Eight Individual Key Visuals for "Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26" Unveiled, with Comments from Seven Directors Including Tetsuaki Watanabe and Nobuyuki Takeuchi

Full Comments from the Seven Directors

■ "A Couple Clucking Chickens Were Still Kickin' in the Schoolyard" Director Seishiro Nagaya
This is Tatsuki Fujimoto's debut work, and you can feel the essence that connects to his later works in various places. The initial impulse of the piece is explosive, so I focused on not diluting its intensity. As a result, I believe we were able to achieve this with the wonderful work of all the staff! Every section—animation, color, background, photography, sound, editing—strived to express that impulse as a video work. As for the story, I hope you enjoy not only the relationship between Yuto and Ami but also the fate of Yohei and Moemi's budding romance!

■ "Sasaki Stopped a Bullet" Director Nobukage Kimura
For this work, we made various efforts to expand on the passion of the characters with animation. For the scenes where emotions clash, we had stage actors read the original manga and filmed their performances in live-action. Using this footage as a reference, we optimized the timing, poses, and expressions as animation acting through animation and direction checks, followed by the supervision of the animation director. Furthermore, we pursued a unique appeal in every section—from color and art to photography, CG, sound, and music—to complete the work.

■ "Love is Blind" Director Nobuyuki Takeuchi
The feeling of a major event happening when an unpopular student council president, who's going to an overseas university after graduation, confesses to his junior! This is a play of dialogue with the characters standing in place with almost no movement, but there's a sense of speed that permeates the entire work! The pure passion I felt from the drawings! The thoroughly cool composition!! I tried to direct it in a way that was a direct expression of the images I felt when I first read this work. I would be very happy if viewers would pay attention to Ibuki and Yuri in the anime.

■ "Shikaku" Director Naoya Ando
When I first read "Shikaku," I felt that despite it being violent, dark, and chaotic, these two characters were somehow cute... and I tried to convey that feeling in the visuals. What kind of life has Shikaku lived? What does she like? When you think about it, she's actually a pretty normal girl, aside from being a hitman. A regular apartment, a regular girl's room, but with guns scattered around... With that in mind, the spaces where Shikaku and Yuger live are filled with various details. Also, at the end of the original manga, it says Tatsuki Fujimoto drew this while he had a 39-degree fever. He's a genius, isn't he? I hope you all watch it as you feel it, without thinking too deeply.

■ "Mermaid Rhapsody" Director Tetsuaki Watanabe
Someone told me that I can't make a normal anime, so I made this in defiance. I wonder what "normal" is (laughs). I want to eat fish, not mermaids.

■ "Woke-Up-as-a-Girl Syndrome" Director Kazuaki Terasawa
Since this is a compilation of short stories, I worked on creating visuals that expand the range of video expression. The depiction of small objects and backgrounds is filled with playful details, so I would be happy if you could find them. Also, the story's setting has been changed to the Heisei era, around the time the author was drawing this. Personally, I thought Tatsuki Fujimoto's works and Heisei J-POP music were a perfect match, so I hope you enjoy that as well.

■ "Nayuta of the Prophecy" Director Tetsuaki Watanabe
Someone told me that I can't make a unique anime, so I made this in defiance. I also love the character Nayuta. (I love Kenji-kun too.) Blood-splatter. Severed eyeballs.

■ "Sisters" Director Shu Honma
To draw the croquis for this work, I pulled out the drawing tools I used in high school. The moment I opened the lid, the smell of pencils and kneaded erasers was just as I remembered it—. The pure emotions of that time, like impatience, fun, and frustration, all came rushing back to me at once. I think the work "Sisters" has the power to make anyone remember those nostalgic feelings. This is the final work of the eight being released in this project, and I would be happy if you would watch it to the very end.

(C)藤本タツキ／集英社・「藤本タツキ 17-26」製作委員会