| Tsukasa Kotobuki's character designs for the Saber
Marionette series have delighted anime fans for their mixture of cuteness
and strength. Yet, the artist says there was nothing cute about the development
of the anime series - and all of the fights weren't just between Lime and
the resident bad guys on Japoness. When Kotobuki spoke at Animazement on
Friday, he said that disagreements between the creator of the Saber Marionette
series and the series' director changed the way the series was presented.
Kotobuki noted that the head writer and the director didn't get along,
the writer left in the middle of producing the Saber Marionette J series,
and that led to some odd twists in the way the first series ended. |
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| Kotobuki said those disagreements aren't unusual
in the Japanese animation and game industries. He had a similar problem
with the people who made the Battle Arena Toshinden game for which he created
the characters. Kotobuki felt his designs were responsible for the game's
success, while the game designers felt they were responsible - so Kotobuki
dropped out of the development of a subsequent game in the series, which
he described as a flop. |
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| And there's a further irony in Kotobuki's comments;
while anime fans like to bash American animation producers, especially
the Walt Disney Co., Kotobuki thinks "the mouse" and Americans may have
something that anime producers don't. "When an American creator borrows
something from Japan, they show how it could be made better. Rather than
an imitation, it's an homage. It may show that the United States has more
talent to entertain people." Kotobuki also said that the large number of
people needed to create an animated show often means that the animated
version of a manga isn't as interesting as the original story. |
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