Harutoshi Fukui Interview

From Young King, February 27, 2017.

What I want to depict are “love,” “feeling,” and “hope.”

What happens when you depict an “authentic” version of the “genuine article” without fabrication? The answer is in the movie Space Battleship Yamato 2202, Soldiers of Love.

The easy road or the hard road — if you are asked to pick one, an overwhelming number of people who would choose the first. However, there are those among them who would daringly choose the second. Harutoshi Fukui, who works on the series composition and scripts for Yamato 2202, is such a person.

“In my own judgment, it has to be worth doing. In that sense, there is a huge proposition that Yamato 2202 must clear, which is that it must be an overwhelmingly fascinating work that exceeds its predecessor — a tremendously challenging task.”

What Fukui calls the predecessor was Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato, Soldiers of Love, which opened in 1978 and mobilized more than 4 million people at the time. This immortal masterpiece, which shines in the history of anime, dispensed with the prior definition of “anime is only for children.”

“I was still six years old when the TV series started, so I didn’t see it in real time. I saw it for the first time when the feature film version was broadcast on TV, and I was impressed that such a great work could be made as anime. I remember shedding tears. Adults were drawn into it, not just children.”

The characters and worldview do not change between the predecessor and the modern version. Eh!? Does that mean it’s just a simple remake? Simple things are not satisfactory to Harutoshi Fukui.

“If you change the underlying roots, it won’t be Yamato any more. In this work, it is ‘love.’ In those days, it was a warning that a crisis of humanism was approaching. It caught a moment when that crisis was coming into view. The depiction of ‘love’ in that time was a major proposition, and I think it was answered 100%.”

Of course, that’s not all there was to it. Just as what’s “right” changes when you change where you stand, there are different sorts of “love” which each of the characters is carrying. In the previous work, a powerful enemy invading the Earth breathed life into the characters, and by drawing on those feelings it can be transformed into a completely new story with depth.

“There is ‘love,’ there is ‘feeling,’ and there is ‘hope.’ This is the Yamato I want to depict, and for those seeing it for the first time, I can recommend this work with absolute confidence.”

Is it just a simple remake? Or is it a completely new work called for by these times? The answer is on the screen.



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