Here’s parts 4 and 5 of the interview. This will be all for the blog this week. Did this one in a bit of a rush so please be aware of any possible inaccuracies. Hope you enjoy!

Umino – There is something I always think when watching anime made by Shinbo-san. In anime and manga, there are two types of scene; one where you watch something happen through a window at a distance and the other, when you watch something up-close. Any anime made by Shinbo-san I watch has the scene happen up close. Where there are anime where characters are shown doing something from a distance, Shinbo-san’s works always feel like they’re making the characters say their lines whilst being right up to their face. I have worked hard to make my manga feel like this, so if I had asked someone to adapt my manga that couldn’t do this, it would have been sad to see it adapted in a way where the characters are shown at a distance.

Shinbo – Although, of course there are times when I do make a scene more objective.

Umino – I thought your works are the kind that easily win over the hearts of the audience. Like making them eat something without them realising. I think that’s a really good thing. Although I’m not quite sure how you manage to create this difference.

Aniplex, Atsuhiro Iwakami – In Shinbo-kantoku and Shaft’s anime, there’s a feeling that they want the audience to be interested and empathise with the work and its characters.

Umino – Rather than making it without thinking, it’s more like they are properly using their head whilst making it. It feels like it’s coming from the brain.

– I’m sure with the announcement, many were surprised that it would be adapted by Shinbo-kantoku and Shaft. But in this sense, it seems that it was a necessity for them to adapt ‘March comes in like a Lion’.

Umino – I didn’t want people to think that it wasn’t my intention; that it was for some other reason that Shaft were adapting the work. That’s why I wanted to tell people clearly with the comment, so that people wouldn’t suspect a pretext to all this.

– Now that it has been announced, I’m sure that many people are interested in how this came to be. But firstly, you were hoping for the work to be adapted weren’t you?

Umino – Yes, that’s right.

– And that request was delivered to Shinbo-kantoku…

Shinbo – Whether it was Iwakami-san or Kubota-san (representative director of Shaft), I can’t quite remember, but the discussion itself happened quite a while ago.

Iwakami – We had heard that Umino-sensei really liked works such as the ‘Monogatari Series’ or ‘Madoka’… well something like that anyway.

– Previously, Umino-san had drawn the end card to ‘Otorimonogatari’.

Umino – But after seeing ‘Madoka’ and ‘Bakemonogatari’, I thought maybe there might not be any merit for Shinbo-san to adapt a manga. It was a period with works based on novels that didn’t have any pictures, or anime originals, so I thought you wouldn’t accept to adapt the work.

Shinbo – Well, it’s the opposite. We were doing more anime originals in the past, like ‘Soul Taker’ and ‘Le Portrait de Petit Cosette’ from the year 2000.

Umino – That’s right. But after seeing ‘Madoka’, I thought that maybe you wouldn’t want to adapt someone else’s manga after making such a free and amazing work like ‘Madoka’.

Shinbo – What I always think is that, as I’m not a writer, I don’t discriminate between works.

Umino – I see.

Shinbo – More than that, my feeling that I want to make something that will sell and be popular has become stronger after a certain point in time.

Umino – Was that during ‘Madoka’?

Shinbo – No, it was whilst I was doing works like ‘Soul Taker’ or ‘Le Portrait de Petit Cosette’. I worked hard, but they weren’t talked about a lot. If they had become more popular as a topic of discussion, I thought it may have been a way to give something back to the staff for all their hard work. Something popular, that everyone can enjoy… my feelings towards making works were moving more in this direction. That’s why we decided to adapt anime based on original works. In this way, after this we were always adapting anime based original works like ‘Zetsubou Sensei’ or ‘Pani Poni’, ‘Negima!?’ and ‘Hidamari’. As we were doing this for quite a while, ‘Madoka’ was the first original we made in quite a bit. It was good as it was a hit, but if it wasn’t, the feeling was that we would lose the chance to make more original anime. So in this sense, there was a more negative side to it.

Umino – Just when I was thinking that Shinbo-san and Shaft wouldn’t do, it turned out that you would adapt the work, so I am now very happy.

Source: http://3lion-anime.com/special/interview/vol01/?p=6

Image: http://3lion-anime.com/special/endcard/