Shopping Guide
Rage of Bahamut, the smartphone app that has garnered popularity around the world, will be made into an anime. It’s title will be Rage of Bahamut Genesis.
Here we speak with director Keiichi Sato, who has numerous fans worldwide from Tiger & Bunny.
Tokyo Otaku Mode: Could you give us some background on what made you decide to take on this project?
Director Keiichi Sato: For this, I received a request to direct a Bahamut anime and create a story from scratch. Up until now, I’ve worked a lot in genres that I’m good at, such as near-future anime, and I hadn’t made any fantasy anime with swords and magic or any on-the-road type anime. I took on the project thinking it would be good to focus on something different and challenge myself.
TOM: What kind of anime is Rage of Bahamut Genesis?
Sato: For the story, I considered something that takes place in an era earlier than the one fans of the Bahamut game will know. Hence adding the Genesis.
I’ve also wanted to make a world that stays true to dark fantasy. I would like to surprise fans. I want to aim for something different from what people have in mind. My main idea with this series is to make something that has never been seen before.
TOM: Rage of Bahamut is already a game that has gained a number of fans, so was there anything that was difficult?
Sato: There are a lot of characters that appear [in the game], so we couldn’t use all of them. Because of that, it’s necessary to examine the characters. Also, there are a lot of items and magic elements on the cards, so in order to animate them, we have to prepare visuals from the universe for each and every piece of magic. For example, Odin emerges from a magic grid. We have nothing to reference, so we have to think it up from square one. This is quite difficult.
Sato: Looking at the Bahamut books that have been released to this point, what caught my eye first were the visuals of cute girls. You see these kind of cute girls in a lot of titles in Japan. We of course have characters with nice looks in this series as well. I’ve just been thinking on how to involve such cute characters into this dark fantasy world.
