Last night the 10th-anniversary screening of the Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day anime film that we previously reported on was held. A talk was held during the event, with anime director Tatsuyuki Nagai, character designer and animation director Masayoshi Tanaka, and the voice of Poppo, Takayuki Kondo, which revealed some details on how the 10th anniversary visual came to be, as well as a hint to a possible sequel.
According to director Nagai, tickets for the screening, which was held at the Shinjuku Wald 9 theater in Tokyo, sold out in just 5 minutes and the number of people who showed up to the event was “astonishing.” Looking around the room, he joked that “there were so many people buying tickets that they sold out in 5 minutes, leaving us no choice but to make a sequel.”
Key visual for 10th-anniversary project drawn by character designer/chief animation director Masayoshi Tanaka:
Talk then moved to the key visual for the 10th-anniversary project and how it was conceptualized. Character designer Tanaka explained that while he came up with a bunch of ideas when given the task, such as redrawing the characters in their school uniforms, but Tanaka was “worried drawing something like that wouldn't give the 10th anniversary feeling to the key visual.” He settled on drawing the characters aged up in the same setting as he thought “it would be more emotive if I used the same composition as in the first key visual of the TV anime.”
Though coming to terms with the characters themselves was difficult, so Tanaka brought in some help. “At first, I was working on the key visual by myself, but ...... I felt like, 'Why should I have to go through all of this trouble by myself? (Laughs).” This is when Tanaka sought advice from Nagai, and scriptwriter Mari Okada.
The three of them worked together to age up the character (who could age up), with Tanaka recalling that Nagai suggested Jintan wear his father’s hat, though in a different color. Okada offered up the suggestion of having Yukiatsu hold his jacket to match the design in the original piece. Both were implemented in the key visual and in this writer's opinion worked really well in evoking the same emotions I had when I first watched the series (I cried!).
Image via Comic Natalie
While we may not ever see a sequel to Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day (or may considering Nagai’s comments!), see how the 10th-anniversary ideas came to be is really interesting.
Source: Comic Natalie
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Daryl Harding is a Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram.
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