In this column, Shudo talks about the theoretical challenges for writing Episode 17: Island of the Giant Pokemon.
Episode 17 of "Pokemon" may be remembered by some as the episode in which subtitles were added to the voices of Pokemon.
Many people seem to think that the idea of adding subtitles came from me, who is known by some as a scriptwriter who creates unconventional stories, but it is actually not true.
At the script meetings for "Pokemon," there were many ideas from the producer and director.
The idea of subtitling the conversations in "Pokemon" was one of the ideas that one of the producers came up with.
By the way, each Pokémon in the animated version has its own cry, many of which are derived from its name.
Pikachu makes a "pika-pika" noise, and Fushigidane makes a "dane-dane" noise.
This was not decided at a script meeting.
Early scripts did not include Pokémon cries.
On the day of dubbing, when Pokémon cries were required, it was left to the voice actors who would be in charge of voicing the Pokémon to decide what kind of sound the Pokémon would make, but one such voice actor improvised a cry similar to the name of the Pokémon they were in charge of, and it was unexpectedly funny, which convinced the director and producers.
The other voice actors followed suit, and they began to make sounds that sounded like the names of the Pokémon they were in charge of.
Some Pokémon had names that did not make for good cries, but even in such cases, it was basically up to the voice actors to decide what sound the Pokémon would make.
But we were not supposed to know what the cries the Pokemon made to each other meant.
One of the anime's traits is that only Nyarth, who can speak human language, can interpret the language of Pokémon.
Therefore, children in the audience would be interested in what Pokémon are saying to each other, and we came up with the idea of showing Pokémon conversations with subtitles.
The Pokémon production staff was not conservative at all, and they were willing to do anything interesting.
So we decided to make an episode with subtitles for Pokémon conversations, but I myself was not keen on the idea.
Subtitles for the Pokémon language would show that "Pokémon" are creatures that think like humans.
It is a good idea to put Japanese subtitles on foreign language conversations in which the words are not understood.
Because we are all human beings, just speaking different languages.
As long as they are humans and we just do not understand the language, we can understand the meaning of what is being said if Japanese subtitles are attached.
However, Pokémon are not humans.
They are different creatures.
We don't know what kind of thoughts or feelings they have.
Human-to-human communication is manageable, but human-to-animal and human-to-Pokemon communication is difficult.
Some humans may think they are able to communicate with dogs, cats, or other pets, but this may be a self-serving assumption on their part.
We do not know the true nature of the thoughts and feelings that animals have.
Subtitling a Pokémon's words means that at least the viewer watching the cartoon will know the thoughts and feelings of the Pokémon.
If a Pokémon's thoughts and feelings can be read by subtitles and understood by the viewer, it means that the thoughts and feelings of the Pokémon creature are close enough to human beings to be understood.
Can a Pokémon with a completely different appearance be so close to human beings?
Wouldn't adding Japanese subtitles to a Pokémon's language and cries humanize Pokémon more than anthropomorphizing animals?
It would be very strange if subtitles were added to the animal noises in this show about the relationship between humans and animals.
But if it is a fantasy in which the animals have a special ability to speak human language, it would be fine...
Furthermore, subtitling the language of Pokémon would mean that all Pokémon in the animated version of "Pokémon" have a unified language.
This means that Pokémon of different kinds can communicate with each other.
The diversity of Pokémon, other than their appearance and abilities, would disappear.
In other words, the animated version of "Pokemon" will be a world with only two languages: human and Pokemon.
Is this a good thing or not?
The idea of adding subtitles to Pokémon sounds is interesting, but will it change the worldbuilding of the animated version of "Pokémon"...?
Although, knowing this, I also thought it would be okay to have such a unique episode in the animated "Pokemon" series.
Still, it is very difficult to put subtitles to the Pokémon's words.
Many viewers are small children.
They may not be able to use difficult words or kanji characters.
The size of the TV screen also limits the number of characters.
In my mind, the size of a TV is 14 inches.
I remember that 14-inch TVs were the norm in Genesis, and I think that even 20 inches is too large for the size of an average room in Japan.
I think there used to be a suitable viewing distance for the size of TV screens, but this has become vague, and large screens have become the norm before we knew it.
I myself watch some movies on a 100-inch projector, but for a child's narrow field of vision, I think that a 14-inch screen is appropriate for cartoons, which already move around a lot.
In addition, there is the problem of whether the Japanese subtitles will be understandable to foreign viewers if the episode is broadcast in a foreign country.
The producers of cartoons intended to be sold to foreign countries did not like the idea of having Japanese on the screen.
For example, in "Idol Angel: Youkoso Youko," which is set in Shibuya, "SHIBUYA" appears, but there are no signs in Japanese.
If they were going to sell to a foreign country, they wanted the animation to be stateless.
However, the staff of the "Pokemon" anime in its early stages may not have thought about selling it to foreign countries.
Most of those who attended the script meeting were in favor of a subtitled episode of "Pokemon."
I can say that everyone was in an excited mood except me.
However, we had not decided what episode would be subtitled.
I couldn't find any episodes that needed to be subtitled.
It would be unnatural to have Pokémon talking with subtitles in a scene where humans are speaking.
Therefore, we decided to make an episode with scenes in which only Pokémon are speaking, without humans being there, but since the main characters and the main Pokémon are always together, it is difficult to create a situation in which only the Pokémon are conversing.
I myself was not very enthusiastic about subtitled Pokémon, so as the series organizer, I was dragging my feet, saying, "Let's make an episode with subtitles someday."
In the meantime, the day came for a meeting with the upper management of the production of the animated version of "Pokemon," separate from the script meeting.
It was a kind of review meeting for the animated version of "Pokemon" up to that point.
As I have written before, this meeting is nicknamed the "Imperial Council."
To make the show more interesting, the first step, for now, is a meeting where negative opinions are expressed by the "Nobleman."
But fortunately, the show did not have a bad reputation.
At that meeting, one of the producers who was at the script meeting mentioned subtitled Pokemon.
Of course, he was hoping to make "Pokemon" with subtitles, and he probably intended to get a willing approval from the upper management.
But, right at that moment, he was met with opposition from the upper management.
The broadcasters also voiced their opposition.
The main reason was that subtitles were difficult for viewers to understand.
As the series organizer, I was on the side of the script meeting.
The chief director got impatient with my reluctance to do a subtitled "Pokemon" and even said that if he had more time, he would have written the script himself.
The actual production team wanted to do it.
So, I countered the objections by saying, "Why don't we do it with short, easy-to-understand subtitles for children?" and so on.
It is my bad habit to get carried away at times like this.
I affirmed the idea of including subtitles as if I had come up with it, and insisted that "Pokemon" with subtitles would turn out well.
Subtitled Pokemon was agreed to in a manner of speaking, if the series organizer insisted so strongly.
At that point, however, it had not been decided what kind of episode the subtitled Pokemon would be.
If the script for the subtitled Pokemon was not interesting, I did not know what they would say.
It was not so much that I was responsible for it, but rather that I made myself responsible for it.
Originally, I was not interested in writing a script with subtitles, and even if I did, I was not in the mood for writing it.
Even as part of the script rotation, I had planned to go to other scriptwriters.
However, it was easy for me to say, but hard to write a script that I said would be "short and easy for children to understand," that needed to be subtitled, and that was interesting in terms of content on top of that.
I feel sorry for the scriptwriters who were assigned such a script.
So, I had no choice but to write it myself.
And what I wrote was "An Island of Giant Pokemon?!"
What are the lines that even a child who cannot read subtitles can understand, that is, what are the lines that a foreigner can understand, and yet that will make sense to be expressed in subtitles...?
If the lines have no meaning, people will say, "There is no need to bother with subtitles."
However, if the content is something that I don't really want people to hear, then I thought it would be okay to express it with subtitles.
For those who cannot read, they are just "xxx," "___," and "..." but for those who can read, they are understandable, and moreover, for those who cannot read, lines where "xxx," "___" and "..." seem to mean something are usually lines you don't want people to hear.
I was also careful to ensure that subtitled Pokémon would not be used as a common practice in subsequent episodes.
If Pokémon conversations are routinely subtitled, it will be difficult for viewers to discern the difference between the thoughts and feelings of humans and Pokémon.
It is not good if Pokémon speak the same way as humans.
Pokémon and humans are too different, which is why communication between them is so important.
I don't want to insinuate such a thing, which might affect the theme of "Pokemon" as a whole, around episode 17, which is still in the early stage of "Pokemon."
Even if you can't read the subtitles, there are lines that have meaning in the subtitles... at least they are not lines that express feelings.
It is possible to express joy, anger, grief and pleasure without dialogue, but that said, it is also troubling that the expressions of feelings are the same for Pokémon as for humans.
We need lines that we can understand even if we don't know what they are saying.
When I was a child who could not read subtitles, my parents often took me to see foreign movies.
I could understand some of it just by looking at the images.
I didn't mind the subtitles.
But that was because there were humans in the movies.
With my childish imagination, I could guess the lines of the characters in the movies.
But this time it's the Pokémon anime, and what is it about the scenes that requires something that looks like dialogue to be in the nook of the screen...?
I was at a complete loss, and as I was grumbling, "What is to be done?" to a friend who is not in the industry and drinking the alcohol I had been stopped from drinking, I came up with an idea.
It was the "grumbling" at a bar.
When I was young, I toured around the cheap saloons of Europe, and I never knew what the people hanging out there were talking about. But at least I could tell who was complaining about something to the other person over a drink.
I don't know the reason for the grumbling, but whether they look angry or happy, in the end, I know a person who is complaining about something when I see them.
I don't know what the "grumbling" is about with "xxx," "___" and "..." but they are important lines to the "grumbler."
Of course, it doesn't make sense to me, but still, I can tell that they are grumbling because of "xxx," "___" and "..."
The world of "Pokemon" is the world of Pokemon and humans.
If "Pokémon" have anything to grumble about, it is their relationship with humans.
I thought that even children and foreigners who do not know Japanese could understand it.
Moreover, the incomprehensible "xxx," "___" and "..." have a meaning.
Animals may also have feelings, but Pokémon may be the only creatures other than humans that "grumble."
Pokémon, as "grumbling" creatures, may be different from other animals, and their peculiarity may be added.
If the image on which the subtitles appear is also shown as if it were a fabrication, the scene itself in which the subtitles appear will also have a meaning as a fabrication.
"An Island of Giant Pokemon?!" is about an island with artificial giant Pokémon.
The entire setting is a fabricated world.
In this episode, Pokémon grumble over drinks at the stall of an oden vendor.
Some people say that the stall is unrecognizable to foreigners, but I think it is recognizable if we emphasize the fictional nature of the stall.
Even in Japan, there are few oden vendor stalls nowadays, and many people find stalls strangely orientalistic.
That was the goal.
In the American sci-fi movie "Blade Runner," soba restaurant stalls and weird Japanese is used to add an odd realism (?) effect to the fictional future.
"An Island of Giant Pokemon?!" was probably the most difficult script for a Pokémon episode for me.
In "An Island of Giant Pokemon?!" the subtitled scenes were not added as a gag.
"An Island of Giant Pokemon?!" was originally created to include Pokémon subtitle scenes.
As a side note, there is a gag in this episode where Pikachu looks small in the distance, but when it gets closer, it is actually a giant fake Pikachu, and this idea came from one of the producers who worked on this episode, and I was happy to use it from the first draft of the script because it was such a hilariously hackneyed gag.
To be continued
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● The Me of Yesterday (not so much a status report, but how anyone can be a screenwriter)
While I talk about originality, this column seems to be filled with stories that are not very enjoyable for scriptwriters, such as those about the disregard for screenplays.
So, as a shot in the arm, I'll try to recall an example of an anime work that turned out wonderfully when the screenplay took the staff for a ride.
It was in the so-called "Sky Momo" series of "Magical Princess Minky Momo."
You may think this is an old story, but I decided to take it up because I heard that it is now available for free on Yahoo! Video on the Internet, so I thought you might be able to see the work.
Since it would be too much of self-flattery to talk about my script, I'll use someone else's script.
There is an episode with a screenplay written by Konparu Tomoko called "The Great Inheritance."
For this script, from the plot to the screenplay, I, the series organizer, did nothing.
It is the same as the first draft written by Konparu Tomoko.
So, after reading the script, the chief director told the staff, "If you can make this script move using more than 5,000 sheets, that would be great."
At that time, it was jokingly said that major animation companies would receive a warning if they used more than 3,000 sheets for a half-hour episode, and if this happened twice or three times in a row, they would be sacked.
5,000 sheets would be a considerable number of sheets.
The script of "The Great Inheritance" itself is a quiet story and is not likely to use that many sheets.
However, the staff did their best.
They apparently used no less than 5,000 sheets.
The script was not changed.
And it became one of the exemplar episodes of "Magical Princess Minky Momo."
The second half of the same series has what's called the Devil Queen trilogy.
The script was written by Tsutsui Tomomi.
She said on a regular basis that she did not want to write scripts for anime.
She did not like the idea that storyboards and animated movements would change the impressions she thought she had written in the script.
I asked a big favor of her to write one, and that was the script for the first Devil Queen episode.
I only asked for this script as well, and the rest I had no involvement in.
The Devil Queen story was supposed to end with the first episode.
She, too, thought she would be done with it after the first one.
However, the chief director told me this.
"I want to make a sequel."
"The writer does not feel like it."
"But I want to make it, because I won't change the staff from the first one and they want to do it too."
When it comes to the "Magical Princess Minky Momo" series, the storyboards, episode direction, and animation differed from episode to episode, and the quality of the production varied.
And the Devil Queen episodes were done by the same staff.
I implored by saying, "Only you, Tsutsui, can write Devil Queen," and she, too, decided that she would rather write the script herself than have someone else write it for her.
Tsutsui is very strict about the scripts she writes and clearly states her own evaluation of her scripts, saying, "This time it's bad. I think this time it's good."
It seems that the scripts for Devil Queen were not bad ones for her.
In the end, Tsutsui decided to write a sequel and even the final part of Devil Queen.
For my part, it was a great relief, because it was going to be one episode but ended up being three, and I didn't have to make any changes.
However, the Devil Queen dies in the final scene in Tsutsui's script to put the character she created to rest herself, and she had a little trouble with the director, who wanted to keep her alive, about the last scene.
In "Magical Princess Minky Momo," only the last scene was changed slightly, for the odd reason that Momo herself had already been run over by a car and there shouldn't be more deaths, but when Tsutsui saw the finished animation, she said, "Well, okay."
The finished Devil Queen trilogy was enough to support the reputation of "Magical Princess Minky Momo."
If you say that today's animation is different from the days when the emphasis was on scriptwriting, then that is the end of it, but is scriptwriting really not important for today's animation?
To be continued