Taniguchi: Good morning, I'm Taniguchi Goro. I'm the director for Scryed and Mugen no Revival. I also have a lot of other works, which I'll be talking about briefly later. I worked in a lot of other areas in the production department too. First I was the chief of Gasaraki, one of the rotating staff at G Gundam and Gundam Wing. Yuusha o Gaigaigar, and I helped with the storyboards in Kiddy Grade. I have so many titles to go through right now in my mind. (Laughs) I forgot a lot of the titles, so I'll just leave it at that. (Laughs)

Kuroda: I thought he was going to run through his whole resume. (Laughs). Yousuke Kuroda, I'm basically a writer. I have a lot of credits, so please bear with me; Tenchi Muyo, Magical Girl Pretty Sammy, Trigun, Infinite Ryvius, Scryed, Kokoro Toshokan, Excel Saga, Onegai Teacher. I'll just limit it to that right now. (Laughs)

Q: When working for general TV shows, do you find that there are a lot of sudden changes to the story arc, or are there usually no changes from beginning to end?

Taniguchi: Kuroda-san has more experience in this. Personally, I haven't worked on a lot of manga titles that were made into TV. I'm actually working on a project that will overcome a lot of the problems he'll be talking about fairly soon. (Laughs)

Kuroda: The first thing that usually happens during a project is the sponsor coming in and asking us to come up with a theme for the project. Every episode we're working on, we basically come together and debate over stuff. During that time, we can change directions. People usually come up with good ideas, and it's usually necessary to change the story to make it better. If you see the American entertainment industry, the script is usually made before anything is started. But here, we are working simultaneously with the scripting, so those are the differences you see between the industries.

Q: What was the reason for doing a sequel to Onegai Teacher?

Kuroda: There were two big things. One of them was that the sponsor really wanted to make a sequel. (Laughs) And the staff wanted to get together and redo it again. Not just the director and the writer, but the voice actors and the music composer wanted to get back together.

Q: How do you usually convert the script from a manga like Trigun, Excel Saga or Onegai Teacher? Do you read through the manga, are you given a list of dialogue from the manga, etc?

Kuroda: I might be an exception to the rule, but I usually read most of the manga before I get the project. One of the first things I do is become friends with the manga artist. (Laughs) Since we're all basically around the same age group, instead of chatting for really long periods of time, I like to hold a party so we can all get together first, then go over the small details later. With people I can't do that with, I don't feel like doing their script. (Laughs)

Q: If you're doing a show based on a manga, how much creative licensing or leeway do you have? How much do you have to stay true to the manga? Can you change anything for your own purposes and to add your own touches?

Kuroda: I do want to stay true to the story, since the manga came first. So, there are two factors. One of them is society and regulations, which means you can't show certain things. A good example is Excel Saga. (Laughs) The second is that some things that are expressed very well in the manga can't be brought over into animation. So we have to change those things since they don't transfer very well between mediums.

Taniguchi: One of the things that happen in transitions of manga to animation is that animation can cover a lot more ground in one episode than manga. So we usually have to combine a few manga episodes to create a single episode of animation. During that time, we have to sort out the characters, the plotlines; sometimes you do have to readjust according to what's going on.

Q: When you're working on a TV series, is there more pressure because you have to break the story down to follow the TV schedule and deadlines being shown every week, or do you decide on the main stories you want to do, and then branch out into the side stories?

Taniguchi: It depends from project to project, so I'll talk about what happened with Scryed. How Scryed came about was that we were drinking together, and that was how the project started. (Laughs) So, the whole project was started based on that drinking conversation. Kuroda basically broke down the plot and we feedback with each other to get the basic idea of what's going on in each episode.

Q: In the Trigun TV series, you killed off a major character, Wolfwood, who is still alive in the manga. Was it because the sponsor wanted to change the storyline, or do you feel the storyline should have gone that way?

Kuroda: Regarding Trigun, when I gave the script to (Yasuhiro) Nightow to get his comment, he basically wrote down "Oh, so that's how Trigun is going to end." So I answered, "Yes, it is." Nightow replied, "Thank you, this is good reference material." (Laughs) But that's a weird exception to the rule. And because of all the drinking. (Laughs)

Q: You've worked with Rikudo Koushi in Excel Saga. Do you find it rather hard to convert his … "Unusual" subject material to script and then to animation?

Kuroda: There is a lot of black humor involved in his work. I basically tried to get the audience to understand and revolt against that part. (Laughs) So one of the things you have to consider is that South Park is not very popular in Japan. It's because the Japanese can't understand that kind of humor yet, so it was a challenge. If I had wanted to go that far, I can, but they wouldn't have let me. After Excel Saga was finished, I had to apologize to 4 companies. (Laughs) One of them was Sunrise, and Shueisha became silent on the issue. I had to apologize to a lot of people as well. Fortunately, most of them just said, "oh, I guess it's okay." So even though Excel Saga wasn't that extreme, I still had to apologize. (Laughs)

Q: Are you doing anything special while you're in California?

Taniguchi: Do you mean during the con or having fun by myself? I want to go to a studio and see the making of a film. I'm very curious to see how they do it in America.

Kuroda: The beach in Santa Monica is very beautiful, so I played around too much. (Laughs)

Q: Did you have any expectations for your first con in America? How do you feel?

Taniguchi: I didn't really want to think, I was just expecting things as they go along. American fans are far more open, and they make me enjoy the con more. But like (Kazuki) Akane-san, I'm a director, so I worry about what people think of my work.

Kuroda: It's the reverse for me. I had a lot of work at the time, and I was feeling down. But my friends say I have to come over here. They say it's like paradise; they want to live here all the time if they could. I had to see paradise, so I came down here. After Puni Puni Poemi, I don't really care what people think. (Laughs)

Taniguchi: I actually had to wake him up this morning because he really doesn't care.

Kuroda: Ah, sorry. (Laughs)

Q: You're meeting some of your colleagues for the first time during this con. Are you intimidated, or are you supporting each other?

Taniguchi: It's a good opportunity, meeting each other, becoming friends. We might work on a project together.

Kuroda: It's fun, and there's a lot of potential, but it's just so busy, so it might take some time before we can do a project together.

Taniguchi: Yes, maybe in around three years.

Q: Where do you get your work? Does the sponsor or manga artist ask you to translate the work?

Kuroda: There are usually three sources. The first one is the manga artist, the second is the sponsor, and the third is the director.

Taniguchi: It's the same for me too, but producers or other people call me too. I have to write up the proposal to the company and wait for the go-ahead. I have no idea why some people call me. The big joke was because other people rejected it first. (Laughs)

Kuroda: For me, they usually say, "Because I know you." (Laughs)

Q: When you are working on a show, are you thinking of the Japanese audience, or are you going for a more global appeal?

Taniguchi: About three years ago, I started thinking of the global perspective, about what I can do to make it more universal. As a creator, I don't want to just be seen by the Japanese audience, I want to be seen by as many people as possible. As of now, I'm trying to approach certain things in a global perspective. Please look forward to my next work; I'm trying to challenge myself in that direction.

Kuroda: From my perspective, I've been thinking about it for about 9 years. Everything is going global, and we have to keep that in mind because there are different markets for people to get a hold of Anime. So on my next project, I'm working with Yasuhiro Nightow on a project with the global audience in mind.

Q: What motivates you to continue working in this business?

Taniguchi: Someone please tell me why I do this. (Laughs)

Kuroda: For me, it's the simple concept of "move". In animation, you're not physically moving something; you're making it move. In animation, you're not only making films, but you're moving things. That's what really fascinates me.

Taniguchi: Three things will always keep me going. One of them is writing down all the actions on the time sheet. The second is seeing how it moves with the time sheet. The final one is seeing the finished product; it's always motivating. But I always like breaking down how the drawings are going to move and reworking the times. It's one of the things I enjoy to this day.