Ishihara interview

(This is a translation of this portion of Tatsuya Ishihara's interview in Newtype 2012/08 edition: https://yande.re/post/show/218412/chuunibyou_demo_koi_ga_shitai-eyepatch-gun-seifuku)
Supervisor Tatsuya Ishihara Interview:
I want to draw chuunibyou as fun as possible

Heroines nowadays that are unlucky

What were your impressions after reading the novel?
Ishihara: I wonder if this is spreading around in the current age. Speaking of weird girls leads, it looks like there’s been a trend lately with pitiful, yet cute heroines like this work. It seems like the male leads have taken advantage of it and look better. Recent romantic comedies seem to have exhausted the genres. I wonder if we’ve reached this setting now.

Perhaps the guy nearby the heroine just has a large heart?
Ishihara: Those guys must have large hearts! For example, let’s take a character in the KyoAni work K-On! named Yui. Isn’t she hopeless? (laughs) Yui fans feel like they have to do something for her. Their needs to help someone are really strong, aren’t they?

Does this feel like a new style of romantic comedy?
Ishihara: Even fujoshi have become recognized, so perhaps this kind of relationship will be too. There’s no cute super powers, they’re just ordinary girls. It’s real heroines. Perhaps afterwards we’ll see a heroine defined by a dirty room. (laughs)

Really? A dirty room heroine anime? (laughs) That’s pretty far out there, but I’m somewhat interested in seeing it. Rikka, suffering from chuunibyou, is a pretty cute heroine isn’t she? When reading the novel, were there any portions that you felt would be interesting to animate?
Ishihara: I paid attention to keep the chuunibyou theme and to illustrate the comedic elements. Having experienced it myself, I have some pretty embarrassing chuunibyou moments. (laughs) If I tried to portray that element seriously, this story would cross over to become darker, so I tried to portray it more comically by making the chuunibyou moments humorous.

I’ve heard that there’s a lot of anime-original elements in this version. Would you mind telling us about them?
Ishihara: There’s a lot of anime-original elements. We used the first novel of the original stories as a base to compose the series, but just one novel isn’t enough. Thus we had to add elements to the story. There’s various details here and there that add up. For example, there’s a lot of times where Yuuta and Rikka study in the original novel. Because we're animating the series, we wanted to make the characters move around more than that. There’s a lot of inside the school scenes in the novel, so we wanted to take them outside in the anime.

This is the first time that Kyoto Animation has made an anime from their own novel. Please tell us about your enthusiasm for working on the project.
Ishihara: There’s plenty of enthusiasm here! This time we’re working on a novel from our companies own label, so I feel it’s like a KyoAni original series. Finally my wish to work on an original anime came true. At the same time, the pressure to succeed is immense. There’s been times where Hanada (Jukki)-san and I leaned on each others shoulders trying to exert more power from each other. We’d say “Just a little more, a little more.” (laughs)

What was the model for the town based upon?
Ishihara: This time we’re depicting a fictional town. We did some location scouting, but I can’t say it’ll be used on a large scale. Perhaps the locations will be credited.

Before, the episode order of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya was shuffled. Do you have any surprises like that planned for this work?
Ishihara: This time there’s various surprises planned. I think readers of the novel will be able to see the story in a new light.