| How did you practice for the rap battle in episode 2? Was there anything in particular you wanted to focus on in your performance? Kaede Hondo: To prepare for the recording, I researched and watched a lot of cypher battles online. But I didn't practice at home; I'd do it at the studio right before recording. During recording, it was a lot of fun, but I came from a perspective of rage because Sakura had gone through a lot. She's been hit by a car, she's become a zombie, etc. I used that rage as a place to draw from. Asami Tano: I practiced a lot at home, but then I went to the studio and talked to the producer for tips and tricks. I wanted to know where Saki was coming from mentally and emotionally in her rap, and he ended up throwing me to the wolves. I was left in the studio to start singing, and it was alarming. But the reason why he did that was to preserve the character's sense of surprise; Saki didn't want to lose to Sakura and I didn't want to lose to Ms. Hondo either. Given the popularity of idol anime, did you expect the anime to become as popular as it is? Asami Tano: I'm surprised, and I'm happy that everyone enjoys the series. Without their enjoyment, we wouldn't be here. I'd love for everyone to keep enjoying and supporting us into the second season. Kaede Hondo: I was very surprised too at how popular it became! However, when I thought more about it, I'm not surprised since in Japan it's called the “five-minute anime.” Despite the length of the episode, you're hit with everything so quickly that it feels like only five minutes have passed. I'm happy that every enjoys the story, but I didn't and couldn't have expectations because of how fast everything happens in the story. Personally, I didn't let myself have expectations. Manabu Otsuka: To be honest, I didn't feel the popularity rise in real time because of all the work involved in the series. To me, it was a slow progression and suddenly I saw that it was really popular. When audiences first saw the series, it didn't hit them as an idol anime. Many people who weren't idol fans before the series became that after watching Zombie Land Saga. Did you expect Zombie Land Saga to convert people into idol fans? Asami Tano: My friend, who isn't an idol fan, watched Zombie Land Saga and I was surprised when they became a fan. All three of us agree that the appeal comes from a place of story rather than being a genre title such as Love Live!, where it's straightforward to see cute girls doing cute things. Creating an idol anime wasn't the goal. Kaede Hondo: We're seeing a trend with idol anime in the 2D and 3D world, where there are deep stories about their bonds and the feeling of family. That hooked me in because it shows me how real the characters feel. Manabu Otsuka: I'm not actually not an idol fan, and I didn't have any experience working on any idol title. At the time, I hadn't watched any idol anime. I went right for the story and the world building. In order to make the series, I gathered information and my staff did the same on researching how to make an idol anime. ANN: During the MAPPA panel at Anime Expo a couple of weeks ago, Makoto Kimura and Manabu Otsuka mentioned that Mamoru Miyano, the voice of Kotaro Tatsumi, had ad-libbed some of his lines. As Sakura and Saki, how did you react to those ad-libbed lines and did you have some ad-libs of your own? Asami Tano: Most of my ad-libbed lines came in during the Drive-In Tori scenes. Mr. Miyano is very over the top and acting his heart out, so I had to change my breathing patterns to match his performance. He's very respected within the voice acting industry, and I was honored to take part in that. His acting is also very infectious; you want to scream along with him! In that episode specifically—which I think is episode five—I was trying to match him at every step and luckily they kept it in. Kaede Hondo: I did most of my ad-libbing during episode ten with the boar scene, and there wasn't a lot of written instruction other than the boar is charging towards Sakura and her head comes off. I was wondered, “Can I really do this?” I ended up ad-libbing the whole thing and I'm happy that they kept everything in the scene, especially the “bleh” face she makes to play dead. Zombie Land Saga is very popular in the United States, and this is because of the uniqueness of the story and its characters. What is your favorite aspect of your character and the story? Kaede Hondo: I really like when Sakura panics, like the moments when she's frantic moment and screaming “Help me, I'm just a head!” There's also a gentle and caring relationship between all of the girls in the show, especially with Tae and Lily. Lily takes care of Tae as best as she can. As we see more of the series, we see more of the negative aspects of each character, and I enjoy that because it makes Sakura more of a character. Seeing her experiences helps the audience visualize how it's shaped Sakura as a person. Asami Tano: Saki is a yankee, where she's a resident troublemaker and zooming around in her loud bike messing stuff up. Although she's rough through and through, she's also very kind and you see this when she's raising her Tamagotchi!. In that sense, she's very much a typical, cute teenage girl surprisingly. At first, she's hesitant to join the group because she doesn't want to be an idol. There's a coolness to her as a character and in her emotions. In the end, she wanted to join everyone because she wants to be their friend. You see her go through this big journey from her initial yankee persona and that's my favorite part of her. Manabu Otsuka: My favorite aspect was creating the characters and working on the archetypes: the good girl, the yankee, the teacher's pet, the one that eats everything, etc. When you look at the characters, you can easily tell who everyone is by those types. But those emotions are very pure and that's how you empathize with their experiences. Also, they're all able to hang in there despite everything they go through, and that's what I wanted to focus on while working on the show. Now that season one is over, what did you learn from your experiences playing your character? Asami Tano: I learned a few things in the professional sphere, such as creating a cypher and conducting a rap battle. It seems simple, but the rap battle works because you're able to feed off your partner and vice versa. Prior to Zombie Land Saga, I had never experienced that before. Also, being able to work with voice acting veterans such as Mamoru Miyano and Kotono Mitsuishi, who's best known as Misato from Evangelion and Usagi from Sailor Moon, helped me grow professionally. I stopped worrying about form, learned new things, and pushed new voices out of me. Kaede Hondo: Mine is more emotional. I had a lot of feelings playing Sakura, and I think it changed me. Sakura's story is tragic where she's constantly being challenged, and suddenly she dies. Her story is about challenges and how one overcomes them. To me, this was a touching message and I hope that it was the same for people who were watching. Did any of you like zombies before you worked on Zombie Land Saga? If you did, what were some of the shows or movies you watched? Asami Tano: No, absolutely not. I'm so weak to scary things to the point where if I think I see a face in the bath I'll freak out. When I first opened the script, I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into. Then I found out that there are surprisingly tender scenes and it wasn't all horror. I think this is why non-horror fans can enjoy this anime, because there's a richness of story and an element of friendship and perseverance in it. Kaede Hondo: I'm the opposite; I love scary stuff! When I opened the script for the first time, I was surprised to see comedic bits in a horror genre. And it's not all comedic either; there are some actual scary parts. Manabu Otsuka: I'm lukewarm. I don't like or hate horror and that was my opinion while working on the show. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2019-09-25/interview-the-cast-and-crew-of-zombieland-saga/.151521 Thanks for the awesome interview ANN. |
| Here is an interview at Crunchyroll featuring series director Munehisa Sakai and voice actress Maki Kawase (voiced actor of Junko Konno) First of all, thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. How’s your time in LA been? Are there any highlights from the trip so far? Munehisa Sakai: Because we’ve been so busy with events and different panels, we haven’t really had the opportunity to go around LA. But I’m really interested in Hollywood, where the films are created, so after this hopefully we’ll have the opportunity to check it out. I hope you do, too! Here’s a question for both of you: Could you tell me about how you first entered the anime industry, and a bit about your careers? Sakai: I was originally going to a school of animation, and one of the teachers there introduced me to the company Toei Animation, so that’s really where I got my start. Maki Kawase: When I was younger, I really loved manga and anime and games. As I grew up, I knew that there were these kinds of jobs in the industry, but it wasn’t really until high school that I thought, “oh yeah, that’s something I really want to try, I want to try and do that.” So as soon as I graduated high school I went to work as a voice actress. Sakai-san, Zombie Land Saga has quite a unique premise. Could you tell us how the original idea came to be, and then how you were chosen to be the director? Sakai: This is a project that actually originated with the producer, and when I first got involved in the project all we had was “girls die, they become zombies, they become idols.” That was the basic premise that we had, and that’s really all we had to work on. So, as we were working with this idea, we realized that we could add on a lot of humor and a lot of gags, to make it even more interesting, and to really help engage the audience. We didn’t just want this silly, kind of off the wall series, though. What we really wanted to do was bring the story home with really deep emotion and give it that really human touch. Not just this fun, lighthearted gag anime, but really creating a mainstream animation that the fans could get attached to and emotionally invested in. Personally, I felt like those two elements merged together perfectly. Sakai-san, I have a question about a specific part of one of the episodes. The rap battle between Sakura and Saki is a bit of a fan favorite. I just want to know how the idea for that came to be? Everyone loves the way that Kotaro also does the beatboxing. Sakai: When we were starting out, we really wanted to avoid what had been done. There are so many idol anime, so we didn’t want to to the normal idol anime with normal idol songs. We wanted to break the mold. So, we decided to start with death metal in the first episode, and the natural progression of that was to then do something that was, again, out of the box. That’s how we hit the idea of a rap battle. Also, rap is a platform where people and characters can pit their emotions against each other, so we thought that it was both really interesting as a way to break out of the mold of traditional idol songs but also to showcase these characters’ emotions and their emotional states at that time. Kawase-san, Sakai-san talked earlier about some of the deeper, more emotional elements, and one of those themes is “overcoming your past traumas.” Did that theme resonate with you? Do you find kinship with your character, Junko, through that? Kawase: Well, I’m not an idol, and I obviously didn’t die in a plane crash, but I do think that there’s some element of the characters that resonate with me. I feel like I am, in many ways, like Sakura. She is quite down on herself, she’s quite negative in her thinking sometimes, and a lot of the time she thinks that she’s unlucky. I myself have moments where I can be down on myself or be quite negative in my thinking and how I approach things. But I also have quite a bit of Saki in me as well. I can be like, “yeah, fine, whatever,” and brush things off. I feel like I have those two characters, both Saki and Sakura, within me. The character you played, Junko, is very quiet and reserved but she’s also revered as a legendary idol. How were you able to portray a character who’s both very powerful and skilled but also timid and quiet? Kawase: Of course I was aware that there was a slight gap between those two aspects of Junko’s character, but what I really wanted to focus on was creating the best voice for the character that I could. Finding the voice that would best portray her talent, her power, her ability. I also feel that, in the time period she lived in, that was just sort of how the idols were–quite reserved but they also have these reserves of power and energy. So I really just based my performance off of the character description and the character’s personality that emerged in the script. I didn’t really think too deeply into how I was going to portray this gap–that was just sort of who she was and I really concentrated on creating the best voice for her that I could. Here’s a question for both of you. What is the one thing you want people to come away from Zombie Land Saga with? It could be a feeling, a thought, anything. Kawase: As you know, the characters are zombies, they’re dead, their lives are technically over. But they’re still living to their fullest, giving it their all. I’m obviously not dead yet, I still have a long life left to go, so I feel that just from working on this project that whenever I feel down, whenever I feel like throwing in the towel, it’ll help me get back on feet to face whatever I need to face. It’s a great reminder not to give up. I hope when the fans watch it, that if they can take that away. That would be a really great accomplishment. Sakai: It’s just as Kawase-san said. If this can be a starting point for people to get back up on their feet, then that would be really incredible for us. The characters are really doing everything they can to live and to be who they are. They’re doing everything they can to succeed at being idols, so I hope that when the fans see the status of their lives in the show that they can support Franchouchou. And by supporting the group, I hope that it can, in turn, act as a support for them and perhaps a source of joy for them, and perhaps be able to motivate them get back up or get past any troubles they may be having. Thank you very much for both working on such a special show, and thank you so much for talking with us! https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-feature/2019/10/03/interview-zombie-land-sagas-strange-wonderful-origins |
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