Last weekend I attended a lecture given by Shinichiro Watanabe. He's the director / creator of the Cowboy Bebop and Samaurai Champloo series. I found out about it at the last minute and had to buy a ticket from someone I met off the internet, but it was worth it.

They showed the first episodes of those two shows (my first viewing of both) then he followed with a little synopsis of his life and how he got into directing anime. He made it sound like he just stumbled into Sunrise (the company he started with) and started directing a short time after.

He talked about co-directing Macross Plus with Shôji Kawamori. He said that was a good experience since it was his first directing job, but described Kawamori as too caught up in jet fighters and the mechanical things.

He briefly mentioned his animatrix pieces, but said that he wouldn't talk about them anymore.

One thing I noticed right off in Bebop was how much Joss Whedon seemed to have stolen from that show when writing Firefly. I mean really. The ships even look the same.

Another thing I noticed was how he took credit for his work. He always said, 'I did this,' or ,'my work...' I thought was awesome. So often when I hear Hollywood-types talk about their movies, it's like they are afraid to take credit. It's always, 'we did this movie...' or, 'our whatever...' Even the director of the movie will say stuff like that. It seems to me that it's not really glory-hounds that take credit, even for collaborative works like film or TV shows, but rather people that consider themselves as artists. After listening to Watanabe speak of how he works and how his ideas are formed, not only for the stories, but for the visual style, the action, the characters, the integration with music... I am convinced he is an artist.

His advice: animate and be creative when you feel loose and relaxed. you won't do good work otherwise.

I was thinking about all this cool stuff on my way home when my wife called and told me to meet her at the ER because our son had fallen and needed stitches.

That was one awesome night.

I hope your son is okay...

Sounds like you heard from a great director.

I always liked his work. Even the Animatrix stuff was good IMHO, but I don't think Wantanabe was happy with it.

Anyhoo... I like his advice. Thanks for the story!

That's actually interesting. My project is totally inspired from Cowboy Bebop and i'm always praising his work. Alot of ideas and similarities of his series are in mine, however not exactly like his, but I still pay him tribute.

I want people to recognise the style and enjoy it and understand that im tipping my hat to him. I make this very clear at my website.

My boy is tougher than I ever was. He wasn't even crying when I got to the hospital and acted great for the 4 hours we had to wait...

Ace: nothing wrong with borrow ideas and elements. I was just mostly surprised since Whedon has this reputation as a fountain of new ideas and creative genius when actually he functions like everyone else. He just knows how to work the system I guess.

Get inspiration from anywhere you can. Watanabe ssays he gets a lot of his from listening to all kinds of music. He also tries to get hands on with elements that he wants to use, but doesn't know a lot about. For Macross Plus he says they went to Edwards Air Force base and I think he said they went up in jets to get a sense of how military planes worked and felt. For Bebop, he wanted to come to Texas to try and make the landscapes resemble Texas, but he said his company wouldn't pay for it. That was actually a little joke of his. He asked us to notice all the similarities to Texas in the show. We found none. That's when he said that he'd never been here and based his backgrounds and settings off of coffee table books. That was pretty funny.

his stories stand out in my mind because of his characterizations, but cultural mashups (space opera with noir/blues and feudal japan with hiphop) appear to be his signature.

i can even forgive the recycling of bebop's spike as champloo' mugen. ' ' )

i wonder what's next?

-jon

Well you have bounty hunters and jazz, then Samurai's(sp?) and rap... my guess his next work will involve Narc and bluegrass?

heheh... wow that does not mix period. forget i said that.

Those cultural mashups are very intentional and not just a willy-nilly decision. I watched Champloo for the first time and observed how he used time shifts and wondered why he did it that way.

Then he talked about hip hop and record scratching. This may be a mental leap of mine, but I think you could interpret the time jumps, edits and even that little clip of modern day that happens at the beginning of that first episode as the visual equivalent of record scratching and audio sampling. Borrow a little from this, a little from that and then mix them in the order that YOU want them.

Like I said, he's an artist.

i agree that the mashups are inspired... i just finished champloo, and the series did take a minor quality hit in the middle, but it really shone with the wacky transitions, beat-box minions and thug-life shogunates were in town.

i'm sure the visual 'scratching' was meant to mirror the soundrack as well.

-jon