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The Moldiver series was his from conception to celluloid. His character
designs populate series from the later Gundam epics to Iczer-One and Genesis
Survivor Gaiarth. Hiroyuki Kitazume has been working at the heart of the
anime industry for years, and has been part of some of the favorite series
of Neko-Con attendees. Working for the AIC production house as a director
and character designer, Kitazume's latest designs are part of the new Virgin
Fleet, a show about an all-female military force with amazing powers -
if they remain virgins. |
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Kitazume, who has been attending U.S. anime conventions since Anime
East in 1995, said he's pleased to see his old shows getting so much attention
in America. "Old" can mean more than a few months old in Japan, where styles
fall and rise in rapid succession and producers look for the next hit -
while artists try to turn out the best shows possible. |
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Character designs start inside Kitazume's head, translated to rough
sketches that must be cleared by the producer, director and the all-important
series sponsors. A reading of the story generates the initial idea, tempered
by the nature of the tale. A comical character won't look the same as a
person who will star in a tragedy, he said. Sometimes the characters do
look like real people. Kitazume said that the Machine Gals from Moldiver
were based on - and named after movie starlets of the era. |
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What about that question about the blue and green anime hair? Kitazume
admitted that the old joke among U.S. anime fans has some truth to it -
that some of the characters are hard to tell apart except for their hair
color, especially the females. So, they have the wildly colored tresses.
Kitazume thinks the hair colors slid out control with the debut of the
pink-haired Magical Princess Minky Momo. To which interpreter Scott Frazier
quipped, "There you have it, a direct link between Minky Momo and Dennis
Rodman." |
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