Interview: Art Director Mao Takayama & Ginger Root on Sparks of Tomorrow

I’ll take that one. The scene that most expresses the work is a scene in among the streets of Kyoto, I think. That is what most expresses the world of the series.

Pipes strung all through the old streets of Kyoto, the ground churned to mud, a world that is permanently overcast. That is what we are depicting, so I think that is the part that expresses this work best, visually as well.

That would be the Violet Evergarden period. Back then I was still in about my second year, a genuine newcomer, so my seniors taught me a great deal and corrected my work for me.

Now the positions have reversed, you could say. Building on what they taught me then, now I am the one teaching the juniors under me, or making the corrections at my end. The position has flipped completely, I think.

This is a very distinctive work, so what we were aiming for was image-making that looks like an oil painting. In building it we made brushes, brushes that would produce that look.

It is not something one person makes; it is made as a team, so we kept communicating. When a piece of art came back we would say, this one is fine, this part would be better handled this way, and we built it up gradually that way.

I wrote the song without seeing any visuals of the ending animation. I was just given a painting done by the director, as well as a piece of writing about what he wanted.

I also met with him online and saw what he wanted and all that, but I didn’t have any real actual visuals to go off of, except for that one piece that he gave me, and obviously some directions from him.

And I purposely wrote things in the song that could complement opportunities for the animation to do something special. Like the breaks, or like the drums, or the interludes and the choruses and all that. So I was very excited to see the finished result, and I think it matches very well. I wish there was animation for the whole song, but it was still in the works, and they actually animated to what I wrote, which is very special to me. So that’s my side of the story.

On the ending, almost all of it was 3D and the photography team’s work. On the background side it was only three cuts.

But we were let hear the ending song, and whether it was the make-up of that world, something like a pipe organ, I am not sure what was used, but that kind of unusual music, music using really unique sounds, we were let hear it, and I thought it matched the art of the work extremely well.

On this work we used a way of drawing that leaves the touch of the brush visible, and an Impressionist-painting sort of treatment that blurs the outlines a little. But the traditional buildings and so on, this is a world none of you know, so we had to explain it properly. The parts that needed that explanation, and the parts where the characters sit, we drew very precisely.

Everything else, the edges of the frame, or scenes with movement, we made those the places to leave big brush strokes. And that balance, we worked it out cut by cut.

What I heard from the director was that, fundamentally, he did not want to tell any lie that wasn’t necessary. So the traditional Kyoto buildings, the streets, the locations, those we reproduce faithfully as they are.

The part we change is the steampunk, because that is the fantasy part, so we string the pipes around and make the world overcast. Then there is the distinctive fabric. We hang bolts of cloth under the pipes that are strung overhead. That sort of thing did exist in the Meiji era, but it was originally a sun-shading measure, hung so as to block the sun.

Here we use it to hide the pipes, and because it is a world where you cannot really see the sky, the patterns on the cloth stand in for the sky and give it a colourful impression.

The single biggest benefit is that communication is easy. For the parts you cannot explain in words, we can have someone come and look at what is actually being drawn, and we can answer a question on the spot, and that is enormously strong.

Beyond the background section, we can stay in very close contact with photography, with key animation and finishing, with the other sections, so we can put a proposal like “how should we handle this one” straight to them.

I thought that was very big. And this time the art was quite unusual, so all the more, I find myself thinking it could not have been done anywhere but our own company.

When I made “Soarin’” I did it completely in a bedroom. I didn’t run any studio time for it, so it does have that kind of lo-fi sheen that a lot of my other songs have. I used a little bit of the same telephone that you talked about, recording some of the vocals on there.

And the thing with writing for TV and anime is my anxiousness of having to change things all the time. So when I did stuff, for example, with NHK earlier this year, I used that as a learning experience to not actually record a lot of real sounds, instead using soft synthesizers and VSTs and all of that. So it was a good exercise.

With a lot of my other songs, recording things with actual microphones, instead of like this. For this song in particular, recording things directly that were easily editable in case I had to make changes.

Especially because there’s two versions, there’s the short version and this long version I made. The short version got the okay, and then I had to figure out how to recreate the sounds I made for the short version to duplicate them for the long version. But thankfully I didn’t have to change anything after the first draft, so I worried for nothing. But that was probably kind of how the song was recorded, in that way.

I got a proposal to do it. I thought it was fake. I was really excited. I’m a big anime fan, and so I took it.

One story I will tell is, I had one meeting with the whole team, including the director, Minoru Ota, and we bonded over the fact that he really likes Lady Gaga. I don’t know why, but weirdly I think that subconsciously influenced how I wrote the song. Not like I’m saying “Soarin’” sounds like any Lady Gaga song to begin with, but the back and forth that he had was, like I said earlier, that he gave me that painting and he gave me that piece of writing.

He also said something differentiating from the opening theme, where he didn’t want any eastern-sounding instruments, because the opening is acting like, here’s the Meiji era, here is stuck in time, very traditional, a sense of adventure. But then with an ending theme, he wanted it to actually sound electronic. What would the future that all the characters, what the Electricity Catalog is, what those ideas may offer.

So that was a big thing that we went back and forth on. He gave me those notes, I made something that I thought would probably fit well, and it sat with the team very well. And that’s kind of the back and forth that we had.

That’s a good question. For me, on the music side, I know specifically they gave me a reference to City Hunter, where the theme song would start while the ending scene is going, there’s a little bit of dialogue left, and then the beat drops. “Get Wild.” I think that song is the one.

So they wanted me to kind of create that same essence of, and here’s the ending. So with that involved, the adventure isn’t solved. There are a lot of things, the Electricity Catalog, there are so many mysteries in there. So in essence a cloudiness, just like the town is shrouded in steam and smoke, similarly having that feeling of uncertainty.

But there’s a lyric in the song, it’s like, but together we can go past the stars, we can get out of that steam together. And so that’s something that I wanted to portray, and kind of also with the animation team, give them an example. Like I said in my previous answer, so the characters could actually fly off the screen and give them a sense of soaring into the sky.

What Ginger said just now, I feel very much the same way about it.

And then, it depends on the episode, but I would like them to deepen their reading of the episode, and to predict what comes next. That sort of, how should I put it, it is very hard to express, but something that becomes that kind of time. Letting your thoughts wander. Yes. Thank you.

Sure. I do like vintage Japanese culture, but not that vintage, I would say. But it was a great opportunity to kind of stretch my palate and deviate from the things that I normally do.

When talking to the team, I asked, do you want me to write an anime song, I think, would sound like an anime song? Or did you want like a Ginger song? And they said, well, while we would like a Ginger song 110 percent, we probably can’t. So in my own head I decided, okay, let’s do a 70 percent Ginger song and a 30 percent anime song, and what would that sound like?

And it was a great exercise. It was a fun exercise to put on a new hat, trying a new set of clothes. I think they fit really well.

And ultimately, taking Ota’s writing and his painting, and also all the key artwork that I was able to see, all the character designs and stuff like that, they said that essentially Sparks of Tomorrow is a boy-meets-girl story, and that you can’t do it alone.

And so how the song starts off with a single instrument is, like, you start off alone, and then as you try to achieve something you want to do, you need help along the way to support that. And that’s why the song gets bigger and bigger, and in the chorus there’s a whole choir that sings the chorus. So it kind of heaves in towards that point. It was a really good challenge. It was really fun and I’d like to do it again.

I think in terms of themes specifically, I think it was a sense of wonder that this book has. It’s something so familiar, but something that hasn’t been delved into a lot. And I feel like in the song, choosing certain chords that evoke a sort of, we’re not at home yet, we’re not done yet, this series isn’t done yet, this song isn’t done yet.

In terms of the characters, I feel each character, and this I guess translates into more of a theme as well, everybody wants something. Whether it is to avenge their brother, whether it is to aspire like their mother, whether it is to just get what they want.

What I’m talking about is, I feel like that feeling is something that I wanted to bring a main focus of. Like, we all want something in life, we can’t do it alone. Some people will try to do it alone and fail. Some people try to do it together and succeed. And I feel like that was the core essence of what I took from the theme, the characters, the scripts, all the stuff that the team told me to implement into the ending theme.

What my seniors taught me was, above all, to draw while thinking, at all times. It is background art, background for animation, so it has to be background that sets the characters off properly, and you think about guiding the viewer’s line of sight, there is an enormous amount to think about. And to keep the colours from going muddy. I think all of that connects to where I am now, so I think that is what matters.

I have liked drawing since I was small, really from about five years old. But what made me want to work on anime backgrounds properly was, at around fourteen, a gentleman named Yamamoto who works as an art director in anime.

On works like Princess Mononoke, or Laputa, I believe he was the art director. When I saw that person’s exhibition, it became the reason I wanted to do this job, so I think I am very much under his influence.

It was extremely difficult. Was it though [laughs]. Because you are not alone, after all. It is a work that a great many people are involved in.

And because it is animation, you have to mass-produce the artwork, so I felt the difficulty very much in that area. And not just drawing something, but communication skills, and leadership, and, yes, I felt that those things beyond drawing were necessary.

The question is whether we vary it between the intense scenes and the quiet ones. As for colour, both the intense scenes and the quiet ones are a clouded world either way, so what they have in common is that we built the colour of that world as a grey made out of many colours mixed together, colourful. What we did vary is the brush stroke. On the intense scenes we make it a little stronger, and on the calmer scenes we make it careful and precise.

Not so much the one that stayed with me, more the one that was hard. There is a scene where Kihachi imagines the future, and the figures there, there are people moving with very realistic movement, and all of that had to be handled on the background side.

Drawing every moving part separately, and so on. It was an unbelievable amount of work, and it was hard.

I think, as I said in a previous answer, the director wanted specifically to have more electronics, bass sounds and stuff. And I think finding that medium between what I would personally put in as a synth sound that I would like, versus something that I think would fit the story, that was a fun challenge to incorporate.

And in terms of, like I said before, having the conscious decision of, I had to make the 82-second version first, because they needed that to animate, and then go back and kind of extend the song from there. That was a really interesting thing that I’ve never done before, because usually when I’m writing songs specifically just for Ginger, I write from the first beat to the last beat. But on this one I had to basically hit a checkpoint, and then get it approved, and then go on.

And like I said in another answer, having to replicate, I didn’t save the guitar sound, so I had to match by ear how much distortion I had on the first half, and stuff like that. So that was a really interesting challenge, that I would try to figure out a way how to not do that again.

Yeah, I was burnt out last year, definitely. In the midst of getting burnt out, I had to remember, and I’m still trying to remember, why I started doing music in the first place. And it was for fun, and because I enjoyed doing it. And I never thought I’d get this far doing music. I never thought I’d be sitting in a room at an anime convention talking about my song credits.

And I’m very excited that I have the opportunity to do that. So I’m trying to learn to be more mindful of taking a step back and really being thankful for what I’m able to do with all these music opportunities.

In terms of creative block, man, just going for a walk does wonders. And also, I used to have the thing where, if I can’t do it in one go, or I can’t finish a song in one night, then it’s a bad song. And I’ve started to be a little more lenient and be like, it’s okay to take a step back, take a day, take two days, don’t even think about them, come back with a fresh perspective.

Because there’ll be a bunch of times where I’ll make something and I think it sounds like garbage, and I’ll wake up next morning with a fresh mind and I’m like, this is not bad. So I think, take it easy on yourself. If you have a creative block, motivation comes and goes. But creative burnout, it’s hard. But if you remember why you started doing something in the first place, it’ll come back when it’s ready.

I love Kyoto Animation. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say all the other shows that I like or whatever, but K-On! and Clannad and Violet Evergarden. I watched Violet Evergarden like, mom, she cried. It’s great.

One thing I will say, and I said this at LA Anime Expo, is that I was learning Japanese during Covid, and the first book that I was able to read in Japanese was Hibike! Euphonium, or Sound! Euphonium. And so I read that book, realized that Kyoto Animation made that, and I watched that. And that’s like a super crazy connected story. Well, now I’m working with the same studio that made that work.

So it’s really special. I’d love to do something again. Maybe an opening theme one time would be awesome. And yeah, I don’t know, just as a fan, awesome. It’s really cool. And I’m really happy that I had this opportunity and hope to do more in the future.

And who knows, if I get better at drawing, or maybe take a lesson from Takayama, I could maybe draw better and maybe make my own anime one day. But that’s like, maybe, I don’t know, 15 years from now.