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Maeda Mahiro may not be the first name one thinks of when discussing animation, but he has
certainly contributed to an excellent body of work. He has worked as an animator at the famous
Studio Ghibli, working on such feature films as LAPUTA and
PORCO ROSSO. He has also worked on
ESCAFLOWNE,
MACROSS: DO YOU REMEMBER LOVE, GUNBUSTER,
NADIA,
GIANT ROBO,
ROBOT CARNIVAL, and many other titles. He also designed two Angels for
NEON GENESIS EVANGELION and
the title character for the live-action GAMERA 2. After directing and
doing mechanical designs for BLUE SUBMARINE NO. 6, Mr. Maeda then went to
work on the Gonzo TV series GATEKEEPERS. He is also
involved in their newest title, VANDREAD.
As he sat and talked with us over some good Italian food in a small
bistro-type restaurant, he shared a lot of his experiences in working on both
BLUE SUB and some of the other projects he was involved with. As if to prove
how busy he was, in the middle of the interview, he got a call and had to return to the studio to
sort out a problem. He returned about fifteen minutes later, still smiling. Everything had gone well
and he was anxious to get back to the interview.
EX: How did you go about adapting the manga to
"Full Digital Animation"?
Maeda Mahiro: When I first read the manga, I thought there were many
different ways to go. One would be to do it in the old style. But, just as when
GIANT ROBO was adapted for animation, I didn't really feel that was the
right way. Of course, the manga has a 60s feel, so by today's standards
it's rather old. It was cool then, so I wanted to make something that would look "cool" in the
present time.
Although the manga's character designs were somewhat out of date, the mecha and
the world setting held up well and were still very cool. I wanted to keep those elements and translate
them into something good for today's audiences. It's like the show THUNDERBIRDS.
When you watched it as a kid, you thought "Whoa! Cool!" And if you watch it now, you still get a
good feeling. The machines were cool, but the puppets seem odd.
Of course, when we modified the original designs, some people were quite unhappy
since we "modified a classic." But I wanted to update this story for the kids of today so they would
have something that would be as great to them as the original was to kids in the
1960s.
EX: So what was your target audience?
MM: Twelve to fifteen year-olds. That was the time I personally was
most interested in anime. Usually as we become older, we become more distant from anime and view it
with a detached feeling. The 12-15 year old range is when this starts to
happen. So we wanted to give them something that made them think and was targeted above their age.
In the 1960s, we didn't have the word "anime," we had a
set category called "terebi manga" ("TV comics"). It was aimed entirely
at children, and it became quickly pushed aside. But then came YAMATO, which
was targeted to more mature audiences, and I, like many others, was hooked. So, when I was working
on BLUE SUB, I remembered this feeling and I wanted to try and create a
similar feeling in our viewers.
In the end, we wound up making something I'd want to see as an anime fan, and
as a director, I wanted to do something good. Plus, I'm in my 30s and I'm
making anime, so the result is that what we aimed for was shifted a bit.
So I'll say that it's for 12-15 year olds, and if those
who are older like it, that's great too!
EX: Whose idea was it to do a
BLUE SUB anime?
MM: This idea came from outside GONZO. The director
of MIGHTY SPACE MINERS, Iida Umanosuke, wanted to work on another show. But
unfortunately, he passed away. So when the idea came up later, the president asked me if I would be
interested in doing it. I read the manga and decided that I wanted to.
EX: What did you add to the story that's not in
the manga?
MM: Oh, we added many things. Perhaps the major thing was the main
character and the point of view. The original manga had boys fighting underwater. Even as a kid, it
didn't seem real to me. So I increased the age of the main character, Hayami, and made him someone
who failed and came back. This changes his perspective and that of the audience as well.
And since our target audience would want something more mature, we made
Hayami older.
As for character designs, we decided to add a heroine as well, and a little
girl. But part of that you could say was "fan service" for viewers.
The story is closer to the new BLUE SUB manga Ozawa is
drawing rather than the original. We've taken some elements from that, most notably the worldview
and the Blue Fleet organization. It was okay to change what's inside—shuffle, add, and subtract.
So that's what I did.
But it's not really adding anything, I'm just changing the balance of the
elements. You could say that we're putting new items into an old model.
EX: How did you manage so many mechanical
designers working on the show?
MM: I just matched the appropriate person to the job. I did the Blue
Submarine No. 6 myself, but I also asked others for their opinions. Also,
Kusanagi Takuhito did both character designs and mechanical designs (he did Musuca, Mutio and the
beast people). For the Umigumo, the spider-like mecha the Mutio use, Kobayashi and I worked those
out together. And Kawamori said that he wanted to do the Blue Submarine No. 1,
the American Sub. He wanted to design a big, heavy mecha. And he also wanted to do the Grampus
designs, so I let him do those as well. Yamashita is very good at doing marine and futuristic
vehicles, so he did a lot of the smaller subs.
There were some parts that I couldn't manage as well as I would have liked,
though. For example, Kawamori did the Grampus designs, and Murata Range did the character designs.
I wanted the character's plug suits to combine with the Grampus. But this was hard to do because
that's asking one designer to do one design and then asking another designer to do a second design
based on the first. Of course, they each have their artistic pride but in the end I had to ignore
it and try to push it through. It didn't really work well in the end.
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