Shopping Guide
A rare type of workforce
Hirasawa: You also talked about sci-fi on the screenplay meeting, but what you exceptional at, Ogura, is that not only can you express your ideas with words, but you can also make them into pictures.
Ogura: Since I am probably the first person doing this kind of job that you have met, it would be weird if you thought this was natural. Eminent teachers doing some kind of research somewhere, who are doing this job part-time, specialists of various fields, or writers who do the investigation work only come in as advisors, usually.
Hirasawa: Yes. We go ask people of a specialized research institution, and it takes up half a day most of the time.
Ishikawa: And that is credited as setting research?
Hirasawa: If the person is a setting researcher, he stays with us a little longer, and participates in screenplay meetings and such. However, with people like that the usual course is basically Q&A, and they submit their ideas written in a composition. That’s also a big help, of course, but people who can draw are extremely rare.
Ogura: Rare indeed. It is only recently that people like me have started to appear.
Ishikawa: Really...? I thought it was completely natural this way.
Hirasawa: He makes the settings consistent, and on top of that, interesting. Plus, he shows amazing achievements both in terms of appearance and design, so he is of great help to us. Originally, the designer and the setting researcher are two different people. Generally, the literature sci-fi settings researcher decides if something is sound as a theory, and tells the designer through the director, and that is how the design is made.
Ishikawa: So you do all these stages by yourself?
Ogura: Yes, while talking with the director about things like, “In terms of entertainment, this would be a common ground, but since that way it’s not interesting, how about trying this instead?” if we reach that extent, the director can judge that ordinary people wouldn’t understand it. If the director decides, “Maybe you should ask Ogura,” people from the planning team also come to me.
Ishikawa: I wish we would have met when we did the dubbing...
Other work
Hirasawa: If we are at dubbing, terminology such as “Blossom Sail Fortress Special Cannon” is also Ogura’s job.
Ishikawa: “Dimenstream,” too?
Ogura: That’s right. When I told Urobuchi, “Dimenstream is a stream of dimensions. It’s a bit plain, is that ok?” he answered, “It’s fine, it’s easy to understand. Good job!” Through our argues with Urobuchi, I came to understand that sticking easily to understandable English words together seems to be better.
Hirasawa: In the first part of episode 1, the lines of the radio officer and the commanding officers provide some information, and even if they only transmit the atmosphere, they don’t hinder the drama even in the worst of cases. We call these “background lines,” and Ogura also does research on the reading of such words.
Ogura: I also make some lines.
Hirasawa: Yes.
Ogura: For something that’s also in Ledo’s lines...there’s “telemothy swing,” for example.
Ishikawa: Telemothy swing!
Ogura: The difficult lines in that part aren’t really Ledo’s, but I was endlessly coming up with difficult lines and delivering them. Since in the storyboard, the length is fixed, I would read them out by myself to make sure they will fit into that period.
Ishikawa: You mean the lines of people talking in the background in episode 1, right?
Ogura: Yes, the lines that come through the radio while Ledo is fighting. Through those lines, you understand how bad the situation is.
Ishikawa: If I listen to it carefully, all of them have technical terms. Are all of those...
Ogura: I tried not make them into incomprehensible words like in Western languages. See, if you don’t add some words that the meanings can be understood in Japanese, or when in English, use words that they have most probably heard, ordinary people will pull away.
Hirasawa: That’s right. People who have the knowledge tend to normally use military terminology or space terminology, thus it will go in a direction of being hard to understand. If that happens, most of the viewers would say, “Well then, what are they doing here?” and we would need to explain it to them.
Ogura: You have to pay attention in the main line of the dialogue, such as in conversations by the protagonist and the main characters. For background words, however, being difficult doesn’t really matter, because even if they are read out as words, they are the same as sound effects.
Hirasawa: It’s better if they are a little difficult and fall out of the ears of the viewers as information.
Ogura: Apart from that, it was nice that the voice actors could pass on the “This is bad...” feeling.
Ishikawa: The same as sound effects...I see.
Ogura: To the people listening to it, yes. The voice actors, however...
Ishikawa: Voice actors, full power!
The charm of Gargantia that communicates that masterpiece
Ishikawa: Returning to Gargantia, is there something you would like the viewers to see?
Ogura: Well, I personally would say, “The first half of episode 1 is Ogura theater, check it out!” (laughs) If it’s Gargantia on the whole, I’d say the CG of the ocean, because it’s super hard to depict water. A lot of hurdles come with anime that take place on the ocean for the whole duration, so I would really like people to appreciate that we tried hard, at least.
Hirasawa: We are very grateful for your words.
Ishikawa: The ocean...
Ogura: Being able to draw the ocean in such a fascinating way is risky for an anime, but it also gives it some charm.
Ishikawa: Yes. It’s like Future Boy Conan.
Ogura: Yes. This piece of work might as well be called the Kazuya Murata version Future Boy Conan.
Ishikawa: Today we heard about a lot of things from sci-fi to modeling. Until now, when I saw a model, I only looked at it like “Cool,” but from now on, I feel I’ll be able to enjoy it from a different point of view, thinking, this is the shape it is because of this reason.
Ogura: If you understand things, you will have an even more interesting life than if you just look.
Hirasawa: It’s very interesting how excellent ideas take special form.
Ishikawa: Since I’m also in an industry related to models, I want to be able to properly see those kind of things. Thank you for today.
Gargantia x Tokyo Otaku Mode Special Site:
http://otakumode.com/sp/gargantia
Source:
http://gargantia.jp/#kaito_2 (Japanese)
© Oceanus / Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet Production Committee
