This year is looking to be a good one for Anime Expo. Anisong World Matsuri will feature multiple anime-related vocalists such as Eir Aoi, Yoko Isida, JAM Project, T.M. Revolution and several others. Anime guests will include Final Fantasy and Vampire Hunter D character designer Yoshitaka Amano, Monster Musune creator OKAYADO, Your Lie In April author Naoshi Arakawa, and director Shingo Natsume of One Punch Man and Space Dandy most recently. Also, as this is the 30th anniversary of Viz Media, we might be seeing some new events and celebrations from them as well.
Last year’s Anime Expo was quite a big to do. In addition to reaching over 95,000 attendees, the con gave folks a chance to see a red carpet premiere screening of Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection of F alongside the cast, as shown briefly here:
They were also given a chance to meet more of the cast of Viz Media’s efforts to re-dub Sailor Moon more faithfully to the original Japanese storyline than the previous American dub by Nelvana. You can see the panel here.
Robotech fans got to celebrate the show’s 30th anniversary at a panel announcing newer initiatives for the franchise, including Mark Canton and Giani Nunnari as producers, 300 screenwriter Michael Gordon, and director James Wan of Furious 7 fame. Harmony Gold producer Tommy Yune spoke about the team’s fondness for the original show’s designs taken from Macross, Southern Cross and Genesis Climber Mospeada, but indicated that it’s been a long time since those designs had been created and that like real-life fighter craft, weaponry has evolved since then, and so would the designs for the live action film. As to other video projects, Lionsgate had tried to distribute ADV’s English dub of Macross as part of “Robotech: The Classic Collection” in a niche release but it didn’t do well, so the project was canceled.
Several prominent anime creators and producers were in attendance. Notably among them was Eiko Tanaka, founder, CEO and president of Studio 4°C which celebrates its 30th Anniversary this year. The animator turned businesswoman is also the chief executive officer of another production company called Beyond C. She’s served as animation producer on works such as Tekkonkinkreet, Mind Game and the Berserk movie trilogy, among others. Appearing alongside director Yuta Sano, we had the opportunity to speak to her about her career and her most recent projects.
Tanaka reminisced a bit about her time as a line producer for Studio Ghibli on My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service, which were released around the same time as Katsuhro Otomo’s Akira. “I worked with the same creators I had been same at the time of Akira. I’m not missing Studio Ghibli because I worked with those same folks (on other projects) after leaving.”
She also spoke about working on Otomo’s follow-up project Memories. “At the time there were many creators who looked up to him, and he wanted to introduce new creators to the world. For Memories, he initiated a new structure to present them and I produced it. He believed in me.”
Tanaka then elaborated on how she came to work on American projects such as Thundercats and Batman: Gotham Knight. “When Memories was completed, we sent it to many movie festivals with great response. When The Wachowskis and Joel Silver saw it, they were big fans and visited Studio 4c. When The Matrix was coming to Japan’s theaters, they offered the The Animatrix and it was successful. So they kept offering more projects to do.”
She also spoke about the company’s collaboration with Comcept to bring the Red Ash experience to different mediums. “This project is about working and putting together two different worlds: anime and games. There are different creative talents for each stage.” She also emphasized that the animation extention, Red Ash: The Animation – Magicada, which was successfully crowdfunded for $150,000 by kickstarter, was entirely done by Studio 4C, not Comcept.
The confident CEO stated why anime fans around the world look forward to works from her production company. “The reason why Studio 4c is trusted is because of our very stable, high quality output. We have strong passion for the work. We’re not going to give up until we put out something good.”
