Roman Album TRIGUN ART BOOK/Yasuhiro Nightow interview
Interview with Yasuhiro Nightow from Roman Album TRIGUN ART BOOK.
English translation
[Profile]
A mangaka. Author of Trigun Maximum, currently being serialized in Young King OURS.
“This summer, I’m going to the Comic Convention in San Diego. I’m also chuckling to myself over ‘BIG GYU’ getting an animation and toy adaptation. Just as I thought I was finished with the disc jacket cover, now I have the DVD to work on. As for the Vash figurine by Kaiyodo, all that’s left is the painting. It seems like a lot is happening, but I haven’t left the house much. Oh well....”
Interviewer: I read your story about how the Trigun anime came to be in the postscript of Maximum volume 2.
Nightow: What’s in there is all entirely true. Even if I talked about it here, it’ll just be a copy of what I wrote there (lol).
Interviewer: When did the anime production project get finally confirmed?
Nightow: It was after Monthly Shonen Captain ended. I thought those plans might get cancelled too because of that, but it turned out alright.
Interviewer: Trigun has really had some ups and downs. First, the serialization stopped due to the sudden end of Captain, and then Maximum began anew in Young King OURS, and after that, the original Trigun’s finale[1] was written to be the “final completed form”. With the anime adaption amid all this, there seems to be quite an interaction between the original and the anime.
[1] T/N: Trigun chapters 14 – 20, first released as volume 3 by Tokuma Shoten.
Nightow: That’s right. That first meeting we had for 12 hours straight was around May of ‘97, I think, between the cancellation of Captain and the start of Maximum.
Interviewer: That was before “final completed form” was a thing at all.
Nightow: Yes, way before. I wrote the “final completed form” after the first volume of Maximum came out.
Interviewer: I assume there many things that needed to be cleared up, like the Fifth Moon Incident and Knives’s fate.
Nightow: I had ideas stocked up, but this was before I gave any of them real form. After all, I hadn’t even written the ending to the original Trigun (lol). The anime had to be summed up in 26 episodes, so Kuroda-san, who’s in charge of series composition, wrote us a general plot. There were quite a few edits done to it afterwards, but the final product ended up being relatively faithful to that initial plot.
Interviewer: So the anime had a clear flow from the beginning of production.
Nightow: It did. Kuroda-san had a good idea of the composition, and the director had a very clear stance about the anime’s worldview. So from the beginning, our meetings could have very in-depth discussions.
Interviewer: Out of the Gung-Ho-Guns, only Monev, Mine, and Dominique had appeared at that time.
Nightow: At that point, we had only discussed that the Gung-Ho-Guns’ names represented their abilities. I only had a very rough idea of things. But I remember that only Dominique’s ability was set in stone and I told Kuroda-san about it early on.
Interviewer: Why was an original character, Caine, added to the Gung-Ho-Guns in the anime?
Nightow: We decided to properly get all 12 of them in there, but I hadn’t made 12 characters in the first place (lol)! I figured that having rougher plans would give me more freedom later on, since I can just insert the ideas I come up with as I go.
Interviewer: Then, Caine was created...?
Nightow: ...By Jinguji-san[2]. He showed me the sketch, and I thought, “Oh, this is good.” It was an immediate OK.
[2] T/N: Jinguji Noriyuki, the mechanical designer for the Trigun anime.
Interviewer: Chapel the Evergreen is also an original character.
Nightow: I had already been thinking about giving Wolfwood a mentor from the beginning. But while I was thinking of making it an event of the past, Kuroda-san had the idea of bringing it into the present.
Interviewer: I’ve heard you discussed extensively with Kuroda-san and Jinguji-san.
Nightow: They both had read the manga very thoroughly. Jinguji-san especially had many valuable things to say. Kuroda-san also took the manga that was full of ambiguities and turned it into an anime with such concrete decisions. It’s such a hard task; I could only imagine how much effort that took (lol).
Interviewer: Were the events like the Fifth Moon Incident being written at the same time for both the manga and anime?
Nightow: I had kept the idea of the moon getting blasted with a hole as a way to complete Trigun in three volumes. However, until I got around to actually making the “final completed form,” I had been putting off thinking about how exactly it would happen. The biggest difference is that Knives was involved with it in the manga, but we didn’t want to use Knives yet at that point in the anime. That’s why we ended up having Vash be driven into a corner by Rai-Dei, then he would hear Legato’s voice, leading to activation.
Interviewer: Were the Angel Arms your idea?
Nightow: Trigun means “three guns,” so I had the idea of one of Vash’s arms transforming into the third gun. So I told Jinguji-san, “I want the gun to be like an angel, or something grotesque like that,” and he came up with that design. Seeing the result, I was like, “Holy cow, this is amazing. Mega-accepted~!!” (lol). I was thankful for how he stayed in tune with the image I had in mind, and then even surpassed it. So, the original design for the Angel Arm was actually by Jinguji-san. I just faithfully traced what he had made.
Interviewer: Episode 17 also had quite a few elements that were original to the anime.
Nightow: Apparently, Kuroda-san wanted the audience to think, “He just blasted a hole in the moon! What’s going to happen next!?” and then suddenly open the next week with a full-on Sci-Fi. That episode was absolutely amazing. I thought “Man, Kuroda-san is doing some really amazing stuff.”
Interviewer: What about Vash’s hidden ship arc in episodes 20 and 21?
Nightow: Kuroda-san and Director Nishimura were the ones who brought in Ninelives, the Puppet-Master, and Gauntlet. I also thought that if we’re doing a team battle, a setting with multiple layers would be interesting. Also, I think using the Puppet-Master there was the right choice. So then, the manga...
Interviewer: ...Also utilized the choice they made.
Nightow: That’s right, since the anime came first. That part was very impressive. So many Gung-Ho-Guns members were introduced and got killed off within the same episode without stint. It’s really something you can’t do in a monthly serial manga.
Interviewer: Speaking of killing off, what about Wolfwood? It sounds like Kuroda-san and the staff were afraid to do it, saying “He’s still so active in the original; are we really allowed to kill him off?”
Nightow: Well, Wolfwood’s death was something that had been decided at a very early stage.
Interviewer: But in reality, there was a huge response from fans over it.
Nightow: I’ve heard that some fans don’t even accept it. As for me, when I received the script, I was so touched; I thought, “Ah, thank you so much for writing this....” I was moved to tears when it aired, too. I was so glad that I was able to see the anime staff sending him off with all their heart.
Interviewer: How about Legato in episode 24?
Nightow: I remember discussing Legato’s death and what to do with the climax surrounding it with Kuroda-san and Jinguji-san in the Denny’s in Aoyama for about 8 hours. Like, “We’re thinking of doing this in the anime. What do you think?” “I’m planning on doing this in the manga....” Rather than comparing and adjusting our ideas, we treated them as completely separate things. I remember telling the anime staff to “Please, end everything in the way you think is best.”
Interviewer: So you sort of left things up to them?
Nightow: Yes. And only when I was asked for my opinion as part of the staff, I would join. About Legato’s death, I told Kuroda-san, “I think Legato would regard the act of making Vash kill him as the greatest act of service he could perform for Knives,” and so he said “Then, let’s have him die joyfully.”
Interviewer: I’ve heard that Director Nishimura created the plot twist of Vash wanting to kill Knives out of his own will.
Nightow: We were pretty tight on the number of episodes; I think that’s why they went with a more serious, grave course of events.
Interviewer: And so the Trigun anime actually ended with the proper 26 episodes.
Nightow: I think it was the right decision to properly finish it, especially since I don’t even know when the manga’s going to end. Actually, I was told by both Director Nishimura and Kuroda-san that if I didn’t want to give it an ending, they wouldn’t make an ending. They told me, “If you want the final episode to be vague, or if you have an idea that you want to save for the manga and don’t want us to use, then we will respect that.” But I responded, “I want you to carry out everything you feel is necessary for the anime.”
Interviewer: So, that’s how that plot came to be.
Nightow: I mean, everyone was thinking of ending it with a duel between Vash and Knives. The anime-original gun action was Kuroda-san’s work.
Interviewer: I’ve also heard that there was extensive discussion over the final conclusion.
Nightow: I got a phone call from the director about it, that he’s “having a hard time.” That was the first time he’d ever directly called me. When I asked him, “What’s wrong?” he told me, “I don’t know how to conclude it, how Vash should leave the stage. No matter what I write, it’s unpopular with everyone else.” So I responded, “Okay. Give me an hour to think about it....”
Interviewer: And so you carefully went over Vash’s emotional journey.
Nightow: I thought, “What would Vash need the most after everything?” My idea was that after all he would shake himself free from Rem. So I answered, “Right as Vash begins to walk away, Rem appears, and Vash leads Rem by the hand. Then, Rem fades away. How about that?” Until then, Vash was always the one that followed her, but now he would become the one who leads her.
Interviewer: How did the director react to that idea?
Nightow: Apparently he tried it out and wrote it into a script, but it turned out to be a bit confusing. Eventually he settled on Vash abandoning his coat, which would become symbolism for a lot of things. To that, I thought “Ah!! That’s a very nice idea.”
Interviewer: So that’s how the ending was decided.
Nightow: I was so happy that the director directly called me at the very end. That I was able to feel, “Oh, I’m actually participating.” Until then, Kuroda-san acted as a mediator between me and the director. I gave out a lot of ideas, but I always left the final decisions up to him. I believed that the director should make all of the final choices, and although I am the original author, I must follow the director’s choices. So I was really surprised that he had called me.
Interviewer: I suppose it means that it was that big of a struggle for him.
Nightow: I suppose so. When I was shown the storyboards, I felt like it wasn’t really as concluded as it should be. But once I saw it on air, it was so definitively an ending, and I was like, “Okay, alright!” Vash’s smile at the end was so good, it made me want the cel for it! (lol)
Interviewer: Out of all of the episodes, if you were to choose a single one to be your favorite, which would it be?
Nightow: Hmm.... Episode 1 was definitely very impactful. I was so impressed by the 3D-ness of the depth effects. Like the part where the playing cards are falling in front of the startled men. When Episode 1 was completed, I thought, “Oh, this is perfect. Please do whatever you like,” (lol).
Interviewer: “If it’s like this, I have no worries.”
Nightow: I was so happy that even if the project were to be dropped at that moment, I would’ve been content because that first episode existed. I also loved Episode 3 that Kuroda-san did an amazing job scripting, and Episode 5 that was such a fantastic adaptation of the source material. And also Episode 10, 15, 20....
Interviewer: It looks like you loved them all (lol)! Also, I wanted to ask about the Plants, which are so integral to Trigun’s worldview. Plants are the black box left by lost technology, and are organic systems that can “produce” things in a process that surpasses all physical law. I thought it was interesting that they are lightbulb-shaped too; what led to its creation?
Nightow: That’s where you can easily see my weakness for Sci-Fi. I wanted to just stuff it all in there (lol). It’s more like they function with some mysterious power.
Interviewer: How about the lightbulb design?
Nightow: It’s really just because I like lightbulbs. In one of Tamura Shigeru’s works, there was a scene where a middle-aged man in a bowler hat is walking in the desert, and he comes across a giant lightbulb stuck in the ground[3]. That was probably what eventually became a Plant in my mind. I contemplated why a giant lightbulb like that would exist, and thought that if there was some kind of production system inside and people would have to rely on that to survive, it could provide some tension in order to create a setting with harsh conditions. Just that sort of thing.
[3] T/N: Referring to his picture book Phantasmagoria and/or its short film series adaptation A Piece of Phantasmagoria (1995).
Interviewer: So Vash and Knives are beings that were originally the lifeform inside a Plant, except born as humans....
Nightow: Yeah, something along those lines....
Interviewer: It probably also had to do with the limited number of episodes, but in the anime, the Plants themselves were less in the foreground, and not much was revealed about them.
Nightow: That’s because even without openly revealing that kind of stuff, the audience is able to accept the story as-is. The fact that it’s okay to omit explanations like this was a very important thing I learned from the anime. It was very helpful.
Interviewer: That you don’t have to explain everything.
Nightow: It’s not good if a crucial part is missing, though. Director Nishimura understood what was and wasn’t necessary much better than I did.
Interviewer: The anime also made the towns out of stone and didn’t show any wooden buildings, since it was a desert planet.
Nightow: That’s original to the anime. I felt that something like a wood-production Plant creating paper and lumber would be fine. Stone towns gave a more desolate feel though, which I thought was clever.
Interviewer: Is that also a benefit you gained from the anime?
Nightow: I really was helped out a lot by it. The way I create manga even changed, compared to before the anime.
Interviewer: Would the Trigun manga have gone in a completely different direction if the anime hadn’t been produced?
Nightow: Actually, Trigun might not have even existed (lol). It’s scary when I think that there was a possibility it could have gotten abandoned (lol).
Interviewer: Were there any parts of the story that were influenced by the anime, when writing Maximum and the “final completed form?”
Nightow: Definitely. If not for the anime, they probably would have turned out completely differently. Above all, when I was shown the story composition that Kuroda-san had written, I thought, “Oh, I see. This is a way to conclude this story.” Until then, I had always been thinking how it could possibly end, all by myself.
Interviewer: Now, how would Maximum continue on from here?
Nightow: I wonder. I have no idea either (lol). I always just go with what I feel at that moment. For the time being, I think I’ve finally gotten to about the halfway point. I do want to add another twist and create a unique flow, but I’m going to think it over as I go. Thank you for your continued support for Maximum as well (lol).
I learned so much from the anime adaptation. The way I create manga even changed.
References
https://cerealandchoccymilk.neocities.org/translation/articles/1999-trigun-artbook-nightow-yasuhiro