FLCLick Noise - Episode 3

[Table of Contents available here]

STORY: Eri Ninamori is the class president of Naota's class. Under her leadership, the class is preparing a theater performance for the cultural festival. Meannwhile, due to an article written by Naota's father Kamon, a scandal arises involving embezzlement by Ninamori's father, the mayor of the city. The preparations for the play "Puss in Boots" are underway, but Naota refuses to participate, considering it "childish". But when Ninamori is unable to return home, she comes instead to Naota's house...

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Interviewer: Episode 3 is "Marquis de Carabas", right? This is Ninamori's episode. She seems like the typical class president character, but she doesn't give off the straightforward "good girl" vibe.

Tsurumaki: Yeah, I just can't really get that ‘moe’¹ feeling for a girl who's just a normal ‘good girl’ type (laughs).

Sadamoto: You know, I heard the details of her story before I started working on the first episode, and at the time I thought it was a good story. But as the episode was being storyboarded, I looked at how it was coming together and thought, "Oh, is this the same story we talked about before?” (laughs)

Interviewer: So, the initial story and the final product came out quite differently?

Sadamoto: Yes, there was a bit more focus on Ninamori’s family, with her father being the mayor, her mother, and the subplot about the mistress coming into the foreground. And as I mentioned earlier, my initial idea was about her desperately trying to mediate the relationship between her father and her mother. That's what I thought it was going to be at least (laughs).

Interviewer: It certainly would have been a good story.

Tsurumaki: Well, in order to make it a story with Naota as the protagonist, I felt that approach wasn’t going to work.

Sadamoto: Yeah, as I first heard it, it was a story in which Naota wasn’t really present.

Interviewer: From your perspective, Sadamoto, was Ninamori an attractive character?

Sadamoto: Yes, she was. She would use her status as a child as a weapon, and even lie to bring her parents together; or at least that's how it would seem from the audience's perspective. It may have seemed dirty, but her cleverness would come through. I liked the idea of an episode where Naota gets taken in by that aspect of her character.

Sadamoto: (While watching Haruko & Naota’s conversation) Why curry?

Tsurumaki: Hmm, why was it curry? I think we started with the keyword "spicy" and wanted to push that concept towards a story that gradually went in a more vulgar direction; from there we thought of curry, which [due to its varied spice levels] can become more and more vulgar in the same way as the story does. We also had the other element of "cats" in the story, so we decided to thematically bind the elements together with "cats" as well.

Interviewer: Ah, so that's why Naota has "cat ears".

Tsurumaki: Yes, exactly. We wanted to tie everything up with the theme of "cats." I had this sense that forcefully binding the story together with a motif would feel very theatrical. And you can expand on that motif through playful word associations, and use that to create a cohesive story.

Sadamoto: I see, so it's a story about cats and curry (laughs).

Interviewer: Cats, curry, and glasses (laughs).

Interviewer: (While looking at Mamimi's panty shot) This panty shot is good, isn't it? (laughs)

Sadamoto: This panty shot is good; but let's stop there. I like the way the skirt is drawn here.

Interviewer: Ahahaha (laughs). As we touched on earlier, the things growing out of Naota's head seemed to have stopped being horns, right?

Tsurumaki: We wanted something to come out of his head, but for Episode 3, we didn't have many interesting ideas around horns specifically. I felt like we needed something more, so we thought, let's go with cat ears (laughs). From there, the theme centered around “cats” that we discussed emerged...

Sadamoto: And it became "Puss in Boots"². Also, there's something that I have been wondering about for a while; the design of Naota's father's face is slightly different in terms of direction it seems.

Tsurumaki: Well, maybe because there's a real-life model? (laughs)

Sadamoto: (Putting on a Suzuki Matsuo³ voice) We decided to elongate Matsuo's face, you see. Personally, I feel like the design captures a sense of carelessness, and I like that type of character... But do you think it's the right direction? (laughs)

Interviewer: No... how should I put it? His face is the only dirty one, you know.

Sadamoto: Ahahaha (laughs).

Tsurumaki: But when his hair is down, he's actually handsome and can come off as a good-looking guy. His usual expressions and gestures don't look cool, but we had that idea in mind, to make him handsome when his hair is down. Well, we didn't really depict him that way most of the time though (laughs).

Sadamoto: Originally, he was a journalist or editor in the city center, so he wears somewhat fashionable glasses (laughs).

Sadamoto: Whose face is that?

Tsurumaki: It's Kazuhiro Takamura⁴. It's a reference to "Kare Kano" (laughs).

Sadamoto: I see, his photo was inserted into Kare Kano⁵, so Takamura shows up again here (laughs).

Tsurumaki: This kind of expression is rarely done nowadays. Like, when there's a thick dust cloud and hands or faces pop out of it (laughs). It's an animation style from about 30 years ago.

Sadamoto: Just like "Pyun Pyun Maru".

Tsurumaki: Yes, we were intentionally aiming for that kind of style.

Interviewer: The secretary running away has that same stylistic touch, right?

Tsurumaki: In this scene, Hiramatsu did the storyboards. This “popping” out of the smoke approach is also his trademark.

Sadamoto: Ahahaha (laughs).

Sadamoto: The reddish-brown colors here are very much the style of [Nobutoshi] Ogura. These are Ogura-quality colors.

Interviewer: This evening scene is overall beautiful isn't it? The scene kind of reminds me of Mitaka Station⁶ (laughs).

Tsurumaki: Does it give you that impression? (laughs) Hiramatsu drew the layouts, and there's a place in Takadanobaba where there's this road going under the guardrail.

Sadamoto: Even its just a train, you have to be very attentive to details like the position of the pantograph⁷, and so on.

Interviewer: And just when you think it's going to be a serene scene...

Sadamoto: It turns into a bullet time sequence. It's amazing (laughs).

Interviewer: It has a completely different tone from before (laughs).

Tsurumaki: In this part, we first decided on how all the camera work would go in 3D, and then we created the animation based on that model.

Sadamoto: Did you create wireframes for that?

Tsurumaki: Yes. Both the background and the movements were all created in 3D. The background is fully 3D, with textures applied to it. And for the characters, there were wireframe-like guides placed, and the animation was done one by one to match each frame outputted from those guides.

Interviewer: You did this in Episode 1 as well...

Tsurumaki: Yeah, I thought we should have made it more dynamic. If we're going to do it, we should have it spin around fully instead of just half a rotation (laughs). While we did it in Episode 1, despite our efforts it ended up being rather plain (laughs). I thought it would be better to make it more dramatic in this scene by having it really spin. Overall, I really like this scene. Ninamori is cute too.

Sadamoto: The way the shadows are rendered is unique, and the lines look clean and nice.

Interviewer: (Watching the scene where Naota and Ninamori collide into each other) So, their heads collide, and Naota's cat ears get transferred to Ninamori, is that what happens?

Tsurumaki: Yes, that's right. When they collide, there's a slight flash of that glitchy transmitted light⁸ effect. If you look closely, you'll see that the same effect is present when something comes out of Naota's head.

Sadamoto: This part is unique, isn't it?

Interviewer: It's a living room scene, but something is clearly different. Grandpa is just frozen in place (laughs).

Tsurumaki: This scene is quite long, and it's basically an endless debate over why Ninamori has to stay overnight (laughs). As for how it presented, there's a scene in the movie "Buffalo '66"⁹ where three characters are all at the dining table, and each character has their own camera on them, and the scene is constructed solely through their dialogue. We wanted to try something similar, and as a result... well, it becomes increasingly vulgar (laughs).

Sadamoto: The animation feels loose too, right? (laughs)

Tsurumaki: I think this part was done by (Shinji) Otsuka¹⁰. From Otsuka's perspective, he thought “It’s FLCL, we can go all out!" and he just couldn't let himself be held back (laughs).

Interviewer: Ahahaha (laughs).

Tsurumaki: Otsuka-san also did the opening scene of Episode 1, where Mamimi is swinging the bat. That scene is still within acceptable limits, so to speak. Even in that scene, he made tricky decisions like animating the bat movement without in-betweens. And when I was thinking, "Is this allowed?" he just started going wild (laughs).

Sadamoto: This scene just gets looser and looser (laughs). Otsuka is normally someone who pays great attention to the details. But here the faces look completely different when you compare them.

Tsurumaki: Only close-up shots of Ninamori resemble her normal design (laughs). In that part, I think Hiramatsu-san might have added some corrections, but there aren't many in the rest, I guess.

Sadamoto: Seeing Haruko is like, "Who is this?" (laughs).

Tsurumaki: Moreover, this maid outfit that Haruko wears only appears in this one episode. She is only recognizable by her hair color and voice (laughs). Her hairstyle is different too.

Interviewer: As a work progresses, do you think the acceptable range of animation expression expands?

Tsurumaki: Well, that's probably true. It's like you are accelerating, so the speed keeps increasing. If we did this much before, we can do even more this time, that kind of mentality. In terms of [Shinji] Otsuka’s animation, in the next episode he worked on, Episode 5, things get really crazy. We wanted to do even more amazing and tricky things. Though in a regular production, even if you want to do things like that, it's not easy to accomplish. Especially considering that Otsuka-san was with I.G at the time, they probably wouldn't do this kind of thing.

Ah finally, we are at the pajama scene...

Sadamoto: We even have a detail there, where you can see a little bit of her breasts through the buttons of the pajamas. Such a simple addition art-wise, too! (laughs).

Interviewer: Ahahaha (laughs)

Sadamoto: When it comes to the impact of pajamas, usually it’s ‘moe’ when a girl wears a boy's pajamas and it fits loosely, right? But in the case of Ninamori and Naota, the boy is smaller, so it becomes tight-fitting instead. When I was told during production "That is what makes her ‘moe’, right" I was like, "What?!" (laughs).

Interviewer: In elementary school,¹¹ girls tend to develop earlier (laughs).

Sadamoto: Tsurumaki explained it as "The heart of moe lies in the undersized pajamas!" (laughs). It's quite maniacal, isn’t it?

Tsurumaki: Hiramatsu also sympathized with that idea (laughs).

Tsurumaki: [Tetsuya] Nishio did this part. He is very skilled.

Sadamoto: Is this design by [Shinji] Higuchi?

Tsurumaki: Yes, it's by Higuchi. But originally, didn't you have do a rough sketch, Sadamoto?

Sadamoto: Come to think of it, I may have drawn a general outline of it.

Tsurumaki: Yes, a four-legged, mechanical robot, with a girl dangling down from the middle. Higuchi contributed the final design, but I am sure that the core concept, the girl dangling from a spider, came from Sadamoto.

Interviewer: Sadamoto, why did you draw something like that? (laughs)

Sadamoto: Well, being visible while still being trapped is appealing, isn't it? It's like she’s there but you can't reach out to her. It very Go Nagai-esque¹² (laughs).

Tsurumaki: Yes, it's a play on a Go Nagai transformation, right?

Sadamoto: But this song¹³ is not Go Nagai-like at all (laughs).

Tsurumaki: Ahahaha (laughs). Here, Hiramatsu-san said, "Let's use this song." I think it suits the elementary school feeling.

Sadamoto: (While watching the rooftop scene) Oh, this part is very well done.

Tsurumaki: This part was done by [Yoh] Yoshinari. He's good.

Sadamoto: The form here is drawn really well.

Tsurumaki: (Haruko jumps in wielding a guitar) And from here, it's Masayuki¹⁴. Masayuki has a more deliberate and straightforward sense of movement. But he's good, as expected.

Tsurumaki: [Shinya] Ohira’s section starts around here.

Sadamoto: Yeah, its Ohira’s work.

Tsurumaki: Damn, it doesn’t make sense!

Sadamoto: It doesn’t make sense to me either (laughs).

Tsurumaki: Why does it look that way?

Sadamoto: Its just the animation being playful, right?

Tsurumaki: The animation is trying too hard and it's making the sequence confusing (laughs). To explain a bit, the weakness of that robot is on top of its head. But in the classroom, the ceiling gets in the way, you can’t get above it. So if they lure it to the rooftop, the top of its head will be...

Sadamoto: it will be visible, right.

Tsurumaki: That's why Haruko always attacks it from above. So right now, Kanchi is punching it from below through the roof of the school building. And when the robot tries to escape from the rooftop, its body tilts to the side, meaning now the top of its head is facing downward and she can attack. That's the plot at least, but because the animation is trying too hard, instead of focusing on the robot’s sideways tilt, our attention is drawn instead to the action and forms on the screen.¹⁵

Interviewer: It just seems like the characters somehow won through sheer momentum (laughs).

Interviewer: (Watching Ninamori revealing that her glasses are fake) So this is the punchline as it were. Did you have this in mind from the beginning?

Tsurumaki: No, I didn’t.

Interviewer: Oh, you didn’t! (laughs)

Tsurumaki: We originally had decided on Ninamori wearing glasses, and separately we had the idea that she would express something she typically hid from people. As we continued to play with the concept we came up with the idea that the glasses themselves were fake, as a last-minute twist.

Interviewer: So her wearing glasses was there from the beginning.

Tsurumaki: I think so. In the initial drafts, she was wearing glasses. I believe Sadamoto-san thought of giving one of the girls glasses to differentiate them as a character.

Sadamoto: Well, she is the class president, after all.

Tsurumaki: But then I thought, "I want her to be the type to only wear her glasses in front of me" (laughs). And on hearing that Sadamoto said "I got it" and erased the glasses right there.

Sadamoto: I wondered if the meta aspects at play here would come across. In works like "Evangelion," the setup inherently asks for deeper analysis. The work directly says to you, "Please analyze me deeply!" But when it reaches that point, you can also get tired of reading too much into it, you know? (laughs)

Interviewer: In short, only Naota gets to see her wearing glasses, so he naturally believes that the glasses are real.

Tsurumaki: In [Yoji] Enokido’s initial script, the twist was supposed to be that Ninamori, who had been presenting herself as the “class president” type and hiding her negative traits, could finally express that negative side in front of everyone. But then we twisted it again, and it turned out that even that ‘negative side’ was a lie.

Interviewer: Ah, I see... (laughs).

Tsurumaki: Well, girls are not always straightforward. It's a worldview that says, "Don't think you have them all figured out" (laughs). The moment you think you have seen through them, you lose.

Sadamoto: They are already one step ahead.

Tsurumaki: Losing is fine though. If it means losing to a cute girl like this, I'd lose over and over again (laughs).

1. TN: Probably unnecessary, but ‘moe’ is an otaku-culture term for a kind of romantic attraction for & the cuteness of (generally) female characters. One could rightly just translate this as ‘cute’ by 2010 as the term grew in popularity, but the Japanese term he is using (萌え) was not common in non-anime contexts when FLCL was made and still isn’t mainstream today, so I think moe communicates the meaning better.

2. Originally, a folk tale that originated in Europe; the well-known version was compiled by Charles Perrault. The story revolves around a cunning cat who uses its wits to climb the social ladder one step at a time. It was adapted into a feature-length anime film by Toei Animation (released in 1969) and the cat has also become a mascot character for the company.

3. TN: Naota’s father’s voice actor, just in case that isn’t clear from context

4. An animator and director born in Fukui Prefecture in 1972. After graduating from vocational school, he joined Gainax and worked on numerous productions such as "Kare Kano," "Mahoromatic" (1st season), and more. In 2008, he made his directorial debut with "Strike Witches," which was received very positively.

5. TN: This is referring to episode 19 of Kare Kano, which Tsurumaki directed and on which Imaishi served as the animation director. It was a very experimental episode, heavily using paper cut-outs; you can see Takamura’s cameo here.

6. Located in western Tokyo, it is the western terminal station of the JR Chuo-Sobu Line and the Tozai subway line. At the time of FLCL’s production, it was also where Gainax’s studio was located.

7. TN: The device connecting an electric train to the wires overhead that power it.

8. A technique in animation where a mask is applied to areas where light passes through, and a light is directly projected from behind the cells into the camera (hence the name, as it captures the light passing through the cells). The glowing effect on Naota's head, for example, is captured using this transmitted light technique. In modern production environments where digital filming has become mainstream, this light effect is often simulated using computer graphics.

9. "Buffalo '66" is an American film directed by Vincent Gallo, released in 1998. It portrays the drama surrounding a man who returns to his hometown of Buffalo after completing his prison sentence. The film was noted for its offbeat storytelling, and director Gallo took on multiple roles, including the lead actor, screenwriter, and music composer, drawing acclaim on its release.

10. A veteran animator born in 1955 in Hyogo Prefecture, he has worked on numerous projects, including scenes in the film "The Dagger of Kamui" and Studio Ghibli films. He was involved in almost all episodes of FLCL.

11. TN: Again, for the US this would be middle school. It doesn’t help much! But it helps.

12. A manga artist born in 1945 in Ishikawa Prefecture. He is known for works such as "Devilman" and "Cutey Honey," among many other renowned masterpieces. His bold incorporation of sex and violence into his art style has influenced many other manga artists. He has also been involved in numerous TV anime productions as a planner and original creator, with "Mazinger Z" being one of his most notable works.

13. TN: The song is “The Comedian’s Gallop”, originally by Russian composer Dmitry Kabalevsky. It is a classic piece used in comedy film, television, and animation globally, and in Japan is historically used for sports festivals at schools.

14. An animator born in 1961 in Nagano Prefecture. He joined Studio Gainax after graduating from a vocational school. After working on series like "Sasuga no Sarutobi" and "Ranbou," he began work on "Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise." He has since continued his work primarily on Gainax productions, including "Neon Genesis Evangelion." Currently, he serves as a director alongside Tsurumaki on the "Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition" films. In "FLCL," he was responsible for episode 2's storyboards and other contributions.

15. TN: This is too difficult to communicate in screenshots; the sequence begins around 18:40 if you want to follow it yourself. Notice how the Ninamori-robot goes from being knocked sideways, to a cut to Haruko & Naota flying through the air, to a cut back to where the robot is upright again but being defeated; its sideways-ness turned out to not really matter as it got lost in the cut, but that was not apparently the intent of the scene.