Anime Herald
patreon
Interview: AnimEigo (AKA: The House That Sexy Mecha Stomping Sounds Built)
🕑 Added 2022-02-17 02:24:23 +0000 UTCInterviewer: Seth Burn
Interviewees: Robert Woodhead & Natsumi Ueki
Location: Anime NYC 2021
Anime Herald: Many years ago you did a track for Shogun Assassin with Samurai L. Jackson, excuse me, Samuel L. Jackson. How did that come about?
Robert Woodhead: This it's a good question.
Natsumi Ueki: I hadn't met him, but I knew Samuel Jackson was a fan of what we released. One time, I heard he called directly to our office and he chatted with one of our employees for an hour. When we were working on Shogun Assassin, we wanted to have somebody you knew of comment on how great this film is. We sort of knew he's a fan of the Shogun Assassin, as well as Lone Wolf and Cub.
The reason I happen to know he is a fan of Lone Wolf and Cub, is I had a chance to visit Mr. Kazuo Koike. I am in the office, and there is a picture of Sam with Mr. Koike. They are playing golf together. So, they know each other. He's a big fan of Shogun Assassin and Lone Wolf and Cub. Why don't we arrange an interview? We happen to know somebody who can get in touch with him, and who has been working with him. I talked to the guy and then we arranged a call. We had a chance to meet him in person. We talked about the price. Of course, we don’t have the money to pay Jackson. I didn't think we could afford him, and then we made a deal. We’ll send him our products and we’ll keep in touch. That's how it happened.
Shogun Assassin
Japan Culture NYC: I know Wilmington is a good place for films and industry. I would not imagine Wilmington has been a hotbed of anime, especially in the 80s.
Robert Woodhead: No, but that’s not where we got started. There’s actually a page on our website called The Secret History of AnimEigo that has all the gory details. But in short, the company was started as a joke while I was living in Ithaca, New York. And then, when I moved to Japan it was to do two things. One was [to] work on a game project. And the other was to chase a girl.
Japan Culture NYC: Was it this one?
Robert Woodhead: Yeah. Only one of those endeavors was successful.
Japan Culture NYC: Define “success”.
Robert Woodhead: (Laughs) As of last week, thirty years. When I was living in Japan, the US end of the company was run by my mother out of a spare bedroom in upstate New York, where she lived. During that period, she moved down to Wilmington, North Carolina. I guess, in an attempt to escape her children or something.
When we moved back, we moved back to Wilmington. And then, all of her other children moved to Wilmington. So now, she's stuck with us all. It had absolutely nothing to do with Wilmington being a film center. It was just where she and her boyfriend decided they were going to live. And it was only by pure accident that it happened to be convenient for doing things like dubbing and stuff like that. So, as usual, it's just a complete accident.
Our company has been virtual since 1989 when we first got started. We found our first translators on rec.arts.anime (Usenet). We didn’t meet some of them physically until years later.
When we were living in Japan, things used to slosh back and forth across the Pacific via email. I remember having to pay a per-1000-character bill for email. It would cost us 10 yen per kilobyte of email. I'm not kidding. That's, that's because at that time, there was only one link. This is actually kind of before the internet. There was only one email link between Japan and the US. And it was around 9600 kilobits a second. It was, like, run by one little company.
MADOX-01
Japan Culture NYC: I bet you faxed a lot.
Natsumi Ueki: Yeah, we did.
Japan Culture NYC: Japan still loves faxing.
Robert Woodhead: It was a lot of faxing. We would do the production work all in Japan at that time, and then mail the tapes to the US for replication.
Natsumi Ueki: Actually, that was started in two locations, Tokyo and Wilmington. He's living with me and I started helping him. We established connections in Japan. Then, during productions, your job gets busier. We decided to move to Wilmington and just have one location, one company. Then, at first, Robert started going to Tokyo to maintain the relationships. Then we switched roles and I started going to Tokyo to maintain and build relationships. Before COVID, I used to go twice a year and say hello, and make new connections and stuff like that. These days, we have the connections there that we need.
Japan Culture NYC: If there’s a new studio opening, do you feel you need to hop over there and introduce yourself?
Natsumi Ueki: There are two very good events in Tokyo. One is [the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF)] . We just finished the Tokyo International Film Festival. It’s held in October every year. The other event is AnimeJapan in March. So, conveniently, once you go there, everybody is there. You can have a list of the companies that you want to see and set up the appointments. If you really want to, you can talk to 30, 40 companies. You don't have to go all around Tokyo and die to meet everybody. So just to go to the events, that's, that's enough. The rest of the time, just use email and Zoom and stuff like that.
Robert Woodhead: For a kind of boutique company like we are, that does these strange little projects, we don't need to chase stuff that's in pre-production. We're more focused on older titles and on the preservation aspects of making sure that the older titles are properly preserved after we're dead. The creators of the stuff from the ‘70s, and ‘80s, they're, they're starting to pass now. It's important to make sure that what they did is preserved. One thing we really like to do when we do a title is get the creators to do commentaries, because it's important to have their thoughts about things preserved. 20-30 years from now, there'll be historians doing histories of anime and lots of stuff. Even now, when we're doing these projects, we see how much just got thrown away. In fact, there are a ton of titles we'd like to release that we can't, because the film got thrown away. All they have is the videotape. Unfortunately, especially from the ‘90’s boom. Before the ‘90s they had to do everything on film, including the editing was all edited on film. They started transferring the film to videotape, and then editing on videotape. And once they had gotten the videotape, edited up “Why are we paying to store this film?”
Riding Bean
Anime Herald: Remember when you got the truckload of cels?
Robert Woodhead: Yeah, the truckload of cels.
Natsumi Ueki: Yes. One anime production company offered us a truckload of cels. A literal truckload. We regretted it later.
Robert Woodhead: Because we found out it was toxic waste and it cost us to dispose of it.
Natsumi Ueki: We thought there would be some use for them, but it turns out, no.
Robert Woodhead: We gave away a couple thousand and had to throw away the other million.
Natsumi Ueki: We heard the horror stories, like tons of cels stuck in a wetland field in the Tokyo Bay Area.
Anime Herald: You recently commented on Twitter about your particular set of skills.
Robert Woodhead: That was replying to a comment about how we’ve been married for over 30 years. As to what those skills are, no comment.
Anime Herald: Understandable. In that case, I'll ask a more serious question. This one is from Mike Toole about Shonan Bakusozoku. In short, how did you get the license and how did Natsumi react?
Natsumi Ueki: This is a title we only licensed for VHS. We didn’t release a DVD or laserdisc.
You know, some people love this title, but it’s not for a major market.
We actually try a variety of titles “What about this genre, what about that genre.”
This was one of them. It was fun and good, but it didn’t sell well.
Shonan Bakusozoku
Robert Woodhead: “I wonder if anyone would be interested in that?” That’s literally how it got done.
Natsumi Ueki: Yeah. And you know, some people love it.
There’s so many titles. It was wonderful and has so much value, but it didn’t sell all that well. Then we have to make a tough business decision, whether we keep this title.
Some companies, like Criterion, they seem to have a different market, different strategy, different business model. They get a whole package of films. Branding seems to be their strategy. They maintain the brand, and keep multiple world class films as a package deal.
We don’t do it that way. We make a decision title-by-title. If a title doesn’t sell well, “Sorry, I have to let it go.”
Robert Woodhead: Basically, almost every title we've ever released, we released because somebody at the office really liked it and thought it was worthy. The heartbreaking ones, they're like “Yawara!” (A Fashionable Judo Girl), not being able to do more than the first season.”
Natsumi Ueki: It was not our decision. It's not the money here. It was a rights issue.
Robert Woodhead: Yeah. Sometimes it's that, sometimes it's sales. But, you know, the weird part is that the couple of titles we've done, not because we particularly liked them, we said “This is absolutely gonna make us a packet of money.”
They all failed miserably.
Yawara!
Natsumi Ueki: But, you know, our success rate is very high. One of the reasons is, we spend a lot of time watching anime or live action films. I watch so many of them, and I'm very picky. We maintain a certain standard level that has to be above. It’s not so much like Criterion, but we stand behind our quality. People buy because of the quality, people trust us. That’s why “Oh, it’s an AnimEigo title, it must be good.” So we have to stand behind it. That’s why we have to be very particular about a certain level there. There are a couple of titles right around the line, like [Growing Up With] Hello Kitty.
Hello Kitty was great data, but it’s still around the borderline.
Robert Woodhead: Yeah, but in its defense, it’s funny.
Natsumi Ueki: It's funny, it's great. Yeah. But you know, we don't just license because somebody says so, or [because] it seems to be popular, or it's a trend or something. We don't follow that kind of stuff. We have to watch. And then at least one of us has to make a decision. “This is a quality film.” That's why we’re going to license it. That's our style.
Robert Woodhead: I guess the right way to put it is that making a lot of money has never been our sort of prime directive, but not losing too much money.
Japan Culture NYC: So who overrides whom if you're saying “This is going to be the one”, and you don't believe that he's right?
Robert Woodhead: It’s “Or.”
Natsumi Ueki: Yeah
Robert Woodhead: If either one of us thinks it’s worth doing then...
Natsumi Ueki: Actually, you know, say Robert loves it, and for me, borderline, but he pushed back “it's great” then borderline’s okay. And then vice versa, for Japanese films, I'm the native speaker, I understand the quality of the dialogue and the story, then I stand behind what I think is great. And then…
Robert Woodhead: Have you ever vetoed anything?
I don’t think I ever have...
Natsumi Ueki: For a Japanese film, never, because he trusts my judgment. And then, you know, I can tell okay, this is a film by this certain big star, and then this [is a] quality director, how important, that kind of stuff. So, then I watch the entire film and decide, “okay, this is worth it or not.” And then, anime was originally Robert’s decision, before I started getting more involved over the first couple years, but basically it’s a joint decision. If one of us said no, then we don't do that.
Robert Woodhead: But I don't think you've ever told me I'm full of shit. Regarding something I wanted to do.
Megazone 23
Japan Culture NYC: Well, Japanese people don't swear.
Robert Woodhead: (Laughs)
Trust me, she does, and she’s fluently bilingual.
Natume Ueki
Over 30 years, he’s taught me so many dirty words. I can if I want to.
Robert Woodhead: Every so often, one of us has come up with an idea that the other one would never have considered. It turned out to be the light. Natsumi, the Hello Kitty release was Natsumi. She was the one who came up with that idea. And…
Natsumi Ueki: That was our biggest seller.
Robert Woodhead: In terms of units sold, yeah, Hello Kitty was, because it got into Walmart.
Japan Culture NYC: I can see that though, she’s universal.
Robert Woodhead: Can we tell the story about Hello Kitty talking?
Natsumi Ueki: I’m not sure.
(There was a brief ‘off the record discussion about Hello Kitty.’ Rejoining the interview in progress)
Robert Woodhead: The best thing about Kickstarter is “no returns.”
Natsumi Ueki: There’s the occasional person who spends $100 and then says “I’m sorry, I cannot pay the rent this month, can I return it?”
Yes, there are people who prioritize our products over rent!
Robert Woodhead: So we say “Here’s your $100 back. Pay your rent. We’ll set aside a copy for you for now. “
Natsumi Ueki: What’s the t-shirt? Anime, drugs would be cheaper? We’re the relatively safer drug dealer.
To the interviewers:
You advertise drugs, too.
Robert Woodhead: You’re facilitators.
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
Anime Herald: Absolutely.
You did a “choose your own adventure” for your wedding. You had a close call between the samurai sword and the chainsaw on the wedding cake. Are there any other close calls for AnimEigo that you'd like to talk about?
Robert Woodhead: Well actually, the hotel wouldn’t let us use the chainsaw.
Anime Herald: They saved you from yourselves.
Robert Woodhead: Hmm…
Anime Herald: Any bullets dodged?
Natsumi Ueki: Too many.
Robert Woodhead: There are a few. There's one time this company really wanted to buy us and they were making a lot of promises. This was just before the big dot-com crash. And we sort of started getting cold feet about it, which turned out to be pretty good, because they turned out to be a bunch of complete scam artists.
So you know what? I guess one of the reasons we’re still around is that we never were really in a “bet the company” situation. We're always about making little bets. If one goes wrong, “Well, okay.”
Our attitude was, you know, it's nice when something makes money, and some things make a really nice packet of money. But it's mostly about making sure you get to make the next thing. You can enjoy yourself along the way. I mean, if you work hard on something that you really enjoy, and it turns out to only be a marginal commercial success, at least you enjoy doing it. But if you work really hard for something that you think is an absolute pile of crap, just because of the money, and then it doesn't make any money, you feel absolutely awful.
These days, we just work on projects that we really enjoy and where we get to do interesting and strange things. On each one of the Kickstarter projects, there's been some aspect of it that's something we've never done before. That we did just for shits and giggles. and that's why there's so much fun. The latest one, Shinji Aramaki got to revisit his first directing job and fix all the mistakes he made. Which he just did last week. We finally got the master from him on Monday. We're gonna show it this afternoon, actually. The commentary tracks are full of him and he and Koizumi and Yamane just like, nitpicky, facts wrong.
Otaku no Video
Natsumi Ueki: “Right here, right here… they kill each other.” It’s a lot of fun.
Robert Woodhead: “Oh, we ripped off this movie for that. Oh, and this movie ripped us off for that.” They actually did two commentaries, and they’re absolutely full of that.
Natsumi Ueki: The original idea was a 42-minute film. Our previous film, Riding Bean, We planned to do the two different ones. And we adapted it two times for Riding Bean. So that was our model. I was trying to ask Aramaki-san, “Can we do it two times?” And then he said “Do we need to do two times?” And then we ended up doing it two times. This time, they ended up talking like machine guns. All three of them.
That’s exactly what we wanted, heavy, loaded, and dense. A very happy story in terms of our contents, but a very sad story for interpreting and translating.
Robert Woodhead: The dialogue, editing the subtitles down to fit, and still catching all the, because they were going into all these incredibly dense details how they managed to get the source materials and how they wanted to make the MADOX suit have a realistic power source, which had not really been done before. And then Aramaki, when we got all the settei, we managed to get a bunch of settei from a Japanese fan group that has been preserving these things.
Natsumi Ueki: They want to build a museum of toys and anime and all sorts.
Robert Woodhead: It turned out they had 120 pages of settei, which we put into an art book. We translated it all up as we do for these art books, and then sent it to Aramaki. And Aramaki comes back with all these comments that he wants added to explain things. At one point, I was teasing him that he was going on in one comment [about] how the MADOX had to have bolts at various places to show how it was assembled. I emailed him back that I’m shocked, absolutely shocked, that you used flathead screws instead of socket head cap screws.
Natsumi Ueki: There are topics like that all over. This artist, this animator, this particular flying part, because he’s the best one in the industry who can do this.
Robert Woodhead: Like, one guy.
Natsumi Ueki: This one sequence, the thickness of the cels, from A to F.
But actually, to plan all of this, it’s tough for one person. In order to make animation, you have to have other people involved, to delegate. They probably hate that job.
The whole point is that it was the ‘80s, and they were young and energetic, and they wanted to do it this way...
Robert Woodhead: Stupid...
Bubblegum Crisis
Natsumi Ueki: Stupid, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they want to do it. So much passion, dedication. Start gathering all the talents. If you see the credits at the end, all sorts of special talents gathered together.
We won’t know that kind of detail until we do the audio commentary. So they explained everything, and we’re like “Great, great, great… Okay, great, great, great”
Robert Woodhead: Let’s not kill the director…
Japan Culture NYC: I know, it's tough for the translator, but what added value that brings.
Natsumi Ueki: Absolutely. We are so grateful. We cannot thank them enough. I’m sure the fans can’t thank them enough.
Japan Culture NYC: It’s nice to have the candid…
Robert Woodhead: You learn a lot about the mechanical processes they went through back then. And also the artistic decisions they made. In terms of like, well, we only have a certain number of cels. So where do we want to save cels, so we can spend them later? They told some stories about the crunch time when they had a week to get things finished? And they're literally drawing on the cels with Magic Marker, the shadows.
Japan Culture NYC: That's important to preserve, I think The whole process.
Robert Woodhead: Yeah, ‘cause you know the mechanics of how it’s done have completely changed.
Natsumi Ueki: Yeah, but this particular time is in the dimension of Ogawara-san (Kunio Ogawara),and Kawamori-san (Shoji Kawamori), mechanic masters, mechanic designer masters. They weren’t involved in this project, but they talk about them. Aramaki is a mechanical designer to begin with. He worked together and got comments from these people.
Actually, Yamane (Kimitoshi Yamane), another audio commentator, is another mechanical designer. He did Cowboy Bebop and Gundam. You can hear all the mechanical commentary. It’s a really diverse variety of topics. I hope you enjoy it. And if you don’t, I’ll (slashing gesture)… with all the time we spent on it.
Richard Woodhead: A couple of times they actually apologize to the translators who need to translate the commentary, because they’re talking about particular minutia of some German armored personnel carrier that they used parts of to make the mobile tank MADOX. All this bizarre stuff.
MADOX-01
Anime Herald: Obviously, I feel sorry for the translators. But I do feel particularly sorry for the person who has to subtitle all this, with three people talking at once at a rapid fire.
Robert Woodhead: Well, fortunately, this is now the sixth title we've done, where we have the dense commentaries. So we've come up with a multicolored style. And when we have three speakers, we pan the audio left, right and center for each person. So you can try and tell from where the audio is coming from who's speaking. And it works out pretty well. But, you know, there's only a few places where we had to abridge what they were actually saying because it's just so dense and fast.
Japan Culture NYC: You have the color coding from the duets, the blue is for the guy singing, and the pink is for the woman singing.
Robert Woodhead: Even though when you’re actually doing it it’s a bit of a slog. That's the kind of stuff that, when you look back at it, that kind of preservation aspect and, in particular, letting the viewers get a better understanding of the creators is kind of the best part of these projects, as far as I’m concerned.
Also, letting the creator revisit things and comment on their work from their perspective in time is, I think, important and worthwhile. I’m so glad that we found a structure. The limited edition structure that we've done provides the budget, so if the project is successful, we can say, “Yes, you want to do that, go ahead and do that.”
Aramaki wanted to do a fixed version. We said “Sure, how much do you need?” and he said “This much.” and we said “Okay.” and he said “What? You’re not going to bargain me down?” and I said “No. Go do it.”
Japan Culture NYC: A lot has changed in technology with regards to anime and film-making. What has changed with your side of the industry with [regards to] marketing and packaging? I guess one example would be subtitling.
Robert Woodhead: Well, those are just mechanical things. I mean, subtitling commentary, subtitling film is more or less the same. Some layout differences, but nothing, in particular. I mean, the software we use to subtitle our videos is a direct descendant of the original software written back in 1989. And, in fact, the files, MADOX was the first time that we commercially released, and so I had a subtitling script for it, and that, with just a few lines of change, would actually render 30 years later.
So, the system has, has had a lot of bags bolted onto the sign of crazy stuff over the years, because anytime we ran into, like, a really weird issue or situation, whether it's like moving from VHS to DVD, and then to Blu-Ray, the rendering aspects, or being able to do particular special effects that were available in one form or another, I would just go, because I'm a programmer, I would just go and update the software, so I have new command in it that you could use. The overall process has gotten easier, because now you just put your video up in Final Cut, and you can look on the timeline and find out where the speaking starts and stops. You can scrub it, whereas in the old days, when you didn't have a nonlinear editing system, we did it all on tape. And we actually had that secret history page explain how we did it. But we, we, you know, we found some shortcuts that let us time things, the timing is the tough part. Do that relatively simply. And so, that aspect of it hasn't changed all that much. It's just gotten more streamlined...
Natsumi Ueki: Updated
Robert Woodhead: Which is good because I’m old.
A.D. Police Files
Anime Herald: I remember from the secret history that it’s not 30 frames per second, it’s 29.97.
Robert Woodhead: It's not 24 frames a second, it’s 23.978. Same ratio. And if you want to go down a real rabbit hole, go to Wikipedia to look up NTSC. And find out the true story of why that is. It's a brilliant technical hack to shoehorn color into a black and white signal without messing up the black and white signal.
Anime Herald: Now I'm very intrigued, because I'm an AV guy by trade. I used to be a projectionist. So this is all the stuff that I understand. I'm excited for this.
Your goal was to bring anime to the masses. Mission accomplished. And now you're preserving anime that you have brought to the masses. Is there anything else? Are there any more moonshots? Anything like “I still have one dream left to accomplish?” And if so what is it?
Natsumi Ueki: World domination.
Robert Woodhead: Yeah. It’s all been part of our master plan for world domination. It’s very subtle.
You know, that’s one of the first rules of overlording is you never gloat.
There’s a list at evil overlord dot com of classic mistakes I will not make.
Natsumi Ueki: Putting world domination aside, you know age-wise, Robert is 62. I’m REDACTED, 39. We haven’t retired yet. We slow down. Maybe Robert has a slightly different point of view. We’re paying it forward. We’re thankful for so many things we’ve been given, from our parents, from the industry, so now it’s time for us to give to someone else.
This Kickstarter, we’re offering some young people the chance to join the production team. We’ve learned from the past, all the successes and mistakes we’ve made in the past. We’re passing that information along and teaching the history of anime.
We’re not at the age where we want to be busy, busy, busy. We’re focusing on the things we want to do and that we’re good at.
It’s weird. Every 5-10 years, we come up with something different and new. And then we’re not really greedy about that. We’re open-minded and trying to search for what’s right for us. It comes to us somehow. So that’s the sort of thing, we want to wait. We enjoy offering opportunities, but we’re not just offering opportunities. We’re learning from the younger people.
We’re already doing what we like to do, and then we don’t mind doing something different. We didn’t make any plans, but things just happened.
Robert Woodhead: We maintain an openness to doing goofy shit.
Japan Culture NYC: Organically.
Robert Woodhead: With a big company, there’s a lot of overheads, and the ball constantly has to be kept moving. Whereas, we have the flexibility to wait until something really interesting comes by, or some bizarre project, so long as it looks like we’ll probably not lose money, and we’ll enjoy doing it, we’ll just do it and see what happens. It’s often the side effects of those projects, a lot of the Kickstarter projects, we’ve let the backers work on them. Sometimes that’s just a fun thing that they do to get a taste of what it’s actually like to do things. In a couple of cases, it’s become a resume thing and they’ve gone on to do significant work for other companies. And that’s great. We’ve all benefited from good fortune.
It’s our turn to try and provide opportunities for other people to do kind of weird and interesting things, because you never know when something is going to completely blow up for somebody. We’re fortunately in a situation where we can afford to be relaxed about that kind of thing.
Natsumi Ueki: This COVID situation has just been a disaster for so many people.
Robert Woodhead: Not for us. We’ve been working from home for twenty years. The only difference is we didn’t go to Japan twice a year.
Natsumi Ueki: I think the anime industry overall benefited with Blu-ray and DVDs, since people tended to stay at home. But they didn’t get to go out to the theater. That’s one downside. I think overall the anime industry stayed strong.
it’s not something we’re directly involved with, but there’s one sad thing I often hear about that I want them to change: Japanese anime production is severely overloaded. It’s so busy and young people quit right and left, because they can’t keep up with it and they’re so poorly paid. They’re making too much. They have to change. Better pay, good working environments, and a good future.
Many people, starting with Miyazaki, and many other anime top people, are really regretting that they don’t have enough young people to [share the] burden, to shoulder the next generation. It’s just a sad situation. So, if some of our money would help them to change, we’d be happy to…
Robert Woodhead: But not too much… *Laughs*
We want to be efficient.
(Editor’s note: It was clear that Robert shared Natsumi’s concerns about the treatment of the next generation of animators.)
Japan Culture NYC: I heard that all the time about craftsmanship. Kimonos, there’s only a handful of kimono makers left, and they’re all 87.
Natsumi Ueki: Yeah.
Japan Culture NYC: I’m really surprised to hear you say that about the anime artists, but I guess if it’s too much work and not enough pay…
Robert Woodhead: Every creative industry runs like this. Just burns people out. Like the computer games industry. The computer games industry runs on the precious bodily fluids of the young people that it burns out, chews up, and spits out. Because they’re working them for incredible hours under incredible stress. Because everyone wants to be in that industry, and they exploit it. There are a lot of people in the younger ranks of the anime industry who are getting exploited in that way.
Natsumi Ueki: Oftentimes, what I hear is that they are in the anime industry. And then, when they get burned out, they go to the game industry or the pachinko industry. In pachinko, they’d do anime art things. It’s good for making money. So, that’s the only way…
Japan Culture NYC: I thought you meant they were in the parlors.
Robert Woodhead: “I was in the anime industry, but the stress was too great, so I moved to the Yakuza.”
Natsumi Ueki: Burnout situations are very, very common. And then, just to educate the young people, that’s what the top people like Miyazaki and others are really regretting. It’s just not happening. They’re not growing.
Maybe ten years ago, I heard they were making 17 new anime titles a season. Maybe there are over a hundred now. They’re fighting over all of the artists. Why don’t you bargain? But the thing is, anime creators, they can’t really market themselves. They’re just creative people. So they end up staying with the studio, with low pay, and then they don’t move… they may need some kind of minimum wage.
But again, the issue is, yes, I understand the working environment is very important. But at the same time, they are greedy about high quality. They pursue high quality, “yes, you have to do it that way,” so it takes extra hours. They want to make good stuff. So it’s just a balance. It takes pursuing the quality at the risk of burning yourself out, so maybe it’s a good idea. But there are a lot of nutcases. Creators where I keep hearing horror stories.
(Editor’s note: We then went off the record with some anime horror stories. Some notes I can share:
1. People have passed on major products because they feel the creators are perfectionists that are simply intolerable.
2. You have to balance the quality and the deadlines and how much you want to push yourself. It’s the same with Hollywood.
3. It can be a money issue too. Some projects have the money where you can have a good work/life balance.
4. Sometimes it takes a nutcase perfectionist to break through. That’s the reality.)
Anime Herald: You've developed a core competency over the many years, even before Kickstarter or crowdfunding. And clearly, you've been able to grab 42 minutes, I believe it was (until MADOX was funded). Is there anything down the pipeline that you'd like to crowdfund coming up? Any ideas that you have for some of your other catalogs that you're looking to bring back?
Robert Woodhead: Yeah, there are…
Natsumi Ueki: Two, but they’re not finished yet.
MADOX-01
Robert Woodhead: Yeah. There's always a lot of bizarre little details. It's been getting a lot easier, now that we've done more and more of these. We have a track record, so people in Japan are more comfortable with the kind of bizarre little model that we've come up with. But we always have a couple of projects that are percolating. And we tend to announce the new project about the time the previous one ships. Oftentimes, though, it takes a lot longer than you'd expect, because of materials issues. MADOX has been hanging fire for years, because it was always “We don't have the film anymore.” And then suddenly, the film appeared.
Japan Culture NYC: Magically.
Robert Woodhead: Magically. As did [Project] A-ko. That was hilarious. And, so yeah, now suddenly, the project's a go. And, it was literally two, three weeks from the time we learned the film was actually available to the time we knew the project was going to happen. So it can turn on a dime.
Natsumi Ueki: The sad thing is there are 35mm films, but at many companies, people are in and out. They don’t keep track of where those films are located.
In the storage space, in the studios, no one keeps track of it. The people new to the industry, new to the industry, they don’t know where to look.
Robert Woodhead: It’s a “Raiders of the Lost Ark” warehouse.
Natsumi Ueki: (Laughs)
That’s exactly what it is. It’s not that they intentionally block us from getting material. They’re searching for us. But it’s the generation shift, and the lack of tracking. And in some studios, some storage spaces, they don’t realize how important some films are, they get thrown away. I’ve heard many horror stories like that.
They don’t understand that the films, the original 35 millimeters, have to stay in one location, and never get taken out, because otherwise they take a chance it gets lost. But, the people we talk with, they say “Okay, we’ll take it over” and then they don’t understand that kind of stuff, how precious it is. That’s sort of an education issue. The older generation of people have died, or retired, or didn’t have the time to educate the next generation of people. We’ve tried hard to find the Indiana Jones stuff.
Robert Woodhead: Sometimes it’s difficult, even if you get the films, it’s the ancillary materials. The artwork, the settei. For some titles, it’s really easy, they kept it. Other titles, it’s just… scattered.
Natsumi Ueki: So when we’re looking for a new project, we have several conditions:
1. The rights have to be available.
2. It must not have been released on Blu-ray.
3. They must have either high definition material available or the 35MM film available.
4. The creators must be willing to work with us.
There was one title where the director was available and in his 70’s. He was interested in working on the title, but not confident in his ability to make new artwork, which is a very honorable decision. So it didn’t happen. Those four conditions have to be met. It’s not easy to find films that meet all those conditions, so we’re doing very tough things, like Indiana Jones.
Japan Culture NYC
I know this is a bit like asking you to choose which one of your children is your favorite, but what is your favorite title or the title that has surprised you the most?
Robert Woodhead: Well, the one thing you have to remember is that when you're actually working on these things, you have to watch them about 50 times. So after you're done, you never want to watch them again. And then, of course, you have to rewatch them. Like, Bubblegum Crisis. We did it on VHS. We did it on LaserDisc. We did it on DVD, we did it on Blu-Ray. And each time I reviewed the subtitles and went, like, “What the hell was I thinking? That's awful.”
“It's a really difficult question to answer. I joke: the main work channel in our company Slack is called The Sausage Factory. Because that's what I tell people: “Welcome to The Sausage Factory.” Because that's one of the side effects of working on this. After you work on something so hard, you can't watch it purely for the enjoyment of that particular title anymore. Because, you know where the flaws are and when you watch it, you will inevitably... I mean, I try not to watch the Blu-ray after it's released after I've done my QC checks, because I know that if I watch it, I will find a mistake. That was like, a punctuation error in one of the subtitles and I'll go like “Arrrrgggg!” and I just don't want to put myself through that.
Do you have a title that you really enjoyed?
Natsumi Ueki: Enjoyed? Or changed my mind about?
Japan Culture NYC: That might be an interesting thing. Maybe something that you weren’t 100% on board with that grew on you over time.
Natsumi Ueki: Well, I think it’s an important film, an important anime for me. I think it’s Wings of Honnêamise…
Robert Woodhead: The one that got away.
Natsumi Ueki: We never got the rights. When I first saw it… it’s sort of like a period shift to the new type of anime, from the simpler design of Tezuka, to way more complicated anime. Wings of Honnêamise is where Gainax got together to make it. Not so much money at the time, but so much energy. Akira was similar in a way, the experience blew me away. That and Wings of Honnêamise were my first ones [where I went] “wow, this is what they call ‘anime’”.
Robert Woodhead: That’s the title I would have loved to work on.
Natsumi Ueki: Yeah. So much intensity, the young Gainax people, They’re all young and stupid and full of energy, and they don’t know what they’re doing… If you see the list of names and talents that got together… they can’t make that kind of anime ever again… gathering so many talents.
I was in the generation that grew up watching Tezuka, much simpler anime. And then, things had to change. There are so many, like Urusei Yatsura, and the Miyazaki titles, of course. Actually, Robert’s first goal was to license Urusei Yatsura or a Miyazaki title. We got Urusei Yatsura. Urusei Yatsura has such a sense of humor. It’s hilarious.
Robert Woodhead: On the other hand, practically every cel from Totoro, Kiki, or Porco Rosso that ended up in America passed through my hands. I didn’t release their films, but I sure was a conduit for their cels. So you know, it worked out.
The story of the Miyazaki cels and how that came about is certainly an off-the-record dinner conversation story. It was interesting. So yeah, I had thousands of them.
Anime Herald: What are you doing for dinner tonight?
Robert Woodhead: (Laughs) Going out with Mr. Aramaki.
