Go Yuri!!! Go, official fanbook
Interview with Yamamoto Sayo (published 19th June 2017)
[Okay, it's time to make all the translations more readable, especially for people, who discovered YoI recently but would like to know more, so I'll post all parts as one post~ I'll then put all translations on a list for easy access.
I'll still post new translations though, there are still some that I've touched, or even magazines that I don't have in my library yet😆]
Watching [the animation of] Victor’s FS at Worlds, I became certain that this is going to be a film [as in a ‘roll of film’] no-one has seen before.
Q: First of all, tell us please, why you have decided to make an anime about figure skating.
I have been a figure skating fan for some time now. At first I was a light fan, watching competitions only on TV, but then gradually I started spending crazy amount of time on figure skating. I started inserting figure skating into other projects I’ve been working on, for example, even while working on storyboards for action scenes, I was thinking: “Wouldn’t it be interesting, if I used the motion of flying camel spin for this kick here?”. Around the time, I was working on “Lupin the 3rd. The woman called Fujiko Mine” I couldn’t help, but to start thinking seriously about it and at first, I was thinking about maybe making an anime about skating to air around the time of Sochi Olympics. People [from the industry] were listening, but not very intently - I heard comments like “Is it going to be about bukatsu [school sports club]?” or “Sounds like that’s going to be hard to do”. I personally wanted to animate competitions, because this is what I watch and find interesting, but it seems I couldn’t make this idea come across well. But at the same time, I became convinced that I’m trying to do something new, something no-one can visualize even. In this state, the project wouldn’t be accepted for around 2 years. During that time, I was inserting figure skating into other projects, for example, the opening to “Persona 5”, but I really wanted to make a TV anime with figure skating as the main theme. The breakthrough happened around the time of Sochi Olympics - there was a producer, who was looking to start a new project and he very kindly listened to my ideas.
Q: When have you become really hooked on figure skating?
Some time between Turin Olympics and Vancouver Olympics. For example, when it’s a short program, it’s like the whole life of a figure skater is packed into these 2min 50s. The longer you watch the better you can understand what the skater is thinking about, while they’re skating. The first time, I’ve watched a live competition was because of Johnny Weir back in 2009. At that time, he skated his own choreography to Lady Gaga’s “Poker face” at exhibitions in a very sensational way, and it left a huge impression on me. I thought that it was so cool and I just have to see it live!!… After Vancouver Olympics, one Johnny’s Angel was so kind to give me their ticket and I was able to go to Fantasy on Ice in Niigata and Fukui… The cast of skaters was dream-like! After that, I fell for figure skating for real.
Q: Please tell as about the circumstances in which Mitsurou Kubo has been invited to join the project.
At first I was thinking about working with a screenwriter. But screenwriters usually work on many project at the same time, so I thought I wouldn’t be able to find somebody who was as deep into figure skating as I was (laugh). Just at that time I really liked and often listened to “All night Nippon”, [a radio program] Kubo-san was doing with Noumachi Mineko-san [Mineko is a biological man living as a woman. You’d say trans woman, but afaik, as per her interviews, she doesn’t like the “trans” label. She’s an essayist, illustrator and writer]. I was just a random listener, but I had this one-sided conviction that “I could be good friends with this person” (laugh). So one time Kubo-san talked on the radio about figure skating and I thought her views on it are very interesting. I knew she has written the screenplay for “Moteki” movie (2011) in a form of manga storyboards, but then when I checked her bio in detail, I learned that for a very long time she was drawing a manga series in Weekly Shonen Magazine, so I could easily imagine her writing a screenplay for a TV anime. The big point was also the fact that she had experience with works based on somebody’s else original idea, so I thought that she’s for sure used to working with other people.
Q: What was the thing that made you feel drawn to Kubo-san?
Kubo-san is a person who doesn’t shy away from talking about things [like, normally you’d choose to maybe not talk about something for whatever reason]. She has her own way of interpreting things and she doesn’t hesitate to state that “Because of that thing, then we have this” [The context here is that very often Japanese people would rather choose not to speak up their mind]. She’s like this on the radio and in person too. One very important thing that I demand from a screenwriter is that they should be able to write dialogues with good punch lines - I thought that Kubo-san would be good at this, but she’s turned out to be even better than I expected. However, as it was the first time she was writing a screenplay for a TV anime, I decided that because I was used to working with the format of TV series, I should be the one to do the series composition, so I started to re-learn screenwriting. Working on the series was very fun, because after the project was launched, almost everyday I was visiting Kubo-san at her house and we were discussing the show, as well as exchanging info about figure skating. Kubo-san is very intelligent and observant and very good at collecting information, so even though she often says things like “I don’t really know that much about figure skating…” she very quickly became very knowledgeable, and in the end I even learned some things from her I didn’t know before (laugh). In addition, Kubo-san, as you’d expect from a person who for a long time was drawing a manga series for a weekly magazine, is really a pro when it comes to creating stories. I often had a revelation-like moments when I was thinking “Wow, now I see it!”. Also, as it was a first time Kubo-san was working on an anime, I was convinced she’s going to create very refreshing visuals, and without hesitation I decided to ask her to do character designs. The character design ideas she made were very stunning and while still a bit real-life-like, the points that make you excited while you watch them were highlighted by making them a bit super-deformed. Also, her bold art style is so pleasant to look at. I was very excited when the best possible team was created, after it occurred to me that Hiramatsu-san is the only person who can translate Kubo-san’s great art style into anime character design.
Q: Without going into details, how was the production organized?
The first step was that I did the series composition and created the plot for the whole series. Based on that, we discussed the details with Kubo-san and she drew manga storyboards for episodes 1-5. From ep 6 onward, it was… how I should put it? An uncharted land (laugh). In the GP series episodes, I was thinking we should make at least 6 skaters compete each episode. The time we had for one episode is 20min10s and normally a short program is 2min50s. When we ordered music for the programs, we asked to shorten it to about 2 min, but I wanted to animate all elements [of a program], so we asked Miyamoto (Kenji)-sensei, the choreographer, to save some time on the in-between sequences and spins. But we still haven’t got enough time, so when I was doing the series composition, I calculated everything like: from X min to X min this character skates, and then from X min this character skates… while taking into consideration all failed jumps and so on. But I had to shorten everything even more and decide where to put other elements, scenes and lines I wanted to include. But even then, when I drew the storyboards, they turned out to be way too long and I’ve spend enormous amount of time editing them. The very talented person who I worked with, Nagasaka Tomoki, has experience with editing live action movies, so thanks to him, we managed to make it, but every week a huge amount of time was spent on the editing.
Q: How did you decide on the program composition for each character?
Kubo-san and I created the story for each character’s program and then I made tables where each element of the story and how long it should be was mapped to the program’s music, plus I decided on other things, like what type of jumps should be included and I gave this all to Miyamoto-sensei. But when it comes to rules in figure skating, I’m not a professional, so even though I wanted to make this character do this jump and this spin, it turned out it was necessary to check if it would even be realistic or not. So, we worked with a figure skating coach, Yokoya Hanae, who works at Meiji Jingu Gaien sports club [fun fact: she still works there and you can totally buy individual lessons with her!]. Yokoya-sensei was active competitor at the same time as Ito Midori, and she has competed in GPF and won at Nationals. She kindly supervised all types of jumps and spins for us. We also asked her for her advice on the scores for each character, if they are actually possible and not wrong.
Q: Tell us about the process of choreographing the programs.
While listening to the music, first of all, I made a table where I put which fragment of the music (from which second to which second) I want to link with the specific element of the story. Even though it was a first time for me doing something like that, it was surprisingly easy because I had been previously working on anime openings and endings where I also had to fit the story to the music and lyrics of the song. Then, while taking advice from Miyamoto-sensei I decided where to put jumps. Together with Kubo-san, we explained to Miyamoto-sensei the story in each program, characters’ personalities and the origins of the music, so he could put it all into the choreography. At first we were thinking that on day one while practicing Miyamoto-sensei would create the choreography and then the next day we would film it, but because there were so many songs it was very tiring physically, and so we decide to film the choreography as it was being created.
Q: What took the longest?
I think it was Phichit’s FS. Miyamoto-sensei has hurt himself and so he had to skate with [kinesiology] taping. Also, in this FS we wanted to include elements of traditional Thai dance, so we had to do some research on it while creating the choreography - this also took time. We were really worried because Miyamoto-sensei has told us that even as an active competitor he has never had to skate with taping… There was a trainer from Edogawa who helped us with taping and massages, so it was reassuring [to have somebody like that who can help].
Q: Tell us about other interesting episodes that happened during the time you were working on choreography.
The very first program we created was Victor’s FS and only in case of this program I started from discussing with Miyamoto-sensei where to put what types of jumps. I told him that we want to show that this skater is the strongest one, and asked what jumps should we put into his program, so it would feel special. At present, there are skaters who can land this type of jump in competitions, but back then Miyamoto-sensei without a moment of hesitation answered “quadruple flip”. It was fall of 2015. Quadruple flip was the jump Daisuke Takahashi was trying to land successfully when he was an active competitor, and he managed to land it during the 6-minute practice session during NHK Cup in 2011. At that time it was a very special jump, nobody had ever landed in a competition. Sensei has said to us “I’m a choreographer so I don’t know anything about jumps”, but I think quadruple flip was a special jump to him. This is also one of the reasons why we made quadruple flip Victor’s symbol in the show, and the special jump Yuuri is so fixated on.
Q: What was particularly difficult in designing the costume?
I think Yuuri’s SP and FS costumes. The designer, Sagiri Yuko, also said that these two were difficult. We didn’t put a lot of color on Yuuri, or should I say, he doesn’t have in him a lot of manga-like, easily recognizable traits, so it was difficult to put his personality into a design. The way we placed orders for costumes was in general the same as the way we placed orders for choreography - we were providing the designer with information about the program, character personality, their image colors and photos as references, but first we talked about figure skating. Saigiri-san is a very flexible person, so whenever we gave her some examples, she was like “Oh yes, I know what you mean!”, so it was very easy to work with her.
Q: Why did you decide to use original music?
We thought that if we used already existing songs, then the impression left by the skater, who had skated to that piece in the past, would still be present there in the music, and so [the programs in the show] would be compared to real-life figure skating and it would possibly be difficult to simply enjoy [the anime]… We made the effort to create an original [fictional] story and wouldn’t it be quite suffocating to have to compete with real-life figure skating [e.g. in creating the best program to the same music]? So I thought animating figure skating would be really worth the effort, if we created programs that use original music no-one had ever heard before.
Q: Which song was the most difficult to compose?
Victor’s FS “Stammi vicino” took a considerably long time to compose. In the beginning of this piece there is that ennui [Google says ennui is a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement] part, before it picks up steam. But the composer, Matsushiba Taku-san, told us that “from the perspective of classical music, there isn’t” [I don’t know much about classical music theory, but I think that maybe she meant that what they wanted to achieve didn’t really fit the form of aria]. But if we weren’t somehow able to achieve this effect, then the music wouldn’t match well with the program, and it would be difficult for us to create the climax of the performance, so he adjusted this for us. Yuuri’s program, both SP and FS, took a lot of time to compose. In addition, with Yuuri’s FS we wanted to match the music with Yuuri’s skating life - at first there is something missing there, but this missing part is gradually filled up. So to achieve this effect we were discussing the music with Tominaga Keisuke-san (music producer) and Umebayashi Taro-san (composer) composed the music for us.
The order we made for ED song was “Something that could be played during an ice show’s final or during a 6-minute warm-up session”. As for the visuals, first of all, I thought that it would be very difficult to animate skating, because of the amount of additional work we would have to do. That’s why we thought to use still images that would leave a strong impression, like unposed photos from the scenes that weren’t included in the anime, because of the time constrains… A lot of real life figure skaters use social media, so we thought that it would be interesting to use this as a theme. For example, when we went to see Karatsu before making the anime, we thought that we wanted to use the showers on the beach as a location, but in the end it wasn’t in the show, because of the time constraints. So instead we asked for it to be used in the ED. For example, in Almaty, where Otabek is, there is a metro station large enough to be a shelter, so we came up with ideas like “A skater from this country could do this in this place” and Hayashi (Yuichiro)-san organized these ideas very nicely into the ED.
Q: It’s a bit surprising that even Otabek uses social media.
A lot of foreign skaters have accounts. We can say that it’s normal to promote yourself by posting about what you are doing. Otabek too uses all sorts of social media. He practices at rinks not in his home country but abroad - I think, for skaters who have to travel all over the world, social media are also a method to stay in contact with their friends, families and fans.
Q: The fireworks scene in the ED was very memorable.
This was Hayashi-san’s idea. It’s not that all three of them were together in Hasetsu in the summer. So, it’s not that it’s a scene that actually happened somewhere sometime in the past - it’s an imaginary world. Hayashi-san is very observant and the visuals he creates are very convincing - he makes you think that the moments he portrays really happened.
Q: What was the most important thing to you when you were working on the visual side of Yuri!!!
First of all with screen layouts, at first I wanted them to look similar to Kubo-san’s original style of drawing, so I was thinking about making the black color of characters’ outlines really stand out. In addition, also in backgrounds, I wanted to leave the lines well-defined, and not make them too realistic and photo-like. With the exception of the town of Hasetsu, all [location] settings are essentially based in real world. In anime about figure skating, and one where we wanted to animate the GPF series, we wanted to have a link to real world locations where GP series events actually take place. Yuri!!! started airing in October, so the timing matched with real-life GP series, and by making the locations the same, we also wanted to make people, who don’t watch figure skating normally, interested in watching real-life competitions.
Q: The interior of Yu~topia Katsuki is a very unique world.
Tamura (Seiki)-san, who was responsible for the design, is the person who works with me since the first anime I directed, as the art designer. He has a good sense of fun and he’s really good at adding a special flavor to his designs. I think, if we just drew everything exactly in the same way as it appears in the photos we took for references, then it wouldn’t really be even worthwhile to work on the designs. Especially in case of Yu~topia Katsuki and the main building where Yuuri’s room is located, we wanted to make it look unique. We placed an order for a design that “shows you that the building has been remodeled, and some time has passed since the time when the Katsukis were running a ryokan [traditional Japanese inn] and now, when they use the ryokan building as their house with one-day [that is, you can’t stay the night there] onsen facilities added. So inside the building we have a lot of elements from different cultures and time periods. In contrast, when designing the locations we wanted to look realistic, like the GP series venues, we used 3D-modelling.
Q: How was your co-operation with the sound director, Kiyomizu-san, going during the voice overs recording?
I have previously worked with Kiyomizu-san on "Lupin”. He’s very passionate about voice acting. He also has the ability to manage voice actors very well. He read the story we wanted to tell diligently and had a very good understanding of what we want to do, to the point that he was able to give me some ideas I’ve never thought about - I could entrust this job to him without any worries. When we were checking the voice overs together, we almost always agreed on the lines which sounded off - it made my life so much easier. In Yuri!!! from time to time we have scenes when we use manga-like deformations but when we were casting voice actors, it was very important for us to have actors, who can act naturally. All VAs are very talented, so basically the voice overs aren’t that different from what I imagined they should sound like. Also I was the most grateful that Kiyomizu-san is also a skating fan. It is the director’s job to explain everything to people who don’t know anything [about the topic they need to work on], but it’s so much better when you have to give only additional information to somebody who already knows a lot, than when you have to make somebody with 0 level knowledge reach level 2 or 3. The number of episodes we could work on together was not so big, so I wouldn’t have much time to explain everything anyway - it was a luxury to be able to work with Kiyomizu-san, who already had know so much that I only had to give him some additional information.
Q: Do you have any interesting stories about voice over recordings?
Every time, the voice actors were giving better performances than we could have expected, so sometimes we had to change the animation to better match it with the voice overs. We only changed small details, but I must admit it wasn’t easy. When the voice actors’ performance is very intense, it’s easy to understand the characters - the character speaks their lines and that’s all they need to exist. But a more exquisite/delicate performance is what determines whether you can feel that the characters are real or not. Are they “characters that only exist in this anime” or can you feel that they “are really there” - it all depends on voice acting.
Q: Which scene was especially memorable to you?
While working on Yuri!!!, the scene that made me feel that “this is going to be an amazing show” particularly strongly, was the scene of Victor skating in ep 1. In animation, you have to explain the characters through actions and in figure skating, it is the skating performance that needs to express everything there is to be expressed - while working on this scene I had in mind both these principles. When I was editing this scene, and also the whole ep 1, I became convinced that “this is going to be a film no-one has seen before”. Of course, I had a lot of faith in this project from the very beginning, but when this 20min10s-long film was created I really felt that we were working on something absolutely new, something that has never been done before.
Q: At the very end of the last episode we see the “See you NEXT LEVEL” text.
It’s because we wanted to end the series with an element of “hope” to keep on going forward. Well, when we started working on the project we couldn’t really get enough money for the budget and there wasn’t any indication that we would be able to work on any sort of continuation (laugh). That’s why we decided very early on that we wanted to end the series like this, so we also can move on to the “NEXT LEVEL” [it’s not really clear if she meant they hoped they would be able to work on continuation anyway or the next level was their personal next level, as in they wanted to move on to different projects]. But before we reached the “NEXT LEVEL” ending, in the story Yuuri has grown as a person in a way we couldn’t have imagined, and because of that he has been changing. Especially the jumps in his FS changed more than any other characters’ from the show. This is because, as Yuuri has been growing as a person throughout the show, there were many moments when he made us feel that: “now is when I want to challenge myself”.
Q: What are you plans for the future?
Right now we are planning the production of the movie. While working on final editing of episode 10, suddenly an idea for this new project came to me, without any context. I think it’s going to be quite an epic story (laugh).
Q: And lastly, a message for the fans please!
Yuri!!! on ICE finished airing so we are in off-season now, but in real-life figure skating the Olympic season has just begun! It’s a very dramatic season that only happens once every 4 years, so please watch real-life competitions. I’m going to keep on working hard towards the NEXT LEVEL while getting my imagination inspired by figure skating and using this imagination to make anime!!!
