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Otakon |
| Tatsuo Sato
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| 2004 |
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 In
2002, anime director Tatsuo Sato spoke at Otakon about his hopes for
the renewed Ninja Scroll TV series that was beginning production at the
time. In 2004, Sato returned to the Baltimore convention to tell fans
that his hopes for the new series may not have been completely
fulfilled. "Back then, the situation at Mad House was getting chaotic,
taking on a lot of titles," Sato said at a Friday panel discussion. "I
wasn't able to fully realize my expectations for the show. I have some
regrets about it, but I did my best under the circumstances." He added
that the ideal form of an animated project is created when the series'
storyboards are laid out, and everything from that point can be
frustrating as the initial plans are changed. Sato's comments made it
clear that anime production isn't perfectly organized, noting that he's
been called upon to write single episodes of series such as His and Her
Circumstances to fill in gaps of the series' production schedules.
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 And
part of the production reality of Japanese series is the move from
26-episode series to 13-episode shows, which cost less to produce and
are simpler to resell on DVD. "To be honest, ideally in order to
work with the staff and to get to know the staff and raise the staff's
skill level, it would be ideal to work on a 50-episode show. But it's
expected that a series will be released on DVD and the production will
be high or the market will not buy all of the DVD's volumes. For the
manufacturer of the DVD packages you can not have this diversity in
quality." Sato also said there's a shortage of good workers to finish
anime series, which may have referred to the large number of shows
being produced (around 70-80 each year), and that may have explained
his comment about how a show's production staff needed to be expected
to make errors during the creation of a long series. "If there is a
generous sponsor who says he'd like to make some mistakes and do a
50-episode series, we'd go ahead and have fun -but the sponsor would
say it's not for you to have fun, it's for the audience to have fun."
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 One
fan had a fascinating question about an anime sci-fi production
practice that frustrates purists: why do spacefaring shows have
spaceships make roaring noises in the soundless vacuum of space, where
only Stanley Kubrick has dared depict that environment's silence? Sato
said that practice happens because most fans expect the sound effects,
accurate or not. :If you are very faithful to sensations in space and
eliminate sounds, there will be people who will be worried that the TV
is busted or that there's something wrong with the broadcast - I'm
reminded that's the case by the TV station management. I'd like to find
a way to show that there's no sound in space, but this is a generic TV
audience, people who just have the TV on in the background and
eating dinner."
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