Akinori
Yabe
(A
translated composite of an interview with the Marmalade Boy first
series director)
"I
got envolved the the story easily"
When
the offer came in, it an unformal request to direct Marmalade,
rather than a formal request I just answered "okay".
I was asked then to read the original work and give my opinion
on it. So then I went to a bookstore and there found out that
Marmlade Boy was shoujo manga. (He laughs). I have never directed
this kind of genre so when I read the original, I'd never be
able to follow the story. But actually it was easy reading. Men
can also understand the feelings and it seems a breeze to get
involved the story.
"Getting
ideas from the movies for the kissing scenes"
The
hardest thing to make the project fun was the kissing scenes
(He laughs). It's different from animations I've directed before
because there had never been any kissing scenes them. But in
Marmalade Boy in every single episode, many different couples
were kissing in different way. We needed to use different kinds
of kisses, so the kissing scenes bothered me.
It
required some studies, I watched (live action) movies as references. Well, the stories
are different so I couldn't use the exact methods . I would remember
"They did it like this". But I didn't use anything
from any particular movies.
When
I direct how to do the anime cels, especially when directing
the male staff to do the kissing scenes, was just as hard as
I thought it would be. They and I were all blushing. We tried
to do poses. Do that, the guys were pretty disgusting. When we
asked the actors and actresses to do it instead, we could really
see the difference. But we still have to do the directing. That
why it was so embarrassing. But I have to keep in mind that this
is my job.
"Fashion
sense from a girl's point of view"
I
thought it was ridiculous when I saw Marmalade Boy wardrobe at
first. But it was like our sells point. If a girl wears the same
outfit all the time, viewers will get bored. If we have a good
scene, the characters shouldn't be wearing the usual outfit.
So naturally, we had to change clothes.
At
first we had fewer number of clothes. But as the story continue,
the number of outfits increased. The cels were also created from
ideas from fashion magazines. But males' feelings can't follow
it (what
girl's like)
so the female staff helped a lot because their points of view
are different. The difference between male and female points
of view? I would say that I'm a person that thinks it okay if
someone wears any old outfit. But that's not allowed in shoujo
manga.
"The
love of ordinary adults"
My
objective with Marmalade Boy was to try to express the feelings
and behavior of high school students. I guess this is the first
animation to express a real love story. It's very possible that,
because of that, the story went on as long as it did.
I
think that there are a lot of those scenes (love scenes) in live action productions, but I don't
believe there had been any in anime. It was true that there was
love in animation, but obviously it was immature - just holding
hands , blushing, or dating and being happy. But Marmalade Boy
is different. They're love looks like ordinary adults' love.
Our
story is a complicated one. But I tried to express the growth
of young people. And, I attempted to keep the upbeatness flavor
of the original (the
manga story). |