The legendary team behind KamiErabi.GOD App made their appearances in Los Angeles, California at Anime Expo 2023, this past weekend. With four staff members, Yoko Taro (creator of the NieR franchise), Atsushi Ohkubo (author and artist of Soul Eater fame), Hiroyuki Seshita (of Knights of Sidonia fame), and JIN (composer for Kagerou Project), we at GameZXC were privileged to sit down with them and get the inside scoop on their newest project. KamiErabi GOD.App takes place in a high school setting, where characters are faced off against each other in a suspenseful battle royale to become a god.
GameZXC: Will you be incorporating elements of some of your past works (ex: Thou Shalt Not Die, NieR Automata Ver1.1a, etc.) into this new series? This can be anything from aesthetic, to story.
Yoko Taro: The answer would be clearly no because it's a different publisher. And so if I were to incorporate some of the elements from those things, they would get mad at me.
GameZXC: A lot of your past works tell an underlying message, such as NieR Automata's theme of existentialism and finding one's own purpose. Is there an underlying message that you wish to convey to audiences through KamiErabi's story?
Yoko Taro: Honestly, I was in charge of coming up with the scenario, and I had a plot that I had written up; and so I gave that to JIN. And he had to do the scenario writing for it - and he gave me something back that was completely different. And I was surprised, and I thought, "Well maybe he just hates what I'm doing". And then the next week, with the next draft--with the next portion, it was the same thing; and I thought, "Well maybe it's not that he hates me, but he just likes to destroy everything that's put in front of him". But at the same time, working with Seshita-san, who's the expert in computer graphics; there was a little bit of similarities between computer graphics and video games, right?
And because you have to have these transitions and changes, and there's a lot of movement and action - if we transfer that to kind of story with JIN, he would come back with some transitions and say like, "Well if we make this change here, what if we make this transition here, is that a problem?". And it was stuff that was just out of this world - it was just kind of crazy. And so we had these meetings where we were trying to move this forward into a project that could come to fruition; but the big thing is, I suffered so much during this process - and so I think all of this came about, because I think we were able to kind of face up to JIN, and to get him to stop destroying everything that we had tried to build. And finally, we were able to succeed in this project. At that same time, I mean, that JIN-san, he's a very skilled creator as well; and so I don't mean to badmouth him; but yeah we did have to go through this excruciating process to get this to happen.
GameZXC: What goes into your decision when choosing talents to collaborate with? For example, in this case, why did you decide to go with Yoko Taro, Hiroyuki Seshita, and JIN for KamiErabi GOD.App?
Ohkubo: Should I be honest? [laughs] So computer graphics in anime was interesting to me, and I was interested in it. I like it - and I've also for example, played Yoko-san's games and then erased all the data, for example from those. And then JIN-san, he's a different generation, so even he has his own great thing going on with music, where all the younger kids and younger people in Japan are listening to his music; and so I thought, "Okay well there's great people involved in this", so I thought, "Well I think I may want to participate in this".
At the same time, my role in this is character design, and I'm working on more analog-type stuff - handwritten stuff; and it was interesting to me to see that my drawings could be converted, could be used for 3D animation - that was fascinating to me - and so that was another aspect that was interesting to me, seeing if that was possible.
GameZXC: So you somewhat already answered this, but in regard to character design, were you given full creative freedom, or were you given a direction to go off of? Was there any outside inspiration that went into the final designs?
Ohkubo: So for me, is that the concept of the characters, which were the settings for the whole character thing, was how we had humans--human talent, actors, human artists - which were kind of modeled after actual real people. For example in the case of Goro, we would look or find someone who was a little bit on the dark-side, a dark-type actor as a reference - and this was added by Seshita-san.
Seshita: Yeah to add a little bit to that, Ohkubo-san's individual characteristics, his own personal touch was very important to this - so we were really just using those as a reference, but making sure that we gave preference to just his personal touch and personal style.
Ohkubo: But in any case, these images of actors or people that are artists, that kind of became models for the characters that we ended up with.
GameZXC: In regard to KamiErabi's overall production, would you say this is experimental?
Seshita: Yes, I think you can say that it is experimental.
GameZXC: [laughs] What made you decide to go with CGI for the animation?
Seshita: Because I like it! I mean there's no other reason than that. Because something that's handwritten is also great. But I like it.
GameZXC: You have a large variety of genres under your belt. What made you decide to take up this project in particular?
JIN: Well, as training--aesthetic training, as kind of like a samurai, kind of like a monk - I needed that kind of training in my life. This is something like 500 years-ago - something that was being done widely in Japan: aesthetic training. And 500 years-ago, they be doing Harakiri and stuff like that all the time. I mean we're not doing that now, but yeah, some of that stuff from that era - I needed that. As a samurai, I mean all our ancestors 1,000 years-ago, they were all samurai! They were samurai warriors; this is true. So we're all still kind of samurai - but not for the creators, like I don't have a samurai-like attitude towards other creators. I'm having a samurai-like attitude towards creating anime. But it's not like you know, killing other people. [laughs]
GameZXC: [laughs] What were the factors for you personally that went into while writing KamiErabi? Is it a story you've been wanting to tell? Did a real-world event inspire you?
JIN: My involvement in this project came at a time when there was still no plot; it was just kind of a mindset, themes, very basic direction - and when everyone was thinking, "Okay let's do this, let's go in this direction. Let's do this, let's do that", it was right at that time that I joined, right? And so, for me that was great because there was no existing story, there was no existing framework. It was like starting from scratch - it was like a diamond in the rough; it was this raw thing without any story - and we had to start building these characters together and this plot together--and then we thought, "Let's put this human emotion factor into this - and if we do that, since it's kind of crazy, maybe we can improve it!". And so we started to do that - so this is kind of my B-movie, my B-side single type thing - this is like me putting my creative mind into it. And seeing if we can't make something, or improve it and turn it into something that has depth in it, and some grit to it at the same time. And I think it was pretty good. What's the word for "good" in English? It's very いい. It turned out good, right?
Seshita: Yeah, it turned out good!
With that, we exchanged bows, thank-yous with the staff, and completed the interview. Stayed tuned to KamiErabi GOD.App's premiere, which will be airing this October on Crunchyroll.