[novel] digimon adventure: afterword #2

小説 デジモンアドベンチャー〈2〉
8人目の選ばれし子ども

Where to buy: Amazon.JP.

Go back to the previous chapter.

   Here is the second volume of the “Digimon Adventure” novel series.
   This time, it includes episodes 21 to 34 in the TV series. Wow, it’ll all be over with one more book! Putting that aside for your enjoyment later, I would like to write my memories here of how I first met Digimon.

   When I first heard of the project intending to make Digimon into an anime, it was summer of 1998.
   About a month prior, I was taking a hiatus from my work with Toei, drawing up storyboards for all sorts of different TV anime and making short story films day by day. It was a couple of days after I received an episode of “Himitsu no Akko-chan” to work on as episode director that Toei Animation’s producer Seki called me up and asked if I wanted to be the series director of the show that came after it. This was in late July.

   I remember that it was a rather warm summer that year. That was the year I attended the national animation festival in Hiroshima, returning to my hotel every night to continue production of short story anime… So I was pretty busy.

   Of course, the title wasn’t decided as “Digimon Adventure” at first. The most we had as a plan was that the main characters would be in elementary school and there would be seven different types of Digimon.
   The title of “series director” is only used within Toei Animation, but it is about the same position as a “chief director” in regular TV anime. Since it is the director’s responsibility to assemble all kinds of people together, as a question of whether or not I was fit for the position, it wasn’t really fit for me at all. However, the reason I accepted was because of the possibility that it was a slightly different genre from what there was at the time.
   It was what I had seen from the Heisei Ultraman series as it changed from “Tiga” to “Dyna.” The chance to review the usual ideals and make something slightly different, or possibly a new genre that couldn’t have been done without the first “Ultraman.” I wondered if perhaps such a thing couldn’t be done for TV anime as well.
   Since the story of the human characters, other than the Digimon characters, would be original, it felt like the perfect opportunity.
   I thought to put within the story the genres of children’s books, fantasy, science fiction, horror, adventure — all of the elements that we ourselves on the production team found interesting, and see how much people were willing to take in.
   As the season changed from summer to fall, the contents of this new TV show began to be finalized. During that time, talks were brought up of a comic serialization in Shueisha V-Jump and a story for a movie. The only thing agreed upon was that the character “Taichi” would be the concurrent main character in both, and a separate staff was prepared for the making of the movie. The name “Taichi” was decided on by Toei, while the original visual of him wearing goggles was produced by the comic artist. With that Taichi at the center, we decided on the ages, specialties, and personalities of the other seven main characters.
   The Digimon who would become their partners were, of course, chosen from the game. Some I’d even had recreated with new baby levels or evolved forms.
   The stage for the TV series was basically set in the Digital World, while the movie was based in the real world in a different year. After that, it was all chaos. The story that started in File Island expanded to a bigger scale, and we even inserted in stories of them in the real world.
   The real world arc that begins in this second volume was actually only meant to be three episodes at first. In reality, it became eleven episodes. Although Taichi and the others lived in the familiar Odaiba, the “Odaiba elementary school” they attended was completely made up, something that was decided on only two weeks before post-recording of the first episode. There was a lot of running about going on.
   Although I say it was utter disarray, I don’t have to tell you that, as the creator, I enjoyed it the most.
   Fortunately, many people were able to enjoy the TV series.
   If possible, I hope that many of you will also enjoy this novel version.

   May 2001

   Hiroyuki Kakudou

Read on to Book Three.