Welcome back to the I Am Anime website
Continuing from last time, the story of “Futari no Black Jack – Manga & Anime storyboard/competition collection”!
I haven’t read it all yet, and there are interviews and comments from director Gisaburo Sugii, producer Masao Maruyama, and animation director Akio Sugino.
However, I get energy from flipping through the storyboards in my spare time between work. I am encouraged by Dezaki Conte’s uniquely vigorous brush strokes and director Dezaki’s passion for saying, “I want this kind of picture, no, this is how it should be!” We are currently in the process of storyboarding the next series after “Okitsura” (the title has not been announced yet)…
Let’s go back in time. When I was in Nagoya, I used to collect Izaki storyboards by scrapping them from used books, but when I moved to Tokyo and entered the telecom industry, I received used Izaki storyboards (copies) from some of my seniors, and I was very impressed. It was exciting. “Let’s do it for you Dezaki fans!” is the part of the storyboard for “BLACK JACK the Movie” — this is probably the part of the storyboard that you were in charge of. By the way, the person who gave me this storyboard was a freelance animator who was renting work at Telecom, and at the time he was also helping out with Tezuka Productions’ work, so he told me he would rather throw away the used one. It was a grandchild copy, so the writing pressure and shading were rough, but I was so happy that I cried when I saw Dezaki Conte in A4 size for the first time that I brought it to a drinking party with my friends, and afterwards I was able to get a free copy of it. When I was working as a director and cutting (drawing) the storyboards, I looked back at them many times as text.
Afterwards, when I was leaving the company, another senior (employee) said to me, “This is a farewell~” and I watched the OVA “Aim for the Ace!” 2” and a whole storyboard for “Final Stage.” That senior was director Dezaki’s “Aim for the Ace!” He was such a person that he wanted to become an animator after watching “Ace”, and the storyboard (copy of his grandchild) he used on the set of the OVA “Ace” when he was a rookie. So, I received “Aim for the Ace! What struck me about the storyboards for “2” was that no corrections were made, as I had heard that “Director Izuzaki will fix all the storyboards no matter who drew them.” What was especially surprising was that the “(tennis) match scene”, which is director Izaki’s specialty, is shown without any editing, and on the other hand, the conversation scene between Mrs. Butterfly and Director Ryuzaki was more complete in both the art and the dialogue. It was Osamu. In particular, it is usually supposed to be “Izaki who writes all the storyboards”, but “Aim for the Ace! 2, why did you give the storyboards for episodes 1, 2, 12, and 13 to someone else? In an interview in the DVD-BOX booklet, Director Dezaki said, “I originally worked on it with the intention of being a director, but what did I mean by “general supervision” (lol)?” However, my teacher when I was a student told me, “Aim for the ace! 2”, and the teacher said, “Originally (as far as I know) Mr. Izuzaki was only credited with ‘supervision’ – it was planned that the chief director on set would actually be the director, but at that time Mr. Izuzaki… I wonder if he suddenly became deeply involved after the overseas collaboration that he was supposed to be seriously involved in ended, and by the time director Dezaki joined, he had already spoken to the storyboard and production staff. What?” However, this is a half-remembered story from ten years ago, so it’s hard to say it’s a reliable testimony, but if the teacher’s story is true, director Dezaki was in charge of storyboarding for only two stories, one for the head and one for the butt. That also makes sense. (But we talked about this here a few years ago, right?)
While using the storyboards drawn by others, especially the action scenes drawn by young people at the time, as highlights of the animation, he thoroughly revised the parts that were the core of the drama, including the script and the dialogue. That is Dezaki style storyboard checking.
Well, in any case, it was my first time directing “BLACK CAT.”
How do you handle storyboards drawn by others when checking with the director? ——“Aim for the Ace!” by director Dezaki! 2” was also used as a teaching material!
Needless to say.
Now that I’ve recalled some nostalgic stories, I’m back to checking the storyboards! I put Dezaki Conte by my side.
