ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Blue Giant director Yuzuru Tachikawa about the anime movie adaptation of Shinichi Ishizuka’s manga. The director discussed what to cut while adapting and his work on a Detective Conan movie.
“Dai Miyamoto’s life is turned upside down the day he discovers jazz,” reads the movie‘s synopsis. “A former high school basketball player, Dai picks up a saxophone and begins practicing day and night, determined to become one of the greatest of all time. He leaves his sleepy hometown for the bustling nightclubs of Tokyo, but soon finds the life of a professional musician is not for the faint of heart. His passion eventually wins over the cocky but talented pianist Yukinori, and after Dai convinces his friend Shunji to learn the drums, they launch a new jazz trio whose rough sound contains a raw energy that quickly wins attention from local audiences. But what does it take to truly be great?”
Tyler Treese: I wasn’t familiar with the original manga, but I was really blown away by the movie. What about the original manga really stood out and made this a good pick to adapt into a movie?
Yuzuru Tachikawa: For me, the main characters are in pursuit of jazz. Their journey overall, I thought, was a really great coming-of-age story. Their journey is not just reflective of jazz, but you can see it in any sport — let’s say baseball. And I really loved trying to portray their very straightforward and honest motion towards that goal and transferring the manga to the enemy.
What I really enjoyed was that this does have that universal appeal of chasing your dreams and going after your passions. Did working on this make you more interested in jazz music?
When production on this started, I actually started attending saxophone classes because I was starting at the point of, “If I press this, I don’t know what note it is.” That’s where I was starting from. So off and on, I took a saxophone class for two years and got a lot of recommendations for different jazz CDs. I went to a lot of shows, so all of what I heard and experienced at those shows and actually playing saxophone, I put that all into the film.
The soundtrack in this movie is gorgeous. Can you speak to working with Hiromi Uehara? Her soundtrack really takes the movie to the next level.
Hiromi Uehara played the piano but was also the music director for the film. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the app called Line? We use it a lot in Japan. So we would actually communicate a lot over Line. So Hiromi would send us a new piece of music, then I would listen to it and we would actually go back and forth about it over Line. What I especially liked about her was she’s such a professional that she would take in some of our feedback and then, sometimes, she wouldn’t. She would say, “What you’re asking for goes beyond the framework of the story we’re telling.” So she would sometimes go against that. Whatever she did, it was always with the intention of making the best film and the best story.
I love the visual style of the movie, especially during the jazz solos. How was it, making these scenes as interesting to watch as it was to hear the music?
In the original manga, there’s a lot of scenes where they’re playing live shows. So that was definitely a challenge I knew I was going to face going in. So the main character’s throughline is to become the best jazz musician in the world. He says in his dialogue that, to him, being a number one musician means to be able to completely express themselves through music and know that’s part of his dialogue. So during those jazz solos, there’s no dialogue. Capturing the expression and how the musician actually plays was something … we spent a lot of time on that and worked very, very hard to capture that entire experience — both how it’s being played and the music itself.
What was the biggest challenge in adapting a 10-volume manga into a two-hour movie? I really like the sit-down interviews as a framework.
Of the 10 volumes, four volumes take place in Sendai, which is where Dai is from, and you see where he grows up, and that’s where he first connects to his audience through his music. You see his good parts and his vices as well. But then the problem with Sendai, those four volumes, is that there’s too much. There’s just too much going on to fit into our movie, and we also want to really focus on the trio — Dai, Yukinori, and Shunji. So that’s how we ended up being able to focus on the Tokyo part. So that’s how we were able to cut down. Dai’s role within the trio is kind of just to always be that North Star for the other two. He’s always shining a light, and then we can get a little bit deeper and more into the drama with Yukinori and what the other two are going through.
There are several follow-up manga series. Obviously, you’re very passionate — what interests do you have in potentially doing a sequel down the line?
There’s actually no specifics about a Blue Giant 2 coming out. In the manga, they travel to Germany and he has his adventures there, but the problem there is that he has just more friends, so it’s going to get harder with such an ensemble cast. Like I mentioned before, we cut the Sendai part out — that’s a possibility. There’s also a couple of other storylines that were cut out from the Tokyo scenario as well. So there’s mention of possibly taking some of those other pieces that were taken out and having them be their own story.
My favorite anime is Detective Conan, and you’ve worked on two of the movies. I really enjoyed Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer. What do you think made that film really resonate so well with fans and become this huge milestone at the box office?
Detective Conan already has tons of fans through the manga, first of all. [Laughs]. So there’s always been the traditional Conan storytelling when it comes to Conan anyway. With that film, we decided to do a story that was a little bit more towards adults or grown-ups. Even the characters weren’t weren’t black and white. You could never tell if they were the good guys or the bad guys. So, I think it was especially a hit because it was kind of a departure from the Conan storytelling traditions. So even the newest one, it again has more of a grown-up theme, so I’m starting to be known as the director with a serious take. [Laughs].
I think that’s great, as the series has gone on for so long, and people have grown up with this series. What do you think has really been that appeal for it to go on for 20-30 years and still be just as popular as it was back then?
As you said, grown-ups can enjoy Conan, but also there’s people who have recently discovered Conan in the last two to three years, and they can start enjoying it from the very beginning. Some folks are just straight mystery fans, and let’s say in the Conan movies, that’s more action, so then you have the action genre fans. So, I think Conan is the type of title that has multiple perceptions, as people just have different takes on Conan. So I think that’s why it’s had a long life so far.
