Angel Beats! interview with the producer
The official website for Angel Beats! has announced that it is currently in hikikomori mode and will only come back on the 30th of September.
Interview with Angel Beats! producer Toba Hirofumi from Dengeki G’s magazine:
I’ve always thought that the quality of work that was being produced by PA Works was really good ever since I saw their work as a subcontractor on DARKER THAN BLACK and Full Metal Alchemist. I was shocked when I watched the first three episodes of true tears and saw the amount of work they were putting into the art and animation for the characters and backgrounds, and how they were very careful with the direction of the anime.
I went to pay them a visit thinking that it’ll be great if I could get to work with them some day, and just the following week after the visit, I was discussing about the production studio with Maeda and Maeda said that he saw true tears and he has been thinking of PA Works.
At this point I thought in my mind that everything had fallen into place, and I officially proposed that we get PA Works.
About the director, Maeda had a request saying that he wanted to put importance into the comedy aspects, so our number one requirement for the director was to get somebody that can do comedy.
After that we looked at factors such as if the director can closely communicate with Maeda, and if the director is able to do both comedy and tear inducing drama. After all considerations we finally decided to get Kishi Seiji.
Kishi is kinda like the “big brother”, he’s really good at organizing the work on the site. There are a lot of young people working at PA Works, so we decided that somebody who’s able to pull people together will be able to keep everybody working closely together.
Iida Satoki (sound director) was a request by Kishi.
This time the sound director was already participating in the staff when we were only at the stage where we were still discussing the script.
Back when we were working together on Gurren Lagann I’ve always thought that Hirata Katsuzou had the artistic skills and at the same time he was fast with his works too. Some time after I saw that he had become the overall art director for Strike Witches and I was surprised.
Flexible art and able to draw both intense action and moe.
I talked to Maeda about this and he gave his approval immediately.
He has a mild personality and goes along well with Kishi. There were practically no requests from Maeda for him to redo any of his character designs too. (character design as in for the anime)
Currently the script is done up to episode 10. PA Works will start working on the animation from September. Work on the BGM for the anime is progressing quite well too, by the time this magazine is released the recording for the theme song has probably already ended. The schedule is currently progressing as ideally as it can be, if we can keep this up, the art should be completed by the time voice recording starts.
Maeda is having a lot of difficulty coping with the length of the anime. However the parts that couldn’t make it into one season of 21 minute anime episodes aren’t going to be lost forever. Some of them will be written into the Angel Beats! novel which will be running in the magazine starting from this month, and it might be interesting to do them as a drama CD, but we plan to do something with the parts that couldn’t make it into the anime.
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September 28th, 2009 at 10:39 am
These days it’s nice to see such an idealistic creation process.
September 28th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I’m a bit surprised to read that true tears was that well received, when its DVD sales were far from being satisfying (and in no way reflected the quality of the series and the effort PA Works put into animating it, I thought). But in a way, I feel kind of relieved for the studio now: even if their first production didn’t sell all that much and may have been a disappointment, it partly led to the production of Angel Beats - and I want to believe that this one’s really going to sell.
September 28th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Whatever happened to A-1/Ordet doing this? Did they pass on it to do BRS?
Was kinda eagaer to see how Yamakan handles a Key-themed show better than KyoAni
September 28th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
A-1/Ordet involvement (along with the alleged staff list) was complete fabrication. The only confirmed info was that Aniplex and Key were behind the project.
September 29th, 2009 at 12:32 am
>A-1/Ordet involvement (along with the alleged staff list) was complete fabrication.
Wow, thanks for answering that, I didn’t even know there was a fake staff list going around for Angel Beats