafter, the producer will conduct a thorough analysis of the type of work the audience will have an easier time receiving. Surprisingly, all this is just the first task, and proposing a plan is not the only job for a producer. Osawa stated that an important job of a producer is to link production to business. Even at GENCO INC, with which Osawa is affiliated, 100 to 150 plans are proposed each year. However, only about 10% of the total plans can actually become established as a piece of work. Although this may seem like a harsh reality to those who aspire to become a producer, the workshop participants found themselves adopting a new attitude when Osawa stated that, “The end of the planning is the start of business.”
Building on the above facts, the second half of the workshop was named “Planning - The Practical,” in which the participants were asked to actually write a plan proposal. With classified resource material specially handed to the participants, under the condition that they did not take the material home, the participants attempted to plan their own original anime series. Participants acted in different ways: while there were those who immediately started writing as soon as they were given the sheet, others read the material closely. However, what was common among all the participants was that they were nothing but serious when they were writing down their proposals.
At the end of the workshop, Osawa gave an overall evaluation that the participants “had analyzed the resource material intently, with the genres covering a wide range of areas. In addition, there are fresh plans among those made by women.” Thereafter, as an “art of planning,” Oswa mentioned the four elements of skills, experiences, taste, and network being indispensable to a producer. However, they all are merely methods for making things come into reality. Osawa stated that the most important thing is desire. He emphasized that desires such as simple ones of becoming rich, or even becoming famous, are the driving force behind creating a work. Though this might be contradictory to what was said, Osawa also stated that it was important to not use resource materials and marketing research as a reference. To the sole participant who wrote down the plan without looking at the resource material, Osawa gave the following words of encouragement: “Because this is your plan, please take good care of it.”
Although there are many ways to plan and produce an anime series, in order to meet the requests and desires of fans and users who will like that anime series, a producer must keep his/her own desire alive. This is precisely the objective of a producer. In order to achieve this goal, a producer needs to have skills, experiences, taste, and network. Osawa warned that a producer should not get methods and goals confused. In the end, this workshop served to teach us that it all starts with a question, “what do I want to make?” - which is the origin and the spirit of creating a piece of work.

Writer：Yoshikatsu Nakagami

Kazuki Nakashima（Writer/screenwriter）

　 KILL la KILL is an anime series broadcast on TV until the end of March, 2014. Screenwriter Kazuki Nakashima took the helm of the writing, screenwriting, and story editing of this series. Nakashima is a resident writer for the theater company Gekidan Shinkansen and in terms of anime work, he is known for series such as Tengen Toppa GURREN LAGANN , in which he worked together with Director Hiroyuki Imaishi, just like with KILL la KILL . So what sort of process did Nakashima go through to create KILL la KILL ? With Kazuya Masumoto, the director of anime production company TRIGGER, and Hironori Toba, producer at Aniplex, also joining the session, various behind-the-scene stories were recounted during this workshop.
Firstly, a quick summary of Nakashima’s biography was presented. Working in theater since he was in high school, he was active in Gekidan Shinkansen while working for a publication company after graduating from university. He stated that he learned how to write screenplays completely by himself. The experience of developing a plot while holding meetings once a week with writers when he was working as an editor of a manga magazine boosted his experience. He reflected on this period by saying, “I believe that is where my backbone as a writer was built first.” Thereafter, hitting it off with Director Imaishi, whom he met when he was working as a story editor of an anime series for the first time with the OVA (original video anime) Re: CUTY HONEY (2004), led to the creation of series such as Tengen Toppa GURREN LAGANN and KILL la KILL .
In this workshop, various anecdotes behind the creation of KILL la KILL were revealed, including his particularities concerning his style of storyboarding. He described that even with dialog that had already been written in the script; such dialogs become brushed up even more during the storyboard and post-recording stages in order to “emphasize giving a fresh and current feel”. Though, he laid down the caveat that, “It is something that is considered taboo as a principle at an anime production site.” Despite this, the participants found themselves gradually being pulled in by the passion that exuded from the stage. Furthermore, he stated that he worked on KILL la KILL with the eagerness to see how far they can push through the things that they thought were interesting as well as their hobbies, and that it is a series that is akin to a compilation of his work, since he put all the know-how he learned from the publishing company and Gekidan Shinkansen into it.
In the Q&A session after the lecture, Nakashima readily answered questions that had been submitted in advance as well as direct questions from the participants. There were many people in the audience who engaged in theatrical activities at their high school or university. To the person who confided their concern was that there are frequently times in which they give up when writing a script, Nakashima gave sincere advice by saying, “It’s not like one can write well from the beginning so you have to continue at it” and “You should accumulate experiences by having someone read your scripts.”
This workshop, in which a plenty of anecdotes useful for those who aspire to become a screenwriter were shared, was concluded with the following passionate message from Nakashima: “If you would like to strive to work in this industry, you first have to finish writing something. It can be anything but try to write through till the end. This will function as nourishment for you so I would like for you to continue writing even if it’s painful. I wish you all the best.”

Writer：Yoshikatsu Nakagami

Yoshikazu Iwanami（Director of audiography）

　Sounds are indispensable elements that make an animation work, alongside illustration, direction, and screenplay. In this workshop, we invited Miwa Iwanami, a director of audiography, which is a role that requires controlling all the sounds in anime. With KILL la KILL , a series which Iwanami actually worked on, as the subject, the audience was able to listen to intriguing accounts of how sounds are actually used in the director of audiography’s work and anime.
Firstly, Iwanami explained that the sounds in anime can be divided into the three categories of dialogs, sound effects (SE), and music. Of these three, dialogs are recorded by having seiyu (voice actors) actually performing at a post-recording studio. However, it is after the recording that a director of audiography can showcase his/her skills. The director can do several things here, such as adjusting the volume and the timing of dialogs and adding delay or reverbs (in other words, echoes). At this point, Iwanami presented video footage she prepared especially for the workshop, which was a scene taken from the 18th episode of KILL la KILL that only contained the dialog. Seeing an anime scene without music or SE accompanying it makes the viewer clearly understand the effects given to the dialog. The workshop participants were blown away - figuratively, not literally like in anime.
Next, SE was discussed. While about 100 staff members work on SE for animation films overseas, as a general rule, Japanese animation films only have one person working on SE. Iwanami stated that this makes the individuality comes through, citing it as a positive aspect of Japanese animation. She referred to the function of SE in animation as “turning the thoughts into realistic sounds”. For example, a key in this job is giving sounds to such things as the shimmer of light and sweat pouring down, which in reality do not make any sounds. Next, the same footage was shown again, but this time with only SE. It was refreshing to hear the sounds that normally would have been washed away by dialogs and music. Iwanami herself seemed delighted by this, saying, “You wouldn’t expect there to be this much sound, right?” Furthermore, she added that the audiences “definitely feel” even the sounds that they cannot hear.
The last part discussed was music, which apparently is a section in which the individuality of the director of audiography comes out the most. Music starts with ordering music to be composed by a composer, with the director having to ponder hard on how to match the created scores to the video. Using episode 18 of KILL la KILL as an example, Iwanami explained how seven to eight music scores are used within the approximately first six minutes of the start. She stated that the utmost care is given to matching the timing correctly. Although this is an extremely difficult task, she also stated that it is the “most fun part.” As a general rule, there are three patterns to adding music scores: “adding to the character”, “adding to the situation”, and “adding to the emotions.” Thus, the viewers might find it interesting to watch an anime series while trying to see under what kind of intention the music scores were added.
The sounds in anime that we as the audience hear without giving much thought to have a wide, rich world of their own. The workshop participants gave a warm applause to Iwanami, who had taught all of us the limitless appeal of sound effects.

Writer：Yoshikatsu Nakagami