Euphonium March NT TL

Translation for:
https://yande.re/post/show/312553/hibike-_euphonium-ikeda_shouko-katou_hazuki_-hibik

KyoAni's anticipated new show combines wind music and adolescence

Kyoto animation's new show, titled "Sound! Euphonium" was announced at the end of last year. Currently, the staff are working together for the show to begin broadcasting in April. Ayano Takeda's adolescent novel depicts the true forms of the girls who play together in the wind music club and their irreplaceable desires. Here, we ask Producer Riri Senami (this show's assistant producer) about how this novel was chosen to be animated.

"I read a bit of the novel in a bookstore and decided to purchase it. As I continued to read, I felt myself getting pulled into the story. Since the 'High School Wind Music Club' theme was so fascinating and the location of the story was very near our company's location, I remember feeling like there should be a possibility that Kyoto Animation would animate this story. As I was thinking about approaching that, the producer for "Euphonium", (Eharu) Oohashi, was also thinking the same thing at the same time. (laughs) With that 'We have to have our company animate this!' feeling, we arrived at our plan. We presented our proposal to the publisher, Takarajimasha, gained their consent, and agreed to cooperate in various forms through the animation process."

The titular instrument, the "euphonium", is a lower tone brass wind instrument. While this instrument so far hasn't been one that stands out, it's got no choice but to be the main part as its player, Kumiko Oumae, is the protagonist of the story. What charm does it possess in this story?

"When I was reading the novel, I thought that it's interesting that the author would try and put the euphonium in the main spot of the story. It's generally thought to be a minor part.... it's not really looked as like a trumpet or a sax, right? (laughs) But the eupho is a very elastic instrument; That gentle tone can play the melody, the accompaniment, the obbligato, anything.  That is both the main role of the euphonium and what a 'wind music anime' is.... (laughs) There's no one in Kumiko's group of friends that's the type of girl who stands out; they're normal girls who go with the flow easily and don't change much. They won't be making passionate claims. Instead she looks at things through various points of view and is pliable. I think she's just that eupho kind of girl.

What kind of scenes will be depicted in a "wind music anime?" Also, we're curious what kind of music will be played in that kind of anime.

"When choosing songs, we focused first on picking songs that people who never heard wind music would enjoy as well as people who once played on a line would say 'I enjoyed seeing this.' There's a lot of difficulties when making a TV series......(laughs) Insert songs and background pieces have their own meaning that comes out when they're played. In order to depict a wind music club, we went to a real club at a high school and studied them as they performed and practiced.  Probably as a result of that, we were able to get information on contests at the same time. While the instruments themselves were able to be simply drawn by hand, there's a lot of pieces that require expert knowledge in order to be drawn properly. For reference on those parts, we asked people with experience playing them to come to the studio and talk to us so everyone could continue working on them.

It wouldn't be a mistake to not attach the two phrases "music" and "adolescence" to this work, but might we dare add another keyword?

"Adding another one.....is quite hard. It would be wrong to say "high school girls" or "legs", but what about "calorie?" When people start coming together one by one, it starts to gradually feel hotter and hotter, and conversely, there's moments where it feels really cold.... You will definitely feel the "heat" from these girls."

Kumiko, Hazuki, and Sapphire are a group of three in the class and then there's Reina, Kumiko's middle school classmate who's by herself. Pay attention to how these four girls' inner feelings are depicted in this emotional tale.

"The wind music club is a big spot, so there's a lot of people there with different personalities. Sometimes the eager first year students have to murmur by the wall in order to do their best in this story. They're serious, so there's a lot of excitement and bitterness at the same time. It's packed together in one irreplaceable moment. We'd be happy if you go ahead and support the girls of this tale."


Start dash - Kyoto Animation
In the spring, Kyoto Animation will produce a wind music club production. There's big excitement for the instrument drawings and performance scenes. "It was difficult to depict a lot of variety in people and instruments with wind music, so I can say that this will be a new type of work that people haven't seen before." (Senami)