Aquarion Series: Genesis-to-EVOL Speculation/spoiler discussion thread

[KleenexGhost]

Originally Posted by kuromitsu

That would be a pretty shocking level of unprofessionalism, and to be honest I don't think it's very likely. And it's not like there was a sharp decline in quality, the problems have been there since the first half of the show, they just got out of hand as the plot thickened.

Btw, this month's Spoon (I think it's this month's - anyway it has Tsuritama on its cover) apparently has a long interview with the director, Yamamoto Yuusuke. Maybe we'll get some insight from him...

Yeah, I agree with you on that. And it will be interesting to get some insight from Yamamoto.

[mayumi]

Looks like interivew iwth Okada is going to bereleased in this magazine. Can anyone confirm? Shushu to be next Apollo by that pic.

http://www.yosensha.co.jp/book/b102657.html

[bastek66]

Some 2ch:
ユノハ自身は恋愛に積極的にはなれないでしょうが、周りの男子がほおって
おかないでしょうね ゼシカとカグラは恋仲に進展するかもしれませんね（山本監督）

ゼシカとカグラは恋仲に進展するかもしれませんね

[SABER60069]

Kagura/Zessica end confirmed?

[kuromitsu]

Originally Posted by SABER60069

Kagura/Zessica end confirmed?

No, just the possibility that they may end up as a couple.

And yes, there's an interview with Okada in Otona Anime #25.

[genjo sanzo]

Originally Posted by kuromitsu

No, just the possibility that they may end up as a couple.

And yes, there's an interview with Okada in Otona Anime #25.

I really wanted this development, but it's now late! They should release something more, not a director's cut. We'll see

[Ruddfect]

Surprised no one has linked this yet, but some anon on /a/ got scans of interviews from Okada, Kawamori, and Yamamoto. The Yamamoto one is further down.
https://archive.foolz.us/a/thread/68439891/

[Destined_Fate]

I see that they're smart enough to use Kagura's sexiness to help attract attention.

[OMG_Zerg_Rush]

Originally Posted by Ruddfect

Surprised no one has linked this yet, but some anon on /a/ got scans of interviews from Okada, Kawamori, and Yamamoto. The Yamamoto one is further down.
https://archive.foolz.us/a/thread/68439891/

Spoiler for Okada on Zessica:

she thought about doing a Zessica route too but that she abandoned the idea because it wouldn't have been refreshing. She wanted to depict a love relationship objectively

Is this some kind of joke?

[Shikijin]

I attempted a partial translation. Here is a summary of the interview with Okada.

Spoiler for long:

-Okada liked the first series. When she watched the rebroadcasting of Canaan a character said "12000 years too early". She forgot to have written that, but it seems she liked Aquarion well enough to parody that catchphrase.

-Okada liked how Aquarion was crazy, it was a maniac anime but it felt like something major. She also liked the peculiar sense of tension.

-Okada thought "Gattai is forbidden" was a good catchphrase. She wanted to add more romance to Aquarion (what she thought were the good parts of Aquarion). Kawamori writes the outline of his anime, but he let the scriptwriter do what she wants with the contents, Okada was a bit worried for such freedom. Kawamori said he chose her because he watched True Tears and he liked Jibeta.

-Okada wanted to portray more realistic emotions. There are many ways to portray love in anime. She received a huge shock from seeing how love was depicted in DYRL, she thought there were gaps in the storytelling of the romance part. She put a lot of thought in EVOL to compensate. She wanted to keep things crazy, but when giving personality to the characters she tried to make them as real as possible.

-Okada said what was difficult was not the romance part, even despite there were so many characters, it was difficult for her to write the robot part. It was also difficult to put in the myth part. Originally the second half wasn't meant to reference so openly the first series, but as the series went on Kawamori became enthusiastic about it. Okada noticed that if you combine love and crazy depiction you get a myth.

-Okada had experience in writing anime with a myth part, and she has to say myth are a very serious thing, there are conflicts for the slightest thing, people kill other on the spot, hystory changes and so on. Okada thinks myth are so extreme they are very suitable for love. She feels embarrassed in writing love in anime, but myth are in a dimension away from reality. The difficulties may make them seem real. She wanted to write a normal love story between a boy and a girl, but it was the myth part that gave the story tension.

-Okada has been called kuso-onna in the past. At first she hated it, but in the end she took a liking to it.

-Okada had entered the world of Aquarion from Evol, she thought she could do it if the character of Kagura was accepted.

-Okada worried a lot over Amata. This kind of "iron feel" main character can't be twisted, so he must stay flat. Okada says that there are even main characters with a crazy feel, like Dragon Ball's Goku who acted without much thought behind. He tried to consciously depict Amata like that. Amata was a meek child, but compared to Kagura, who was straightforward, he grew up a bit weird.

-Okada says Amata is the kind of people who can flip anytime even while being calm, and in that sense he was scary. Okada says he likes him although he's different from her, but she finds him scary.

-Okada sympathized with Zessica who remained in a losing position no matter what. Midway there was a plan to involve more Zessica, but she was told that wouldn't be refreshing. Okada herself doesn't know if Evol could be really considered refreshing. Anyway, she felt she overdid it with Zessica as a loser, but even the other writers just came up with situations a la "the housekeeper saw it!{a TV drama}". She got uneasy when Zessica secretly witnessed Amata and Mikono together. Mikono was a character who tended to fall to the dark side, so Okada insisted for having Zessica more heroic.

-Andy wasn't originally meant to be there, but Okada felt she needed a "male who loves pretty girl" (ie: the friend of Tokimeki Memorial's MC). Kawamori was surprised when she put such kind of character. Even Okada herself was surprised to have proposed him. She thought Andy was the "hole" of Kawamori, so she was able to turn it into a regular. MIX has always been a class rep, but she was originally a gentle bigger sister type. Some member of the staff was complaining MIX was not MIX anymore after Okada's changes. Andy and MIX were two characters easy to depict and to made fall in love.

-It was Kawamori the one who wanted to turn MIX in a boy. In fact, Kawamori tried to put in an amazing joke, but the producer stopped him, and it became a blooper. It was a very funny joke, so Okada will try to use it if she will have the chance.

-Kawamori doesn't like to do things as planned till the end, so the story changed a lot from the original plan. With that way of doing things they might end up changing even the setting on a whim. Okada worried a lot over it, but she found it fun. She was very sorry for the other writers, but luckily they were all people able to cope with changes.

-Okada wanted from the beginning to give the series a good ending. She gave it her all, but she would like to do more. While writing the scenario of the first episode, Okada listened together with Kawamori to the two song proposed for the OP, Kimi no Shinwa and Eve no Danpen, and they thought Kimi no Shinwa fitted better. Okada writes the scenario thinking of the tune, and she started feeling that indeed puberty is refreshing.

-According to Okada, Satelight is a curious place. They work on schedule but they enjoy what they do. Normally you don't hold much loft events, and even if wanted to, someone would reply "now we can't do it". In Satelight they get excited as if it was a school festival. It feels like a place where you can laugh together even when you really don't have the time to. She thinks it's thanks to the fact there are people of various age groups. Nowadays in many companies you don't have adults, many people over 30 leave. In this sense Satelight doesn't feel like an anime company, but they are still full of enthusiasm. Kawamori is the most broad minded of all, and it's like all people in the staff are united to grant his wishes. Even in the most strict situations, when Kawamori gets an idea he can't be stopped. People think they are having hard, but when they see what were able to do they are amazed. While doing meeting for the scenario Okada got accustomed to travelling, she noticed she doesn't need a change of clothes if it's just one night.

[Destined_Fate]

More realistic emotions? Is that the excuse for why Amata and Mikono were... Ugh?

Originally Posted by OMG_Zerg_Rush

Is this some kind of joke?

Well... It would have gotten in the way of them kicking Zessica which isn't something they would stand for.

[Radik]

Originally Posted by Shikijin

I attempted a partial translation. Here is a summary of the interview with Okada.

Thanks for that, it's an interesting read.

Spoiler for long:

Originally Posted by Shikijin

-Okada sympathized with Zessica who remained in a losing position no matter what.

And for good reason, I think most people that watched the series felt the same way.

Originally Posted by Shikijin

Midway there was a plan to involve more Zessica, but she was told that wouldn't be refreshing. Okada herself doesn't know if Evol could be really considered refreshing. Anyway, she felt she overdid it with Zessica as a loser, but even the other writers just came up with situations a la "the housekeeper saw it!{a TV drama}". She got uneasy when Zessica secretly witnessed Amata and Mikono together. Mikono was a character who tended to fall to the dark side, so Okada insisted for having Zessica more heroic.

I wonder who told her that involving Zessica more wouldn't be "refreshing". It does explain how Zessica's character was all but abandoned in the final episodes.

Originally Posted by Shikijin

-Kawamori doesn't like to do things as planned till the end, so the story changed a lot from the original plan. With that way of doing things they might end up changing even the setting on a whim. Okada worried a lot over it, but she found it fun. She was very sorry for the other writers, but luckily they were all people able to cope with changes.

Those changes were very apparent, the story lost all sense of direction halfway through. I'd certainly like to see what the original plan looked like, I'd imagine it would at least have been more coherent than the end result.

[mayumi]

seriously all this focus on making zessica the one who would fail regardless of what she does only made mikono more unbearable. if they really focused on mikono properly maybe she wouldn't turn out to be such a useless girl. zessica never had a chance because the other writers never wanted her to/ okada could only try to give zessica a heroic "ok i will give up finally" because it looks like okada liked her. okada atleast won that one battle and maybe that end pairing with kagura

also, some of the writers intentions are downright nasty like that whole "the housekeeper saw it!{a TV drama}". How lame they couldn't come up with anything better but cliche stuff?

andy not supposed to be there? okada included him? i am thankful that he was there.

amata is like goku? the guy who never changes? the genre shounen kind but really messed up in the head? atleast she admits he was batshit nuts with his obsession which explains why he disregards everyone else when mikono is around. he is supposed to be a flat character as i saw him as.

[Destined_Fate]

Well, it seems they changed the script a bit during development and not all the writers liked it. I'm sure Zessica was a hot topic for changes since she ended up being so popular which in turn made Mikoto so very unpopular in comparison since they're rivals... Only Zessica was made to fail no matter what she did.

I don't think Amata can really compared to Goku. At least Goku cared enough for his friends and willingly took the bullet for other characters. While Amata never really took a hit for anyone and let the world go to hell over reckless his pursuit of Mikoto. Everyone else didn't really seem to matter all that much to him when Mikoto is involved and she always came first even when she wasn't in danger.

Also... Amata learned nothing to change his behaviour. Such antics shouldn't be rewarded, Amata's obsession still stays the same from beginning to end. Zessica and Kagura at least got over their obessions and moved on but Amata? I wouldn't want to be in the same room as him, he might just flip out on me for looking at "his" prize.

[ZetaAEUG]

All in all, Okada's interview seems like she's making quite a few excuses for why EVOL was so bad. Kawamori's the one who's ultimately at fault though, for giving her and the other writers so much freedom in the first place.

[KleenexGhost]

That was an interesting interview to say the least.

First, I agree with ZetaAEUG. I've said that even though Okada was in charge of a large part of the writing process for the series Kawamori still deserved a good amount of the blame himself. He was the one in charge of the show altogether. People talk about the flaws with the story, writing and character development, but I'm pretty sure he gets final say on things.

Besides it sounds like the story wasn't even really planned out properly. Sounds like there were no definite ideas at times, which could mean there were some re-writes. The interview even says that Kawamori didn't like to do things as planned until the end. Seeing that revelation makes me sympathize with the writers a little bit and it also explains some of the flaws with the storytelling.

I pretty much had the same reaction as OMG Zerg Rush when I read her thoughts on Zessica. A lot of viewers sympathized with Zessica too, which is why fans of her character don't take too kindly to her being the punching bag of the show. Also didn't do any favors on Mikono's part as Zessica made Mikono look bad at times.

I'm glad she proposed the idea of Andy. Definitely a good move on her part.

An interesting read. I'm interested to see more of their thoughts. It seems like they had a lot of ideas but they also had to please Kawamori so a lot of those ideas may have fallen to the wayside. I'm really interested to see what the original plan was, because the show we ultimately got definitely felt it went through quite a few rewrites and changes.

[Shikijin]

Interview with Kawamori part 1:

Spoiler for long:

-The direction for the chara design changed, and it was emphasized the campus love aspect, but aside from that for Kawamori EVOL is still Aquarion.

-The CG has evolved a lot. They were able to do various experiments with CG which will be useful in the future. With Sousei Kawamori wanted to do something that wouldn't pale in comparison to hand-drawing, but moving a humanoid mecha was difficult, so the action became stiff or minimal. Once he cleared that problem, he was ready to use more mecha on screen at the same time.

-Kawamori noted in Sousei there were good cut and not so good cut, he aimed at having a more uniform quality. He also aimed at having the robot giving off a sense of weight and scale. With this and the absurdities the robot did, he managed to suspend disbelief.

-There is a restriction on the number of cuts per action scene. Evol for example had an average of 60 cuts. While in Macross you have mecha firing missiles, running away and then firing again, with Sousei Kawamori came up with the concept of certain kill techniques, which were impressive even with few cuts.

-Kawamori wanted EVOL to be more about the campus part then mecha, so there were episodes without mecha scenes. Battles obviously reduced the time for chara development, while Kawamori wanted to put scenes whose emotional effect would have been felt only later. Besides, an episode without battles meant he could use 120 cuts the next time.

-Aquarion was meant to be not a robot anime but a combine anime, with the robot as a symbolical deformation of that theme. By combining feeling and powers the drama advances. EVOL's peculiarity is that Kawamori was able to depict human relationships using antithetical hole-drilling and hole-filling Element powers. Kawamori midway thought it was fun to take that direction, like using Mikono's connect power to create drama by connecting people, or the reverse with Jin's disconnect power and Kagura's reverse power.

-In Sousei we had Apollo eating rats and being obnoxious, in EVOL Kawamori watered down Amata and Mikono, but it resulted in the other characters seeming vexing by contrast. This time the production commettee told many times Kawamori to widen the appeal, so the character is now cuter and doesn't eat rats. However Kawamori thinks there is not much difference from Apollo doing absurd things and a more meek guy acting stupid. He did worry Amata was being too soft, but it wasn't a problem.

-The interviewer found Shrade a character who should have been cool but resulted weird. Kawamori agree, though he doesn't know if it was for Mari's music related words or for him opening his shirt. Unlike Sirius though, Kawamori found Shrade ok.

-Kawamori says that as he grew accustomed to this sort of flavor, the other works become unsatisfactory. Kawamori thinks Aquarion is a work that chooses its viewer. Nowadays anime are subvided in genres, like "imouto moe". He understands that if he went with the tide his anime would be popular, but he is a contrarian and he wants to break the system at any cost.

-Kawamori said Aquarion is like a penniless travel in India without a guidebook, so Japanese common sense doesn't apply. In fact, even Kawamori didn't know what was going to happen when he went to India. There are those people who are attracted by that sense of chaos and those who won't go there again. Kawamori thinks Aquarion is an anime like that.

-Kawamori wanted to depict a gap like Jin being a formidable enemy yet unable to call out to Yunoha.

-Jin felt as if he died early, but he actually appeared before in a lot of battle episodes. Kawamori did comment that Jin and Yunoha were becoming good characters, but he didn't predict together they would have had such good synergy. Kawamori had to see in a new light the power of coupling. He thought that pairing Andy and MIX together would have been fun, but the effect with Jin and Yunoha was more than expected.

-Kawamori thinks of MIX losing her breast or Apollo being the reincarnation of an angel dog as a written challenge to people's shallow love.

-Apollo was always intended as the reincarnation of Pollon, but people didn't notice or didn't believe it, so in the end Kawamori didn't reveal it. He really thought people would get it just by looking at Pollon though.

-Kawamori said Pollon was meant to be a bit of a wolf, more than a simple dog. Kawamori in another interview already mentioned the legend of the twin founders of Rome who were brought up by a wolf. Their mother was called Silvia, originally a princess. Aquarion's name Silvia came from a car though.

-Kawamori wants viewers to doubt more. For example in Arjuna he never mentioned global warming because someone said global warming was a trick to justify the nuclear industry. Also, since Arjuna Kawamori wanted to use the motif of the kanji of "now" + the kanji of "heart" becoming "nen" (idea/feeling/desire/attention), which Kawamori explains as making a decision in the unpredictable present out of your own will.

[Destined_Fate]

I see that no one brought up Zessica, guess they don't want to make the interview awkward.

Strange that Kawamori didn't see how popular Jin and Yunoha being a couple would be? The Japanese loves it when a "bad guy" falls for a good girl and joins their side not to mention Loli love with a pretty boy. They could have made a fortune off that.

[mayumi]

Did kawamori just compare aquarion to india? what a douche.

Him thinking watered down amata and mikono made other characters vexing is LOL worthy.

He has serious mommy complex. Fron silvia the mother of the twin founders to alicia and mikono resembling each other. Amata and kagura having mommy issues.

There is just so much wrong with his way of thinking. It is like he is disallusioned with what audience likes. I am so disappointed with this series that I probably won't be watching any of his shows again.

He clearly states that apollo and amata are reincarnations. No, if or buts. That whole fate shit was not necessary at all.

[KleenexGhost]

Originally Posted by mayumi

Did kawamori just compare aquarion to india? what a douche.

Him thinking watered down amata and mikono made other characters vexing is LOL worthy.

He has serious mommy complex. Fron silvia the mother of the twin founders to alicia and mikono resembling each other. Amata and kagura having mommy issues.

There is just so much wrong with his way of thinking. It is like he is disallusioned with what audience likes. I am so disappointed with this series that I probably won't be watching any of his shows again.

He clearly states that apollo and amata are reincarnations. No, if or buts. That whole fate shit was not necessary at all.

It sounds like he thinks his ideas are smarter/better than they actually are. He sounds like George Lucas now.