With the addition of the Tatami Galaxy to crunchyroll, I thought I’d translate an interview with Masaaki Yuasa. This interview was released on マイナビ in April 2010, so just before the release of the anime adaptation.

– What did you think when ‘The Tatami Galaxy’ was first brought to you?

It was quite hard to decide. Which work we’ll choose, we talked a lot and finally decided if it was this it might work. This work was ‘The Tatami Galaxy’.

– Was it already decided that you would be directing the work?

Yes. I had heard that they wanted to do something, but that there was some difficulty in choosing a work to adapt. It was at that time that ‘The Tatami Galaxy’ was brought up. I was waiting and hoping for it, so the moment it was brought up I said “Yes, that one” (laughs).

– So what did you think when you read ‘The Tatami Galaxy’?

It was enjoyable, but it being difficult left a stronger impression.

– Difficult, as in difficult to adapt?

We already had the idea to use Nakamura (Yusuke)-san’s illustrations, so I thought adapting the work into picture wouldn’t be a problem. Just, I was left with the strong impression that it would be good if the images described in the work could be adapted just as they were. It was enjoyable because it was a written work, so I thought it might become quite mediocre if adapted. Can I properly express the same appeal in picture as that expressed in words? That was my first problem.

– So how you would express this in animation.

What I want isn’t very normal, you see. I tend to feel unease when nothing happens. But in reality there might not be any need for anything to happen. After reading the novel, I thought that just putting a background behind it might be more than enough for the adaptation to be enjoyable. In cany case, I found the dialogue to be enjoyable, so it was about how to transfer this into picture. In reality, it’s not a piece of work with a lot of movement. So instead of moving it would be better to go quickly from cut to cut, with the fast-talking placed over this. By the end, this was the sort of image I had.

– The talking in the narration is incredibly fast.

I wanted to bring over the appeal in the writing of the original work. But in regards to the story it wasn’t important. But I wanted to put it in. So if that’s the case then it would have to be narrated. The main character is thinking about various things you see, usually silly and insignificant. From an outside point of view you couldn’t care less, but the speed at which you think in your head is probably much faster than the speed at which you speak. In other words, it feels slightly wrong to read someone’s thoughts at a normal speed. So if that’s the case then it would be natural for the dialogue to end up being very fast.

– It’s at the speed where you can just about manage to hear what they’re saying, isn’t it?

That’s right. We’re doing it with the feeling that you don’t have to pick up every word. Rather than what he’s thinking, it’s enough to just convey the image that he’s thinking about something. The main character is always going on and on, thinking about various things, so I think that it would be enough to just be able to convey that he’s someone who can’t really settle on one thing.

– The art style is very unique, but was this something you planned from the beginning?

From the beginning I was thinking of doing it in a Japanese style. It was set in Kyoto, so I wanted to have this slight feeling of nostalgia. Nakamura-san’s drawings are done in black and white, so it was just about adding colour. But still, in depicting Kyoto I thought it would be better to leave it in black and white to produce that feeling of nostalgia. Something like a print or ukiyoe, in the idea of adding a bit of colour to a black and white manga, I thought it would be good if we could do these more basic things.

– Even with that, it is very much done in pastel colours with a lot of variation.

I didn’t particularly want it to be boring, you see. I thought the images being thought up by the protagonist would probably have more colour to them, so colours in this regard were done in a brighter manner.

– In the anime you also implemented real photographs, didn’t you?

As we are using the actual Kyoto as the setting, and as these places do exist, rather than using carefully drawn pictures, I thought it would be easier to understand if we used photographs, so I used this in a collage-like manner. Just, we couldn’t show the whole thing like this so it would end up being placed between pictures from the anime. Even if it feels slightly off, I think it has settled down to be something that is somewhat watchable.

– In portraying Kyoto, did you do a lot of location hunting and such?

It couldn’t be everyone all together, but I did stay in Kyoto for a period of 1 month. I wanted to see everyday life, so rather than research it was more like I went to live there.

– Were you particular about anything in regards to the portrayal of the scenery?

With the scenery in the novel, I wanted to properly show the areas that had some meaning. Other than that, I also wanted to show areas I went to that I found interesting. For example, ‘the delta’ has a mysterious feeling to it. I didn’t know that Shimogamo shrine had such a long history, but it is a place where all the rivers come together to become one, so there is certainly a feeling that there is something there. Also, the fact that the people there were unexpectedly apathetic was something that I noticed and thought was interesting, so I would like to implement that as well. The Gozan Okuribi and incline was also interesting; the Enkiri shrine was very thought provoking.

– The setting is Kyoto but the characters don’t speak in the kansai dialect do they?

The original work was like this too, but the idea was to use someone who was not from Kyoto themselves, but was spending their student life there. During the post-scoring we did try to add a bit of Kansai dialect, but it didn’t feel quite right. If anything I think the work has a literary feeling to it.

– Even though it’s not in the Kansai dialect, the wording is quite unique.

Very much so that you end up thinking, are you really a person of this era (laughs)? The dialect is very much like that from the great writers of the Showa and Taisho eras. It is definitely set in present times. Though the atmosphere of the work suggests that people are using rotary-dial telephones instead of mobile phones, I think it would be nice if we could also create that atmosphere where one would could mistake the setting for a different era.

– So the time in which this is set is very much the present day.

If you read the original work, the protagonist does have a computer, but it’s set so that it’s broken, so there’s not one scene where the computer is used. As I said earlier, though it’s set in the present day, I did after all want to produce a nostalgic feeling, so on top of the appearance and dialogue, I also used classical music to produce this atmosphere.

Source: http://news.mynavi.jp/articles/2010/04/21/yojouhan/

Image: Amazon jp