Ichiro Itano Interview

[Tobi54]

This is the first time I came across this interview, if it has been posted before I apologize.

http://www.theanimenetwork.com/myblog/153-A-word-with-Ichiro-Itano-part-2

For Part 1 Check out this earlier article.

Casting a critical eye over his work as director, Ichiro Itano pulls no punches: "I just don't think I'm very satisfied with anything I've done so far." Given the technology available today, he muses that early titles such as Megazone 23 Part 2 and Angel Cop could benefit with some 3D embellishment, if not remade entirely. Nevertheless, Megazone 23 Part 2's superlative visuals-a significant boost in production quality over its predecessor-coupled with the director's violent and grittier take on rebellion in a city that isn't-what-it-seems narrative has made it one of the defining OAVs of its era. The then-polarizing decision to have Yasuomi Umetsu redesign the main characters from scratch (previously visualized by Toshihiro Hirano) is now arguably more lauded and less criticized for breaking continuity.

"I've always been one for pulling down stereotypes," says Itano. "I wasn't going to have any of those so-called Lolita-type coquettes that were all the rage at the time." Umetsu created a new a look that the director recalls: "the sponsor swore up and down would never sell." It only stoked Itano's rebellious streak. According to him, the sponsors were banking on the sequel's name recognition, and didn't want to rock the boat in terms of aesthetics or animation quality. The director got his way in the end. "I just hate doing things by the numbers. If they want me for the project, then I'm assuming it's because I bring something to it that only I have-that's why I want to try doing things in a new format," Itano reasons. "The first show I got to do that one was Megazone 23 Part 2, and in the end, it turned out to be the most popular series in the trilogy."

Conversely, Itano stresses that taking the director's chair also means accepting all responsibility-good and bad-of the project's outcome. "If a voice actor doesn't work out or the art is no good, you can't blame them because you're the one who picked them in the first place." Producing quality art within a tight budget and timeframe is a constant challenge, but on the upside he enthuses: "I get the freedom to do what I want within my limitations." On projects he's proud of, Itano cites the long-running franchise that first put him on most overseas anime fans' radar: "the closest I've come to being satisfied was in Volume 5 of Macross Zero. There was this great fighting scene and I truly think the quality was out of this world."

Q: You frequently collaborate with Shoji Kawamori. What keeps on bringing you two together to make such great work?

ITANO: We both like seeking out new ways of doing things. For example, when the millennium changed, everyone was saying that the TV anime of the new century would be hybrid anime using CG background plates, robots and vehicles [along with hand-drawn characters]. The thinking was that we needed to increase the quality of TV animation. Around that time we made Arjuna. The show was about environmental issues as they pertain to human lifestyles and thinking habits, but we used toon shading because it allowed us to match a 3D mode of expression to 2D character art.

Then on Macross Zero at Bandai we decided to use toon shading from the ground level. About three months earlier, Bandai had had another toon shading success with Yukikaze, but since Macross was dealing with the same kinds of airplanes and stuff, we didn't want to rehash the same ideas. Since Yukikaze came first, the first thing people would think is that Macross was a copycat, so we tossed out every single technique we'd built up over the past two years on Arjuna, and decided to start over from scratch with a technique called "box art."

What was the big thing when we were kids? Plastic models. And the box art on plastic model kits was very cool, right? Normally the sky is blue, but the box art on model kits showed all these shades of pink and purple. It didn't look like a photograph but it still looked very cool, so we thought ‘let's move more in that direction.' That was [shoji] Kawamori's philosophy. But once you understand the philosophy, you're still left with the question of where to proceed from there. Since we weren't going to use toon shading, we had to figure out a way to do what we wanted using compositing methods instead.

We experimented with various things, but nothing really worked well. Then we came up with the idea of calling over a box-art guy named [Hidetaka] Tenjin to draw the box art effects, and then we needed the right lighting. When you're working in 3D, usually you use a single light source, and then you draw in sunlight to drop shadows down. Box art has more complicated lighting. You need pinks and purples and yellows and greens, highlighting on the wings of the planes, and all of that means four or five times the number of rendering passes. We were trying to make the lighting closer to the quality of the lighting in live-action filming, trying to build up the high-speed Itano Circus in various places. Basically, we were trying to make a "Japanimation" that could compete on the level of a high-budget Hollywood film, and there was that energy between me and Kawamori, both of us putting ideas out there and then each of us thinking more about the ideas we'd already discussed.

That's what's so fun about working with Kawamori. We'd laid out such ambitious plans, and we had no choice but to find a way to make it work. He and I just have this great back-and-forth that comes out when we're working on a show. It's like a competition to see who can make the better product, even if it's only better by a hair.

Q: I've heard that you're known to go to extremes for research. What examples come to mind from various projects during your career?

ITANO: Well, Shoji Kawamori and I went to the US to do research for Macross Plus. That show was a story about test pilots; at first we went to see the Japan Self-Defense Forces. The thing is, towards the end of Macross Plus there's a scene where the main character blacks out under intense G-forces while the plane is still flying, so we were looking for a pilot who'd actually had the experience of blacking out in flight. We couldn't find any at the JSDF, but they said we might be able to find someone in the US.

So at that point we went to NASA, and then to Edwards [Air Force Base] to do some research. We found out about a certain event where retired pilots who didn't fly professionally anymore would take you up and let you experience dog fighting in a prop plane. On the final day of the event we went up in separate planes-it wouldn't do to have us both fall out and die!-and had our little mock dogfight.

I was the special effects director, so I pushed for myself to ride with an instructor who was actually a former holder of the Top Gun trophy. The thing about this event, though, was you had to sit and listen to a two-hour lecture in English. I couldn't understand a damn thing, just a few words here and there. You get a single practice run of the escape sequence, then you sign a piece of paper saying if you lose your leg or die it's not their fault, and then they let you fly. They even let you work the controls.

So here I am trying to fly this thing and pushing it way too hard...and the pilot's wearing a G-suit and an oxygen mask, but I don't have anything. No mask, no suit. So naturally I blacked out. The pilot reached over and woke me up and asked if I was all right. Then he chewed me out and told me to stop horsing around. So then it was back to [see the people from] Bandai.

When you lose consciousness at six Gs, it hits you like a ton of bricks, and all your strength just leaves you. The impact is intense. For a moment there's no blood going through your brain, and it's like pulling the plug on a computer-everything just shuts down, including your memory of the experience. When the pilot woke me up my head was in such a fog. At first I remember hearing "Ichiro" or "Itano" or something, but then the words got more and more blurry, like "Icharo...Itarno" and then "Ichano...Icharro" [laughs].

When I finally came around and looked up, all I could see in front of me was this big, beautiful blue sky, and all I could think was here was some foreign guy calling my name and why was he doing that. Then I gradually realized that this guy was the pilot from before, and then it dawned on me that I was inside a plane. It took me a minute to realize why on earth I would be inside a plane.

That's when I realized that if you're all alone and you black out in the plane, even if you do wake up, by the time you come to and figure out where you are and what's going on, you're already hitting the ground and dead. So anyway, I had to put the experience onto a storyboard, but I was still feeling a little light-headed. These guys from Bandai dragged me to a nearby restaurant, sat me down and said I better hurry up and draw the storyboard before I die on them [laughs]. Then they asked me to describe it to Kawamori.

I said it was like passing out in a hot tub. You get this rush of blood to the head and fall over, and as the blood starts going to your head your field of vision gets more and more narrow, like how it gets when you're going 125mph on a motorcycle. Everything starts tunneling in front of you and in the end everything just goes black. After I finished the explanation I told them that was good enough and I needed to get some rest, and then...whomp [onto the bed]. So anyway, yeah, I guess you could say I've done some pretty daring research [laughs].

Q: If you knew that would happen, would you actually have said yes to it?

ITANO: I think I would've. I had to know what it felt like. It's just not the same as hearing someone else describing it. It's the kind of work where risking your life is part and parcel.

Q: Given the differences in production technology, what are some similarities or differences between planning the battle sequences and the Itano Circus in Macross Plus and Macross Zero?

ITANO: For Plus I just had to draw it by hand. It was tough. In a single frame you might have 70 or 80 separate missiles, each with their own vapor trail. You work away on them all day long, drawing lord knows how many pages. Halfway through you're sick of the whole thing. Your hands hurt and you feel like if you never have to draw another missile again it'll be too soon.

Process-wise, the drawing is the hardest part because there's just so much of it. You'll have so many key frames and so many in-between frames, by the time you get around to doing the finishing on them they won't even fit in the bag anymore [because there's so many sheets]. You have to put them in a crate or something instead-that's the key frames. The in-between frames are sent out overseas, but time is at a premium, so we end up getting some pretty rough art back. It's not that people overseas are bad artists, but they have to draw a lot of content within a tight timeframe, so the quality suffers.

One way of combating that is to use lots of key frames so the in-betweens don't go completely to pieces, but that's really rough going. It's fine if I either draw it directly myself or if I just look over and fix up the ones the keyframers do, but with CG all that hassle is gone. You use a rough key frame to work up a layout and then you give that layout to a CG guy. The CG guys try really hard, but it's just not the same. How do I describe what I want done in a way that they'll understand? The one who has to do the fixing can't actually draw, so it's very hard communicating what I want, like more directness, more speed, or whatever.

Q: What attracted you to work on the Ultraman movie, and can you tell us about your experiences or challenges working on the project?

ITANO: I've been fortunate enough to have a chance to mentor people in animation, and thanks to Kawamori I've been able to do a lot of the things I've wanted to do. On Macross [we developed] all these new technologies. Now the things I like to do such as the Itano Circus or whatever are starting to become possible in 3D by CG.

But special-effects films are another aspect of Japanese culture, just like anime and manga. When I was a kid, the shows I loved from the Ultraman series were Ultraman and Ultra Seven-especially the latter. I heard that the idea for this film is basically to have a single Ultraman movie that people can enjoy without knowing anything about the TV series. The director is a guy named [Kazuya] Konaka. He approached me and wanted me to try and do a special-effects film version of the Itano Circus. I was pretty surprised by the request, because I'd be changing the way Ultraman flies and stuff. I was like, "are you sure you want me for this?"

You see, Ultraman always flies like this [acts out the pose with arms out front]. Always. It's the same with Superman. I guess superheroes always fly like this; it looks really cool from an artistic standpoint. But in this film, Ultraman is a pilot, and when pilots do a flying simulation they try to think of themselves as the plane, like how would I fly? I took that idea of being the plane and thought if I were the pilot, my legs and arms would be the wings [pointing backwards], rudder and so forth; this is how I'd fly. I drew it up into a storyboard and gave it to the director. He OK-ed it, but at first we got some flak because Tsuburaya's Ultraman is a cultural icon. People were saying that's not how he's supposed to fly. He looks too human, too much like an airplane and so on. But the whole idea was that we were breaking some of the rules trying to make a different Ultraman and reach out to a new audience, so we wanted something different. In the end we were able to do it.

I really wanted to do a good job of portraying Ultraman as someone who carries this heavy mission and risks his life for the sake of others. I wanted to show how cool that is, and even if it meant changing Ultraman a little bit, I wanted to show the people over at Tsuburaya something they'd never seen before.

Amos Wong

The first part of the interview is about his work on Gantz, and some other things, what I posted here is Macross related, I get a kick out of all the technical production details that go into making the series, so this was quite interesting to me.

[JB0]

It's the kind of work where risking your life is part and parcel.

Not something I ever thought I'd hear said about the animation industry. Itano is hardcore.

[CrazyMartian]

Awesome. Itano is really cool, going so far to create something. It's interesting how much went into experiencing hoe G-Forces act on the body and how little the scene lasts. Still, the next time I watch Macross Plus, I'll be sure to remember this and appreciate the scene a lot more.

[Netherek]

Wow, very cool, hardcore.