Kizumonogatari Interviews

Kizumonogatari: Tekketsu-hen Interviews with Kamiya Hiroshi, Sakamoto Maaya, Nisio Isin, Shinbou Akiyuki, Oishi Tatsuya
These interviews took place while the movie was still being made and published in a booklet given out at theaters.

Kamiya Hiroshi (voiced Araragi Koyomi)

	When he was recording lines for the TV series, he was was always hearing about how Kizumonogatari was slowly coming along, so he was surprised when it actually happened.

	His script didn't have many lines, but there was a lot describing what Araragi was thinking and feeling all the time.

	His experience voicing Araragi helped a lot, especially knowing 'what he's made of'.

	He kept in mind Araragi's distance between the other characters, since it's the first time they met.

	The animation was mostly done by the time the lines were recorded.

	Having few lines was harder because he had less to work with.

	The scene where Araragi goes down the subway had a big impact on him and was hard to voice.

Sakamoto Maaya (voiced Kissshot Accerolaorion Heartunderblade)

	She was excited she would finally get to play the Kissshot she voiced when she auditioned for Shinobu in Nisemonogatari.

	At first she wasn't confident about voicing Shinobu because she hadn't voiced many children, so she enjoyed voicing adult Kissshot, who's closer to her age.

	According to her, the difference between Shinobu and Kissshot is that Shinobu enjoys being a little girl, but Kissshot feels defenseless and weak as a little girl.

	She felt like Araragi became someone special to Kissshot when he told her to "drain me dry".

	Oishi told her to voice Kissshot like she was really pleading for her life, so she tried and succeeded at doing the subway scene in one take.

	She liked the scene where Araragi is burning under the sun and the facial expressions during conversations.

Nisio Isin (author of the light novel)

	The first thing he wrote for the Monogatari Series was 'Hitagi Crab', published in the magazine Mephisto. He was originally going to title it 'Hitagi Weightless', but when written in katakana 'weightless' can be read as 'waitress', so it ended up as 'Hitagi Crab'. Nisio was originally planning to write a book with three parts: 'Hitagi Crab', 'Tsubasa Cat', and 'Koyomi Vamp'. But then he wanted to write about what happened to Senjougahara after Hitagi Crab, so Bakemonogatari became a book about her recovery.

	After spending all of 2007 writing Katanagatari, he wrote Kizumonogatari for a change of pace. It took him about 20 days. It took him longer than usual partly because he used to write slower, and partly because he was so satisfied with Bakemonogatari.

	It was hard to give Araragi a reason to save Kissshot since he used to avoid people. So Nisio had Hanekawa influence Araragi by being an extremely good person.

	Even he doesn't completely understand Hanekawa.

	After he finished writing Kizumonogatari, he thought that if he could do that, then he could get by as an author. This was before he was serialized in Shounen Jump, so he was plotting out the story ahead of time and foreshadowing instead of making one thing happen at a time.

	He thought Kizumonogatari would be a good place to end the series, but when the anime was being made he wrote Nisemonogatari as a kind of fanbook. He got the idea of having the heroines narrate the story from watching Horie Yui recording by herself.

	He kept writing the Monogotari Series because of the anime, even though he had plenty of good stopping points. He was amazed at how the anime adapted Bakemonogatari. He liked how they made long conversations at the same place look interesting, showing a class trial with 40 people, drawing an invisible crab, and summarizing Kizumonogatari in 1 minute at the beginning of Bakemonogatari. Since it was his first series to get an anime adaptation, he didn't realize until later just how great it was. He thought that he had to make sure the series itself was good since its anime was so good. This also gave him more motivation to make his other series interesting.

	He's glad that Wazamonogatari will be published at the same time as Tekketsu-hen, since one of the stories,'Acerola Bon-appetit', explores Kissshot's character and is another beginning of the series. The characters in Monogatari series get rounded out and more human through the series, so they're at their sharpest in Kizumonogatari. Especially Hanekawa.

	He wanted the movie specials to be good, so he wrote Mazemonogatari, which has various crossovers to his other series.

Shinbou Akiyuki (Head director)

	They decided early on that Kizumonogatari would be three parts, but weren't sure whether to have it on TV or make it a movie. When they were recording for Bakemonogatari 15, they had to use a recording studio specialized for movies because the usual one wasn't available. After they saw Bakemonogatari on a big screen, they decided Kizumonogatari should be a movie.

	To preserve the atmosphere, they tried to keep in fun conversations even when they didn't add to the plot.

	Nisio Isin was the one who suggested naming the parts Tekketsu, Nekketsu, and Reiketsu.

	Shinbou liked having Oshino Meme back, and they tried to make him as cool they could.

	When he was reading the Monogatari Series he wanted to know why Araragi picked Senjougahara over Hanekawa. He thinks the relationships between those three might change.

	He thought Hanekawa and Meme could be a good couple since they're special to each other: Hanekawa is the only person Meme is uncomfortable around, and Meme is one of the few people Hanekawa looks up to.

Oishi Tatsuya (director)
Kubota Mitsutoshi (SHAFT producer) and Iwakami Atsuhiro (Aniplex producer) were also interviewed, but they didn't really say anything interesting.

	They decided to adapt Kizumonogatari when Bakemonogatari became more popular than expected.

	Since a movie theater is a place where you experience something different, Oishi wanted the viewers to see things from Araragi's point of view. That's why most of the Araragi's thoughts were cut out. It's the opposite approach from Itamura Tomoyuki (the director for Nisemonogatari and onward), who turns the narration into monologues.

	Oishi sees his work on Kizumonogatari as a continuation of Bakemonogatari, but wanted to show the characters' emotions differently. He wanted to make the movie erotic and visceral like the light novel, but had trouble in that area.

	He had new character designs made so they could use Watanabe Akio's best and most recent work. He also had Morioka Hideyuki contribute to the character designs.

	He wanted the movie to look fresh, so he used different visuals for the cram school. It's modeled after a cultural hall in Yamanashi (山梨文化会館).

	Kizumonogatari is a bloody story, so he had red stand out and made the other colors more faded.

	He was careful with how the character's feelings were portrayed. In Kizumonogatari, a lot of people meet for the first time, so there are some complicated emotions involved.