Bloom Into You Interview with Director Makoto Katou (Patreon)

Happy to present this interview with Bloom Into You Director Makoto Katou, provided by @ultimatemegax. Here, the director talks about capturing the feel of Nio Nakatani's hit manga in their adaptation from the careful attention to characters' emotions and body language to the human elements of their relationships.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nio Nakatani’s manga “Bloom Into You” depicts the subtleties of teenage emotions via a romantic story between two girls. The TV anime series that ran between October and December 2018 also ended with the audience admiring those subtleties with its high quality visuals and a sense of filmatic elements. We went to ask the director of the anime, Makoto Katou, about important topics like how the beauty of the visuals was created and heard him talk about how he moved from thinking about how to direct the series towards being a foreman overseeing it all.

Building the work around Yuu and Touko

- First we’d like to hear about how you were selected to be the director for this title.

Katou: At first, the publisher Kadokawa sent over a variety of titles asking “are there any of these that you would like to direct?” They all were fascinating titles, but the one that captivated me the most was “Bloom Into You.” When I read it, I saw the story of a girl who fell in love with another girl, but the details of that story were depicting a more general love that anyone could appreciate. I’m someone who doesn’t know anything about the “yuri” genre, so I thought that I could create a visual work that would reach out and attract a lot of people in addition to fans of the original manga. I felt that would perfectly fit the commonality aspect that the manga prized.

- Did this become a challenging work as you begin working as a director on it?

Katou: I’m sure that people who love yuri works like this manga were on guard against someone like me who knew nothing about yuri at all. But conversely, I feel that those who love yuri immensely would be the type to create something oriented to a very narrow audience because they’re the type who think “I know everything.” I think taking a step back and searching for the meaning of “what is this view of yuri content” when making this title was what made it so enjoyable for me.

- “Searching?”

Katou: When the mangaka Nakatani-sensei created this title, she made each of the surrounding characters have some type of message towards the leads. When you think about it that way, there’s no gaps in how she structured the story. That’s why it was important to me to talk with her about the core components of each character so that we would understand why they would look this way or act this way towards a certain character or say something in particular. Of course, since the main characters Yuu and Touko aren’t characters that can be explained in simple terms, this was a title that you had to search meaning from. And since she’s the type to appreciate that in anime titles, I felt pressured to live up to her expectations. (laughs) But curiously, from the very first time we met, I remember saying things like “I think this,” and “I would do this and use this to create something,” very quickly with her. Since the producers were also saying “that’ll convey what we thought” so I felt that I had been able to convey what I thought and wanted to make.

- How did you structure the series with the composer (Juuki) Hanada-san?

Katou: At the beginning, I submitted a tentative plan of the portions of the manga I wanted to include. After that, Hanada-san and I combined everything into a series draft through our discussions. That included things we wanted to stress and where we wanted to end. Probably a lot of fans who read the manga thought the anime would go through to the student council play. That’s certainly a highlight in the manga. But I thought that if we only went to that point, then it would shortly turn into a title only about Touko. Hanada-san had the same viewpoint. We both wanted to make this title fully about both Yuu and Touko. If we only went to the student council play, then we would omit a lot of the manga, and that would also be a waste. So we had decided on that plan from the very beginning. I think that was the right decision.

- What were you conscious of when making the series about both Yuu and Touko?

Katou: Since we didn’t want to only depict about “them”, we focused on thinking how best to depict Yuu starting from the point of “I don’t know what love is,” and going through a process to find the light within herself. How light arrives after how many eons inside her heart to fill a gap she thought was completely empty. I thought that the planetarium scene where the number of stars grew is a point of that. Since we were restricted with only 1 cour with Touko, we chose the option to have her chasing after her sister’s shadow. We absolutely couldn’t ignore that. We also were conscious of thinking how she would want to be addressed when she wanted to absolutely be lonely during the series.

- Did it feel difficulty to compare to the highly finished visuals from the manga?

Katou: I first worked as a director on “A Corpse is Buried Under Sakurako's Feet” (“Beautiful Bones”) which was a novel, so this work was originally a manga instead. As Nibutani-sensei’s illustrations were so skillful, it was quite difficult to draw out the significances from those drawings when I was creating the storyboards. (laughs) Even though it was a manga, the way the panels were laid out made it feel immensely visual already. So if I were to make the image the same framed layout as the manga and just trace its work, I felt there’d be no point in making it animated. Of course you want to respect the intentions of those who read it and think they want to see it a certain way while watching the anime, but we also wanted to do things that you can only do in the anime format. I think you should find what’s in the gaps between manga panels in anime. It was because of that concept that I remember thinking there wasn’t anything left out when I read the manga. Everytime I would find something incredibly tiny in the panel to have a deeper meaning, Sensei would say to me “You noticed, huh?”

- Let’s dig further into that. When you were reading, what points made you pay attention?

Katou: The utmost was how impressive the mood felt. Characters’ emotions weren’t displayed directly to the reader. Instead the reader had to look further and search into the imagery to discover how they felt. I wanted to expand that expression further however possible, like using a wavy leaves when someone would be crying, one leg secretly jutting out, or hands twitching a little. I thought that viewers would see that and think “wait, maybe I should think about this character differently, shouldn’t I?” That’s why the mood was so important. I searched to find any possibility to depict those frames in a different way as best I could.

Knowing the visual plans for “Bloom Into You” from working on the storyboards

- Your name was listed as working on the storyboards for the first three episodes. While most directors of TV series will use the first episode as a plan for the series, it feels like most will have to stop at that episode for 1 cour works.

Katou: To put it bluntly, I wanted to draw storyboards for all of it myself. (laughs) That way it’d be 100% what I imagined. But, originally I wanted to do episodes 1, 3, and 6 however, that proved to be impossible, so episode 6 was handed to Ei Aoki-san. The first episode was just like you said, but for episode 2, I only handled the storyboards for the railway crossing scene. Since Hanada-san also thought episode 3 would be an episode “difficult perhaps for someone that isn’t special enough to draw it,” I picked up that one too.

- This might be more general, but what do you dig into where you have a difficult script to work with for an episode?

Katou: When working on storyboards, of course I first read the script, but then I place the characters in the field of the visuals and then work backwards from what I want to show in this image to organize that cut. Placing characters is difficult. I always think I’m going to lose to the script when I start the storyboards. Since Hanada-san’s scripts are so magnificent, it’s not that I want to negate anything he wrote, but that we can’t go down a particular path. For example, the script in episode 3 only read “the trees swayed”, but in the episode, the wind blew when Touko placed her head on Yuu’s shoulder. In a script that line is fine, so from there a director has to think how to make that charm prosper in the storyboards. Episode 3 is the time where Touko finally steps out of her sister’s shadow, so I don’t think anyone could have done that episode without a deeper reading of the original manga there. When they’re behind the gymnasium, there’s a cut with both her sister’s shadow and her old self’s shadow. I added that as I didn’t want to depict Touko having her younger self inside her at that time as the script said. I felt the camera separating from her was the only way to depict what was inside Touko as well. There were a lot of things needed for the third episodes. We had to go location hunting for the shopping mall in the A-part, and then inside my head I had to think about which store to go in, what angles for the tables, what backlighting to use since it’s twilight, how far to express their shadows stretching out, and so forth. All of that had to be accumulated in my head. That’s why I chose to handle episode 3 myself really quickly. (laughs) The railroad crossing scene in episode 2 had a special color palette for it too. That is the visual direction I wanted to show in “Bloom into You.” While Hanada-san wrote “Time stops” in the script, that expression became how those two alone were in that space and how beautifully that was depicted in that scene. From that scene, a lot of cuts were born so for scenes where we didn’t have a reference photograph that included the proper mood, that image made up for it and became essential.

- You mentioned him a while ago, so how was working with Aoki-san’s storyboards? It seems like he’d capture the depth needed from working on titles like Aldnoah Zero and Re:CREATORS.

Katou: Agh, I knew that he’d be able to draw it like I said, so while I thought I could leave it to him, I was still annoyed with him. (laughs) I expected no less from him. It was a chain of serial “this is it!” moments in my head. I needed that kind of motivation. While he did place his own adlibs and inverted the script at times, he was able to match it all into a singular storyboard. Even though I felt frustrated, I was truly glad that I asked him to work on this. I didn’t make a single change to his storyboards.

- Changing the chronological order in the storyboards is truly amazing.

Katou: He said “we don’t need this here!” and tossed out scenes, so the episode wasn’t long enough. (laughs) From there we placed gaps in the riverbank scene and used the long version of the ending, so the cutting process went surprising well.

- I’d like to ask about length. How did you create the sense of time that flowed in this series?

Katou: It’s a bit tough to explain, but instinct. Other than my own feeling inside me saying “this should be 18 scenes” or “cut this at 12 scenes” I couldn’t believe in any other way. We could control the tempo with the storyboards to a certain extent, but as we could change the tempo completely by inserting the voices from the actresses, it created a live sensation. Even though the cutting process where we determined the timing was the most stressful job, I believe that I didn’t get tense at all due to all the information I’ve accumulated up to this point. I felt I could do it with editor (Shouta) Uyama-san. Since I’ve worked with him together since Aldnoah Zero, he knows my quirks and would be able to positively assert “I want to cut this here.” I’d say “why would you do thaaaaat” stretching out my worries and we’d have a good give and take together.

- You were also responsible for storyboarding and directing the opening and ending animations.

Katou: I wondered what I wanted to do this time. For Aldnoah Zero and Re:CREATORS I split these duties with Director Aoki, but one goal of mine was to make the OP/ED in one work. It takes special techniques to be able to make the visuals for the OP/EDs and since being a director takes a lot of time, there’s not a lot of people that can handle being in charge of both of them. However, I already had the images that I wanted to depict in my head before I placed the order for this show’s music, so while I drew the image boards, I also ordered that type of music as well.

- And so these visuals were the images that were in your head from the beginning.

Katou: That’s right. They didn’t change at all. These images kept floating around in my head like “I want to do the OP/ED this way.” The visuals I had in my mind at the beginning were more of a frontal attack or a more motion-stacked expression for a brief moment. I calmed down and inserted a calm message instead and furthermore thought how to cut it down into something possible with that amount of key animation frames and still show that message. The characters don’t move at the hooks of the song, but that was a distinct direction from me. I thought organizing it like that would allow emotions and messages to be packed into a single cut, so to hear that it reached the audience perfectly was a relief.

- Having those experiences helped you as a director, correct?

Katou: This title has a lot of new experiences that unfold. Isn’t it similar to like some music video where a lot of things happen in one specific space? I thought that using that type of setting without changing location like that would feel stylish for an anime. But by using hanging flowers in an ordinary, dull classroom allowed me to place messages inside it.

- The color of hydrangeas are talked about in the show itself, so flower motifs come up quite often.

Katou: I had to research flower language. (laughs) Since there’s a lot of types, the message may change due to what color I chose, so I had to hand-pick them. Even if I found a flower that had a meaning that perfectly fit, it might not look great in visuals, so picking these flowers may have been the worst part of this title. (laughs)

- They’re also used to express the relationships and emotions between characters.

Katou: This OP depicts dual nature. At first you think they’re just hiding their face in embarrassment, but inside the mirror is the other they really want to see and that person is shown. The message of hiding their embarrassment but still wanting to see the other is included in that. And then to signify the stability of their love, they’re always linked together by their emotions even when crumbling apart. I feel like people have this mask hiding what they’re really thinking.  Don’t we adopt a mask or “persona” when interacting with someone else? Yuu and Touko are similar: Yuu hides that feeling of loving someone while Touko hides herself in her sister’s disguise. This time I used vegetation like vines as shadows much like I used it in Beautiful Bones as well. In that work, it was used in how you think about death, but death is entirely going to nothingness. I worried a bit if people would sense a bit of a horror vibe from them.

- How did the ending animation come about?

Katou: During the business meetings, I received a smartphone cover from Kuzu-san in the editorial department. At that moment I received it, a light went off in my head thinking I could use these pop colors for the ending. I hadn’t previously created any pop imagery, so that meaning itself was a challenge for me. To make that work, you have to have great taste with colors, so I put my trust absolutely in the color designer Mariko Shinohara on it.

- Coupled with the ending song, it feels like a sense of relief after the seriousness from the episode ends.

Katou: That kind of structure was an idea from producer Shinpei Yamashita. Several years ago there were a lot of works where a calm ballad was used to tie everything together as the ending, but in this title that would be a bit too much. Instead if we placed that here, it would make the developments in the main story more serious. So we thought why not change the feeling so that people would look forward to the following week, so we made a pop song instead. With that, I thought about making the OP more emotional. It was really a try-and-see effort.

A director’s job is producing by being the instigator

- I feel that the presence of Hiroaki Gouda as character designer and chief animation director was huge for this work. What requests did you have of him as director?

Katou: The one who asked for Gouda-san to work on this was Troyca’s producer (Toshiyuki) Nagano-san. Gouda-san has been active at the forefront of the anime industry since I was a child, so my first thought was “I can’t stand in his way.” But at that very first moment, I instantly felt “I can’t lose to him!” (laughs) Why was I thinking about winning? (laughs) However, his intuition was close to mine, so he was instantly able to pick up what I was thinking and saying to him. It was like “I’m not going to lose to you either bud!” between us. (laughs) He would also give me various bits of feedback like “if you do it like this, it’ll be more lively.” Of course I have my own image of how things would go and I wanted things to be active as well, but naturally an animator who’s drawn things themselves would be able to think of different directions than I could imagine. We all have our specialties. Gouda-san would say something like “I increased the amount of key animation frames on this cut, so good luck on the timing!” and I’d reply back in kind “Nice timing!” (laughs)

- How did you explain the humanistic way of acting to Gouda-san and the episode directors?

Katou: I’m not a fan of anime stereotypes like hair fluttering only at the tips near the chin. I thought that moving only a character’s hands up when they’re gesturing that they give up would be technically impossible, but Gouda-san said “since it’s the same amount of drawings, they can move that way.” Not only did he correct my impression, but Gouda-san furthermore improved the quality of that cut. By doing many things like that, the other directors could see his work and make something good to showcase. I don’t think you could express that type of mood in the workplace on video. Beginning with Gouda-san and going all the way to the in-betweeners, all of the staff had such tenacity. The young animation directors also received encouragement from Gouda-san and seeing the fire that they had to do whatever it took was amazing. I wonder if that could’ve happened only since we were at Troyca.

- What were you focusing on for Yuu and Touko’s animation?

Katou: Yuu is an active girl, so I was conscious that she should have a lot of reaction to her. Touko feels the calmer of the two, but I wanted to express a stirring inside her. Also their facial expressions. I also remember talking with Gouda-san about how it felt like Nagatani-sensei was able to control their expressions so minutely in 1mm intervals. Sayaka as well too. When Yuu was talking with someone, she was always Yuu, but the Touko everyone saw was a Touko in the shadows of her older sister. It was truly difficult to depict the part of Touko that wasn’t like that; the scene in episode 6 by the riverbank with the side of Touko that she dislikes reflecting on herself was quite challenging. I didn’t want it to just be dimmer than usual either. Although there’s a bit of emotionlessness to her originally, I thought about how we could bring out a different type of expression from underneath her to depict her in that scene.

- What ideas did you have in regards to the voice acting?

Katou: The first time I greeted them, I conveyed that “there is [recording-specific] footage, but it’s alright if you don’t stick with this timing.” In short, that was a general landmark for what should be said, but it’s alright if they didn’t exactly match up with that footage. The actresses were quite surprised. Usually the recording is done with a fixed episode duration, but this time they recorded with a temporary length and then we would use that in order to cut and trim the episode. They are also professionals, so if it’s said to speak everything in 2 seconds, then they’ll speak it all in just 2 seconds. But I thought that if they used their breathing techniques and add a second or a beat here and there, then the acting could be even better. From there, they could perform something that felt more alive and not bound to specific timings. It was similar with the storyboards; I would think of a specific tempo, but I wanted to see the “liveliness” of the actresses at that point.

- When we spoke with Touko’s actress, Minako Kotobuki, she mentioned that “Director Katou is the fiery type.” What instructions did you give her?

Katou: Maybe I gave her the impression of conveying something like “this work has this kind of message so I really want to portray this!!!!!!” when we first met. (laughs) It’s common to convey your directorial intent to the sound director and that would get conveyed to the voice staff. And each time we finished recording I told each of the actors “you did well on this part here.” Instead of simply saying “good work today,” I thought that saying what they did well today to each person would increase their motivation. And then once I told them what I thought, I’d say “Let’s do it again next time.” Outside of those times, I wouldn’t whisper to them at all. I clearly modulated my voice as a way of showing trust in them. By saying “I won’t do this anywhere else but here,” I feel it eventually showed in the series that the cast embarked on that feeling in that room as well. Yuuki Takeda-san cried after the recording for the final episode. It was the love she had for those recording sessions that made her cry. I also felt happy during those moments.

- You could say that setting up those recordings for the best quality would also be part of your directorial technique.

Katou: I agree. Again, I feel that a director is very close to working as a producer.

- You mentioned earlier that communicating with Gouda-san about animation was also like a producer as well.

Katou: Right. Geniuses may think the production revolves around them alone if they’re there, but I’ve never considered myself a genius. I feel like a director for the first time when everyone’s around. Every single person there is truly important; if someone’s missing then we can’t go forward. Each time an episode was finished, I would go around to all the sections and say to them, “Thank you so very much. We’re able to broadcast this week as well thanks to your efforts.” I despise this trend that in-betweening is the bottom rung of the industry. If I were in that position, I’d want a director who comes to us and pays attention to me. Directors aren’t someone that’s immensely different than them; they’re just someone who’s the instigator in creating a work. That’s why I think it’s truly important to not forget to show gratitude to everyone working on a production.

- With this show ending, your second directorial work has finished. What has this experience meant to you?

Katou: My experience on being a director for “Beautiful Bones” was just eagerness. I felt like my experience was just doing something where I didn’t know what to do at all. After that, then I got to work as assistant director to Director Aoki on “Re:CREATORS” and I feel this is the result of my work from that alone. My thoughts on directors being similar to producers may have some from that experience. Before then, I was much more energetic. It’s embarrassing to say, but I even yelled a lot back then. But thinking about this time, the mood never got upsetting, so I think that production was able to proceed smoothly somehow. I think it worked how it should have to make a series. The reaction from a director becomes that reality.

- You’ve really changed to know what you should do as a director for a series and took an overhead view, haven’t you?

Katou: With “Beautiful Bones,” I wasn’t able to tidy things up, perhaps due to just being delighted to be a director or I was too worried about the response from the viewers after it aired. This time, I didn’t fluff my ego and while thoughts from the viewers arrived, I didn’t change anything from what I wanted to do. Something you have to do as a director is to consider how is this title going to finish. You have a goal and you can’t break away from that process no matter what delights the people watching it send you. I also have thoughts about wanting to hear what they say, but I’ve settled on not listening to them. “They’ll be there when the work is done, so won’t I be happy then?” It’s a different type of being cold and it’s a strange feeling when working. Being able to take a step back and look at yourself, that’s what being a director is about.

- Something like “Bloom into a Director”?

Katou: (laughs)

- Your tools when working as a director on a title have increased, haven’t they?

Katou: Producer (Toshiyuki) Nagano-san said this, and I’ve been metaphorical for a while now, but he said “Your direction has started reaching the audience.” I was so happy when he said that to me. What I hoped to create was something where the viewers would think about how it was directed and get into the title that way. I feel like there’s a trend to stress “easy-to-understand” and stop thinking about things, but I worked while thinking “it’s alright to also do this kind of thing, right?” In the end, the response from the audience wasn’t “I couldn’t understand it,” but more that they had to use their imagination and think “maybe that was this type of expression instead?” I was happy that I stuck with my thoughts.

- There’s a continuation of the main story, but there’s also another publication “Bloom Into You: About Sayaka Saeki” from this series.

Katou: Right. If there’s a plan for an anime coming out for that, then of course I want to direct it. I’ve directed this up until now, and it’s become a special series for me, so I think I’ll want to depict it until the very end. So if they give me a call, then I’ll do my best.

Original Interview:  https://akiba-souken.com/article/38191/