In May last year, the Animation Chronicle HEAVEN and EARTH books came out, which contained a bunch of interviews. Hiroyuki Yamashita's interview has already been translated and can be read Here. What follows is a summary of the interview with Naruto and Naruto Shippuden's anime director Hayato Date and producer Naoji Hounokidani, which was translated by a kind individual who wishes to remain anonymous. :ninja
Date mentions he left the series at episode 700 (i.e. episode 480 of Shippuden). He's satisfied he could complete the Naruto manga and says that directing the anime was a valuable experience, something an ordinary director wouldn't be able to experience.
Kishimoto wanted Tetsuya Nishio to do the character design for the anime, a wish which was very hard to fulfill because Nishio was an executive at another studio at the time. Due to the sheer size of Naruto's cast, they ended up putting both Hirofumi Suzuki and Tetsuya Nishio in charge of character design, according to Hounokidani. Date adds that Nishio's designs are easy to draw, but difficult to animate.
From the get-go, Date wanted to incorporate Japanese instruments (drums, koto, shimasen) in Naruto's soundtrack. The music was eventually assigned to Musashi. They also wanted the OP/ED songs to be done by rock bands instead of anime song artists. Date says "Wind" and Toshiyuki Tsuru's ending animation made a very good match. Hounokidani thinks "Haruka Kanata" is also impressive.
Transitioning to Shippuden, Musashi was replaced by -yaiba- and Date decided that the soundtrack should be more foreign-sounding, such as Akatsuki's themes which have a Western religion vibe.
Both talk about the transition from 4:3 to 16:9 in Shippuden's early days. The former is almost square shaped, creating little "discomfort" even when the character is in the center of the screen, whereas 16:9 results in big left and right margins, which seemed to confuse the animators at first. It was Toshiyuki Tsuru's idea to show Shippuden's opening scene in 16:9 even though they hadn't shifted to digital broadcasting yet and were still drawing 4:3.
The manga had a lot of surprises in store even for them because Kishimoto generally didn't reveal future story developments to the anime production team. They knew about Tobi's identity in advance though for the sake of casting. Date says it was fun thinking about how original anime material could further grow characters, but they couldn't diverge from the manga of course. They couldn't introduce (anime-exclusive) enemy characters stronger than Akatsuki, which was quite a constraint according to Hounokidani. Raiga was the first main character created by the animation team.
The interview ends with both of them saying they're no longer involved with the series and want to entrust the anime to new staff (Hiroyuki Yamashita and Abe Noriyuki), the way Kishimoto entrusted the manga to Mikio Ikemoto.
source:NF
Date mentions he left the series at episode 700 (i.e. episode 480 of Shippuden). He's satisfied he could complete the Naruto manga and says that directing the anime was a valuable experience, something an ordinary director wouldn't be able to experience.
Kishimoto wanted Tetsuya Nishio to do the character design for the anime, a wish which was very hard to fulfill because Nishio was an executive at another studio at the time. Due to the sheer size of Naruto's cast, they ended up putting both Hirofumi Suzuki and Tetsuya Nishio in charge of character design, according to Hounokidani. Date adds that Nishio's designs are easy to draw, but difficult to animate.
From the get-go, Date wanted to incorporate Japanese instruments (drums, koto, shimasen) in Naruto's soundtrack. The music was eventually assigned to Musashi. They also wanted the OP/ED songs to be done by rock bands instead of anime song artists. Date says "Wind" and Toshiyuki Tsuru's ending animation made a very good match. Hounokidani thinks "Haruka Kanata" is also impressive.
Transitioning to Shippuden, Musashi was replaced by -yaiba- and Date decided that the soundtrack should be more foreign-sounding, such as Akatsuki's themes which have a Western religion vibe.
Both talk about the transition from 4:3 to 16:9 in Shippuden's early days. The former is almost square shaped, creating little "discomfort" even when the character is in the center of the screen, whereas 16:9 results in big left and right margins, which seemed to confuse the animators at first. It was Toshiyuki Tsuru's idea to show Shippuden's opening scene in 16:9 even though they hadn't shifted to digital broadcasting yet and were still drawing 4:3.
The manga had a lot of surprises in store even for them because Kishimoto generally didn't reveal future story developments to the anime production team. They knew about Tobi's identity in advance though for the sake of casting. Date says it was fun thinking about how original anime material could further grow characters, but they couldn't diverge from the manga of course. They couldn't introduce (anime-exclusive) enemy characters stronger than Akatsuki, which was quite a constraint according to Hounokidani. Raiga was the first main character created by the animation team.
The interview ends with both of them saying they're no longer involved with the series and want to entrust the anime to new staff (Hiroyuki Yamashita and Abe Noriyuki), the way Kishimoto entrusted the manga to Mikio Ikemoto.
source:NF
