Anime Central - Yoshitoshi Abe

Yoshitoshi Abe will freely talk about the process that led to the creation of Serial Experiments Lain, but he won't give every detail about the meaning of the enigmatic series about a schoolgirl descending into a wired world. "That is completely open to the interpretation of the viewer," Abe, the show's character designer, said. "If I gave an official interpretation of the show, it would ruin the fun for the viewer." Lain had an odd development path, Abe said, starting as a game for the Sony Playstation. The show's producer went to Abe when he was still an art school student, asking him to design the characters. Abe responded with a series of sketches, and the producer picked out the sketches he wanted to match to the characters he had in mind.

By Japanese standards Lain is an old series, and Abe is glad that it remains popular - although he admits that might be because people are still looking for its meaning. Next from the Lain production team was Niea Under Seven, with some of the look of Lain through Abe's designs, but a different feeling. "Lain was a very dark story and we decided we didn't want to do another dark story," said Abe. We wanted to do a light fluffy story and that created its own hardships." Abe said the Niea series was born when the producer saw a doodle of a character in one of Abe's notebooks and decided to create a series about the character.

Abe's time in art school saw him major was in traditional Japanese inkings, and that time was a major influence in his later work. "When you apply for art school in Japan, the entrance exam is very tough. You're required to draw realistic human anatomy - but in drawing manga, the process is in reducing the number of lines," he said. For Abe, drawing is a form of therapy. He has mixed feelings about the way that people accept his work; Abe is glad that people like his work, but he's embarassed that his innermost thoughts are revealed to the public.

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