From
Kimagure Orange Road to Gunsmith Cats and Vandread, director Takeshi
Mori has a track record of commercial success. Yet, this proven veteran
said at Anime Overdose that he can't ease up on his creative efforts,
that each new series must come from the lingering dissatisfaction from
the previous series. Mori had successful parents, and he's learned from
their success on how to come up with new idea - concepts for series
that are uniquely personal because of Mori's track record and the
independence of the Gonzo animation series that handles his projects.
For example, Mori's spacefaring Vandread series is going to have a
reflection in the upcoming Stratus Four series. "In Vandread the theme
was the growth of one human being, and in Stratus Four the theme is how
a family grows," said Mori. Part of the new series' plot will be the
spread of a disease that Mori said was inspired by the real-world
spread of AIDS, which is Mori's way of expressing another one of his
concerns - how a society combats its problems.
Part
of the success of a series is the preparation time, Mori said - months
for a TV series, years for an animated movie. We've heard about the
dozens of television anime series in Japan, and Mori said one of the
ways that a series gets its episodes finished on time is that each show
has several production units working on its episodes. It's not unusual
for a series to have five episodes simultaneously in production, he
said. The other production speedup trick is the move from paint and ink
to computer animation. Through his work at Gonzo, Mori has been
fortunate enough to explore the cutting edge of three-dimensional
animation for scenes of spaceships in flight, something that is going
to be a major part of Stratus Four. But the series is still going to
have a human story, regardless of the number of spaceships. "The theme
I was thinking about was why people want to protect what they have,"
said Mori. "I think it's the same for Japanese people and
American people. We have all different sorts of problems within our
society, and I hope that series will be a hint about how we should
fight against those sort of things and why."
From
Kimagure Orange Road to Gunsmith Cats and Vandread, director Takeshi
Mori has a track record of commercial success. Yet, this proven veteran
said at Anime Overdose that he can't ease up on his creative efforts,
that each new series must come from the lingering dissatisfaction from
the previous series. Mori had successful parents, and he's learned from
their success on how to come up with new idea - concepts for series
that are uniquely personal because of Mori's track record and the
independence of the Gonzo animation series that handles his projects.
For example, Mori's spacefaring Vandread series is going to have a
reflection in the upcoming Stratus Four series. "In Vandread the theme
was the growth of one human being, and in Stratus Four the theme is how
a family grows," said Mori. Part of the new series' plot will be the
spread of a disease that Mori said was inspired by the real-world
spread of AIDS, which is Mori's way of expressing another one of his
concerns - how a society combats its problems.
Part
of the success of a series is the preparation time, Mori said - months
for a TV series, years for an animated movie. We've heard about the
dozens of television anime series in Japan, and Mori said one of the
ways that a series gets its episodes finished on time is that each show
has several production units working on its episodes. It's not unusual
for a series to have five episodes simultaneously in production, he
said. The other production speedup trick is the move from paint and ink
to computer animation. Through his work at Gonzo, Mori has been
fortunate enough to explore the cutting edge of three-dimensional
animation for scenes of spaceships in flight, something that is going
to be a major part of Stratus Four. But the series is still going to
have a human story, regardless of the number of spaceships. "The theme
I was thinking about was why people want to protect what they have,"
said Mori. "I think it's the same for Japanese people and
American people. We have all different sorts of problems within our
society, and I hope that series will be a hint about how we should
fight against those sort of things and why."
