Jazz up your January with a big screen performance that combines an award-winning story with a score by world-renowned musicians. Anime Limited are gearing up for the release of Yuzuru Tachikawa’s BLUE GIANT, which will be coming exclusively to selected cinemas across the UK and Ireland from January 31st, and to celebrate its release… We have a very special treat.
We had the absolute pleasure of talking to anime director Yuzuru Tachikawa, whose previous works include Mob Psycho, Death Parade, Deca-Dence, as well as episodes of Attack on Titan, Kill La Kill, and Bleach, about his experience working on this unique endeavour into Jazz. It was an incredibly enlightening and fun interview, and we can’t wait for you to check it out in its entirety.
Looking at Blue Giant, what drew you to Dai’s story? What was it about the manga that appealed to you?
I was, I read the manga when I was first introduced to the project, and it was Dai’s character that did it. His determination, that single mindedness, and the fact that he wants to be the best in the world. That’s what kept me reading till the end.
Blue Giant is such a visual and playful approach to Jazz. What challenges did you face bringing the music to life and actually giving it that abstract and distinct spark?
Well, Jazz hasn’t really featured much in animation, especially in the past. Now I know why. It’s really hard to animate the instruments and also the solos, because they’re improvised in the moment, they’re not repeatable. That was really challenging. But I wanted these solos because they’re particularly unique to Jazz, and I wanted to get that across in Blue Giant. So I wanted to show what the performers are seeing and feeling, and I did that witht he more abstract style, as well as a stronger focus on the instruments themselves.
Dai’s passion for Jazz ignites when he first encounters Jazz. As a director, I was wondering what or who inspired you to get into film and become a director?
I knew I wanted to make films when I first saw Terminator 2. I saw a “making of” documentary on TV and I found it really interesting, but then I started to think… How would I do it? And my dream from there was to make movies that when you came out the world had changed a bit.
Watching Blue Giant made me reminisce about my early days of playing instruments at school. I played the trumpet, but I was never very good at it. In preparation for this film, did you have to do anything to help you understand the instruments that were being used?
The first thing I did when I joined this film was to start taking saxaphone lessons, which I continuted for about two years. I also went to a lot of Jazz clubs. I wanted the rest of the team to understand what it felt like to hold a saxaphone, so I got some of them to go to lessons as well – the 3D director and some of the animators. I had also learnt piano for about six years at Primary School… I can’t play now. Maybe one piece.
James’ full ⭐⭐⭐⭐ review is available to read now.
I decided to check out the manga after watching Blue Giant. I’m roughly half way through, and I was wondering how you went about condensing this 10-volume series into a two hour film?
Volumes 1-4 are mostly set in Sendai, where Dai grows up, and they allow the reader to get to know Dai, understand his character and get to like him. Most of that isn’t in the film, apart from a few flashbacks, so you start the film kind of not knowing what kind of person Dai is. Because we have such a limited amount of time, it’s hard to paint that progression, but I think you do see that growth in all three characters.
I think the music really speaks for Dai as well. You can gauge what sort of person he is simply by what he plays and how he plays.
One of the biggest issues we had when making this into a film was whether Dai needed more conflict, whether he needed some obstacles to overcome because his path is so straight and direct. In the end, we decided that that wouldn’t be Dai. His role very much lights the way for Yukinori and Tamada, that’s the kind of protagonist we wanted him to be.
The music is obviously a very integral part of this movie, and for me it was a terrific introduction to Jazz as a whole, but what was it like actually crafting the soundtrack for Blue Giant?
Well, when I came on board as the director, Hiromi Uehara, the pianist, was already on board. She was responsible for the soundtrack and for all of the music. As director, I gave direction for the kind of music we needed for this scene, and for that scene. Uehara would write the music, I would then listen, and then we would talk it through, then she would rewrite it. It was a recurring process. Because I’ve got no real experience of Jazz, it was hard for me to express my opinion on the music because I didn’t have the right words to explain it musically. I could only really say things like “make it more exciting,” “more passion,” “make it more emotional.” That was the extent of the comments that I felt comfortable to make,
Sometimes we would be doing it in real time as well. So we’d be on the phone and I’d say “I think it should be more like this,” and Uehara would play it and say “like this?”, then I would say “Yes, but also like this.” It was very back-and-forth.
From Death Parade, Mob Psycho 100, Steins;Gate, and now Blue Giant, how do you think you’ve grown and developed as a director and creator?
Well, every time I take on a project, I want to try something new. I want a new challenge. This time, I didn’t know anything about Jazz, and I had never animated music before. So I thought that would be a good challenge. I thought it would be quite an encouraging story for anyone, not just Jazz musicians, bur anyone who is really dedicated to something in their life.
Speaking of challenges, your work has spanned a vairety of genres, but is there a specific untouched genre that you’d like to tackle next?
I quite like suspense. I love, as I said earlier, I love Terminator 2, you know that big blockbuster entertainment. I think I’d quite like to do something on the suspense side.
Across your career, you’ve worked on both Anime TV series and films. How does the process differ between working on a series, and developing a film?
With TV, you obviously have more episodes and much longer overall. You can build ip the store more, and further develop the characters, so it’s a bit easier in that sense. With a film, your audience is confined for two hours sat in their seat, so you need to make sure that the plot and themes have their interest for that time. It’s shorter overall and you usually have a bugger budget for a higher quality of animation, but both have their own pros and cons, their pluses and minuses. They’re both extremely fun.
I think with Blue Giant, the benefits of having it in the cinemas is that the audience get to experience the sound and the performances in that space. That can sometimes be difficult if you’re watching it on a TV. There’s ambient sound, people might be eating dinner, doing housework, or they might pause it. I think that’s the major valuable aspect of having this kind of story as a film.
When Blue Giant is released, especially here in the UK, what are you hoping fans take away from it?
When I was making this film, I was hoping that it would encourage people to do whay they want to do, just like Dai. With audiences in Japan, I’ve heard of people taking up instruments and even deciding to dedicate more time to the thing they are passionate about. So I hope it will have the same impact here. I didn’t know how the film would go down here, but it won the Audience Award at the Scotland Loves Animation awards, so that was a very encouraging sign.
It’s so great to see how anime has grown in the UK over the past few years, especially in terms of these big screen events. How does it feel to be able to bring Blue Giant to the UK and take it on the road?
When I started in this industry, you didn’t really hear about these kind of events. No one was really aware of the oversea audiences when we’re talking anime. But now, partly thanks to streaming, there’s a much larger audience internationally, and with that comes plenty of opportunities.
BLUE GIANT will be released in selected cinemas across the United Kingdom and Ireland from 31st January 2024 in Japanese with English subtitles. Will you be checking out BLUE GIANT when it arrives on the big screen? Let us know in the comments. Don’t forget to check out more anime news right here.
