Blu-Ray Volume 2 Booklet
This page contains translations of the booklet included with Puella Magi Madoka Magica Blu-Ray Disc Volume 2. The full contents are listed on the Products Page, and the BD is for sale on Amazon.
Pages 3-4: Interview / Akiyuki Shinbo
From volume 2's booklet, translated by symbv at forum.evageeks.org.
The ED starts to run from Ep.3. Although the song used in ED was also used as an insert song in the advant (pre-title sequence), Hirofumi Suzuki-san, the animator who helped put the ED animation in place, said that this got to start from Ep.3 as it fits perfectly the taste of this work. When I was working on some Mahou Shoujo works in the past, I had asked him to help on ED animation. This time I followed that past flow and asked the same thing.
The storyboarding and directing for the OP was by Tomoyuki Itamura. Because it was the OP for Mahou Shoujo show, I wanted to put in some transformation footage. I told Itamura-san, "It does not matter if it is not some awesome OP. Please make it in a video that will get people to want to watch the show once they watched the OP video.". He worked very hard on it and drew the part where Madoka did her best (learning as a mahou shoujo).
From Ep.3 the real taste of the work is finally becoming clear. One of the attractive things about an original work is that the audience is not able to tell what will happen afterwards. And combined this with speculation over how the development will go, it becomes part of what made the work interesting. Atsuhiro Iwakami-san, the producer, said it from the very beginning, "I want this to become a work that develops in a way that subverts prediction." And the final product indeed developed precisely as Iwakami-san imagined.
It was really hard work checking the storyboard of Ep.3. The mood was becoming heavy, and on both physical strength and mental strength sides I was absolutely worn out. Perhaps it had something to do with my age. If I could have done this while I was still young at age, I might be able to storm up ideas while directing this kind of work. What happened was Yukihiro Miyamoto-san, the series director this time, calmly dealt with issues and thus allowed the work to proceed.
After that, as the story progressed, storyboard checking work gradually became harder. I did not want to show cruel scenes; I wanted to show the feeling of those people who had to face those situations. In order to make it a more interesting work, I put in my ideas during the storyboard task.
There may not be many times I can make this kind of work in the rest of my life. When I thought about that, I stopped trying to get sloppy or slacking.
