blog cauldron

Armored Lows

illustration for Les Fleurs du Mal, mixed media on paper, 1913.

i went to the event~

it was really cool to see kazeki on the big screen (as well as toward the terra!) and feel the emotions of the people around me. i yapped w/ the lady next to me about how much i love serge and the paris arc.

the talk show was interesting! it was pretty brief but covered some nice topics. takemiya talked about how she was really worried no one would want to come lol but the tickets sold out in 10 minutes so she was pretty happy.

they went over the story of how the OVA came to be, which was a lot of good timing, connections, and mutual interest. takemiya and yasuhiko sort of knew each other because takemiya lived really close to where yasuhiko was working, just on opposite sides of the station. takemiya talked about how she didn’t want to do it unless yasuhiko was the one to direct it, which worked out, bc yasuhiko had watched the OVA for natsu e no tobira (another takemiya work, animated by different people) and was a bit dissatisfied with it as an adaptation of a shoujo manga. although he’s mostly known for gundam, he was really adamant that shoujo requires a sense of delicacy that natsu e no tobira didn’t have, so he ultimately agreed to do it.

he had some funny anecdotes about how he still can’t draw shoujo manga characters though, and he said that when he was drawing the new art of serge up above, he scrapped his initial drawing bc after he saw takemiya’s gilbert he was like “agh, this isn’t serge!!” and he stayed up all night redrawing it lolol

gilbert’s voice actress was also there, and so there was some talk about how the voices were chosen. takemiya said the only voice she had a direct hand in choosing was gilbert’s (much to sasaki’s embarrassment and delight) and left the rest to the casting director. sasaki’s first role was gilbert, and so they needed someone with a bit more recognition for serge and settled on ohara. they talked about how ohara brought a very motherly quality to serge and reminisced on memories of her, since she passed away two years ago. they also commented on how it was somewhat unique to have two women voicing the lead characters, since with “BL-like” works, it’s usually only one female voice. but yasuhiko said he really liked it and wishes he had gone with a female voice actress for his work, arion.

they mentioned that the OVA was created with the hope that more would follow, but just in case, they also created it with the mindset that it would be able to serve as a standalone introduction to the world of kazeki—hence the bookends of serge reminiscing at school. yasuhiko mentioned that since those were original to the OVA, those were also the only parts that they didn’t check in with takemiya about writing and they hoped it would make it a nice surprise when she watched it. ultimately, kazeki didn’t sell very well, so nothing more ever got made… hence takemiya’s anxiety that no one would come.