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It's not just an Internet legend, Yuji Moriyama said at Anime Central
on Friday evening, it really happened. The famed anime Project A-Ko was
really intended to be part of the Cream Lemon sex series, and was turned
into an comedy film only when the producers felt that it could be successful
in that form. Moriyama spent some time on Cream Lemon shows, including
the Pop Chaser film that drew many fans into anime (although they'd never
admit that). Project A-Ko was a profitable series, and Moriyama would like
to see it revived one day. |
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A-Ko and another character from a Moriyama film, Nuku-Nuku, both have
superhuman strength - and red hair. At first, Moriyama said that was just
a coincidence, but later he said that hair color can be used to show a
character's personality. C-Ko's hair is blonde and she's a passive character,
and B-Ko's lavender hair shows a cool, calculating personality. |
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Moriyama has a reputation as a director of light-hearted comedies (TTS
Airbats and Urusei Yatsura - Remember My Love, among others). A-Ko was
his response to stories that get too serious, he said. "Serious stories
seem to have a higher priority. That kind if dramatic material has a greater
weight with the industry," he said. The light-hearted tone Moriyama likes
in his films once meant subliminal, single-frame jokes like the Budweiser
labels on the missiles in A-Ko. That practice had to be toned down after
an animator made a joke about the Aum cult in Japan, just before that cult
launched a gas attack on the nation's subways. |
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Moriyama feels that one anime director has an untapped sense of parody,
someone you wouldn't expect; Mamoru Oshii, the director of psychological
thrillers such as Ghost in the Shell. Oshii was known for parody in his
earlier works, Moriyama said, and he thinks Oshii would like to explore
that in his next films. |
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