Particular about “beautiful visuals”
For the Dragon Ball series, it’s the first theatrical work in 17 years; please tell us what you were particular about in working on it.
In the Dragon Ball Z TV series, I directed some pretty crucial episodes in the “Cell arc”. At that time, I received a positive response in having made some relatively pretty visuals, so this time as well, I was particular about “beautiful visuals”.
Did you have any concepts or anything in making it?
I wasn’t told this directly, but Toriyama-sensei had written that “I don’t want you to have citywide panic or destruction”, so I paid special attention to that.
This time, the concept for the guest characters were created by Toriyama-sensei; did you receive any sort of instructions from Toriyama-sensei about how to draw the characters?
As long as I didn’t stray from the original drawings, it was basically okay. With Toriyama-sensei’s art, I can sort of understand their facial expressions just by looking, so I drew them imagining out from that starting point, and then got it checked.
Did you meet with the main staff members before you started working?
Rather than everyone getting together and saying, “now, let’s do it this way”, it was like letting each person freely handle their areas of expertise. There were many on the staff who had worked on
Dragon Ball longer than I had, and whom I could trust to leave things to them, so it took the form of each person giving their opinions with regards to what came out.
Only, in the end, we expanded the scenario too much, and at the story boarding phase, we had already gone very much over [the intended length], so as a result, we cut down quite a bit. (laughs)
In the scenario, the Z Warriors played a larger role, so I would have liked to put more of that to video, if possible. Each of them has their fans, after all, and I think they’ve all trained and gotten stronger.
Also, we shortened the breaks in the fight [and such], and managed to just barely get it within the allotted time. Contrary [to what you’d expect], I think concentrating it [made it more] impressive.
As the director, what is your favorite scene?
The part where Vegeta threw away his pride and did this and that in order to protect those important to him was good.
Did [Toriyama-]sensei say anything after watching the preview screening?
He said to me, “That was a lot of fun!” I created the fighting scenes using a variety of techniques based on
Sensei’s request that we “not destroy the city”, so he even said, “I didn’t know you could do it like that!”
At first, it was going to be “don’t destroy anything”, so for the midair battle, I was imagining a fight in the middle of a blue sky with all the clouds blown away. But as you might expect, it just wouldn’t work, so I took advantage of the concept that Bulma is unbelievably rich. So this time, the only thing that gets destroyed in the end is Bulma’s personal property. (laughs)
Please give a message to those who are looking forward to the opening.
The strength of each individual staff member has been condensed into a single movie with unbelievable power. By all means, I’d like you to feel it firsthand!
