Urobuchi Gen: Discussions on his Stories and Style (spoilers ahead)

[Dr. Dahm]

Not even a day or so after my last post I'm given more evidence of Urobuchi's new status as a name that gets slapped on the top of a marquee seemingly solely to move product. This time he didn't even come up with the original title, Square Enix did yet he's somehow credited with the Original Creator title and the very first name you see out of all the staff involved including the director:


Gunslinger Stratos

Staff:
Original: Gen Urobuchi
Director: Shinpei Ezaki
Script Produce: Nitroplus
Series Composition: Norimitsu Kaihou
Character Desgin: Shinichi Yokota
Music: Tetsuya Kobayashi
Studio: A-1 Pictures

So that settles the whole 2 years thing, but realistically he doesn't actually seem to have much to do with this at all. I wonder what kind of effect this has and if people will finally catch on and start disregarding his name a little bit more as he becomes something akin to the Tom Clancy of anime. In any case definitely becoming overexposed and definitely a popular brand this fellow.

[IceHism]

Originally Posted by Dr. Dahm

Not even a day or so after my last post I'm given more evidence of Urobuchi's new status as a name that gets slapped on the top of a marquee seemingly solely to move product. This time he didn't even come up with the original title, Square Enix did yet he's somehow credited with the Original Creator title and the very first name you see out of all the staff involved including the director:


Gunslinger Stratos

Staff:
Original: Gen Urobuchi
Director: Shinpei Ezaki
Script Produce: Nitroplus
Series Composition: Norimitsu Kaihou
Character Desgin: Shinichi Yokota
Music: Tetsuya Kobayashi
Studio: A-1 Pictures

So that settles the whole 2 years thing, but realistically he doesn't actually seem to have much to do with this at all. I wonder what kind of effect this has and if people will finally catch on and start disregarding his name a little bit more as he becomes something akin to the Tom Clancy of anime. In any case definitely becoming overexposed and definitely a popular brand this fellow.

He's the scenario writer for the arcade game. It would make sense they would give credit to urobuchi if they are adapting part of or his whole story

[Frontier]

Speaking as someone who's seen Kamen Rider Gaim in its entirety, which was the Tokustatsu that Urobuchi was recently the head writer of, I can say that there he wrote a majority of the episodes and at least co-wrote several with other writers. The only exceptions were a crossover episode with Ressha Sentai ToQger, episodes meant to tie-in to other movies out at the time (which always seemed to interrupt the plot at inopportune times), and the epilogue.

But the final episode before the epilogue had a lot finality to it anyways, if some elements left open-ended and some implications towards the fate of a certain character that there's some disagreement over. That tends to often be the case in Rider, at least ending with quite a bit finality, despite the fact that these days they always have to come back for the crossover movie with the next Rider show .

As for Gaim in general, I'd say that while there was certainly deconstruction as to what it meant to be a Kamen Rider, what justice truly meant, and what defined heroism within the show, ultimately there were plenty of heroic moments throughout and I think the series was left with a pretty idealistic message and ending .

Granted, it's a kid show designed to sell toys and Urobuchi was on record saying he was writing for that kind of audience, but considering some of the dark stuff that show got into (even compared to older Heisei shows) I'd say the ending was a nice surprise from what I was prepared for...

[Dr. Dahm]

Originally Posted by IceHism

He's the scenario writer for the arcade game. It would make sense they would give credit to urobuchi if they are adapting part of or his whole story

My bad then.

Originally Posted by Frontier

Speaking as someone who's seen Kamen Rider Gaim in its entirety, which was the Tokustatsu that Urobuchi was recently the head writer of, I can say that there he wrote a majority of the episodes and at least co-wrote several with other writers. The only exceptions were a crossover episode with Ressha Sentai ToQger, episodes meant to tie-in to other movies out at the time (which always seemed to interrupt the plot at inopportune times), and the epilogue.

But the final episode before the epilogue had a lot finality to it anyways, if some elements left open-ended and some implications towards the fate of a certain character that there's some disagreement over. That tends to often be the case in Rider, at least ending with quite a bit finality, despite the fact that these days they always have to come back for the crossover movie with the next Rider show .

As for Gaim in general, I'd say that while there was certainly deconstruction as to what it meant to be a Kamen Rider, what justice truly meant, and what defined heroism within the show, ultimately there were plenty of heroic moments throughout and I think the series was left with a pretty idealistic message and ending .

Granted, it's a kid show designed to sell toys and Urobuchi was on record saying he was writing for that kind of audience, but considering some of the dark stuff that show got into (even compared to older Heisei shows) I'd say the ending was a nice surprise from what I was prepared for...

What I've seen of that show indeed feels very much like the standard Urobuchi tropes given a Kamen Rider skin and slightly reigned in. You've got your naive idealistic hero who is forced to confront said naivete, another kind of utilitarian guy who believes power and a certain harshness is needed to attain a better life for people at the end of the story and they're kind of pitted against each other. It could very well be a fun romp but it really just seems like he's recycling the same thematic an ideas over and over again and just working the series and genre conventions to match those ideas rather than working his ideas to match the series, genre and part of a greater whole. I'm not a huge Tokusatsu fan anyway since I tend to find the acting really bad so I never saw more than a couple of episodes but I get the feeling I really didn't miss much of anything new from the guy.

The whole fact that the show is supposed to be based around the theme of fruit at the same time as Urobuchi is working his usual elements of naive heroism and sense of morality versus might makes right and decides what justice is (he favors the latter too much as I keep insisting) that kind of amuses and confuses me though. It's that hard clashing of elements, themes and ideas that always seem to crop up in a lot of things he writes for that IMO tend to lead to very mixed results. Like he especially seems to like to work on series like that where he can rely on subverting expectations except it doesn't work so well anymore IMO when you kind of know exactly what to expect out of the guy and what angles he's going to be working under the skin of it all. It can be a magical girl series, a tokusatsu series or a giant robot series but at the end of the day it all tends to come down to the same thing with a dash of rule of cool on the side for good measure.

I think that is also why for me Psycho Pass is his writing credit that works best. It isn't great, but for a change what you see is kind of what you get. There's not much clashing of elements nor this apparent need to subvert some beloved childhood ideal or genre to keep people on their toes.

[Soliloquy]

Originally Posted by Dr. Dahm

My bad then.
The whole fact that the show is supposed to be based around the theme of fruit at the same time as Urobuchi is working his usual elements of naive heroism and sense of morality versus might makes right and decides what justice is (he favors the latter too much as I keep insisting) that kind of amuses and confuses me though. It's that hard clashing of elements, themes and ideas that always seem to crop up in a lot of things he writes for that IMO tend to lead to very mixed results. Like he especially seems to like to work on series like that where he can rely on subverting expectations except it doesn't work so well anymore IMO when you kind of know exactly what to expect out of the guy and what angles he's going to be working under the skin of it all. It can be a magical girl series, a tokusatsu series or a giant robot series but at the end of the day it all tends to come down to the same thing with a dash of rule of cool on the side for good measure.

As another anime watcher, I found Gen Urobuchi interesting as his story constantly involved punishing any idealistic state of mind and resolve the ending in sadistic note all the time, I have to agree with your assessment of Gen Urobuchi. Lately I have found him to act as one trick pony, there's no other interesting element or theme to look for when watching the anime supposedly created by him. As much fanboy as I am of Fate Zero, it's disappointing to see nothing of that standard by him. And the sad thing is his involvement basically the hype machine and nothing much. In that way, anime industry and fandom is frustrating to observe at times.

Even if his stories have the similar tones and themes, I wouldn't mind more as long as it's interesting and logical. Somehow I find it unlikely if he is going to give a lot of effort. He seems to be aware of his status and knows even with the littlest effort, it's going to be pretty big name anime. It's sad he's perfectly capable of creating something devoid of light novel tropes, he seems sort of lazy.

[TJR]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

However... I don't know how anime companies typically handle "writing staffs". It could be that a situation like Madoka Magica is very much the exception, and not the rule. It could be that writing work for anime originals are typically group efforts, with no one person handling it all or most of it. If that's the case, then maybe Gen is just slipping back into the industry standard, and we should cut him some slack?

The concepts are generally a group effort. It isn't necessarily uncommon for a single writer to tackle the screenplay, but it depends on the schedule and the writer's ability to stay on top of things. A late script can screw everything up, so sub-writers are sometimes hired from the start.

As for Gen Urobuchi, Madoka was an anomaly in that project delays gave him so much time to write. In an interview, he mentioned that he is used to writing over a period of 2-3 years, so working on Psycho-Pass was especially difficult.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

That trend is that Gen's degree of involvement in projects he's a part of has steadily declined, from almost complete control/involvement in Madoka Magica and Psycho-Pass to minimal control/involvement in Gargantia and Aldnoah.Zero.

Actually, Gen had quite a bit of control on Gargantia (original concept, series composition, first and last episodes to establish the writing style for collaborators). It's true that the concept evolved after the director joined the project, but that's the collaborative nature of anime. Psycho-Pass changed too, plus we've all heard of the adjustments on Mari Okada's Anohana.

I suspect that he's still more of a guest writer than an industry regular. Producers are relying on him to carve out the story/universe design, but with regard to screenplay, he may not work at a pace that they're comfortable with.

Originally Posted by Dr. Dahm

He's a little too overexposed right now and kind of casting a shadow over the entire industry IMO

Nitroplus has had a huge hand in promoting him. While Gen's stardom may be new to anime viewers, it's really a continuation of pre-existing popularity among visual novel fans.

I played Phantom of Inferno in early 2007, and the marketing machine (following the success of Fate/Zero, I guess?) was already at work by then. Nitroplus published a commemorative magazine highlighting his works, and as we now know, he was their ace in an attempt to crack new markets, whether it was anime, light novels, the American comic market (Song of Saya adaptation)......

Currently, they're assigning other writers (such as Jin Haganeya) to work on anime, which may be an attempt to shift attention to the brand/company as a whole. That opens up more project opportunities.

[Shyni]

Originally Posted by Dr. Dahm

What I've seen of that show indeed feels very much like the standard Urobuchi tropes given a Kamen Rider skin and slightly reigned in. You've got your naive idealistic hero who is forced to confront said naivete, another kind of utilitarian guy who believes power and a certain harshness is needed to attain a better life for people at the end of the story and they're kind of pitted against each other. It could very well be a fun romp but it really just seems like he's recycling the same thematic an ideas over and over again and just working the series and genre conventions to match those ideas rather than working his ideas to match the series, genre and part of a greater whole.

Pretty sure at least some of the themes were used in previous Kamen Rider anyway, so it's not like there was absolutely no basis to use it in the franchise. Ryuki had a naive "i wanna save everybody" type as the main character going against a "sacrifice a few to save the many" antagonist, for example.

Originally Posted by Dr. Dahm

nor this apparent need to subvert some beloved childhood ideal or genre to keep people on their toes.

To be fair, Kamen Rider as a franchise was pretty subversive towards itself some years ago, so Gaim doing it isn't too out of place. Just out of place compared to the few years preceeding it, and perhaps the current season.