[EN]Lantis Music Producer, Kisara Yohei analyse the reasons for the success of ‘Love Live!’

Credits:

Official Link and Image source: Here

Original TL：Here



Disclaimer: This is a Chinese to EN TL, there would be things that would be lost in translation between the languages.



Please refer to my policies for more details and do not use the translations for commercial use.

There is a portion where I had to enlist the help of my good friend, tenno who helped TL from JP-EN. Thank you for the kind assistance!

Credits to: mega~ from #teamonibe for QCing.

It took me months but I finally got it out, sorry if I missed anyone in the credits.



The contents are under the cut.

Lantis Music Producer, Kisara Yohei analyse the reasons for the success of ‘Love Live!’

http://www.weibo.com/u/1756310761

For the Project “Love Live!”, where music and dance are its core, Lantis was in charge of music production and distribution. Lantis music producer, Kisara Yohei mentioned at an interview with Japanese Media that before joining in the production for the LoveLive! Concerts, he had taken part in the《Tantei Opera Milky Holmes》project, and how LoveLive! Concerts are inspired by ‘The iDOLM@STER’. He analyses the reasons for ‘LoveLive!’ success.

And he mentions that it’s because he first took part in the project for 《Tantei Opera Milky Holmes》 that resulted in the creation of ‘LoveLive!’s concerts, and how ‘LoveLive!’s performance were inspired by ‘The iDOLM@STER’.

Q- What was the turning point of your career after joining Lantis?

Kisara Yohei: It was 《Tantei Opera Milky Holmes》, this project was the turning point. There was a period of time where I wanted to take a step back from being in the front lines of music production. I felt that I shouldn’t dive too deep into production. But 《Tantei Opera Milky Holmes》 had allowed me to dive deeper into the scene of music production.

Q - Letting “Voice Voice Actresses perform”, this idea originated from 《Tantei Opera Milky Holmes》

Kisara Yohei: Originally one of ‘LoveLive!’s selling points was that it would use Animation to reproduce the intense dance moves of professional dancers, but the opportunity/trigger was when I saw Suzuko(Suzuko Mimori) and Tokui(Tokui Soramaru) dance very energetically (during their performance).

Q - Then what were the factors that made 《Tantei Opera Milky Holmes》 successful?

Kisara Yohei: It’s mainly because the anime itself was popular, in addition the people in the production committee were very passionate about it, and that allowed the project to rise in popularity. Although right now there are a large amount of anime projects, but only by having a series gain popularity could the atmosphere of the production committee staff be very passionate.

As for 《Tantei Opera Milky Holmes》, everyone was involved in active discussions, there were lots of ideas being bounced around and it wasn’t just a simple sum of its parts. After experiencing success in 《Tantei Opera Milky Holmes》, I became more experienced handling other projects.

Q - When you joined in July 2010, you were just in time as the LoveLive! project was just starting up.

Kisara Yohei: Yes, at that time we’ve decided on the candidates for the members of μ’s, it was a project with many different kinds of new challenges. At the start it was really quite serious, but in any case you must look much further ahead, and with an eye on the target of success, lead the entire project forward.

It’s with this gung-ho attitude that I participated in this project, every bit of effort we put in would result in a little bit of result, in a situation without any collaboration, we sold first 3000 CDs, then 5000 of them, and afterwards the confirmation of the TV Animation. There were also requests to perform at many events.

Q- As expected, were the ‘lives’ a factor for the success of ‘LoveLive!’?

Kisara Yohei: At the start we had quite a relaxed attitude, “If we did a ‘Live’ it’ll definitely be interesting right?”, or: “Can we do this?” and “If we held a live, it would definitely be interesting”, that kind of feel. We sent the nine members of μ’s the footage, asking them to: [Please remember this choreography within one month].

Although at the beginning everyone’s reaction was: “Ehhh????”. But surprisingly, after trying it, they could do it. Although based on the situation with the dance steps, we can choose to organize a simple Live, but I said: “Let’s just do a big one like this!!”.

Q - That was μ’s 1st Live on February 2012

Kisara Yohei: μ’s 1st Live started its planning phase on the Autumn of 2011 and it was officially held on February of 2012. Thinking back on it now, it really was done quite well. At the start it was very difficult, in many ways I am very thankful for the nine members of μ’s.

We held an actual ‘Live’, and the audiences were really very happy. The audience themselves didn’t think that the ‘live’ would be done to this extent; µ’s themselves let everyone feel their commitment to it.

“We got to hold a live after so much difficulty; I wish to be just like Honoka and the rest.” They really put lots of effort into it, and I’m thankful for the cooperation of all the different agencies to be able to hold the ‘live’ without any mishaps.

Q - Talking about the importance of experiencing ‘live’ live, you were able to ride the tide of popularity of leading Idols like AKB48 and the rock music genre.

Kisara Yohei: That might be the case, but when you were doing it for real you wouldn’t think of such factors. It is just that I previously have always liked ‘The iDOLM@STER’, I was paying for in game credits in ‘The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls’, when I got my salary I spent my money like it was water in ‘Cinderella Girls’

And I’ve been to many ‘The iDOLM@STER’ ‘lives’ too, it really made me very happy and allowed me to forget the annoyances of reality.

Although the ones on stage were the voice actors, if I closed my eyes, I felt that the people standing there were Haruka and Chihaya~

This wasn’t 2.5D, simply put ‘The iDOLM@STER’ live was ‘The iDOLM@STER’, the feeling of being in a concert felt the same as being in the game and it’s really something magical, I feel that was the most important thing when making a ‘live’.

Q - And so it is important to have the space to create something different.

Kisara Yohei: Yes, pay heavy attention to this point, because ‘LoveLive!’ has animation, so the setting for the concert grounds is to immerse the audience in the same setting as the animation. You have “The iDOLM@STER” to thank for me pondering about such details.

Q - What are the considerations when you create the music for ‘LoveLive!’

Kisara Yohei: The only consideration is to make good music, if I have to consider ‘lives’ and to allow μ’s to have it a little easy, there won’t be any good songs, so I try to ignore the ‘lives factor.

Keeping that in mind, the initial three songs that came out were very nice. If you’re too focused on how to accommodate ‘Lives’ and to induce the audience to clap along with the tempo it wouldn’t turn out right. When making music you shouldn’t be too concerned about the trend, rather you should create music naturally.

Q - But in reality do you have any experience with things just developing naturally?

Kisara Yohei: The most shocking one at 1st Live was Honoka’s Snow halation solo part.

At that time LoveLive! Still haven’t gotten an official Twitter account, regarding the image color for the nine members of μ’s, it was just me writing it willy-nilly on my personal Twitter, and I didn’t really paid special attention to it, and I write Honoka’s image color as Orange.

As the song Snow Halation gives the impression of ‘white’, the audiences were all waving white cyalumes. But when it was time for Honoka’s solo, everyone changed the color to orange without it being planned, it was really shocking.

But that is good too, if we told the audiences “Please do this” or words like that, it’ll not be reading the mood right, having the audience do whatever they wish to is good too.

Q - And it’s because of this, not following the crowd, but to do the songs that you like?

Kisara Yohei: Yes, it’s better if you make songs with a fresh outlook, to not pander to anyone and walk your own path. I still do like classical music, songs like [Kaguya no Shiro de Odoritai] is very popular.

But to me personally, although it is performed with a shamisen but is still extremely cool now would still be the OP theme for the 1957 series <Yatterman> that was performed by Yamamoto Masayuki . Yamato Masayuki’s voice infected me, and it was from there that I got the ideas for Kaguya no Shiro De Odoritai.

The 70s had disco culture being the popular thing, and although the tunes were said to be stupid by people, but the music were very pleasing to the ears. I really like that contrast so [Kaguya no Shiro de Odoritai] was created with this world view. Wasn’t it interesting having μ’s sing a song like this?

Q - So as expected, It isn’t aiming to accomplish a particular thing, but doing things that you feel that are the best. Doing this resulted in μ’s performing in ‘Kōhaku Uta Gassen’ and performing their own ‘live’ in Tokyo Dome, it’s really amazing.

Kisara Yohei: I feel that this is the returns from all the hard work that we put in. The members of μ’s were asked to do things that were far beyond what they could do, but the nine members of μ’s instead thought that: [It is really great that we can work so hard].

With that thought in mind, regardless of its ‘Kōhaku Uta Gassen’ or Tokyo Dome, or Ranking number one in the Oricon Charts. You can wish to eventually achieve all of these once in a lifetime, but actually i really feel that you shouldn’t be too worried about such things. But as a tale about achieving dreams, being able to achieve these dreams for real, is great.

Q - As a cross-media project, ‘LoveLive!’ has gathered together a large amount of creators and performers. It has surpassed many different kinds of barriers; ‘LoveLive!’ is already a hugely successful project.

Kisara Yohei: If you put it this way, ‘LoveLive!’ Project has broken through the gender wall, there are lots of girls who like ‘LoveLive!’ and I have no idea why.

Q - It would still be due to the Idol craze? For girls, μ’s is someone that they can look up to.

Kisara Yohei: Is that so. To wish to be an Idol, to wear pretty clothes and yearning for a gorgeous stage huh? And in addition, from how the content is considered ‘moe’, ‘LoveLive!’ is not pandering towards the female gender.

In general, what we call the ‘moe’ content would be the main character having a harem; the male audience would insert themselves in the place of the protagonist and have fun. ‘LoveLive!’ doesn’t have any guys in it, so what it is describing is the feelings of pure and direct feelings of girls, perhaps it’s this reason that it is attractive to female fans.

Perhaps the most important reason for success for ‘LoveLive!’ is the firm stance the girls of ‘LoveLive!’ and the production staff’s has on not fawning and not pandering to others.







(JP TL starts here)





Q - This serial article is a joint project between CINRA.NET and CAMPFIRE. Kisara-san, what is your impression of Crowd Funding?

Kisara Yohei: I think that opening new possibilities is a good thing. Speaking from the standpoint of customers, if it allows them to get the things they want the most, there’s no set limit for the money they are willing to spend. I am spending money for interesting things related to gadgets or products. It’s like buying dreams, right?

But, one thing to think about is the meaning of the term “Place of Presentation”. I think there were similar discussions when NicoNico Douga first appeared in the scene. When something is done individually, there is no intervention by a ‘producer’, don’t you think so too?*

I think that Lantis is not just a publisher, but it is also a production group. According to how they 'produce’ it, the created work will feel like it is a product with good quality. If there are no intervention by a ‘'producer’, I feel like there’s a limit to the quality of the created works.

Well… even so, I basically like new things, so long as it is interesting, I think it’s fine.



*TL Note: The term ‘produce’ in JP culture suggests that having another person who is better at the product managing it would make it seem better, so a ‘produced’ product would be better than one which isn’t done so.





Q: Then, lastly, can you leave a message for the people who are think of entering the Entertainment Industry, and those who have interest in it but feel uncomfortable with the future of said industry?

Kisara Yohei: Though I am a company employee, I think the current entertainment industry is shifting strongly towards a new age of 'individuality. If I explain it with my job as a 'producer’, today, even as I speak, the sensation, knowledge, and feelings that I have accumulated and received are being sublimated, and that is something no one else can do. It is the same with other individuals.



I am currently affiliated with Lantis, but sometimes, it’s does seem to be more of an assignment with the “individual Kisara” instead. Along with the same train of thought, I believe that it is important to increase an individual’s value, as one’s own life is the foundation of one’s value. Things like that seems very interesting to me.



Q - Doing a job based on your own values is what makes it interesting.

Kisara Yohei: I play classical music and like anime, I think that it is connected to my personal roadmap. Of course, basics are important. But, turning things that only you can do into value, then increasing and visualizing it into sales is something really rewarding.

If I have to do something, I would do things that I want to do. I want to raise myself higher. It might not be stable and if someone were to look at the changes of time, it is possible that the company itself would fail Even so, it’s possible for an individual to to succeed.

It’s because that we’re at this age of 'individuality’, that I feel it’s interesting.

Part of #teamonibe

