Creative Collaboration

Haruki Murakami books> movies

I've read quite a few books by Haruki Murakami and watched a few movies based on his stories.

I really find it quite satisfying, both of the movies I've seen by different directors, one is called Burning and the other one is Drive My Car. They both have a strong feeling of how Haruki Murakami stories in their own way.

I want to talk about Drive My Car a bit more here. It's a 3 hours long film, by director Ryusuke Hamaguchi. It's based on a short story from the book Men Without Women, it's mainly based on one story ''drive my car'', but he also applied some bits from the other short stories in the book. He also changed a few things like the colors of the car, as he saw it would better suit/reflect certain emotions in the color of the film. Also, there was a short sequence of  ''Uncle Vanya'' play in the book, but the movie director made it to a longer sequence of it in the film, so, as you can already understand, it was a big interpretation by the movie director as well. The director of the film made the things in a certain way that he thought was better, that's what he said about it to put it in short.

This movie accompanies a great, sort of jazzy instrument-based soundtrack by Eiko Ishibashi.

Everything comes to a good harmony of the story, I really love the actors that were chosen to perform and how the storyline overlaps around them.

4job roles in the movie sector: director, movie editor, cameraman, actresses.

Target audience: anyone who likes Haruki Murakami is one of them. A recent movie Parasite went quite viral, and I think a movie like Drive My Car can also be an interest of people who also liked Parasite. Individuals aged 18-40 I imagine so!

Monogatari (Bakemonogatari, Nisemonogatari, Kizumonogatari, etc. there are many parts to the same story) novels>anime.

The novels were released before the anime.

I could speak about Bakemonogatari to keep it short so as to put anime and novels difference, I felt like there's actually so little cut out when it was made into anime from the novels. I find anime series quite intense though, as there are so many spoken words, the scenes and the lights are quite flashy, lots of symbols that also play along in it. I do find reading the novels sorts of like slowing down on the story, cause everything seems to happen so fast in the anime.

The author of the novels didn't make the visuals of the characters, it was a collaboration with Akio Watanabe and the anime series was made by Shaft studio, directed by Akyuki Shinbo and Tatsuya Oishi plus the staff.

Anime has lots of series and is divided into different chapters(same as the books).

I think it was a great idea to make this novel into an anime, cause it really fits this sort of medium.

The light, composition in anime is very important, it creates mood, and plus music, it becomes very expressive. Music in anime was also composed by Satoru Osaki, who's known as a soundtrack composer. I really love the sound actors too that have been chosen for different characters.

Target audience: anime fans who like stories about spirits and myths. Probably people who are around 18-30 years old. Some of the scenes contain violence and gore in the anime.

4 job roles in the anime sector: director, animator, soundtrack musicians, voice actors.

I add some samples pictures of some screenshots of the novel cover and anime series below.

Novel book cover of Bakemonogatari

Screenshot from Bakemonogatari anime series

Screenshot from Nisemonogatari anime series

Screenshot from Kizumonogatari series

Dangan Ronpa game> anime

So this story actually consists of three different sequels(as everything sort of becomes more clear after the story progresses), but let's only talk about the first one, Danganronpa: The Animation

It's a survival type of story, adventurous where you(and every other character) play a part as a detective to find out certain things that are happening. In this game, everyone is stuck in a school building with no windows to the outside. Every story contains 16 students. Headmaster gives motives/motivations for students to murder each other, and if you would not be found out in a class trial you would be let free. 

The first part of the game takes around 25 hours to beat and the anime is 13 episodes(one episode is about 24mins with an ending and opening sequence). The anime series was created after the game.

The game was made by Spike Chunsoft studio and is very interactive, and the anime was made by studio Lerche, directed by Seiji Kishi, which previously had a similar experience(anime based on a game story). In this case, the character design was already there and the music composer too, so these things were kept in the anime too.

But it had to be compressed a lot, so it lost a lot of the story, sort of rushed. You don't really get to know the characters so well and you don't really get attached to them.

Anime adaptations in Japan are normally made to make as a purpose for people to get more interested in other products of the story(manga, game, etc.). Anime is normally aired on TV in Japan. But in this case, I think it sort of did the opposite in a way, cause the story is lacking a certain depth that the game had.

4 job roles in the anime sector: director, animator, soundtrack musicians, voice actors.

Target audience- for anime probably people aged around 16-30. Some of the game scenes can seem quite a gore, but the game audience I think game age audience would be different than anime, at least from age 18.