Author: Microphone/anitama Cover Source: "Glass Flower and the Broken World" heroine Limo
On January 9, 2016, the theatrical version of the anime "Glass Flower and the Broken World" (hereinafter referred to as "Glass Flower") released by Pony Canyon and produced by a-1 pictures premiered in Japan. What caused concern this time was that on the day of the premiere, the film was simultaneously screened in Shanghai, and the voice actors Hanamori Yumi and Taneda Iza also attended the scene. The innovation of the simultaneous premiere of the animated theatrical version of China and Japan has also attracted a lot of attention for this film. Xiaobian also had the honor to watch the premiere and meeting in Shanghai, and the mountain call tsunami for the farming Dafa is still like yesterday. In order to promote this work, the editor specially selected the interview with the producer of the film in the live sale of "Glass Flower" and Ryoichi Ishihara of pony canyon for excerpt and translation, and talked about the animation theatrical version of this project that started in a unique way.
(Although the text involves the background of the plot, it basically does not constitute spoilers, so please feel free to watch.) ）
In an interview, Ryoichi Ishihara said that the planning for this theatrical version began in June 2013 at the "Animation Awards" grand prix held by ponycanyon, which solicited works from the whole society. In the end, the creative team of two women, "Physics Point", won the award for "d.backup", thus winning the opportunity to animate. Ishihara also took the initiative to ask for help and asked to be responsible for the production of this animation.
In the eyes of the producer, the advantage of "d.backup" that is most suitable for animation is the degree of freedom of the work. The stage of the work is the world in the computer, and the characters are anthropomorphic programs, and the charm of the work is that the world represented in the work, although it is superficially close to us, is actually a virtual world where the truth is unknown. There is an important prop in the setting of the work: the real-world backup data that exists in the computer - "Knowledge Box", which Ishihara believes has a strong "expansion" setting. "As long as the imagination is rich enough, it can be used as a basis to build a colorful world and story."
So in the end, the producer's judgment was to retain only the "story of the anthropomorphic antivirus software in the knowledge box" and the setting of the protagonist "Limo" in the original work, and the description of the world view was all handed over to the animation production staff to start from scratch. Among the judges of the Animation Awards are a number of well-known industry companies, including senior executives of production i.g and a-1 pictures and j.c.staff, and the film was finally decided to be produced by A-1. The supervisor intended to hand over to Ishihama Masashi from the beginning, and the benchmark for judging was because the producer felt that Ishihama supervisor had creativity beyond the imagination of ordinary people, and was good at gradually expanding the world in the brain in the slitting stage. The original case was handed over to kantoku, a painter who is extremely popular among both male and female fans. As for the key scripts, the producers hoped to entrust them to the scripters who were good at the relationships and emotional lines of the characters, and finally selected Fumihiko Shimo, who had worked as the series for Kanon and Clannad. Ishihara made it clear that he chose these people, hoping for characters that induce the audience to protect and plots that move the audience to tears. He believes that in terms of results, these elements have also succeeded in becoming the personality of "Glass Flower".
In terms of personality, except for the heroine LiMo, who is based on the characters of the original award-winning works, the direction of the other characters is completely handed over to Kantoku. The worldview is also gradually formed in the process of drawing from the script to the mirror.
In the end, the producers expressed their hope for the audience to pay attention to the stories of the cute female characters - the female characters' expressions are very cute, and the story is also tear-jerking. For the fact that the background of the story is more complicated, the producer said that it must be understandable to watch it many times, and hopes that the audience will have the opportunity to watch the work repeatedly.
After watching the interview with the producer, we may not have too obvious feelings, the content of the producer is decent, there is not much highlight. But the logic is very clear – when choosing to animate this work, the producers focused on the work's extremely liberal worldview.
But we can't help but feel a little strange, the original "d.backup" is obviously a competition award-winning work, the result of the producer chose it without mentioning other advantages (although it is an excerpt but the editor did not intentionally omit this point), the only mention is the freedom of world view. What is degrees of freedom? Just do whatever you want! And what does the producer want to do? It can be seen from his selection of the main creators that his purpose is extremely clear, he wants a popular painter and a tear-jerking script and a supervision that is good at building the world, in order to shoot "a role that induces the audience to protect, and a plot that can move the audience to tears."
So the strange thing here is that the reason why this original work was favored was because it had no content! The original was a basket, anything could fit in, and this basket was used by the producer to hold what he wanted—the creators he wanted to use, the works he wanted to make. Seeing this, anyone will have doubts, what is this animation award designed for?
To analyze this question, let's take a look at another interview about "Glass Flower" that Gigazine did a few days ago, which talked about the origin of this "animation award".
Although Ponycanyon, who held this competition, has a lot of exposure in the field of animation, he is still a record company, and readers who have seen Anitama's Japanese animation business model may know that other families do animation and help sell discs. In this context, Ishihara mentioned in this interview that the company wanted to create its own animation originals, so it set up a new light novel brand called "ponycan books". Ishihara believes that while others have many light novel brands, pony canyon itself does not. However, pony canyon has obvious advantages in animation, so the company decided to set up this animation award, the purpose of which is to collect excellent original works from the society, and eventually deal with them into animation projects.
By the way, in addition to the "Glass Flower" that tested the waters of the animation of the grand prix-winning work, the new light novel brand ponycan books is also in the process of exploring the original animation. Since its inception in December 2013, the no. 1 anime of the light novel brand's original work has finally aired in October 2015, the last season! The name of the anime is "Guns and Masks", which is very interesting.
The animation awards project, which preceded the establishment of the light novel brand, sounded very famous, but it was actually proposed by the famous Japanese anchor Yoshida Naoki Yoshida during a leisure chat with the top management of pony canyon. "Your company's animation level is so high, why don't you make an animation award to shoot it yourself?" Perhaps this proposal coincided with the mentality of the senior executives at that time who always wanted to shoot other films and wanted to shoot themselves, which led to the birth of the animation award. After all, many of the animation industry's biggest projects are decided at the banquet and mahjong table, which is nothing new.
However, the start of a project in this form will also not have too clear a purpose. Ishihara said that although "Glass Flower" was filmed as a theatrical animation this time, the animation awards were not sure what form of work the award would be made at that time. Is it tv, ova or theater? Or take a pv to mean it? Ishihara said that at that time, Pony Canyon also decided to take a step and look at it one step at a time, "to see how the award works are decided."
Here we once again encounter a chicken and egg egg chicken problem: this grand prix was set up to select the original animation, and the important evaluation criteria for the original work must be whether it is suitable for animation, right? So even the most basic form of animation is not yet clear, on what basis did the judges select "d.backers" as the grand prize?
Of course, this question is a bit far-fetched, even if the form of animation has not yet been decided, the judges still have other selection criteria. Let's take a look at the project's proposal and one of the judges of the competition, Yoshida Naoki, on the evaluation of the winning works:
"The idea of this work is to be able to diverge an inspiration into an infinite version, which can create a variety of stories in a very powerful setting!"
So the reason for the award of the original work is still the "degree of freedom" mentioned earlier, and the focus is on you, a basket that can fit anything into. But you get a prize and make such a big deal, just to get a basket? If it's just for such a loose worldview idea, why should you still be awarded an award, and can't you just engage in originality? Anyway, the producers are so clear about how to shoot this film. The significance of this great prize has once again been questioned.
However, it has to be considered that in recent years, the Japanese animation industry has been booming, and the project of shooting original animation is not so easy to pass. Especially mentioned earlier, pony canyon does not even have the experience of creating its own animation original, in this two-eyed and black situation, the producer suddenly ran to the top and said that I have an original theater animation case and want to shoot you to give me a hundred million tricks, can the top level nod? It is simply not possible, and the producers also need to convince the top to invest in the material.
So in the delusion of the editor, this widely raised from the whole society, and then found the industry big guys for the selection of the big prize, perhaps the producer used to make the high-level nod and pay the money will be a blow: "Lead you to see this book is one of the thousands of submissions, and there are all the big guys to check, we have the confidence to do it!" "The high-level look at the pomp and circumstance of this award seems to be really so, the planning has passed, and the theatrical version has gone up!
It should be noted that, despite the previous analysis and the delusions of the editor, it seems that the producer seems to have forced the theatrical plan up with a deception, and then hung up the sheep's head to sell dog meat, and took the original work he wanted in the skin of the original work. However, Xiaobian did not deny the meaning of this practice, but thought that it was a rather positive move. In terms of the way of investment, there are more plans in the Japanese animation industry, and no one should hack anyone. We should be even happier to see that a young producer can have a strong creative intention, and can actually use his own wrist to attract investment, and finally hand over to excellent creative personnel for animation production. This is certainly beneficial and harmless to the Japanese animation industry, which has gradually become conservative in recent years, and benefits the audience.
The only question is, is the act of borrowing the original empty basket a courtesy to the original author? Let's look at Kyoto Animation next door, they also created their own library, and carried out original animation that seems to have the original work, which is actually produced and sold by themselves, and although the works taken have been greatly modified and specially modified to the so-called original works, they can't stand a little, and most of the animations are very good. Yes, as long as the animation is good, we as viewers don't care whether the original won the award or not. The original novel will also be released from ponycan books next month. The original author who wants to borrow pony canyon to publish the book, I am afraid that there will not be and does not dare to have too much nonsense.
Finally, Xiaobian naturally hopes that readers will have the opportunity to watch this wonderful work "Glass Flower". Although everyone's tastes are different, and perhaps the evaluation of the film itself is difficult to reconcile, but the more important thing in this article is that I hope that everyone can appreciate the filmmaker's fist and fist, and hope that the new ways brought by young people can blow a new wind to the Japanese animation industry and find more breakthroughs for the declining market.
By the way, then draw cakes for the princes: after the premiere of "Glass Flower" in Shanghai, Anitama interviewed the two protagonist voice actors Hanami Yumi and Taneda Irisa who came to Shanghai to attend the meeting, and the interview will be released soon, so stay tuned!
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Original: m.anitama.cn/article/43739e7b2aee3cad?utm_source=toutiao