Summary of Ishida’s Q&A about Jack Jeanne
I don’t have the time to translate the entire thing, so I wrote the gist of it…I say gist but I pretty much got everything from the interview, but just wrote it in my own words since that takes a lot less time. Only the last 2 paragraphs are exact translations. Enjoy!
The news for this opening ceremony is that Jack Jeanne is being released on the Nintendo Switch for 2020 release.
Ishida will not only be responsible for the character design, but also for world building, establishing the setting, in-game illustrations, and even taking a part in writing the lyrics to the songs. He and Towada Shin (the author of the Tokyo Ghoul light novels) will be working together on Jack Jeanne’s scenario.
Songs will be produced by Akira Kosemura, concept art done by Ronin (who has done concept art for other series like NieR:Automata, Bayonetta 2, Pokemon among many others), and in-game 3D dance choreography by Seishiro (the same choreographer who Ishida met a few months ago).
Q1: What is the concept of Jack Jeanne?
If he’s talking about the genre, he would describe it as a “shounen opera”. The concept of this work is that all the boys attending the Univers academy play both the roles of the male “Jack” and the female “Jeanne”. He was influenced by one of his personal activities, which was to make a shoujo manga.
Q2: There are differences between creating a game and creating a manga, but what do you think has been fun for you?
The first is that he’s working with people from all kinds of fields. He likes that he’s not making the game alone. When he’s creating his manga he can get his staff to help with the backgrounds and get his editors to look over the story, but when making a game he finds that it’s been fun working with people outside of his field of expertise to create the game.
Because he’s working with different people, everything feels a lot more fresh compared to producing a manga. He also likes how he can just work with other people because he wants to.
He also finds there’s a huge difference in how manga is produced for magazines with weekly deadlines, and now where he can see the big picture of the story he’s writing while also being able to focus on the details.
Q3: On the flipside, are there any difficulties you haven’t adjusted to yet?
Related to the fact that this game isn’t a weekly serialization, he’s still used to reading weekly content so he finds it frustrating that he can’t reveal the contents of the story.
Whereas manga serialization is a series of sprints repeated hundreds of times, game production is a marathon, so he finds he’s having a hard time putting use of the explosiveness of from which manga is made.
Additionally there’s a lot of checks he has to deal with, which are at the same level of importance as writing the story and drawing the illustrations, which can be difficult at times. Though it may just be a result of him being involved in so many different parts. Though it’s quite a lot, he promises to do his best.
Q4: The focus of this work, the premise of male characters playing the roles of women, and the spectacular world view leaves behind a big impression. What did you have in mind when you were creating the character designs?
The six men certainly have their own unique designs, but he considered the overall balance of their characters as the most important, putting a particular emphasis on their appearance and personality when all six characters are lined up next to each other.
Regarding individual characters, he made sure that he could show the characters who play the female Jeanne roles (Fumi and Shirota) and the characters who can play either role (Yonaga and Neji) with feminine attire and hairstyles.
He thought each of them would have a gender-neutral charm of their own.
Because of that, he specifically incorporated a manly charm for the characters who specialize in playing the male role of Jack, Kai and Suzu. Also, Kai was the very first character that he designed for Jack Jeanne, and he thinks his design played a role in determining the direction of the game.
On the contrary, the main character Kisa looks feminine at first glance, but he aimed to dress her in a way that would make her look like a bishounen.
Q5: This will be a work in which you have an extremely strong influence over, as you are working on the illustrations, scenario, world building, etc., but are there any specific points that you’re particular about?
He was careful to make sure the characters didn’t die…for example, in a manga he has the option of developing characters, whether friend or foe, through death, but since the characters in Jack Jeanne aren’t dying or killing each other off, he had to consider how to make the drama in the story interesting.
He’s had hundreds of meetings with Towada Shin who’s also involved in the scenario writing, and because he thought a lot about the drama within the story, he’s very particular about that part. And because the story within the story is happening in the screenplay one by one, it’s important to create such a backbone.
Also, he hasn’t started drawing yet but he’ll be drawing over 100 still illustrations by himself.
Q6: Lastly, please share with us your excitement for Jack Jeanne.
If I was like I used to be, I don’t think I would’ve gone this far even if a position for the game was offered to me. It’s a work that I’ve become deeply involved in, so for those who are interested please check it out. I’m working on a lot of things, and I think I can make the deadline for the stills. Thank you and I hope you look forward to it.
From Ishida Sui-sensei, to the people who are looking forward to Jack Jeanne
I poured all my love into creating the Jack Jeanne characters. There are a lot of cuties, so please give it a play. I’m extremely looking forward to seeing which character everyone is interested in.
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