The Moé Manifesto
Page 5
PG: Is transformation some thing that appeals just to girls?
ST: No, I don’t think so. There are anime for boys that involve transforming robots. Then you have transforming superheroes 199
such as Kamen Rider. The difference is that boys transform to 1
become stronger and defeat evil. By defeating evil, they become REED
heroes. Boys buy the merchandize, for example Kamen Rider TION
belts, to act out that moment of transformation.
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PG: You are saying that Minky Momo wasn’t about becoming stronger and defeating evil?
ST: Right. There aren’t any villains in the series. Rather than defeating evil, Minky Momo helps people who have lost their dreams. It’s a very positive message
about making dreams come true by
transforming into someone that can
help others in the world.
PG: What do you think about anime se-
ries such as Sailor Moon and Pretty Cure, which have girls fi ghting evil?
ST: Toei Animation brought out both
of those series, which did very well.
We did something similar with Idol
Tenshi Yokoso Yoko (1990–1991). That sort
of good-versus-evil model is fi ne, but
it’s not the only approach. Minky Momo
Minky Momo and family
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Minky Momo: a different sort of heroine
offers a different sort of heroine and worldview that I hope will always be popular.
PG: Was Minky Momo a success from the beginning?
ST: Actually, no, in the beginning it didn’t create much buzz. But after about six months on air, the ratings started going up and Bandai’s toys started to sell. If this hadn’t happened, then the show would have been cancelled.
PG: Who was the intended audience for Minky Momo?
ST: It was the consumer group who would buy the toys produced by Bandai—little girls from three to fi ve years of age.
PG: Did you expect that there would be adult fans?
ST: No, not at all. I still can’t believe it. The show started in spring 1982 and these guys started showing up after about six months. It was completely unexpected, but this guy came to our SATO TOSHIHIKO
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studio and told me he was the head of a Minky Momo fan club, which was made up of members between eighteen and thirty years of age. I was shocked! He said he thought Minky Momo was cute. It is still hard for me to understand. Minky Momo is cute, yes, and she is someone that everyone likes. I expected this response from fi ve-year-old girls and their mothers, who might be watching TV with them, but not adult men.
PG: This was a time when anime fan clubs were on the rise.
ST: Yes. I was aware that there were fan clubs for the anime Mobile Suit Gundam, but still I was not expecting there to be a fan club for Magical Princess Minky Momo.
PG: Later iterations of Minky Momo were well received among these male otaku. The animation quality was excellent, and the character was voiced by well-known voice actress Hayashibara Megumi. Were you deliberately targeting these fans so that they would buy videocassettes of the series?
2
Minky Momo:
89 1
magical girl
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SATO TOSHIHIKO
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Minky Momo: princess of the land of dreams
ST: No, not at all. We have never taken such fans into consider-ation. We did, however, deal with issues such as children who don’t want to grow up. In the second series, we moved more toward depicting the world of grown-ups instead of little girls.
There are multiple levels to the series.
PG: Minky Momo has been around since 1982. How do you think the series will continue to develop in the future?
ST: For the thirtieth anniversary, we did a stage musical, which brought the series to a new generation. Those who watched Minky Momo as children are now mothers with their own children, whom they brought with them to the musical. I was glad to see children who’d never encountered the character before accept her wholeheartedly. They will be the next generation of fans. There have also been fi gurines, toys, and merchandise, which expand the chances for new encounters with the character. We are thinking of rereleasing or perhaps remaking the series. In any case, I think that the character of Minky Momo will continue to be an infl uential example of the magical girl genre.
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Interview with
Nunokawa Yuji
Nunokawa Yuji, born
in 1947, is the repre-
sentative director of
anime production company
Pierrot. The many works
he has produced include
the anime version of the
manga series Urusei yatsura
(1981–1986) that featured
Lum, a buxom alien girl in a
bikini, who is considered one
of Japan’s fi rst cartoon sex
symbols. Nunokawa was a
key fi gure in the production
of Pierrot’s magical girl anime
series, which includes Pastel
Yumi, the Magic Idol (1986),
Magical Emi, the Magic Star
.D.T, (1985–1986), Fancy Lala, the
., L
COT
Magic Stage (1988, 1998), and,
O
RRE
most famously, Creamy Mami,
PIEYSES the Magic Angel (1983–1984).
TER
In this interview, Nunokawa
COU
PHSP
talks about what Creamy
AR
OG
Mami meant to his company
TOHOPH and to fans.
NUNOKAWA YUJI
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On Magical Girls
and
Male Fans (Part Two)
Kindness Rather than Strength
Patrick W. Galbraith (PG): Tell me a little
about the development of Creamy Mami.
Nunokawa Yuji (NY): Magical girl ani-
mation has a long history in Japan, go-
ing back to Sally the Witch (1966–1967)
and Little Meg the Witch Girl (1974–
1975). These were standard shows
for girls to watch. Creamy Mami is
part of this lineage. It was the fi rst
time Pierrot had made an original
anime series that wasn’t based on
a manga, and the start of our very
successful magical girl series. Toy
maker Bandai ap-
maker Ba
pr
p oac
r
hed us to make
oach
the series,
the ser
as it was an
opportunity for them
opportu
to market a line of
to mark
related to
relate
ys. When
we d
stor
s
y with Bandai,
tory
we came up with
we c
the idea that
TO
PIERR
©
ESGA
IM
Pierrot’s magical girls
Pierrot’s magi
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TO
we would make our main character transform into not just an PIERR
adult woman, but an idol singer. This idea evolved into the story
©
ES
of a little girl who transforms into an idol and lives a double life GA
IM
in Japan’s showbiz world.
PG: Why did you settle on idols?
NY: For children, idols inhabit a dream world. Children watch idols on TV and want to be like them. Everyone in Japan was really into idol singers in the early 1980s, but there weren’t any anime about them. So we decided that Creamy Mami should be an anime series that focused on the life of an idol singer. But this was an idol our audience of little girls could relate to, because she had transformed from a little girl that was just like them. The music in Creamy Mami was performed by an actual child idol, Ota Takako, which was unusual. The character designer, Takada Akemi, put a lot of effort into the fashion worn in the series, too.
PG: To what extent did Bandai shape the show?
NY: Because the budgets are so tight in producing TV anime in The idol singer Creamy Mami
NUNOKAWA YUJI
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Creamy Mami: transformation
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TO
PIERR©
Creamy Mami protagonist Morisawa Yu Japan, you need to have a sponsor. And the sponsor needs to sell toys that are related to the anime. So you need to have a theme that children are drawn to. Transformation is a theme that children are interested in: for boys, it’s the transforming machine; for girls, it’s the transforming human. The need for transformation is probably an unwritten rule for TV anime targeting children in Japan.
PG: So Bandai decided to sell magic wands and you decided that the character would use a magic wand to transform into an idol singer. What else did you want to do with the series?
NY: We wanted to make an animation that was not just cute, but also dramatic. The story of a young girl who transforms into an idol allowed us to pursue surprisingly deep themes. Creamy Mami’s protagonist, Morisawa Yu, is in elementary school, and she is starting to mature and develop feelings for a boy. Her transformative powers allow her to suddenly become an idol, a young woman that is older than Yu, more mature and in charge of herself, which is why little girls are attracted to her. The boy NUNOKAWA YUJI
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TO
PIERR©
Creamy Mami
Cream
: cute and dramatic
y Mami: cute and dramatic
that Yu has feelings for, however, falls in love with the idol singer. Yu has to struggle to get him back, but this is a struggle with herself. We wanted to depict psychological confl ict. We didn’t exactly plan it from the beginning, but the drama built in each episode to a fi nale that left everyone in tears. Creamy Mami has stronger dramatic elements than other magical girl series, which made an impression on a lot of people. To this day it has many devoted fans.
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Children are attracted to transformation themes
PG: Such a nuanced approach to human relationships might be a little unexpected in a show for children, especially one designed to sell toys. It reminds me of Tomino Yoshiyuki’s anime Mobile Suit Gundam, which was originally meant to sell children robot toys, but then developed into a realistic depiction of war, which attracted adult viewers.
NY: Creamy Mami did all right. We got consistently high ratings, especially for the fi nal episode. People later said that it was very infl uential.
PG: Idol Nakagawa Shoko loved the series as a child, and went on to achieve fame herself.
NY: I’m happy that Creamy Mami lives on in people’s hearts.
PG: How was it that you were able to produce such high drama in Creamy Mami?
NY: In Japanese animation, especially TV animation, due to the budget constraints, we can’t animate the movement of characters much. But we get to have weekly episodes that continue for NUNOKAWA YUJI
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many months. Creamy Mami, for example, was fi fty-two episodes long, and it ran for a whole year. Because we had that much time, we could develop the characters properly. Because the series had to end, however, we had a limit to how far we could go, and we needed to develop the story toward a conclusion. So, even though we had budget constraints that limited us in drawing the movement of characters on screen, we were able to create dramatic stories that moved the characters and audiences.
In terms of movement, American animation is much sharper and smoother, but Japanese animation focuses on creating good drama. Japanese anime has a reputation for being interesting for adults, which stems from a commitment to the story and drama.
Making anime in Japan is closer to writing stories for adults.
From a business standpoint, it works well for sponsors, because they don’t need to invest much in the animation, but the series has a good story and is stretched out over a long period of time, which attracts and holds viewers’ attention.
PG: So you weren’t surprised to see adult fans of Creamy Mami.
Were you surprised to see male fans?
NY: Well, yes, that was quite a big surprise for us. From about the middle of the series we became aware of the existence of male fans. I was even more surprised to fi nd that when we did events for Creamy Mami, the audience was predominately male.
Before that, magical girl events didn’t really draw male fans.
They might have been there, but they weren’t visible. Male fans of magical girls increased after Creamy Mami. At the time the word otaku wasn’t well known to describe this type of anime or manga fan, but I think that Creamy Mami can defi nitely be considered one of the factors for the spread of this phenomenon.
PG: Did you try to target these adult male fans?
NY: Not at the time, no. We didn’t even think about it, since the sponsor was selling toys that targeted little girls. We didn’t realize that we could sell videos at fi rst, as they were quite expensive.
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PG: What were your feelings about the otaku fans?
NY: As I said, we didn’t make Creamy Mami for them. We’d been asked to make an original TV anime that would sell toys to girls, and we developed characters and drama within these limita-tions. If the series remains in people’s hearts, we are glad. If the audience got more out of the series than we intended, then we are honored as creators.
PG: Why did Pierrot stop making magical girl series?
NY: It was simply due to the declining number of children in Japan. The number of children is shrinking, which means the number of toy companies is shrinking and fi nally that there are fewer robot and magical girl series for children. There is only one major series for little girls at any one time now, and that’s enough.
PG: What does the anime industry look like today?<
br />
NY: There are more series being made and they target diverse viewers, but at the same time it is harder to create long-lasting series. It is hard to fi nd a sponsor willing to invest in a series that will run for a year unless it is based on a proven manga series. Instead, animation series tend to be short, about twelve episodes, and oriented toward selling DVDs or Blu-ray discs rather than toys. The toy makers don’t want to invest a lot of money producing toys for a series that might not be a hit. So, they wait and see if a short series will be a hit before making toys, but by then new series have appeared and no one is interested in the older ones. In Japan, we’ve always had a lot of domestic demand for anime, so we haven’t necessarily had to look overseas, but now that dynamic is changing. We need to reach out to overseas markets, which is why there is so much anxiety about fans streaming anime for free online. It wouldn’t matter if licensing and DVDs and Blu-ray sales weren’t so important, but now those are precious sources of income.
NUNOKAWA YUJI
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PG: Is the magical girl still relevant today?
NY: Sailor Moon in the 1990s was probably the height of success for the magical girl genre, but I think that people still have a longing for protagonists that display kindness rather than strength. Of course our company makes epic adventure animation such as Naruto and Bleach, but I personally can no longer believe in male heroes. Maybe fi ghting isn’t the way to resolve confl ict. But if a male character said that, it would seem weak and pitiful, because we judge them based on some notion of what it means to be a man. The solution is to have female characters resolve the confl ict in a way that is impossible for men. Miyazaki Hayao, one of the most celebrated directors of animated fi lms in Japan, shifted in the 1980s from male protagonists to female protagonists. I think that he did this because it allowed for a different approach to the world. That’s why so many people prefer magical girls to male heroes. Regardless of what era people live in, they desire peaceful change, and that is ultimately what the magical girl is all about.
TO
PIERR©
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