Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaoru Chujo
2. There is no way Yamakan is going to retire. His career is just getting started. I believe he contributed a lot to Haruhi, but he wasn't the actual director. He only did four episodes of Lucky Star. Kannagi was good but not great; it lost direction as it went on, for me. I think he has more in him. Hopefully this is that. To me, what Yamakan has is a flair for motion and music, and a smart sense of humor. He needs a good writer, and I think Okada Mari (true tears, Toradora, Zakuro) has a chance to provide that.
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Yamakan may not retire from arts, but the feeling I get is that he'll be more than happy to ditch anime for live-action projects. As for Okada Mari, I don't think he's relevant in any sense, not at all, but he has lots of experience, and from the current staff lineup, I believe he'll serve to dumb down Azuma Hiroki's story concepts, perhaps make them more understandable to the general audience. Iguchi Yuka and Hanazawa Kana made a guest appearance on
Cho! A＆G+ digital radio show recently where they promoted Fractale. They said that it's the kind of show where each line carries a meaning for the story development. It wouldn't surprise me, considering Azuma Hiroki's previous dabbles in writing. His sci-fi novel
Quantum Families was hard to understand and barely qualified as a novel, according to his readers, although he won the 27th Mishima Yukio literary award for it. I mean, the guy's a cultural critic--if you were to read his
Otaku: Japanese Database Animals, you'd know he's no joke when it comes to ideas. Unfortunately, I don't see the Azuma-Okada pair working too great at this moment. Perhaps the complexity level of their storytelling have too wide a margin?
Maybe Yamakan will be able to bridge them together somehow for the anime, but I'm sure Azuma will be able to stretch out his intellectual wings in the planned novelization (which won't be metafiction, thankfully).