The Yu-Gi-Oh! Logo and the Incredible Story of Its Creation
May 2, 2024 at 9:00 pm | Posted in 4Kids, Duel Monsters, English dubbed, Other Stuff, Yu-Gi-Oh! | 3 CommentsTags: interview
The Yu-Gi-Oh! logo — so ubiquitous, yet so little is known about its origins. A representation of the entire Yu-Gi-Oh! brand outside Asia, the first Yu-Gi-Oh! logo was created under cutthroat deadlines and involved the efforts of a graphic designer in California, several Japanese restaurant employees, and a spunky artist and businessman who worked at a fast-paced, flourishing licensing company.
The story of the Yu-Gi-Oh! logo’s creation was told in the latest episode of the 4Kids Flashback podcast, a show that interviews former employees and freelancers of 4Kids Entertainment. Hosted by actor Tara Sands (the original voice of Mokuba Kaiba) and artist Steve Yurko (a host of the One Piece Podcast), the podcast delves into the behind-the-scenes stories of the burgeoning company behind the success of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokemon, and other international hits, straight from the mouths of those who worked there.
In this week’s episode, 4Kids Flashback spoke with Waldo Cabrera, who worked for about 12 years at 4Kids Entertainment. Cabrera began as an art director, was promoted to creative director, and eventually rose to become the vice president of 4Kids Entertainment Home Video. Cabrera discussed his origins as a young artist, detailed the early years at 4Kids (named Leisure Concepts back then), and told a remarkable story about how he spearheaded the creation of the Yu-Gi-Oh! logo.
Waldo Cabrera: Young Artist and Businessman
Waldo Cabrera grew up in the Bronx in New York City. At school, he was the class artist. He loved anime and wanted to create his own manga too. Even at a young age, Cabrera knew he wanted to work in the art industry. But because he didn’t want to fall into the starving artist cliché, he was savvy enough to focus on the field of advertising.
Cabrera brought his passion for art and advertising to the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan. Afterward, he further honed his skills at Syracuse University in upstate New York. There, he split his time between its Newhouse School of Public Communications, which taught the business of the advertising industry, and its College of Visual Performing Arts, which trained visual creatives.
After graduating with a degree in advertising, Cabrera immediately landed in the entertainment industry working for a small company called Ericksen/Basloe Advertising. He started as an assistant, and then became an art director. He worked with clients like Orion Pictures, Turner Home Entertainment, and others in the television industry.
Early Days at Leisure Concepts
In 1993, Cabrera joined Leisure Concepts Inc., a fast-moving, quickly expanding licensing business of about 30 employees. Leisure Concepts owned the rights to numerous big names, like Cabbage Patch Kids, World Wresting Federation, and many Nintendo properties. It was an inspiring and enterprising place to work for Cabrera, who was now in his mid-20s. As the company’s art director, he was responsible for creating style guides and marketing materials for all those exciting properties.
One pivotal day, a new property arrived at Leisure Concepts, a strange TV show from Nintendo called Pokemon. Everyone in the office gathered to watch the first episode.
“You should’ve seen the look on people’s faces when it [arrived],” Cabrera laughed. Even today, the cries of the creatures he heard in that episode remain firm in his memory. “It was just like, what is happening?! It was slow and none of us got it.”
As the employees began to vote on whether or not they should acquire the property, the brash CEO of Leisure Concepts, Al Kahn, stepped in and told them that there was no need to vote. They were taking it.
Cabrera and his team were tasked with creating a logo for Pokemon. They tried so hard to come up with the right design, but it was “swing and a miss, swing and a miss, and we just never nailed it,” Cabrera recalled. Eventually, Nintendo sent over its own logo that would be used to this very day.
That experience irked Cabrera. He vowed that if he ever got another chance, he would get it right.
With Pokemon’s launch on the horizon, Leisure Concepts was ready for a change. In November 1995, the company renamed itself 4Kids Entertainment Inc. Cabrera created a new logo for the company. Meanwhile, the company’s licensing arm, where Cabrera worked, was established as a separate subsidiary and adopted the Leisure Concepts name. (It would eventually be renamed 4Kids Entertainment Licensing Inc. in July 2001.) Still, his biggest logo design project was yet to come.
Yu-Gi-Oh! and The Nightmare Before Christmas
In 1997, Cabrera was promoted to creative director. In his new role, he oversaw seven or eight artists and established the general creative focus of the company, he explained.
On another pivotal day, Cabrera and his team were tasked with developing the logo for what would eventually become 4Kids’s next big hit: Yu-Gi-Oh!. Cabrera remembered his dismal experience with the Pokemon logo and proclaimed that they would get it right this time.
However, time was of the utmost essence. Konami was about to print the cards and needed a logo immediately. Cabrera would have only a week and a half to get this job done.
Norman Grossfeld, the president of 4Kids Productions Inc., and his team explained to Cabrera that Yu-Gi-Oh! “is similar to Pokemon but is scarier. It has a sharper edge.” When Cabrera heard that description, the vision that appeared in his mind was Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Cabrera made numerous sketches with his ideas. But ultimately, he loved the font used on The Nightmare Before Christmas’s movie poster and wanted Yu-Gi-Oh! to be in that font.
So Cabrera went to the source. He called up the designer of the font of The Nightmare Before Christmas, an artist in California named Mark Andrew Allen. As the clock continued to tick away, Cabrera sent Allen the job on a Friday and paid him “a ton” of cash to complete it over the weekend.
Allen came through. On Sunday, Allen faxed over his designs. Cabrera and his team picked the one they loved and faxed it to Yu-Gi-Oh!’s licensors in Japan for approval.
The licensors approved Allen’s design but suddenly added a new wrinkle in the process. It wasn’t enough just to have the Yu-Gi-Oh! logo in English. They wanted there to be kanji spelling out Yu-Gi-Oh! in the background.
Cabrera’s stomach was in knots. “How am I going to visualize this? I don’t know kanji,” he thought. He had no clue what to do next and the clock was still ticking.
The Crazy Origin of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Logo’s Kanji
Cabrera needed to calm his anxious stomach. Whenever he got stressed, he would eat sushi because it’s easy for his stomach to digest. Two blocks from his office was a row of Japanese restaurants. So he headed there and sat down at one of the restaurants. When he picked up a menu, he saw that half of the menu was in handwritten kanji.
A light bulb went off in Cabrera’s head.
“So I call them. I’m like, ‘Hey, who wrote this?’ And they go, ‘Oh, it was the dude that rolls.’ The guy that’s sitting there, he goes, ‘Oh, I wrote that.'”
Cabrera was thrilled and unleashed on the man a crazy idea. If Cabrera returned to the restaurant right after closing time with some paper, ink, and brushes, would he be able to write Yu-Gi-Oh! in kanji for him?
“He goes, ‘Ah, no problem!'”
So Cabrera did exactly that. Five minutes after the restaurant closed, he returned with a bunch of newsprint, enough to cover the floor. And just like Cabrera requested, the man picked up a big brush and began to write Yu-Gi-Oh! in kanji over and over.
The restaurant’s hostess walked by and saw what he was doing.
“‘That doesn’t look that good,'” Cabrera recalled her quipping. “‘Gimme that!'” She picked up the brush and started writing Yu-Gi-Oh! too.
Then, one of the chefs in the back came out and saw what they were doing.
“‘Ah, you guys don’t know how to do this!'” He also picked up a brush and joined in.
The restaurant employees probably weren’t experts in Japanese calligraphy, but that didn’t matter a single bit to Cabrera.
“I had about four or five people in there just writing Yu-Gi-Oh!, and I was in heaven,” Cabrera gushed.
With the ink still wet, Cabrera ran back to his office and plastered the walls with all of the newsprint. He and his team pored over the details of each kanji character and chose a “Yu,” a “Gi,” and an “Oh” that they liked.
Cabrera scanned the characters in Photoshop, outlined them, and dropped them behind Allen’s English Yu-Gi-Oh! logo text. The licensors loved it. So Cabrera delivered the logo and, about four days later, the cards went to print.
“It was crazy,” he said.
To this day, Cabrera does not know which person wrote which character.
* * *
The full episode of 4Kids Flashback is well worth listening to, especially to Yu-Gi-Oh! fans.
In May 2002, 4Kids established a new subsidiary named 4Kids Entertainment Home Video Inc. Cabrera was tapped to head this business, and it was in this role that he developed a short-lived Yu-Gi-Oh! product: the uncut Yu-Gi-Oh! DVDs. In the podcast, Cabrera explained in depth his reasons for creating that product and why it was discontinued. Spoiler: it failed because no one bought it.
Cabrera also discussed how 4Kids’s corporate structure contributed to its success, his opinions about why 4Kids ultimately collapsed, and the Emmy Award-winning work that he does today.
For more episodes of 4Kids Flashback, check out its website, and listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Episode Director Yuji Yanase Talks Kazuki Takahashi’s Wrap Parties, Stringent Production Guidelines
August 3, 2023 at 6:00 pm | Posted in 5D's, Japanese, Yu-Gi-Oh!, ZEXAL | 2 CommentsTags: interview, otakon
Anime series director, storyboarder, animation director, and key animator Yuji Yanase was a guest at the annual Asian pop culture convention Otakon in Washington, D.C., last weekend. A veteran of the anime industry, Yanase was visiting to promote his latest directorial work, My Unique Skill Makes Me OP Even at Level 1, but also took the time to reminisce about his other projects, including Yu-Gi-Oh!.
Yuji Yanase has worked in the animation industry for around 40 years, starting his journey when he was only 19 years old. In his first job, he was an inbetweener for the 1986 TV series Centurions, which was produced by Ruby-Spears Enterprises for the Western market and which he has never watched before.
Yanase didn’t set out to become a director as his goal, but his vast experience in the field has brought him down that path and has led others to select him for those jobs. His first foray as the role of series director was for the 2014 anime Himegoto and the 2015 anime Hakone-chan, both of which are short-form TV series whose episodes are fewer than five minutes long.
Between 2009 and the early 2010s, Yanase served as one of the many episode directors for Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s and Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL. At Otakon, he discussed his memories of how challenging and enjoyable his time on these series were.
Before he started working on Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yanase did not know how to play the card game. One might imagine that that would disqualify him from directing an episode, but Yanase shared a little secret — the shows’ producers armed the animation staff with everything they needed to succeed, even if none of them knew a single thing about Yu-Gi-Oh!.
“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say this but, when you’re working on Yu-Gi-Oh!, they actually provide you with an entire guidebook of ‘this duel happens this way and looks this way,'” explained Yanase. He gestured with his fingers to show how thick the guidebook was — probably a good two inches. “The story is already fully completed and key animators cannot deviate from this guide, not even by a millimeter. There’s not a single line where you’re allowed to veer off course. It’s very strictly managed and you will find out everything that you need to know about the game within that guidebook.”
While this guidebook was fundamental in establishing the consistent look of the anime and instructing animators on how to proceed with the story, it was nevertheless a double-edged sword. Such a rigid framework could also stifle one’s creativity and lead to its own assortment of production challenges. But Yanase was no stranger to the heavy-handed influences of producers. When he thought back to how often producers have meddled in his creative visions, Yanase put his face in his hands, leaned back, and pretended to cry.
“Honestly speaking, I really don’t want to talk about that,” he laughed.
Despite the challenges of working on Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yanase also took with him some wonderful memories. His favorite times were the wrap parties that were held with all of the production staff and voice actors.
“Because the shows are very long, there’s a celebration party for all the staff’s hard work [upon completion of the anime]. When I participated, Takahashi-sensei also attended,” Yanase recalled. “Unfortunately, he’s passed away now. The party was really, really gorgeous. Later I found out that Takahashi-sensei was actually the one who paid out of his pocket for those parties. It’s really amazing.
“It’s just a rumor but I heard that Takahashi-sensei paid maybe close to 10 million or 20 million yen out of his pocket for those parties.”
* * *
Want to hear more stories from Yuji Yanase? Let your favorite anime convention’s guest relations staff know that you want to see him as a guest!
Yuji Yanase posts on X (formerly known as Twitter), @yanase_y.
The New Yuma Tsukumo in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links: Noah Benjamin Tells All
October 11, 2020 at 10:00 am | Posted in English dubbed, Yu-Gi-Oh!, ZEXAL | 2 CommentsTags: interview, video game
The debut of Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links game on September 29 came with much fanfare. But what some fans might not have immediately noticed is that ZEXAL’s main character, Yuma Tsukumo, arrived with a new voice actor. Eli Jay, who played the protagonist in the TV anime, did not reprise his role for the game. Instead, it was up-and-coming actor Noah Benjamin who brought Yuma to life.
On Saturday, Noah participated in a live interview on the Everything Geek Podcast, where he and host Ruari Williamson chatted for half an hour about his work on Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links, his fondness for the franchise, and his acting philosophies. This write-up provides some highlights from the show.
A Silver Lining
Growing up, Noah Benjamin dabbled in a variety of activities, from sports to dance and more, but didn’t find his calling until he was 12 or 13 years old when he discovered acting. He started on the stage with musical theater and as his passion for the art blossomed, he realized that he wanted acting to be his career and not just a hobby.
Noah graduated earlier this year from the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri. At the end of his academic year in March, Noah and his graduating class participated in a showcase in New York City where they performed for casting directors and agents. Then, two days after that event, the coronavirus pandemic hit and shut everything down. Unable to safely participate in any more face-to-face showcases, Noah and his class took their talents online, holding a virtual showcase instead.
It was thanks to that online endeavor in May that Noah met a certain casting director who would introduce him to the world of voice over. The two hit it off and the director soon sent Noah an audition. That audition was for Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links.
“And from there on, it was just hurry up and wait,” explained Noah. “I would do an audition and then I would wait for a while for a response. And then do the next round, and then just rinse and repeat until I got it. And that was a thrilling moment. It was a virtual moment, but it was a very thrilling virtual moment. […] As horrible and as dark as this world is right now, finding silver linings is like the only thing we can do. And I’m so blessed and happy that this was mine.”
A Love for Yu-Gi-Oh!
Yu-Gi-Oh! was huge phenomenon when Noah was growing up, so naturally it became a big part of his life. When he was six years old, he dressed up as Yugi for Halloween. And whenever he was sick and stayed home from school, he would watch the TV show or movie.
“I loved it when I was a kid, trading and dueling, even though I didn’t really know what I was doing,” Noah reminisced. “I had the Duel Disk. I had the original one, the plastic one, that would cut your arm every time it came across,” he laughed.
It’s no surprise, then, that after landing the role of Yuma Tsukumo, Noah wanted to unearth the pieces of his childhood.
“Literally, the first thing I did when I got the role was break out my old Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and look at what I still had,” he said. “And I just had so much fun doing that. I had so much fun venturing back into my childhood ’cause that’s what a lot of creative people have to do when they’re creating something, or when they’re blocked, or when they don’t know what to create. They have to kind of go back to that childhood place of wonder and discovery. And this [role] just came so naturally because this is what most of my childhood was — collecting those cards and trading those cards with my friends.”
A recent post on Noah’s Instagram shows him holding up the original Egyptian God cards. “Oh my gosh, when I got those cards when I was a kid, that’s like the second most excited I think I’ve ever been in my life,” he passionately recalled. “I don’t know what the first most excited moment is, but that was definitely up there.”
Noah understood the significance of Yu-Gi-Oh! and the importance of the role he was entrusted.
“Looking at my Dark Magician, I nearly cried,” Noah further described. “Like, just the beautiful foil of it. It’s so sentimental and it meant so much to me back then. The fact that it still does now shows why it’s still so popular. And shows why shows like ZEXAL and characters like Yuma can live up to the times and can grow with the times. It’s just a beautiful thing.”
The Best Kind of Research
Noah was aware of the Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL anime before auditioning for Yuma, but he didn’t know about the character because he hadn’t watched the show before. By the time it aired, he had already grown out of Yu-Gi-Oh!. So of course Noah had to check out the show to help him get into the spirit of Yuma and prepare for the role.
“[Watching] it was incredibly helpful,” he said. “And [the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links creative team] also sent me a ton of samples, and they sent me a full description before I auditioned. I watched anything that I could get on Hulu with the amount of time that I had. It was kind of a quick turnaround but I did as much as I could in the time that I had.”
Noah was thrilled that he got to watch the anime as his research. “It just blew me away. I was smiling the whole time.”
“What draws me to that show more than anything is the— I love the summoning animations of that show,” Noah added. “They’re so cool and beautiful and rotoscoped and artistic. It’s really— It’s a work of art. It’s really cool.”
Noah also became quite fond of the character of Yuma. He especially likes how Yuma just won’t quit and is always looking for the most “diplomatic solution, the most compromisable solution. He’s looking to make everyone happy.
“He loves the sport and he loves the vigor of that. But when it comes down to it, relationships are relationships, friends are friends, people are people. And that’s kind of what I really love about him. The humanity in him. And the fact also that he’s ruthless and that he never gives up. Wants to high five the sky, as they say.”
Giving Yuma Tsukumo a Voice
Yuma Tsukumo is Noah’s first professional gig straight out of college, which made the experience a little nerve-wracking — even more so than having to perform a role that was previously held by someone else, he said.
What kind of direction did the Duel Links creative team provide Noah? Did they give him the freedom to do his own thing? Or did they want him to voice match Eli Jay as much as possible? Fortunately, it was “a very healthy mix” of both, said Noah.
“As an actor, I always kind of want to be an artist, and I kind of want to shape the character in as many ways as I possibly can through my observation and through my methods,” Noah explained. “But they did want specifically for the voice to sound as much like that performance as possible.
“That being said, they also gave me, for lack of a better phrase, free rein or liberty to kind of explore this character in my own voice and my own way. And not just emulate the sound of the voice, but be that essence, be that character in the moment. And that’s basically what will get you through at the end of the day. If you have the essence of the character and you know relatively what it sounds like, then it’s really— Go from there at that point.”
To help him mimic the voice Eli gave Yuma, Noah tapped into a technique called “voice soup” that he learned from his college voice professor Joanna Battles.
“She would teach reading people’s voices and analyzing people’s voices based on tonality, pitch, rhythm, raspiness, breathiness, energy and overall essence, accent — all of these things play a factor,” Noah explained. “And so when I listened to the character, I would just go through my voice soup — I would go through the list and write down, like, okay, where is he on the scale of raspiness to breathiness? Where is he on the scale from pitch, high to low? Obviously this character was pretty high on the pitch range. For me, it’s all in the method, and it always has been. And so that method has proven very, very helpful for me.”
Noah acknowledged that “there’s always going to be slight differences from revivals and from the originals.”
“It’s nearly impossible to perfectly impersonate someone,” he said. “But the ability to do it at least adequately and capture the essence of the character— Again, that word ‘essence’ is so important. And that was a direction word that they gave me that really, really helped me fit into this world, fit into this character. Discovering what makes that character click is, to me, what helps me with the voice ten times more. The voices— it comes after that.”
Indeed, Noah praised his predecessor for building Yuma into the notable character that he is.
“Eli [Jay] did such a wonderful job creating the voice of this character that it was kind of easy to slip into the essence of this character because it was so clear from the moment I saw it. So props to him for that.”
As for why Eli didn’t reprise his role, Noah was curious about the situation, but “I didn’t really ask,” he said. “I felt like that wasn’t really my territory.”
Favorites
With “over five hundred, six hundred lines of dialogue,” Yuma offered Noah plenty to get excited about, from the numerous cards he plays to the characters he interacts with.
“I was excited for almost everything. But I was mostly, I think, excited for the Gagaga monsters — like Gagaga Gardna, Gagaga Magician — just because that’s really fun to say,” Noah described. “And also, in the episodes that I watched, they played very prominent roles. Being able to look at that name on a script after I’ve heard it and seen it — seen the actual thing on a show — was surreal. And Utopia, Number 39, obviously. All of that stuff. Any Xyz summoning. And I was mostly excited because I could tell that the fans wanted that stuff really, really bad. And I could see why. Those are the cards I was super excited to play.
“And characters? I always love a good duel between Yuma and Shark, or Yuma and Kite.”
In addition to recording fun dialogue, Noah also had a positive experience with the recording process.
“I had never voice acted before, professionally. So I didn’t really have a professional studio at my disposal,” he stated. “But I had a good quality microphone and a strong PC. […] So I have all the equipment, but it was really the creative team [who was] teaching me step by step by step.
“They had an awesome sound engineer who was helping me literally in so many different ways to figure out like, oh there’s metal ping in the back of this sound, there’s a little echo here so you need to move a blanket this way. It was a long, long process, but that’s my favorite memory because that’s the work that kind of gets unsung in projects like this. And it was so fun to just chill with him for like an hour and talk about his career and talk about my life while I fiddled with blankets under my loft bed. That’s my favorite — the crew connections that I got to make.”
Related:
– Composer Elik Álvarez Talks Yu-Gi-Oh! Music with the Everything Geek Podcast
Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS English Dub Recording Continues Amid Pandemic
August 17, 2020 at 12:00 pm | Posted in English dubbed, VRAINS, Yu-Gi-Oh! | 3 CommentsTags: happy space pop con, interview
Even amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, production of the Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS English dub keeps forging onward and is “nearing the end of [the] series.” That’s the word from the anime’s voice director Darren Dunstan, who was a guest at the virtual convention Happy Space Pop Con this past Sunday. He was joined by fellow actors Megan Hollingshead (Mai Valentine in seasons 1 through 3) and Wayne Grayson (Joey Wheeler). The trio participated in a live Q&A session with viewers during the online event.
Describing his workload during the pandemic, Darren said that he hasn’t been doing too much acting these days but remains “busy […] from a directorial point of view.” He and the Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS voice actors now record from home.
“Each system is kind of set up differently,” explained Darren. “Most of them, it’s a combination of Zoom, and then the actor’s connected to the engineer via Source-Connect. The actor’s in their closets, parent’s bedroom, whatever, with like, you know—” Darren and the others on stream gestured at their backgrounds. “Exactly. Blankets.”
Megan, having not heard of the show before, was amused by its name. “Wait, Yu-Gi-Oh! Brains? Is that what you said?” she asked.
“It’s VRAINS, with a V,” replied Darren. “It’s like Virtual Reality Artificial Intelligence— n-no sir. I don’t know what the NS stands for. I mean, I’m only in episode 104, so. A hundred and four episodes, like, I’ll never know what it stands for.”
Don’t worry, Darren, I’m sure you’re not the only one.
The full hour-long Q&A is available for purchase and viewing from Happy Space Pop Con. The three guests talk about various aspects of their voice acting careers and the enjoyment and drama of working at 4Kids. And they of course provide plenty of trivia about the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime. The convention is also selling guest autographs, video chats, and custom voice recording.
The Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS dub is available now in select English-speaking markets, excluding the United States.
Kazuki Takahashi at MAGIC 2019, Part 3: Interview
April 10, 2019 at 2:00 pm | Posted in Duel Monsters, Japanese, Konami, Series 1, Yu-Gi-Oh! | 2 CommentsTags: interview, magic, manga, video game
Kazuki Takahashi did more than judge a manga contest and sign autographs at MAGIC 2019. He also participated in a question-and-answer session where, for 25 minutes, he entertained the audience with candid insights about himself and his creations. Takahashi spoke about his start as an artist, the importance of creating dramatic cards and moments, the origin of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, and even about a game he invented that failed to take off.
At MAGIC, all panels were conducted on stage in French. For attendees who only speak English, this wasn’t a problem if the guests were also English speakers. But for a panel like Takahashi’s, which was conducted in French and Japanese, the convention’s technology came to the rescue. Attendees could rent a pair of earphones and a receiver that allowed them to listen to an English interpretation of all the French dialogue spoken on stage.
Takahashi’s panel was the last one of the day, scheduled for 6:00 p.m. Sadly, it started very late and the auditorium, which could seat 400 people, was only about a quarter full. Nevertheless, the true fans in the room were all very enthusiastic. They made sure Takahashi could hear their cheers when he arrived on stage, even as the French Yu-Gi-Oh! theme song thundered from the loudspeakers as he entered.
Takahashi was accompanied on stage by his interpreter, Sahé Cibot, the general manager of Shibuya International and one of the manga contest’s judges. They were joined by Naoki Kawashima, deputy editor in chief of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump and fellow manga contest judge, although Kawashima did not speak during the panel. The moderator was Matthieu Pinon, a journalist and author who specializes in manga and anime topics.
This post contains a full transcript of Kazuki Takahashi’s Q&A panel.
Left to right: Matthieu Pinon, Sahé Cibot, Kazuki Takahashi, and Naoki Kawashima
Matthieu Pinon: Good evening, everyone. Thank you for waiting for this grand moment, this extraordinary meeting with Mr. Takahashi, the author of the manga Yu-Gi-Oh!, whom you all know because you are all passionate about manga and Japanese pop culture. To begin this conference, we will first ask Mr. Takahashi, what manga did you read when you were a child? What manga did you like to read?
Kazuki Takakashi: Honestly, I liked to watch Japanese tokusatsu [special effects] TV shows where kaiju appear, like the Ultraman series and Kamen Rider. These are what led me to want to draw.
Pinon: So drawing is all well and good as a hobby, but at some point you decided to become a professional. What motivated you to move in this direction?
Takahashi: Since I loved to draw, I wanted to make it my career. Before I was a manga author, I was an illustrator and also worked on video games. Then I started developing manga.
Pinon: You just talked about video games. At the time Yu-Gi-Oh! launched, video games had exploded in popularity in Japan. Then you came along with Yu-Gi-Oh!, which was a table-top game, something that might seem a bit old-fashioned compared to the current trend. Was your editor surprised when you presented this project?
Takahashi: No, not at all. Back when I was working at a game company, it was an era of martial arts video games where players could take control of characters and make them fight. So, it was less interesting to create a manga about martial arts. It was more special, more different to make a manga about table-top games, which are analog and more traditional.
Pinon: There are many table-top games in the world. And when Yu-Gi-Oh! first debuted, the manga included several categories of games. When you launched the card game, that’s when the manga became a success. This success is thanks to you [the audience] and the editors. How did public interest in the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game manifest itself?
Takahashi: When the manga began, the original concept was to show various ways of battling using games each week. At first, I wasn’t even thinking about a card game. Cards were just one of those games. After drawing them for two weeks, there was such an overwhelming reaction from the readers that I decided to make the manga into a series about cards as a response to their request.
Pinon: To first explain how readers can express their interest, we have to remember that the magazines contain a small postcard in that back that readers can mail to the publication to specify which series they prefer. And it was right at the moment that the card games appeared in Yu-Gi-Oh! that the manga climbed further and further into the top 10. Speaking of cards, you didn’t just make these cards by happenchance; you actually developed rules for the game. Could you explain to us your process of creating a card? How did you determine its characteristics while taking into account the increase in the number of cards as the game progresses?
Takahashi: First, I created the story and decided how a character would play an active role in that story. Then I asked myself, what card would be the most dramatic when used by the protagonist while fighting against an opponent? Are fan-favorite characters playing an active role? From there I created each card.
Pinon: Could you tell us, briefly, how many cards you created for the game? Do you remember?
Takahashi: I’ve… Never counted before. Quite a lot, I guess. Like… A thousand.
Pinon: Around a thousand! I think that deserves a round of applause because a thousand cards is so–
[The audience applauds, drowning out Pinon.]
Pinon: And among these one thousand cards, the most famous is the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. But why a white dragon with blue eyes? Why not, say, a black phoenix with red eyes? Why did you choose this animal with this color and specifically this eye color?
Takahashi: I wanted to design a mystical and cool monster for Yugi’s first rival, Seto Kaiba, when he appeared for their first battle. That monster became the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. In a black-and-white world [of manga], I wanted its name to evoke a feeling that would allow readers to conjure up its colors. Ultimately, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon turns out to be a woman — a woman with white hair, white skin, and blue eyes who is revealed in the story to be a spirit.
Pinon: Does anyone out there have the Blue-Eyes White Dragon card?
[Many people in the audience raise their hands.]
Takahashi: Ah. [Nods.]
Pinon: Congratulations, you can show off to others.
[The audience laughs.]
Pinon: And when you watch Game of Thrones, you will get to see your card.[1]
[A few more chuckles from the audience.]
Pinon: Quite often, a duel in Yu-Gi-Oh! is more than a simple face-to-face confrontation between two players. Through the strategy of the opponents, players get to know one another better. It’s almost as if they are communicating through the cards. Was this important to you in your manga?
Takahashi: Yes, that’s right. Because the protagonist, Yugi, is a character that readers are rooting for, I always thought about how to give him a dramatic victory. For example, his trump card gets destroyed and he needs a come-from-behind win. I always thought about how to make such dramatic developments possible in narrative terms.
Pinon: As we all see, MAGIC invites not only famous manga authors but also authors of [non-Japanese] comics. We know that you are a particular fan of this medium. What comic series do you read? Which do you follow with great interest?
Takahashi: I really like Mike Mignola. When it comes to BD, I really like Moebius.[2]
Pinon: Those of you who have been to Japan before might know that production of Japan’s own homegrown comics is quite important, so much so that foreign comics, whether French or American, are not well represented. Where did you find them, and how did you enter the world of comics?
Takahashi: There actually are places in Japan that sell American comics and I occasionally visit them to shop. I’ve always been a fan of American comics, especially stories about superheroes. I love the impactfulness of the artwork, a style that can’t be found in Japanese manga.
Pinon: You mentioned Mike Mignola. You had the opportunity to meet him and exchange drawings. He drew Yugi and you drew Hellboy. Could you tell us a little about this meeting? Because, when we see the drawings, it must have been quite the interesting encounter.[3]
Takahashi: I actually haven’t met him. I was excited to meet him at a comic convention but it didn’t work out. But we did end up collaborating. I drew Mike Mignola’s Hellboy while he drew Yugi.
Pinon: [You exchanged your drawings] through your publishers?
Sahé Cibot: Right.[4]
Pinon: For those of you who don’t know how Yu-Gi-Oh! ends, we aren’t going to spoil it for you, but you really should read the manga to the end because it’s quite exciting. The conclusion of Yu-Gi-Oh! is particularly successful. There are many manga that will simply stop, with publishers stating that their popularity is declining and that this is where they would draw the line. But you took great care to make a well-prepared ending. How did you plan this with your editor? Without revealing the ending to the reader, could you tell us how you prepared this well-developed, thoughtful ending?
Takahashi: When serialization of Yu-Gi-Oh! began, I had already decided that Yugi would meet the other Yugi — that he would meet his, umm, double — and that the two would fight in the end. I decided from the very beginning that Yugi would win.
[Cibot translates Takahashi’s answer into French, but leaves out his last statement that Yugi would win.]
Cibot: This is a huge spoiler, isn’t it?
[The audience laughs.]
Pinon: The ending is from 2004 so those who got spoiled are 15 years behind. We won’t blame you.
Cibot: Well, I didn’t say who won.
Pinon: This is so– Anyway.[5] Why was it important to you that he meet his double?
Takahashi: Well, it’s kind of like a multiple personality. The idea is that when the protagonist finds himself in trouble, a stronger version of himself appears. As the story progresses, he learns more about that other self and realizes that he must defeat him in order to become independent. Eventually, he does defeat his other self, grow, and become independent. This is the theme of the story.
Pinon: Sometimes, our greatest adversary is none other than ourselves. Two years ago, I believe, Yu-Gi-Oh! was developed into a smartphone mobile app. There was a monstrous promotional campaign in Tokyo where you could see billboards all over the Yamanote [railway line], the likes of which is completely unimaginable over here.[6] How did it make you feel seeing the analog game that you had designed shift into a video game?
Takahashi: Sure enough, in the manga, there was a rule that the game should absolutely not be taken in a digital direction. But we’re talking about Konami Digital Entertainment here, so…
[Takahashi and Naoki Kawashima laugh.]
Pinon: Time has moved on of course and video games are now available on smartphones that everyone can have in their hands. So time passed and in 2004, you stopped the manga. And for ten years, you supervised everything that was developed after that. Then, in 2013, you returned with a one-shot called DRUMP. What motivated you to create this manga?
Takahashi: I had the opportunity to do a one-shot. I thought of making the theme about card games. The Yu-Gi-Oh! card game is incredibly extensible, with rare cards and powerful cards constantly being introduced–
Pinon: It’s quite the catalog. I think some people have one or more binders that are stuffed full of cards.
Takahashi: On the other hand, I thought I could make an interesting game using playing cards, which are limited to 52 cards, so I created a manga based on that concept.[7]
Pinon: So in DRUMP, if you have a deck of 52 cards and a pencil, you can build and rebuild a [DRUMP] deck. You will only ever need 52 cards. Did this constraint help you create a crazy new concept? Or was it a barrier?
Takahashi: I did a lot of play-testing and found it to be a well-rounded game, so I created a story around it. I had fun drawing it and making the cards. It was interesting to play. I really wanted it to become popular, but compared to the power of Yu-Gi-Oh!, it paled in comparison. [Laughs.]
Pinon: As you may have noticed, we’re running a bit late so we’re going to have to cut this short. However, to finish, Mr. Takahashi, you don’t often have the opportunity to meet a Monacan or French audience. Perhaps you have something you would like to tell your fans, who have come and waited until the end of the day to see you. So if you have anything you would like to say, now is the time. Seize the moment.
Takahashi: More than 20 years have passed since Yu-Gi-Oh! began serialization. I am so grateful to be able to come to Monaco to interact with fans. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for supporting Yu-Gi-Oh!.
Interview Notes
1. ^ See Game of Thrones, season 7, episode 7.
2. ^ BD (bédé) is short for bande dessinée, a term describing comics of French or Belgian origin. Jean “Moebius” Giraud was a famous creator of BD.
3. ^ Takahashi’s and Mike Mignola’s illustrations were printed in VIZ Media’s September 2004 issue of Shonen Jump magazine.
As described in this issue, VIZ Media had asked Takahashi to draw his favorite American comic book character with Yu-Gi-Oh!-style hair, so he created the Hellboy drawing on the left. VIZ then contacted Mignola and he agreed to draw Hellboy clad in Yu-Gi-Oh! apparel. The two artists then exchanged these drawings.
4. ^ In this awkward exchange, the interpreter, Cibot, did not translate into Japanese the first part of Pinon’s statement about how Takahashi had exchanged drawings with Mignola. Instead, she asked if Takahashi had ever met Mignola before. That’s why Takahashi repeated the same information in his response.
5. ^ Another awkward exchange. Nothing was lost in translation here though. Takahashi ignored the no-spoiler request, hahaha.
6. ^ The mobile app that Pinon mentions is of course Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links. The Yamanote Line is a circular railway loop that connects Tokyo’s major city centers. The Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links billboards described by Pinon appeared in March 2017 and were well documented on social media and in Konami’s own video ads.
7. ^ The game Takahashi created is called DRUMP and uses a standard deck of 52 playing cards. The manga, also called DRUMP, was published in 2013 in Shueisha’s 49th issue of Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. It was not published in English or French.
(Questions and answers have been edited for clarity and readability.)
* * *
Next:
– Kazuki Takahashi at MAGIC 2019, Part 4: Live Drawing
Previously:
– Kazuki Takahashi at MAGIC 2019, Part 2: Autographs
Yu-Gi-Oh! Animators Shuji Maruyama, Junichi Hayama at Youmacon 2018
November 9, 2018 at 11:00 pm | Posted in 5D's, Duel Monsters, Japanese, The Dark Side of Dimensions, Yu-Gi-Oh!, ZEXAL | 2 CommentsTags: interview, youmacon
Shuji Maruyama (left) and Junichi Hayama
Fans of anime, manga, and Japanese culture descended upon Detroit, Michigan, last weekend for the annual Youmacon convention. This event would be a very special one for animation fans because the convention welcomed four animators straight from Japan, including two highly respected and beloved Yu-Gi-Oh! animators.
Making his first ever appearance in the United States was Shuji Maruyama, a very prolific Yu-Gi-Oh! animator and animation director who has worked on Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, 5D’s, ZEXAL, ARC-V, Bonds Beyond Time, and The Dark Side of Dimensions. Maruyama is probably best known by fans as the character designer for 5D’s. More recently, he has worked on Fuuka, Recovery of an MMO Junkie, and Hanebado!.
Returning for his second appearance at Youmacon was Junichi Hayama, who has served as an animator and animation director for Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters and as a key animator for The Dark Side of Dimensions. Hayama is well known for his mastery of the brush pen and has most recently been working on Golden Kamuy.
Joining Maruyama and Hayama were two more talented animators: Mamoru Yokota, who has worked on Death Note, Naruto, and Gatchaman Crowds; and Shigefumi Shingaki, who works full time at Toei Animation as an animation director for One Piece.
Over the weekend, all four animators participated in live drawing events, where cameras were homed in on their paper and pencils to get an up-close view of their artistic process, and in Q&A panels where they tackled burning questions from the audience.
But there was one very special panel that was not to be missed by any Yu-Gi-Oh! fan: “Draw of the Cards.” Moderated by Anthony “Kroze” Kresky of Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged fame, Draw of the Cards was dedicated entirely to all things Yu-Gi-Oh!, with Shuji Maruyama and Junichi Hayama offering insights about the Yu-Gi-Oh! series they’ve worked on and delighting the audience with their illustrations.
This post contains a full transcript of the Draw of the Cards panel and also highlights the Yu-Gi-Oh! artwork that Maruyama and Hayama presented at Youmacon 2018.
Transcript: Draw of the Cards, a discussion about Yu-Gi-Oh!
Kroze: I’d like to start this panel by talking about what goes into animating and drawing a show that’s highly based on just people playing cards against each other. How do you make that exciting from an animator aspect?
Hayama: That’s something that the author of the source material really thinks of so I really don’t have any say in that.
Maruyama: This is a work with an actual proper source material so I make sure a lot of the elements from the source material are not lost in the adaptation.
Kroze: Since it’s coming from manga source material that already exists, has there ever been any difficulty adapting something over into the animated show that was easier to tell over in the manga?
Maruyama: I want to really keep the elements from the source material intact so I make sure to use the same “image.” So I really want to make sure I preserve the touches, the styles, the expressions, and the angles that are from the manga and convert that into an animation style.
Hayama: Exactly what Maruyama said. Adapting from manga to animation — they seem very similar but they’re actually very different in a lot of components. In manga, most of the time a lot of the motion and feelings are all condensed into one single image. Whereas in animation, you have to keep in mind that it is in motion and you really want to have fluidity in the entire content. At the same time, knowing how to make sure that the essence of the source material is intact while converting that to a fluid motion is what separates amateurs from veterans.
Kroze: Do you ever look to the cards for art inspiration when adapting some of the sequences into animation?
Hayama: We don’t actually take inspiration directly from the cards. There are dedicated people that deal with the monster designs so that they can be adapted from the cards to the animation. [Takahiro] Kagami is one good example of them. He is known among the fan community as one of the best animation directors in the production team.
Maruyama: Kagami did a lot of the earlier monster designs as well as the God Cards’ monster designs.
Kroze: Yu-Gi-Oh! has had a lot of great characters over the many years. Is there any character that you take pleasure in animating and drawing?
Hayama: I don’t have a particular favorite character because I make sure that plot lines and story lines are intact, and so I see value in all the characters.
Interpreter: Is that genuinely your answer? Or are you saying that because you don’t want to answer the question?
Hayama: No, seriously! Every single one has an important role in the story line.
Maruyama: Just from the ease of drawing, I really like to draw Yusei because I draw a lot of him, so I’ve got a lot of practice for him. But my particular favorite is Bruno from 5D’s. I like his role in the story and his design.
Kroze: Because Yusei is simple for you to draw, does it make the action scenes a lot easier to create? Does it let you be more dynamic because you don’t have to concentrate that much on Yusei?
Maruyama: Hmm…
Hayama: The more you draw, the easier it gets. You have the image of the picture revealed in your mind, so there’s one less thing to deal with. So sometimes even the smallest details like how his fingers appear, the more you draw, the more you memorize how they actually look. So in other words, practice makes perfect. At some point, it becomes a habit as opposed to a task.
Kroze: All of the Yu-Gi-Oh! shows have so many action sequences in them. Are there any particular ones that stand out that you had a lot of fun animating?
Hayama: I don’t remember. Sorry.
Maruyama: It’s not an action scene, but one of my favorite scenes is in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters when Yugi is dueling Joey while he was being controlled by Marik. I love that, especially the scene where, after the duel is over, Yugi jumps into the water to try to help Joey. That’s one of my favorite scenes because it really allows me to reidentify, to reassure that their friendship just goes above and beyond what friendship really, truly is.
Kroze: At this point, I’d like to take a couple of questions from the audience.
Audience member: You’ve talked about which characters you look forward to drawing. Which characters are the most difficult to draw?
Hayama: Actually, monsters were really hard to draw. In Duel Monsters, there’s that black magician wearing some sort of belts fighting against Pegasus.
[Audience members shout out the name — Magician of Black Chaos.]
Hayama: When I saw that character design, I was like, you’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me.
[The audience laughs.]
Maruyama: A lot of the dragons in 5D’s were really hard to draw because a lot of them were 3D designs, even though some of them, like Black Rose, were drawn most of the time. Including that, there are a lot of dragons that were designed from the get-go through computer graphics as 3D models. They didn’t consider animators at all during that design process so I struggled with that.
Audience member: Have you ever played the card game itself?
Hayama: I don’t have a clue about it.
Maruyama: Recently, I’ve been playing Duel Links.
Audience member: Of the different summoning mechanics — Normal summoning, Xyz, Synchro — which is the most difficult to incorporate into an action sequence?
Hayama: I don’t understand all the different summonings so I just try to have fun without caring about them.
Maruyama: Summonings and the transformation portions are probably one of the most inspiring, appealing portions of the anime so I make sure to use some variations so there’s not all the same recycled motions. I have fun trying to come up with different kinds of animations.
Kroze: Are there any transformation sequences from other shows that you’ve look to for inspiration for some of those summoning sequences?
Maruyama: Not really. Not any one in particular.
Audience member: Which of the Egyptian God Cards is the hardest to animate?
Hayama: I don’t know. Which one’s are the God Cards again?
[Maruyama lists them off for him.]
Hayama: Which one’s the blue one? That’s the hardest. All of them are hard to illustrate.
Audience member: I was assuming it would be Ra because of all the scales and everything. The yellow one.
Hayama: I try to forget about bad memories.
[The audience laughs.]
Maruyama: Back when God Cards were the thing in Duel Monsters, I was still just pretty new, so I struggled with all of them.
Audience member: Are there any other series’ animators who you respect and who you draw inspiration from?
Hayama: Once we go down that rabbit hole, there’s no end to it.
Maruyama: True, but…
Hayama: I worked on Fist of the North Star. During that time, the character designer, Masami Suda, was like my mentor figure. A lot of my work has many elements that I learned from him. At the same time, when I was someone who just enjoyed anime not as a professional but as a viewer, I believed some of his touches are kind of reminiscent of the original Gundam series.
Maruyama: I learned a lot of things from [Takahiro] Kagami, one of the animation directors from Duel Monsters. A lot of my works are similar to his style.
Kroze: Is there anything in Yu-Gi-Oh! that you haven’t worked on that you want to work on? Like GX.
Hayama: As long as I get paid, I don’t care.
[The audience laughs.]
Maruyama: If I get asked to, I will be happy to do it.
Audience member: Are there any American series that influence your art?
Hayama: I watch The Simpsons. I also watch a lot of American comic series, from Marvel and DC. I watch them just for fun, but if I see something interesting, like certain layouts or designs, I might get inspiration from them.
Maruyama: I watch Pixar for fun, but I don’t think it really inspires my work because the styles are completely different.
Audience member: Have either of you worked with the creator of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Kazuki Takahashi?
Hayama: Nope.
Maruyama: I just said hi to him once.
[The audience commiserates with him — “Aww.”]
Hayama: I would like to meet him for a very personal reason. Takahashi worked on a spin-off manga of the anime Go-Q-Choji Ikkiman by Toei Animation. I was a fan of the show so I want to meet Takahashi just for that personal reason.
[Note: The Go-Q-Choji Ikkiman anime and manga aren’t available in English. According to the Go-Q-Choji Ikkiman Japanese Wikipedia entry, the manga was serialized in Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine in 1986 and was compiled into two graphic novel volumes. Takahashi worked on it using the pen name “Kazuo Takahashi.” -ravegrl]
Audience member: When you’re not animating, what’s your favorite thing to do at home?
Hayama: Rest assured, I don’t work all the time. I watch movies and drink a lot. The usual things.
Maruyama: Same.
Audience member: How did you get into the animation industry?
Hayama: Back when I was in high school, my friend’s brother was involved in an anime production. I mentioned to my friend that I might want to be an animator some day. “Oh, you want me to introduce my brother to you?” So I met him and asked if there’s a special school for this. “No, don’t do it. Don’t do it.” Two months later, I find myself introduced to a new company. After five minutes of introductions and a simple interview, they were like, “When are you going to come?” I started in April and the rest is history.
Maruyama: I went to a special school for animation. From there, I met the first company that I worked for, and now I’m here.
Kroze: Seeing as how this franchise has had a lot of people work on it, is there anything that either of you feel like you’ve contributed that you hope makes a lasting impression on the franchise as it moves onward?
Hayama: I will leave that to the viewers and the audience’s discretion.
Maruyama: I hope the character designs will stay intact as long as the series does continue.
Audience member: For Maruyama, you’ve talked about how you’ve drawn inspiration from animation director [Takahiro] Kagami. Do you know the story behind why, in so many of Kagami’s episodes, Joey is often shown making a tough-guy pointy-chin face?
Maruyama: Kagami really likes Antonio Inoki, who is a well-known pro wrestler in Japan. Kagami is a fan of him and so he played around with the thought that maybe Joey really likes pro wrestling. So in certain scenes, he added some references to some pro wrestlers in terms of their facial expressions or emotions or playfulness.
Audience member: Apart from the card game, Yu-Gi-Oh! known mostly for the hair. Which character’s hair is the most difficult for you to draw?
Hayama: Tristan. Tristan has a distinctive pointy hair style. What makes it difficult is that it really depends on the angle it is seen pointing. [The subsequent explanation is inaudible because of the excessive laughter from the audience.] That makes it difficult because the angle really changes his hairstyle. I saw the character design and was like, you’ve got to be kidding me.
Maruyama: The character Vector in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL. His hair is very hard to draw. Similar to Tristan, the angle really dictates how the hairstyle looks. In the show Ashita no Joe, the main character has a very interesting hairstyle as well. Depending on the angle, the hair goes on one side or the other. Even if he looks straight forward, it still goes a little to the left or right. Likewise, for Vector, I really have to think about how, if I am looking straight at him, how the hair would look.
Audience member: If you have the chance to create your own monster card or Yu-Gi-Oh! card, what ideas would you have for it?
Hayama: I won’t know until I try.
Maruyama: I will try to design a cute girl, like Dark Magician Girl.
Audience member: In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s, the final villain, Z-One, has a really interesting design. Where did the idea for his design originate?
Maruyama: I didn’t design him so I have no idea. But the first time I saw that design, I said that looks really tedious.
[Note: The actual designer of Z-One is Shinichi Miyazaki, who is credited in the endings of episode 65 and onward for his “Concept Design Cooperation.” Miyazaki recently tweeted an early design sketch and character concepts for Z-One. -ravegrl]
Audience member: Did you enjoy working on ZEXAL more or 5D’s? Which one was more fun?
Maruyama: I had more fun with ZEXAL because it was a little more colorful and playful. In 5D’s, very early on, the main character gets arrested. That sets up the tone of the show to be kind of dark. I think it’s not my actual output that is dark, but that darkness is something that I have to keep in the back of my mind when I’m actually illustrating.
Kroze: Speaking of 5D’s, the show, like you said, has a very dark tone. While manga is always black and white, 5D’s definitely has a very prominent “color” to it that makes its darkness feel entrenching. Is there anything that you looked at that inspired how you approached the darkness there?
Maruyama: There are actually dedicated people that deal with the color tone and the director and the people that handle this idea. They handle the tone of the colors and they make sure it’s all consistent with the story and throughout the series. So I didn’t have much of a say in the actual color.
Audience member: In the Dark Side of Dimensions movie, Kaiba and Mokuba don’t have their lockets on. Do you know why their lockets aren’t included in the movie even though they always wore them in the TV anime and manga?
Maruyama: I have no idea. I was given the designs from the directors. There’s nothing that took place in the background that we know of or any theories we can verify.
Audience member: Was there ever a time you had to animate something where you said no, you couldn’t do it, or had to change the way it was animated because it was too difficult to create?
Hayama: There were many occasions where I’ve thought it’s impossible to do a certain thing within a certain given schedule. Before I decide to accept the job, I make sure it’s something that I can finish. Because if you do accept the job that’s nearly impossible to do, you will always experience something bad.
Maruyama: No comment. [Laughs.]
Audience member: Do you have any favorite old American action movies?
Hayama: Escape from New York.
Maruyama: Back to the Future.
Interpreter: Is it a sin to have never watched that movie?
Kroze: What?! Are you serious?
Hayama: You’re joking! How sad.
Audience member: In Duel Monsters, Noa’s story arc wasn’t in the manga. What is it like drawing something that doesn’t have a source material?
Hayama: Even during Noa’s arc, I was just an animator, so I wasn’t part of the actual major staff. The director and the scriptwriter are the ones who make the decisions about the details. But, having said that, I did feel that it was kind of different than usual, that it was kind of weird. But a job is a job.
Maruyama: What Hayama said.
Kroze: I have a final question for both of you. This is a little bit of a silly one, but the phrase “the heart of the cards” is used many times in the series. What do you believe the heart of the cards means?
Hayama: Sorry, I have no idea.
Maruyama: I’ve never heard of that.
[The audience laughs.]
Interpreter: “Kādo no kokoro wo shinjiru” — “To believe in the heart of the cards.” [The interpreter places his index and middle fingers on top of his wrist, as if he were pausing before drawing a card.]
Hayama & Maruyama: Aaah!
Hayama: It’s a fully mental thing. Probably a full mental hypnosis.
Shuji Maruyama and Junichi Hayama’s Yu-Gi-Oh! Illustrations at Youmacon 2018
While the animators were answering questions during the Draw of the Cards panel, they were also busy putting pen to paper. What were they drawing? This panel was technically a Q&A panel, not a live drawing panel, so there were no cameras set up that pointed at their papers. So, the audience would just have to be surprised.
At the end of the panel, Shuji Maruyama and Junichi Hayama revealed what they had been working on and invited the audience to approach them and take photos.
Maruyama wowed the crowd with his Yusei Fudo and Jack Atlas:
Hayama’s Seto Kaiba and Yami Yugi left the audience awestruck:
Needless to say, everyone was astonished by the works Maruyama and Hayama managed to turn out while they were casually chatting with the audience. They are both truly masters of their craft.
These are the only two Yu-Gi-Oh! pieces that Hayama drew the entire weekend.
Maruyama, however, created more Yu-Gi-Oh! illustrations at other live drawing and Q&A panels that weren’t specifically dedicated to Yu-Gi-Oh!.
Here is another take on Yusei and Jack by Maruyama. This photo is from fellow animator Mamoru Yokota (@yokotamamoru).
Seto Kaiba was a very popular request for Maruyama. He drew Kaiba and Blue-Eyes White Dragon twice using two different styles at two different panels:
All of these illustrations by Maruyama and Hayama were given away to lucky audience members.
On Facebook, Yu-Gi-Oh! voice actress Erica Schroeder, who was also a guest at Youmacon, shared a story and photo of how she had the great fortune of running into Shuji Maruyama in her hotel lobby. After Maruyama learned that Akiza Izinski is her favorite character that she has played, he whipped up an original illustration for Erica in minutes.
Truly a moment she won’t ever forget!
At Youmacon’s Artists Alley, the animators had their own table set up where they accepted a very limited number of commissions over the weekend. When they weren’t attending panels or sightseeing in Detroit, they were busy drawing at their table. Youmacon attendees could commission an original piece of monochrome or full-color artwork on a shikishi — a hard paper board often used in Japan for autographs, paintings, and calligraphy.
Shuji Maruyama displayed two sample shikishi at the table — one with a color drawing of Yuma Tsukumo with Astral, and another with a monochrome drawing of Yami Yugi and Seto Kaiba standing back to back.
Throughout the weekend, all of the animators held autograph sessions where they each offered posters to fans that featured original illustrations from anime series that they’ve worked on.
Junichi Hayama’s print showed Saichi Sugimoto and Asirpa from Golden Kamuy. But Shuji Maruyama’s print was this masterpiece of Yusei Fudo, Jack Atlas, and Yami Yugi:
Want to see Shuji Maruyama and Junichi Hayama at more events? Contact your nearest anime convention’s guest relations staff and let them know!
Follow Shuji Maruyama on Twitter, @masyuu_nemunemu.
And follow Junichi Hayama on Twitter, @hayama11.
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If you enjoyed hearing from Shuji Maruyama and Junichi Hayama, check out my coverage of Youmacon 2017, where Hayama made his first American convention appearance. At that event, Hayama spoke in greater depth about his background, techniques, and the animation industry.
(Questions and answers have been edited for clarity and readability.)
Yu-Gi-Oh! Animator Junichi Hayama at Youmacon 2017
November 9, 2017 at 3:00 pm | Posted in Duel Monsters, Japanese, The Dark Side of Dimensions, Yu-Gi-Oh! | Leave a commentTags: interview, youmacon
Junichi Hayama, one of the most popular Yu-Gi-Oh! animators and animation directors among fans, was a special guest at Youmacon in Detroit, Michigan, this past weekend. Not only is Hayama a veteran of the Japanese anime industry with over 30 years of experience, he is also a gifted artist in his own right and has published some famous books cataloging his acclaimed brush illustrations.
Junichi Hayama served as the animation director for Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters episodes 94, 124, 161, 167, 173, and 179. He also worked as one of the key animators in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions. Outside of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Hayama is probably best known for the 13-episode JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA from 1993, where he served as the series’ character designer and one of its animation directors.
At Youmacon, Hayama shared the stage with Mamoru Yokota, a younger animator who has worked on series like Death Note, Naruto, and Gatchaman Crowds. Together, the pair held one Q&A panel and two live-drawing panels where they offered a rare look at their creation process and fielded numerous questions about their careers and the anime industry.
This post compiles all of the Yu-Gi-Oh!-related questions that the audience asked Hayama during his panels and highlights some of his more interesting opinions and responses about his background.
By @hayama11 (October 4, 2013)
Meet Junichi Hayama
How did you get started in your career as an animator?
I used to draw a lot of manga and show them to many producers to try to see if I could get them sold. But reading my own manga, I felt like they weren’t interesting or funny enough. So, I felt that I couldn’t become a manga artist myself, that I wasn’t good enough for it. When I graduated high school, I wanted to do something similar so I went into the anime industry instead.
Did you go to school for animation?
No, I went directly to an animation company.
How much freelance work did you do before you entered the animation industry?
I’m still classified as a freelancer, even now. I’m not tethered to any one company.
What was your first job?
What has been your most cherished and favorite thing you’ve worked on thus far?
Fist of the North Star. It’s not the project that I like the most but rather is the one that has left the strongest impression on me. This was where I learned a lot of the basics and standard kinds of jobs. It was kind of my stepping stone in a sense.
Is there a person who has been a major inspiration for you?
Masami Suda, from Fist of the North Star, when I first started working in the industry. Suda was an animator who worked on the characters in that project. He was a great animator and had a very cool way of drawing that was very inspirational for me and that led me to where I am today. His work is the standard on which I base my own work today.
Are there any anime or manga that you enjoyed when you were young that inspires your work today?
On the anime side, something that I felt was kind of cool and awesome was Combattler V. The character designs by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko still inspire me today. A lot of my drawings are very much related to his. On the manga side, there’s Chojin Rokku. It’s one of the manga that I used to read. Yuki Hijiri, who worked on that, is someone who’s still inspirational today.
What has been the most challenging project that you’ve worked on so far?
Shonan Bakusozoku. I worked on one of the OVA episodes. This series features a lot of motorcycles and bikes, and there are a lot of fight scenes and gangs in the episodes. In particular, I didn’t know how the structure of motorcycles worked. I never rode one myself and I never really understood how they worked. I spent about two weeks all like, “I don’t know how to draw this. I don’t understand this.” I spent a very long time scratching my head over this. I decided one day I was going to buy a classic model motorcycle to understand the structure. So I bought two plastic models from my part-time job. One of them was a full-fairing version and another one was a very popular version at the time. So, from building these, I was able to finally understand the structure and felt like I was able to fulfill that job. But while I was struggling with that job, I felt like I was never going to finish it and felt a little bit hopeless at the time.
What’s the hardest thing for you to draw?
Things that look like Pretty Cure.
What’s your favorite thing to draw?
The design process of the characters. Drawing them from different angles. That’s the most fun to draw.
When you were a young animator, did you ever think about becoming an animation director?
Yes, I definitely wanted to try it.
How did you feel the first time you worked as an animation director?
I was really nervous. It’s a lot of responsibility because there isn’t anybody else who is checking things over or fixing them for you. You’re the final word, so I was nervous. I was looking forward to it and it was fun, but still nerve-wracking.
By @hayama11 (October 17, 2014)
Junichi Hayama Talks Yu-Gi-Oh!
Are you enjoying Youmacon so far?
Yes, it’s very interesting. [Hayama points at a couple cosplaying Kaiba and Mokuba sitting in the audience.] They’re one of the interesting parts.
How did you first get to work for Studio Gallop?
I kind of happened to be in between jobs. I got a hold of my friend’s company and kind of asked, “Do you have any jobs or anything that I can work on?” And he’s like, “Well, we have this Yu-Gi-Oh! TV series that we are working on. So why don’t you work as an animation director for it?” And that’s how I got involved with it.
What was your favorite character or scene to draw for Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions?
I actually haven’t seen the finished project. I really liked the first half of the movie when Kaiba and Yugi duel each other. Process-wise, I was kind of only involved in the first stage or so, so I wasn’t able to complete the project with them. It’s a little bit of a sensitive subject.
In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, did you get to draw Aigami?
Who’s Aigami?
[Hayama is taking requests during a live-drawing session.] Can you draw Marik?
[Hayama puts his face in his hands then pretends to cry. He won’t do it. It’s too difficult.]
[Hayama is still taking requests during a live-drawing session.] Can you draw Dark Magician Girl?
Ehh?! No, I can’t!
Who is your favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! character to draw?
Hmm, it’s tough to say.
By @hayama11 (October 17, 2014)
Junichi Hayama Talks Art and the Anime Industry
What art supplies do you currently use?
Mechanical pencils. Pentel Art Brush pens. I think there are around 16 colors.
How do you decide which colors to use to accent your art?
I don’t use too many colors. Using just a few colors has more impact.
Do you ever do any digital work? Have you felt any differences with the shift to doing more digital work in the industry?
Yes, I’ve used it. About ten years ago, there was a remake of Gaiking and I had to use digital back then too. So I’ve been using it for quite a while now. [Hayama searches for video of the first Gaiking ending to show some of the digital art he did there.]
What do you think of artists who only know how to draw digitally?
They can do as they want. I don’t have a strong opinion about that.
Is it possible for Americans to work in the Japanese animation industry?
Yes, it’s possible, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it because the work-life balance isn’t great and you don’t really have any free time.
Some of the productions you have worked on are based on manga. How often do you interact with the creator?
It’s not impossible to get to meet with creators and manga artists. There are a few occasions. But the majority of the time, I’m usually working with the director. So working with the director and having meetings and such where we can talk together.
What tips would you give to artists who are just starting off?
Just draw what you like. When you’re doing it as a job, you can’t just draw whatever you want so it becomes a little bit more difficult. So when you’re a beginner, just enjoy it.
Are there any changes you would like to see in the anime industry?
The animation industry is known for its very, very long hours and its poor life balance without a lot of free time. I wish that everybody could have an easier time with a more balanced life and enjoy themselves more.
By @hayama11 (October 17, 2014)
Junichi Hayama’s Likes
How much do you know about Western animation?
My knowledge isn’t super extensive, but I do like some American animation, in particular The Simpsons.
Are there any current shows that you like?
The American shows Arrow and The Flash. [Hayama searches for illustrations of Green Arrow and the Flash on his phone that he previously made and shows the audience.]
What’s your favorite anime, in general?
What’s your favorite food and drink?
My favorite food is tofu. My favorite drink is Wild Turkey.
What’s your favorite sake?
Wild Turkey.
What kind of hobbies do you have?
Drinking.
What’s your favorite genre?
Action.
What’s your favorite color?
Vermilion.
What’s your favorite movie?
Back to the Future.
By @hayama11 (October 17, 2014)
Junichi Hayama Draws Live
Junichi Hayama draws with brush pens. These pens have a reservoir that holds ink, like a fountain pen, but have a tip that emulates the look of traditional Japanese brushes. Hayama’s artwork is so well known that he has published some books focusing solely on his brush techniques and illustrations. At Youmacon, he showed off artwork from two such books: Brush Work and Animation and Design Techniques for Anime Characters.
There are said to be two different types of artists in Japan: method drawers and talent drawers. Method drawers are artists who can consistently draw the same thing over and over again for everyone. If they practice their method, they can draw very fast. Hayama is a talent drawer. He has an image in his mind, which he translates directly to pen and paper.
This talent of Hayama’s was on full display throughout the live-drawing panels. Not once did Hayama ever sketch out his drawings with a pencil first. Instead, he drew completely freehand. He began each piece by waving his pen over his paper, creating an invisible outline of the image he has visualized in his mind, then immediately started inking. This process makes his illustrations all the more incredible.
Hayama created seven illustrations during his two live-drawing panels. Only one was a Yu-Gi-Oh! piece, but it was a particularly outstanding one featuring Yami Yugi and Seto Kaiba:
Fellow animator Mamoru Yokota, who has not worked on Yu-Gi-Oh! before, showed that he has the skills to be hired for the next Yu-Gi-Oh! project by offering his own take on Yami Yugi:
In Japan, animators normally only sell their works in books. But at Youmacon’s Artists’ Alley, Hayama offered attendees something that Japanese fans never get: the chance to commission a piece of art. Not only that, he was willing to draw anything, not just characters from series that he has worked on. Asking animators to draw for them is considered a faux pas in Japan. There aren’t really events like the ones he participated in at Youmacon, said Hayama.
By @hayama11 (May 31, 2015)
Follow Junichi Hayama on Twitter, @hayama11.
And follow Mamoru Yokota on Twitter, @yokotamamoru.
(Questions and answers have been edited for clarity and readability.)
Update (November 9, 2018): Junichi Hayama returned to Youmacon in 2018, together with fellow Yu-Gi-Oh! animator Shuji Maruyama. The two held a panel dedicated solely to Yu-Gi-Oh!, answered fans’ questions, and showed off plenty of amazing illustrations. Check out my write-up of the event!
Yu-Gi-Oh! Manga Editor Yoshihisa Heishi at NYCC 2017
October 12, 2017 at 11:00 pm | Posted in Duel Monsters, Japanese, Series 1, Yu-Gi-Oh! | Leave a commentTags: interview, manga, new york comic con
In Japan, manga editors are more than just people who know the nuts and bolts of the publishing industry. Editors work intimately with manga creators, exchanging story ideas and guiding the creators to success, and even look after the creators’ health and well-being. When Kazuki Takahashi’s Yu-Gi-Oh! manga was first serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in Japan, its founding editor was Yoshihisa Heishi. Heishi eventually rose through the ranks to become the magazine’s editor in chief, and today still works at Shueisha’s shonen manga department as its director.
This past weekend, Heishi attended New York Comic Con where he was a guest at VIZ Media’s Weekly Shonen Jump panel. He offered some tidbits about Yu-Gi-Oh! and Takahashi during a brief Q&A.
“How did Egypt become such an important theme in the story?” asked Urian Brown, an editor at VIZ and the panel’s moderator.
“Before the manga started, Takahashi-sensei was really interested in Egypt and Egyptian culture,” explained Heishi through his translator, English WSJ Editor in Chief Andy Nakatani. “The Millennium Puzzle was originally not supposed to be used. It was going to be a different item. But since he ended up using the Millennium Puzzle, Egypt became a more important part of the story.”
“What was it supposed to be originally?” asked Brown.
“I can’t say,” Heishi laughed.
“What was it like working with Takahashi-sensei?” Brown continued. “Can you give us any details about his creative process?”
“When Takahashi-sensei was making the manga, I didn’t really see him having trouble or questioning himself when he was creating the manga,” replied Heishi. “He would go through the struggle unseen, not out in the forefront. Every week, they’d be playing card games and video games and things. He would play every week with his assistants. […] The ideas came from that.”
“Did you try out any of the dangerous Shadow Games in the manga, like yo-yos on the roof or the nitroglycerin air hockey?” asked Brown.
“No! Kids, please don’t do this at home.”
* * *
Check out video of the full panel for discussions and insights about even more Shonen Jump titles, like Rurouni Kenshin and My Hero Academia.
Related posts:
– ‘Spotlight on Yu-Gi-Oh! & Creator Kazuki Takahashi’ Panel at SDCC 2015
Video Interview: Yu-Gi-Oh! Composers Álvarez, Sheinfeld on All Access
May 11, 2017 at 2:00 pm | Posted in English dubbed, Other Stuff, Yu-Gi-Oh! | Leave a commentTags: interview, music
Yu-Gi-Oh! composers Elik Álvarez (left) and Freddy Sheinfeld
Last week, Elik Álvarez and Freddy Sheinfeld, two members of the Yu-Gi-Oh! music composition team, appeared on All Access, a video series that features in-depth interviews with composers. The program is produced by Kaya Savas of Film.Music.Media, a website dedicated to the ins and outs of the film music industry.
Álvarez and Sheinfeld, both originally from Venezuela, talk about how they met in the United States and started their own company and how they dove into the world of composing for animations like Yu-Gi-Oh!, from the Pyramid of Light to The Dark Side of Dimensions and everything in between. Some of the topics they discuss include:
- Their musical backgrounds and how they discovered film music.
- How they define the sound of a show and their approaches to thematic writing.
- What it’s like composing with each other and what happens when there’s a disagreement.
- How their approach to composition differs when writing for narrative fictions and nature documentaries.
- The aspects of a movie or show — whether the cinematography, script, characters, or story itself — that draw the first note out of them.
- The negatives of the film composition industry, like the decay in appreciation of quality film music and the need for composers to follow popular trends.
- The positives of the industry, like the influx of new directors, fresh content, opportunities to grow.
There are numerous funny and enlightening moments in this interview. Álvarez and Sheinfeld got a good laugh remembering when they first met in the U.S. at a conducting class. At the time, they didn’t realize that they were both from Venezuela. They only spoke to each other in English, each thinking that the other was Greek or German.
Álvarez explained how, when composing for Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s, they enjoyed going “really dark” with the scores because it was such a change in style for them compared to the previous series. Unfortunately for them, they never got anywhere with this new sound. After writing close to an entire episode, the producers asked them to dial it down a notch. It was “too Nine Inch Nails meets Yu-Gi-Oh!” laughed Sheinfeld.
A show’s sounds sometimes develop organically and in unexpected ways. Sheinfeld reminisced about writing Yu-Gi-Oh! GX’s rock-oriented score and how the music he submitted was really similar to the ones that he used to play with his college rock band. As luck would have it, the producers really liked this style, so writing for that show became like a jam session for him and his style was integrated with the sounds of the show.
Give this interview a listen to hear more great moments like these!
(h/t Freddy Sheinfeld)
Related posts:
– Composer Elik Álvarez Talks Yu-Gi-Oh! Music
– Yu-Gi-Oh! Composers Álvarez, Sheinfeld Talk The Dark Side of Dimensions
– Yu-Gi-Oh! Composers Álvarez, Sheinfeld Interviewed on Soundtrack Alley Podcast
Yu-Gi-Oh! Composers Álvarez, Sheinfeld Interviewed on Soundtrack Alley Podcast
April 9, 2017 at 1:00 pm | Posted in English dubbed, Other Stuff, The Dark Side of Dimensions, Yu-Gi-Oh! | 1 CommentTags: interview, music
Yu-Gi-Oh! composers Elik Álvarez (left) and Freddy Sheinfeld
On Friday, Elik Álvarez and Freddy Sheinfeld, two members of a team of talented composers for the many Yu-Gi-Oh! series and movies, appeared on the most recent episode of Soundtrack Alley, a podcast that celebrates the love of movie soundtracks. In a 40-minute interview, the duo speak with podcast host Randy Williams about their work in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions and other recent projects. This post includes a few highlights from the interview.
Adding a New Flavor to an Old Favorite
Elik Álvarez and Freddy Sheinfeld are both composers originally from Venezuela who are now working out of Los Angeles. Their involvement in Yu-Gi-Oh! began with the first Yu-Gi-Oh! movie, Pyramid of Light, which led them to work on season 3 of the classic Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters series and, eventually, every season and spin-off since then. For Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, the pair tried to move away from the style of music seen in the TV series in an effort to make the score a little more cinematic, explained Álvarez.
“How [do you] make it more cinematic?” asked Álvarez. “Well, you just do. That’s what you do as a composer. You are able to switch gears when they need to.”
One of the things that the two composers really pressed for in The Dark Side of Dimensions was the inclusion of more choirs.
“That doesn’t mean we haven’t used choirs in the rest of the series, but not as much probably as we do in this one. We really pushed hard for that one,” Álvarez added. But the most challenging aspect of scoring wasn’t actually the composition process.
Álvarez continued: “What is difficult is to have people who oversee the music — the music producer, the producers, the writers, whoever is listening to the score — this movie is a little bit different because even people in Japan were listening to this, people in Konami, I believe. So the difficult part is to convince them, ‘Listen, let’s try to do something different.’ They are so used to listening to a certain style of music. To propose something new takes time and persuasion and things like that. But to switch gears, in my opinion, is something that comes very natural to us.”
Sheinfeld noted that the their experience with Yu-Gi-Oh! has come full circle. The pair began with Duel Monsters, which had a certain style of music. They then moved on to other series, each with their own unique sound; GX was a little more rock-oriented and 5D’s had electronic industrial elements. Now, after more than ten years, they’ve returned to the original Yu-Gi-Oh! and needed to approach it with a fresh perspective.
“We kind of came back to some of the original ideas as far as the themes that we needed to use because those are characters that everybody knows,” said Sheinfeld. “But at the same time, we wanted to do, like Elik said, something fresh, something more cinematic. And somehow, the way it worked, to sound a little bit more cinematic was actually going a little bit old school.
“It’s funny because in the original Yu-Gi-Oh!, if you listen to the music, there’s a lot of electronics going on. A lot of electronic percussion, a lot of techno stuff combined with an orchestra. But [for The Dark Side of Dimensions], we were a little bit more pure. We tried to avoid that just a little bit just to sound a little bit more modern, which is weird but it kind of worked that way. A lot of those sounds [in the original Yu-Gi-Oh!] now sound a little bit dated if we use it, so to sound fresh, we avoided it as much as we could. We were for a more traditional sound. You know, still mixing some of the modern electronic sounds that we use these days to still have that modern feel. But overall, it was a little bit more traditional orchestration approach to this film.”
Getting the Style Just Right
Both Álvarez and Sheinfeld gave a lot of credit to Mike Brady, 4K Media’s music producer, who offers them lots of freedom to compose to picture. Brady doesn’t give the composers a temp track — a sample piece of filler music that editors and producers use to set the mood of a scene.
“We just get plain animation with dialog and rough sound effects and sometimes rough dialog, and we just write music to it,” explained Álvarez. “So that’s a very, very important point I want to make. We’re pretty lucky with this because temp tracks sometimes could be a big help, sometimes they don’t. So one thing for this is we don’t get any temp tracks. He just sends us picture with dialog, and that’s it. There is no music there. So we really create from scratch.”
“I think the producer, Mike, is very good at what he does,” Sheinfeld said. “Like Elik says, he doesn’t give a temp track, but he has a very specific idea of how the show works. It took a long time to understand it but now it’s a matter of trying to understand what is important, what you need to accomplish with the music, and on the other side, what you can add to it as far as being creative. So it’s always that balance. You want to make it work and you also want to make it as cool as possible. There’s a lot of work involved. As far as making things work, it’s funny because it’s even though it’s an animation, I think the level of thought that goes behind each detail is much more deeper than a lot of the dramatic films that I’ve done in the past.”
After working on Yu-Gi-Oh! for more than ten years, Álvarez and Sheinfeld have a good feel for what the producers are looking for and what style of music works well in the anime.
“We understand the language pretty well of these types of animations,” said Álvarez. “I gotta tell you, it’s very, very complex. It’s very complex. Sometimes, on TV, you don’t really listen that much to the music. There is a lot of dialog. They don’t mix the music that loud. But it’s very complex what we do over here, and it took us quite a few years just to nail down the style and not to be afraid.”
And getting the style just right really is the key, since the music dictates so much of how characters and scenes are perceived by the viewers.
“As Freddy said, each of the characters over there, they have their own personality and we need to make sure that people can understand that,” Álvarez said. He elaborated on this point using Kaiba as an example, explaining that when composing for this character, Brady emphasized not to treat Kaiba as a bad, evil guy but also not as a good, heroic guy.
“These characters are complex. And you know, people don’t realize that,” stated Álvarez. “And again, when you see it on TV, and there is a lot of dialog going on all the time. But we’re behind that trying to make sure that people don’t perceive Kaiba as an evil guy because he’s not. So how do you make that balance?”
Teamwork, Inspirations, Future Projects, and More
Elik Álvarez and Freddy Sheinfeld discussed several more topics with Randy Williams, including how they have honed their skills from working together, how they met fellow Yu-Gi-Oh! composer Joel Douek, what types of film music they enjoy, and what some of their future project include. It’s a smart and enlightening interview, so give it a listen! Be sure to listen all the way to the end because they share a few of their full-length pieces from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions and other works.
Related posts:
– Composer Elik Álvarez Talks Yu-Gi-Oh! Music
– Yu-Gi-Oh! Composers Álvarez, Sheinfeld Talk The Dark Side of Dimensions
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