This is the final part to the interview by Kazuya Tsurumaki. In this, he talks about the production of flcl and it’s blu-ray release. He also touches on his thoughts of a ‘flcl 2’ (which now of course has been confirmed with him as the supervisor)

Click here for Part 1

– Please tell me about the blu-ray edition that was released the other day. On the blu-ray the lines are sharper, but was there anything you ordered for the new release?

Originally, ‘flcl’ was a transitional work towards digital production, so it’s quite hard to watch now due to the resolution and processing¹ of the work. So I think the blu-ray holds value in the fast action scenes where in the DVD version, all the noise² couldn’t be cleaned up. Also, Q-tec, the company in charge of producing the blu-ray version were able to use new technology to make the lines cleaner, so they were much cleaner than I had thought they would be.

– The packaging is also quite particular in that it’s made like a candy box, where you have to rip it open to get at the contents.

The packaging was done in the style of old limited edition DVDs, where the packaging would be a paper box. I really liked those sorts of things. So this time I was wondering whether we could make the packaging into something like a candy box. I’m part of that generation where I can’t pay money just for just digital information, as I feel uncomfortable buying something not tangible or something that will eventually disappear. With the old laser disks, as a whole product it tends to be quite big so I don’t mind spending a few thousand yen, but I don’t quite feel the same way towards the smaller plastic cases with just one disk. With this blu-ray release, we discussed that “first, we want to make it something special as a product”, so we decided to use packaging like this.

– ‘flcl’ is a piece of work that asks the question “what does it mean to become an adult?”. After 10 years, have you found the answer to this?

Oh no, I really don’t know. It’s the same now as it was back then. I don’t know, so as a prerequisite I start off by saying “let’s become a child”.

– If you were able to say something to your past self, what would you say?

Maybe something like “That was good only because the staff were good” (laughs), “it wasn’t due to your own ability”. As it was my first time directing, there was a lot I didn’t know. It was thanks to the staff that ‘flcl’ turned out much better than I had feared. I myself was satisfied. Thinking about it now, I was very lucky wasn’t I?

– With the release of the blu-ray, please give a message to the fans of ‘flcl’

I think I can watch it more normally now than I could do back then. ‘flcl’ is quite different from the usual style of anime, but even so I still hesitated as I didn’t feel that it was quite right; I wasn’t expressing what I wanted to express. But even with this hesitation I still tried it. Of course, even now I think that it’s quite one sided³, but I feel that I can watch it more easily now than before.

– Do you think of making a ‘flcl 2’?

A continuation…… I can’t quite imagine a 22 year old Naota appearing. Well, if I was asked to “make an anime like flcl” I could probably do it, as for one, I haven’t matured much since (laughs). But I think even now, I still hold the feeling that was portrayed in ‘flcl’.

Notes

1. 撮影処理 wasn’t sure how to translate this accurately as it is a technical word specific to anime production.

2. ノイズ I translated this literally as noise. As with 撮影処理 it’s a more technical word that I could easily misunderstand (as I don’t know enough on anime production).

2. 尖っている look back at part 1 for my note on this.

Source: http://news.mynavi.jp/articles/2010/10/16/flcl/001.html