“Gintama: Yoshiwara in Flames” – the latest iteration of the “Gintama” story – previewed this week at Lucca Comics and Games, Europe’s largest Comic-Con, prior to a theatrical release in Italy. Variety spoke with director Naoya Andô and producer Ryo Nakamuray about their continuation of the saga.
“Gintama” started life as a manga, authored and drawn by Hideaki Sorachi. Set in an alternative, sci-fi version of late-Edo-period Tokyo, the Earth has been invaded by the Amanto, an alien species, and three friends set off on a personal mission.
The manga became a long-running 367-episode anime series and has had three previous big-screen spin-offs. “Gintama: Yoshiwara in Flames” is the fourth cinema outing for the series.
How did you want to approach this franchise without losing its soul but at the same time making it suitably cinematic?
Naoya Andô: When we started planning this film, we already knew that there would be many action scenes. We were keen to use the CinemaScope ultrawide ratio as well as using 3D in order to be able to move the camera more, and give us more variety, as well as keep the camera a little distant from the subjects so we could frame the shots better and really appreciate the design and setting. It’s for this reason we made this choice.
This story was already told in the TV series but despite the title Yoshiwara didn’t burn. But here we see it burn really.
Naoya Andô: Our producer Takashi Maekawa also worked on the television series and so I asked him, are we going to actually burn the town this time? And the producer said: “Yes this time we’re going to burn everything.” And so we had talked among ourselves about how we were going to do it and the group made a creative decision to do it.
How important is Lucca Comic and Games for you to reach European fans and markets?
Naoya Andô: Obviously, I am very honored and happy to have been invited to such an important event as Lucca. Up til now, we haven’t brought the films to Europe. This time we decided to try and bring the film here. Yesterday, we saw how the Italian fans of “Gintama” love the series and we were very happy to see the warmth of the reception we got.
Returning to such a well-loved narrative arc as “Yoshiwara in Flames,” how did you deal with the high expectations that audiences would have?
Ryo Nakamuray: As you say, even in the original manga, this arc was hugely popular as well as the anime, but we felt there was enough time and we had the benefit of working on a different scale as well.
How do you transfer from television to the big screen?
Naoya Andô: Obviously we tried to find aspects that were big and impressive both in the audio and visual aspects. But we finished the anime five years prior to beginning the film and in these five years, the technology has made great leaps forward. So we wanted to use these new technologies to push the film in new directions, especially using the 3D in the animation. We also worked on the music as well. There is a lot of new music.
There was a version of the film released earlier this year in Japan and then a new version released in September with over a hundred changed shots. What was behind this decision?
Naoya Andô: We released the version in February because we had a deadline to respect and the film was finished and ready to be released, but we also knew that there were shots which weren’t perfect and could be improved and so when we had the opportunity we went back and perfected them. We were very proud of the film we released in February but with the opportunity of the DVD release we decided to go back and work again on the film and we retouched over 200 shots.
In the end titles there are tens of studios which appear from China to Indonesia to Vietnam. How do you coordinate so many teams?
Ryo Nakamuray: In animation, you’re always dividing elements into teams. Some will be experts in character, over action scenes, etc., so we are always choosing the collaborators and animators who will be best for each element and so we’re always meeting up with these different studios and groups. Every group will have a team leader who is responsible for their work.
The film also has quite a lot of humor and meta-humor.
Naoya Andô: Humor is very difficult to do and especially to translate culturally. It’s very, very difficult to do. We had one director who worked principally on that. What we figured out was that it was best not to present the humor to the audience as this bit is really funny, but rather have the characters themselves joke between themselves and the audience could listen in and enjoy the humor.
