An Entry Point Into the Extinct World of Hard-Boiled Fiction

──When you turn a manga into an anime, the big difference is the introduction of voices and sound. What are your expectations for that aspect of NO GUNS LIFE?

Identity is very important in this work, so I'm more interested in the casting than in the actual performances. Casting is an extremely important part of the creative process, and it's something that I emphasize in the things I make.

──Outside of the voices, Kenji Kawai will be handling the music this time.

He's a well-regarded guy who's very popular overseas, too. I think this might be popular in Europe. Bande Desinée is a thing there, so it might pick up a lot of fans in France. I'm also a little curious about how much of this will be CG.

──I'm sure they'll be using it for certain segments, but the show will also be using backgrounds that were created in the Unreal Engine, which is a game development engine. That's probably a first for anime, I'm told.

I see. So something that was used in the gaming industry is now being used at anime studios. The Unreal Engine is capable of putting out almost complete video in real time, so it should cut a lot of time off the process. Not too long ago, a lot of places used the Unreal Engine to do tests for video just before it was sent off to final rendering.

──You mean they'd do the final rendering in another engine, but use the Unreal Engine's real time capabilities to put together a prototype first.

Yes, for example, you would use it to do a simulation of a collapsing building, and then if it looked OK you'd render it for real. Without that capability it would take like six months to change something. They're right to try it. I think rendering technology has advanced enough that you could do anime backgrounds in CG.

──How about the characters? Do you think they should be done in CG too?

No, actually. It's common lately to do motion-capture and then run the output through Toon Shader (Note: A method of using 3DCG technology to create video that looks like anime), but... I don't know. It's one choice, but it's something I've seen a ton of in video games. (laughs) I think there's a more "anime-like" way of doing things. Something that's ultra-stylish, like the way Kawajiri-san does his work. That's what I'd like to see.

──Kawajiri-san is actually doing storyboarding for several episodes of NO GUNS LIFE.

Oh, really? Wow, that's something to look forward to! (laughs excitedly.) I want to see more stuff like the airport scene in Wicked City. Something that just blows you away. That was so cool. The way the stuff in the foreground and background was moving at different speeds, that was just perfect. My eyes almost popped out of my head. I'll say it again, but for this anime, I want to see them really take their time depicting Juzo in a way that only anime can do. If they do that, I think viewers will really understand how great hard-boiled SF can be. I'm hoping this becomes an entry point for people into the extinct world of hard-boiled fiction.