For three years now, I have published something special on every July 21st, “Kanada Day” as I call it, the anniversary of the death of legendary animator Yoshinori Kanada. Since I arrived in Japan last October, I’ve thought of doing something special this year: perhaps meet people who knew Yoshinori Kanada, interview them and obtain some more insights on one of my favorite artists from those who were there at his side.
Through circumstances that would be too long to recount here, I’ve had such an opportunity: thanks to Mr. Masatsune Noguchi, a former colleague of Kanada’s, I could meet Ms. Makiko Kanada, Yoshinori Kanada’s wife. This was a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and I think there’s no better way to remember her husband and his work than share the conversation we had. Without further ado, then, here is the exclusive interview of Ms. Kanada and Mr. Noguchi, full of insights on Yoshinori Kanada as an artist and individual, as well as all the people around him – his colleagues, friends and fans.
I wish to extend all my thanks to the people who made this interview possible: Mr. Takechi, Mr. Noguchi and Mr. Maruyama for making room for us in studio M2. And, of course, to Ms. Kanada for taking some of her time to answer my questions. As always, this article is dedicated to Yoshinori Kanada’s memory – may it live long in the hearts of animation fans.
“That’s how we first met”
Ms. Kanada, were you interested in animation in the first place?
Makiko Kanada: At first, I was mostly interested in manga. To tell the truth, I wanted to become a mangaka. But then I met my husband, and helped out a bit on animation.
I see. If you don’t mind, can you tell me how you met your husband?
K. Is it alright? It could turn into a long story (laughs).
It’s alright with me (laughs).
K. I was 14 when we first met. A friend of mine was a fan of Hideo Azuma, who lived in Oizumigakuen, so we went together to visit him. When we went, Azuma was out, but we had gone all the way there, so we didn’t know what to do… And at that time, a special focus on Studio Z had come out in some magazine… Was it OUT? The address was written down, and since it was close by, we decided to go. That’s how we first met.
So were you already a fan of his?
K. No, not at all! None of us were (laughs). My friend liked Hideo Azuma, but since he wasn’t there, we just went to take a look at Studio Z.
And was your husband an acquaintance of Azuma’s?
K. Not at all, they had no relationship whatsoever.
After that, I believe you entered Studio NO1, right? How did that happen?
K. Well, at first it was Studio Z, right, then they moved to NO1. I met my husband there again, and I got to work part-time there… That was when I was in highschool.
Were there any other highschoolers working there part-time?
K. I don’t think so. But I believe Masahito Yamashita and Kazuhiro Ochi were already there at that point.
What kind of job did you do there? Only in-betweens?
K. In-betweens. I did that for some time, and by the end I did a bit of key animation as well.
Do you remember what works?
K. What works… Well, mecha shows.
Masatsune Noguchi. You also worked on Kazuhiro Ochi’s Hikaruon, didn’t you?
K. Yes, I think. Also, what was it, Tetsujin 28-go? The one with the sun… I did some in-betweens on that, then Moero Arthur… On Mr. Noda’s episodes.
Did you also do in-betweens on your husband’s work?
K. I probably did some… When it changed from NO1 to Nonmaruto, I also helped him out a bit, with key animation and in-betweens?
When was it, the change from NO1 to Nonmaruto?
K. When was that (laughs).
N. That’s a complicated one, nobody really knows!
That’s why I asked (laughs).
K. We were already married during Birth, and at the time it was still NO1.
N. At the time, Mr. Kanada often came to Kaname Pro. I was working in Kaname back then, and everytime he came everybody went “Mr. Kanada has arrived, he’s there, he’s there!”
They would have these meetings and draw all the time, and when they were over, they left the room and Mr. Kanada or Mr. Kageyama told the production assistants to throw them all away, since they were only scribbles. But these were treasures for us, there’s no way we could throw them away! So I kept some to this day.
K. I was around 19 or 20, and then later it became Nonmaruto. It was a lot of fun. There was NO1 and then Z5, where my husband’s disciples worked, and we’d often go on trips or eat somewhere together.
Were there any other women in NO1?
K. In NO1… There were at first… 2 other women, I think?
Did you keep doing animation after that?
K. What was the last thing I worked on… The last in-betweens I made must have been on Hikaruon, but I also worked a bit on the Yu Yu Hakusho movie. I did a bit of key animation, and I think that was the last time.
“Everybody was there for the Kanada episode”
During the NO1 era, I believe you worked on a manga called Waga Seishun no Floresia together with your husband, can you tell about the origins of this work?
K. Waah, that’s an embarrassing one! (laughs)
N. Ah, I wanted to bring that one today but I forgot it at home. The mysterious manga.
K. Stop it (laughs)! It’s better to forget about that one. I was still in highschool back then…
Ok, then I’ll drop it (laughs). Can you just tell me how the character of Kapoko was born?
K. At first, there was this children’s magazine… Was it Nakayoshi? No, something else… Basically, there was this magazine, and everybody did pictures or stories for it, and I think that was the first time Kapoko appeared. Wait, no, since I was in highschool, that manga came first. But this was when Kaponen from Don de la Mancha appeared, right? Who likes little blonde girls…
N. The little blonde girl is originally a character from Zambot, right?
Aah, so Kapoko’s basically a crossover between Zambot and Don de la Mancha.
K. That’s right.
N. You know about Don de la Mancha?
I do.
(everybody laughs)
N. I was watching it live back when it aired. I read in anime magazines when it would air, and recorded it on video as if my life depended on it…
K. Isn’t it really obscure?
N. Yes, but there was a special issue about it on Animage or something, so it became big and everybody was there for the Kanada episode.
(takes out a DVD of Download) There’s also this one.
K. Ah, Rin’s one, right?
N. That’s right.
K. They really did whatever they wanted on that one, just playing around.
N. Actually I rewatched it with Mr. Rin here just a few days ago, he was going “ah, that one was fun!” all the time.
K. Well, they both really liked that one. There’s no real point to it but it’s just fun (laughs).
I believed they researched Buddhism or something for it, right? Since the subtitle is “Namu-Amida-Butsu is a love song” or whatever.
K. Well, at first, my husband liked characters like Rasa and everything, right. They went to China and wanted to create a character like that, but my husband got sick and came back to Japan (laughs). And then later, for the Spirit Warrior OVA, everybody went to Tibet – I think Mr. Maruyama was there as well? – but they all got sick (laughs). Because the air is so thin there (laughs).
Mr. Kanada really loved traveling, didn’t he?
K. That’s right. We went somewhere around every year.
Did you go overseas a lot?
K. Overseas as well. At first, we went to Hawaii, then India, China… Also Europe: starting in Germany, then Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, Egypt, Greece… And then back home.
You mentioned Rasa earlier, and I’ve heard you were her model… Is that true?
K. (laughs) What should I say here…
N. They really look the same, you know. Back then, everybody said “wait, that’s your wife!” (laughs).
I’ve heard you also helped out on the Birth manga…
K. That’s right. I helped out with the coloring, the tones, things like that… I was asked to help out with the colors at first, but I ended up doing everything (laughs).
What was the origin of Birth in the first place?
K. At first, there was the manga, right?
N. At first there was the manga that got an extension in The Motion Comic, so there were talks to turn it into a short or something…
So the idea to make it into a short came from Kaname Pro?
N. Yes, I think. Kaname Pro was centered around Ms. Inomata and Mr. Kageyama, and then the original author, Mr. Takegami…
K. Yes, he’s the one who wrote Birth in the first place, then my husband did a manga of it, but he totally ignored Takegami’s work and did his own thing (laughs).
N. The same thing happened for the OVA’s storyboard. Everybody went wild with it, changing the length of the cuts and the camera angles… Everybody wanted to have fun with it.
Actually, last year, the Birth manga was published in France…
K. Is that so?
Didn’t you know about it?
K. I don’t. I don’t have any of the rights for Birth… I think some game company bought them at some point?
There’s also this story that your husband threw away his drafts for the second half of Birth…
K. Ah, someone said that, right? I don’t know anything, though, I wasn’t there.
N. That’s Kazuhiro Ochi. Apparently, right before his eyes, Mr. Kanada tore all the pages down.
K. I think everybody went to some hot springs somewhere, and my husband took the manuscripts with him to keep working on them or something, and I don’t know what happened but they ended up all torn down (laughs). But my husband didn’t tell me anything about it. Ochi knows.
N. Yes, apparently he saw it. And then later, Mr. Kanada said that there weren’t any manuscripts left, so there wasn’t anything to publish anymore.
K. Yes, they planned to release a second volume, so my husband was asked to draw some more, and I think he did draw some, but in the end that happened so it all disappeared. That’s what I heard.
Why would that happen? Was it because he was frustrated with the anime or something?
K. I really don’t know. Ochi would, since he was actually there…
N. Actually, I asked him once, and apparently Mr. Kanada was dissatisfied with something, so he just went “to hell with it!” and tore it all up. But it’s not like I was there, so I don’t know. But apparently he was just in that mood, and did that, and everybody was like “what have you done?!”. That’s what I heard, but I really don’t know. The only one who does would be Mr. Ochi.
K. Nobody knows except Ochi (laughs).
“He was the kind of person who had hundreds of friends”
After Birth, your husband started working with Studio Ghibli. Was he invited by Mr. Miyazaki or something?
K. Was he? Maybe Mr. Miyazaki did invite him… Anyways, Ghibli did a new film something like every year, right? And they always asked him to help out, so he went to work there.
So it was just helping out, not working there full-time?
K. Yes, going there a bit at a time at first. And then as it went, he got more involved.
How were things between him and Mr. Miyazaki?
K. Mr. Miyazaki’s probably the only one to know about that (laughs). Things were normal… I guess?
So they weren’t friends or anything?
K. I wouldn’t say that, more that he could rely on my husband. Well, human relationships are complicated (laughs). Mr. Miyazaki’s quite severe, after all (laughs).
N. In Ghibli, Mr. Kanada really cheered people up, didn’t he? Everybody always said he was really cheerful and kind, and they all loved him, didn’t they?
K. He was the kind of person who had hundreds of friends, right? (laughs)
That’s amazing (laughs). And talking of directors, since we’re in M2, what about Mr. Rintarô?
K. They were quite friendly with Rin.
N. They often went on trips together, after all.
K. Yes. And I don’t know about now, but Rin had a country house in Yatsugatake, and we went there sometimes…
Didn’t anybody invite your husband to Madhouse? After all, there was Mr. Rin, Mr. Noda…
N. (points to the room in the back) You should ask Mr. Maruyama (laughs).
K. But basically, as an animator, my husband just moved from place to place and helped out here and there, so he wasn’t really attached to anywhere, he just did the jobs he wanted to do.
But after that, he joined Square, right? How did that happen?
K. Ah, that was Masahito Yamashita’s fault (laughs). He was the first to join Square, which was in Hawaii, so when he said that he was going to work there, my husband went “then I’m going too!” (laughs). That’s how it happened… He loved the sea and sun and all that.
So was Hawaii fun?
K. You could say that (laughs). Well, he didn’t really have any work to do for the first year, so at first he wanted to go back home, but then he’d go to the beach or somewhere and we ended up staying (laughs).
N. It’s Hawaii after all, right (laughs).
I guess even working there was quite different?
K. It was, after all it wasn’t like doing animation in Japan. The process was completely different, and he’d say there was no end to it (laughs). The story wasn’t decided, the characters weren’t decided, so he didn’t know what to do…
And it was CG as well, right?
K. He never did CG. What he did were the indications for how things should move, like a sort of manual.
So he kept working on paper all the time.
K. That’s right. And then the CG people used that as reference.
N. It must have been complicated, right? The approach to timing is completely different. The CG people would have wanted something fluid, but Mr. Kanada would make things move irregularly, so there were some misunderstandings… I’ve heard they’d put in-between frames where there weren’t supposed to be any, things like that.
Did your husband like video games in the first place?
K. I don’t know if he “liked” games, but he played stuff like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy or Zelda…
So I guess he was happy to go to Square to work on games to some degree…
K. I don’t know about that… He was just happy about going to Hawaii, I think (laughs).
Is that so? (laughs)
K. Well, it wasn’t just that. It was the point where they started using CG in anime as well, so I think he also wanted to know more about CG.
When did you go back to Japan?
K. After 2000, I think… We spent around 3 years in Hawaii?
“He watched a lot of movies”
I believe your husband left some unfinished projects… Can you say anything about those?
K. Well, together with Mr. Takagi, who was someone working in anime with whom he often went camping, they wanted to create an original. My husband would do the characters and Takagi the original story, I think it was something along these lines.
Nowadays, I believe you’re part of the archive called Studio Z, right?
K. Ah, that’s something by Chiharu Satô, who’s gathering originals and various materials by my husband. So I lent my name to help out, but I’m not really doing anything there. She said she wanted to keep using the name Studio Z, and asked the people from Z5 if it was OK, and that’s how it happened…
N. Nowadays, on all of her credits, Ms. Satô always puts “Studio Z” alongside her name.
K. She wants to keep Z alive, right.
Your husband had a lot of disciples, right? Who would you say he was the closest to?
K. The closest to? Well, they were all friends, I can’t really say…
N. I think they were really close with Mr. Yamashita, but in the end they were all good friends, weren’t they? So singling out just one person might be difficult.
I see. Did your husband watch a lot of anime?
K. Not really. But he really liked movies. Sometimes he’d get really into some drama as well… Things people had told him about, so he’d watch it and spend all his days on TV.
Do you remember some titles?
K. I don’t (laughs). Really obscure ones… Sometimes he’d ask me to record them, so I watched a bit as well, but I can’t remember the titles…
N. I’m changing the subject a bit, but about movies, I’ve heard this story about when he went to see The Thing and just roared out laughing in the middle of the theater…
(everybody laughs)
K. I don’t know what was so funny!
N. Yeah, everybody was trembling on their seats when that spider-like monster comes out, but he was there laughing… That’s what I heard.
K. Well, he liked a lot of things.
N. The name “Nonmaruto” also comes from Ultraseven, right. From the famous episode called “The Messenger from Nonmaruto”. He liked tokusatsu as well, so that’s why he chose the name.
K. Yes, he’d be from the Ultraseven generation. He also loved Goranger. Anyways he watched a lot of movies, so I still have lots of DVDs at home… There was this European one, what was the title… Solaris, he really liked that one as well. Also minor films… And Akio Jissoji’s works. So he’d imitate him with his layouts, with the perspectives and everything.
Aaah, so that’s where it came from!
K. He was always very particular about the size of things. For instance, when there’s something big on screen, he’d have small birds flying by, or show it from below…
N. There’s that in Zambot, the way he drew the giant robot… That really surprised me back then, the way he drew the perspective.
K. He really liked things like that.
“Something you can’t draw in one hour is too difficult”
So I guess things like light flares did come from live-action effects, didn’t they?
K. Hmm, I don’t know about that… When did he start using those, anyways? Zambot?
N. There were definitely some already in Zambot and Daitarn.
Voltes V as well…
N. Where he did the opening. Akihiro Kanayama said he was really surprised by the key frames, they were so rough, he didn’t know what to do with them… But the timing was exceptional, so he did his best just fixing the characters and not touching the timing.
Mr. Kanada must have been hard to handle for animation directors, right?
N. Nowadays, you can’t make such rough drawings… The in-betweeners won’t take anything that’s not cleaned-up. Back then, they’d take them as is, and sometimes clean them up themselves. Now they’d just say “I can’t trace this, please do the second key animation”.
K. Please do your job properly (laughs).
At the time, they didn’t really do second key animation that systematically, after all…
N. They didn’t.
K. Nobody had the time for that, after all (laughs).
N. So they’d just transfer the rough lines directly onto the cels. Now they scan the drawings, clean them up and color them digitally, so it’s quite different.
Coming back to what you said, if your husband didn’t watch a lot of anime, I guess that means he didn’t really follow what the younger generations were doing?
K. Sometimes he did watch things like openings that the younger people were doing. I’m sorry, I forgot the names (laughs). But he’d watch these, and make comments all the time, saying things like “you’re putting too much effort in it, make it simpler!” (laughs).
N. Well, Mr. Kanada drew really fast, didn’t he? With his ruler, he’d just do things in a flash.
K. He used to say that something you can’t draw in one hour is too difficult (laughs). If he ever spent more than one hour on something, it’s that it put him in trouble.
What kind of pencil did he use?
K. His strokes were really weak, so I think there were always B4 or B2 ones laying around… Really thick, soft ones. Since he drew really fast, with wide strokes, the lines weren’t strongly marked or anything.
And did he spend a lot of time working?
K. Hmm, so for example, in the NO1 days, he’d go to NO1, first he’d get a drink or something, have lunch, and only start working in the evening (laughs). He spent most of his time playing around!
Back then he’d take me out for a drink, and 3 hours later we still weren’t back at work (laughs). He was alright with not working…
That’s just like Yasuo Otsuka. I’ve heard he’d go to the studio, take a look around, go for a drink somewhere…
N. The type to play around, go on trips and all that, right? That’s totally different from Miyazaki, isn’t it? Who’s always there at the studio focused on his work.
Who did he consider as his master?
K. That would be Takuo Noda, wouldn’t it?
Ah, no surprise there.
K. As the first person to take him under his wing, I’d say Mr. Noda. They had the same mannerisms. So you can’t really tell who imitated who in the end.
N. They both adjusted their styles, right. You often hear about how this way of drawing robots came from Mr. Kanada and Mr. Noda adopted it and the other way around…
K. Back then, even though they were masters and students, everybody was sort of like the rival of the others. It was the same with Ochi and Yamashita. They’d borrow techniques from one another… The same happened with Kazuhide Tomonaga, they were real rivals.
So was Mr. Kanada very competitive?
K. There was that with Tomonaga… And then the younger ones, for example Yamashita… I think there was a bit of that at some point.
N. Yes, I think that when Mr. Yamashita started doing his own thing, Mr. Kanada was following him quite closely.
Ah, I’ve always thought that his style changed a bit at that time, around Genma Taisen and Nausicaä… So it was really Mr. Yamashita’s influence, wasn’t it?
Speaking of which, I’ve heard that unlike other animators, he didn’t use a stopwatch when drawing, is that true?
K. No, he did use one, though I don’t know how it was at first. But he’d do things like removing pictures he had drawn just to see what it was like. And then say things “it looks different than I thought”.
K. Well, back then you couldn’t really see what you were doing, right? You only completely figured things out when the rush film came out.
K. About that, there was this thing he was frustrated about. In Genma Taisen, there’s a shot with all the characters showing up one by one, and Vega’s last. He looks a bit small there. When the movie came out, my husband realized that and he got unhappy about it. He felt like he had messed up the perspective and Vega was too small. He hadn’t noticed it, and nobody told him to fix it either…
N. Mr. Rin really cares about these kinds of details, so if it was a real problem, he would have said so, wouldn’t he?
K. But when my husband saw the film, he was really disappointed with this scene.
So he was really conscientious, I guess.
He liked jazz, right? Did he draw with music on?
K. I don’t think he did… But in NO1, there’d be disks lying around… Actually, in Ghibli or Square, he’d have a Walkman or something and did listen to music on earphones.
Do you remember his favorite artists?
(thinks) Miles Davis? (laughs) The performers that were popular back in the day, like that Japanese singer who’s retired now… But I can’t remember her name.
Overseas, Mr. Kanada’s animation is often likened to jazz, actually…
K. Ah, because nothing seems like it’s been planned in advance, is that it?
N. Or how he’s actually expressing himself through the pictures?
That’s it exactly. Thank you very much for today!
Animétudes 