Forum - View topicInterview: Gen Urobuchi
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AnimeRunner
 Posts: 6 |
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I went to Nitro+'s panel at this year's Anime Expo, and man was I surprised how much the company is connected to Gen Urobuchi and other fantastic shows. They not only were connected to both the visual novel and the anime for Steins;Gate, but also are connected with all of the famous work from Urobuchi. After that panel, I went and checked out all of the openings from anime written by Urobuchi, and sure enough, Nitro+'s name was there.
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GVman
 Posts: 729 |
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Personally, I think Saya no Uta is his best work. Most of his anime feel too "Hollywood" for my tastes, so to speak; they lack that weirdness that drew me to Saya no Uta in the first place. I hope that his future works bring more of that weirdness back.
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Kaioshin_Sama
Posts: 1215 |
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I've always found his contempt for altruism and justice to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard from a writer. It just feels very childish somehow and like he's trying to appeal to teens in their rebellious phase or something that feel they have to answer to nothing. I also have never really bought that he feels like putting good and evil on the same ground, it's more like he just refuses to have conclusive resolutions to the conflicts of good and evil entities.
I know it was probably a restricted question, but I would have loved it if the interviewer asked him why if he's such a superstar he refuses to actually commit to any anime project and finish what he's doing anymore. Anyway he strikes me as kind of a weird dude with mostly shock value and a few interesting recurring themes he likes to play around with so I have no idea why he's become such a superstar again considering he really doesn't contribute all that much to the industry these days. I guess anime really is just that badly in a rut when comes to personalities compared to say the video game industry so by comparison he stands out since he's willing to tackled some darker themes and typically doesn't completely shit the bed with them. I would have also asked him if he ever feels like his name is put on something just to have it sell better and if he ever feels he's being treated as a commercial tool rather than a valued and key member of a writing team cause it sure looks that way these days. I never liked how I heard he was basically overruled on what sounded like a way more sensible idea with the Madoka movie for a more shocking and twisting ending. I get the sense he'd like to try some new ideas but isn't really being afforded the chance to because the powers that be want the easy money and will exploit his current brand popularity while it lasts to get it. |
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Chipp12
Posts: 301 |
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Uhh... Gargantia was more like an experimental project where some of Nitroplus/former Nitroplus writers took part and development of Aldnoah was overlapping with his work on Gaim's scenario.
Well it was Shinbo's idea and Urobuchi isn't the sole member of Magica Quartet. |
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Knoepfchen
 Posts: 698 |
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I'll be looking forward to seeing that steampunk setting, then.
Thank you for the interview! |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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If there's one theme of Urobuchi that really frustrates me it is that happiness and suffering are in a zero-sum game. (Meaning that one person cannot be happy without another person automatically being sad by the same amount.) This is not only really stupid and simplistic, it is completely contrary to how reality actually works. Even preschoolers understand people and human interaction better than he does.
Urobuchi is a great writer but he has weird ideas and a bizarre outlook on life, and I don't mean that in a good way. |
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Akane the Catgirl
Posts: 1091 Location: LA, Baby! |
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^ ...
The point. You missed it. By a long shot. Yes, I know you're talking about Sayaka's arc in Madoka Magica. (At least, I hope you are. That's the only Urobuchi anime I've seen, and I've already gushed about that one.) It was never about "equivalent exchange". Honestly, from what I see, you're the one who's being simple here. If you dig deeper, there's a different message that the Urobutcher has written. Sayaka wants to be a hero for the wrong reasons. When she makes her wish, she's not being honest with herself. She never wanted Kyosuke to be healed; she just wanted Kyosuke himself. The reason she ended up the way she was wasn't because of the happy-sad thing. It was because she made a selfless wish with a selfish motivation. Really, the message here was "if you're going to do something selfless for your own selfish gain, then it's not really selfless at all." If you want, you can share your own opinion over at the ANN Book Club. (We need members. Badly.) Then again, I'm just a stupid sheeple who mindlessly praises some random Japanese writer, so what's my opinion worth? EDIT: Ahahaha, sorry if I came across as a bit mean. I just have a bad habit of getting too passionate over things I like. Then again, doesn't everyone? Last edited by Akane the Catgirl on Wed Sep 17, 2014 2:43 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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zeo1fan
Posts: 1016 |
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It's not that hope and despair are a zero-sum game. It's not about nihilism. It's about balance. It's about having just enough of both to be a balanced individual. =_=
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Ryu Shoji
Posts: 671 Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom |
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To be honest, Gen Urobuchi is one of the writers I respect the most. Madoka and Fate/Zero were absolutely phenomenal - the way he mixes light and shadow, giving them both equal attention is just...amazing.
*looks at Sayaka* |
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JacobC
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Yeah, this. His point of view is pretty loud in his work, and it's not to all tastes. That's the nice thing about art. Even when it's well-executed, you can discuss how well a theme does or doesn't work for you on an ideological level. But in fairness, the whole "he punishes good and heroic people" thing is being ascribed to the wrong worldview by the dissenting posts here. He does reward the good people in his work, even against impossible odds. What Urobuchi really seems to mercilessly punish (although not "hate," he seems to have compassion for all his characters,) are "good hypocrites." The Sayakas of his work (and there are a lot of them!) are always people who hide between altruism and justice to justify extremely selfish beliefs and motives, even to the point of self-deception. I think he sees a lot of people like this in the world, and he's trying to call various iterations of them out in his work. To Urobuchi, a hero isn't a hero if they claim the title in the name of ulterior motives. (Or often if they even claim the title of "hero" at all!) He sides more often with people who do the right thing without pretense or ego [Madoka], or people who are happy to be demonized and misunderstood because they are confident that what they're doing is right. [Homura] tl;dr Urobuchi loves heroes and goodness against all odds! He doesn't like people who call themselves heroes though, because he seems to naturally assume they are adopting the moniker to convince the world and themselves of their goodness and mask their self-delusion and selfish motives. It's totally fair to disagree with that, but that's not the same thing as a nihilistic "screw you if you try to be heroic/altruistic" thing. He just values motive over method to an overwhelming extent. |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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Don't you know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions? It could very well be that the apple the snake offers in the garden is what saves us from an oppressive master. Besides, there's no such thing as true altruism anyways since everyone who wants to consciously do something, always does it in exchange for something else (and I don't mean money). There's always a selfish motivation for any supposed altruistic act; the exchange is of perceived spiritual value, or to satiate your own desires to "do good". And often, that pursuit of what they think of as doing good is what forms their own vision of justice, which would surely conflict with someone's else vision as well. |
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Knoepfchen
Posts: 698 |
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^Exactly. Also, precisely what Fate/Zero is all about beyond the mythology (that wasn't Urobuchi's, anyway).
JesuOtaku, although I very much agree with what you wrote here, I believe he truly loves characters like Sayaka. Even though he sends her into hell (and very literally so), she gets the chance to look into the mirror, face who she is, and find the peace he seemed to deny her in the beginning. Madoka accepting Sayaka's sacrifice the way she does (and, in the end, it becomes a truly altruistic one after all), to me, is proof of that. (While Ave Maria is playing. Obviously.) People are able to be good, stay true to who they are (or, rather, what they want to be, to themselves or in the eyes of others). It's just going to take more than pretty words or impulsive actions and, rather, lot of work and pain to get there, eventually. Urobuchi's often described as cruel because he destroys his character's innocence. There's a lot more beauty in having seen what the world can be like and accepting who you are and still wanting to do the right thing than there is in innocence (or ignorance). |
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JacobC
ANN Contributor
Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Oh, I do too! One of the reasons I like him so much as a writer is that he clearly loves all his characters, or at very very least, tries to understand all of them. He's just meaner to some than others.  But he doesn't pass unfair judgment or write unrelatable strawmen to be mocked. I think he punishes his Sayakas with boundless love. Cruel, cruel love. 
Also agree. Also a reason I love his writing. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Well you're wrong; I wasn't referring to Sayaka or her arc specifically. And you say I missed the point but in fact you missed my point. Forget about this business of selfishness and selflessness; that's something you raised, and has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. |
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Juno016
 Posts: 2381 |
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To begin my counter-argument, I want to make it clear that I'm not attacking you or your opinion. I respect any opinion, yours included, and I will gladly talk here or in private messages about any dissenting views. I hope to be treated with the same respect. =3 Now, bullet-pointed for convenience: 1) "...contempt for altruism and justice..." <-- He has a tendency to destroy characters who actively work toward justice, but I believe he's mentioned before that this comes out of his bias against naivety. Other people here mentioned something about "hypocrits", but I haven't heard him say anything about that. Rather, he has talked about "making the right decisions" in a logical manner--being smart about each step you take, whether that's for the sake of justice or for the sake of your own selfish ambitions. In terms of Madoka, Sayaka was punished for being heavily biased against evil without thinking about the consequences, despite multiple occasions where she could have taken in Mami's warnings. Madoka, on the other hand, made her decision based on her experiences. She, too, was naive until the very end, but it was important that Homura existed to help her realize her own faults. In Fate/Zero, Kiritsugu lost everything not because he was selfish or selfless, but because he fought a losing battle from the beginning. He made a solid decision and stuck to it, despite all the suggestions that the Grail wasn't what he hoped it would be. The novels specifically mention that he knew this, but still fought on in search of some kind of fantasy he wasn't sure even existed. 2) "...refuses to have conclusive resolutions to the conflicts of good and evil entities." This is more personal to me, but one thing I've noticed about a lot of fictional stories is their value of a decisive conclusion. If the conclusion doesn't decide what's right, then a lot of people decry it as having been pointless. However, indecisiveness itself can be a tool, as long as one is conscious of it. In Urobuchi's views, I've noticed he tends to hold an unbiased view of "right" and "wrong." Rather than decide on one thing and stick to it, he plays the "neither side is right or wrong" card. I don't know why so many people think this is some kind of lack of confidence or something. I, too, don't view the world in black and white, and I'll actively oppose any assertion that there is a clear line because I don't think one exists. Purposely ending a story without an answer can be effective in suggesting that there was no right answer in the first place, which is often the theme of choice for many of Urobuchi's works. 3) "...if he's such a superstar he refuses to actually commit to any anime project and finish what he's doing anymore." <-- When he creates a project himself, he commits to it. In Madoka, Fate/Zero, and Psycho-Pass were, for the most part, created with him as the centerpiece, giving him a lot of creative freedom (to different extents). Gargantia and Aldnoah Zero (and the actual filming of Gaim), on the other hand, were not. His name was used to advertise it (especially on ANN, since he was the only real prominent figure known to Western anime fans in both projects) and a lot of misinformation and assumptions were throw into the public, but rather than blame him or the industry for it, I'd say that was a case of word-of-mouth hype that got out of hand. He committed to the job they told him to do and he stuck his nose in as far as he could, and then he had to focus his attention elsewhere for other jobs. He never refused to finish anything. 4) "...he's being treated as a commercial tool rather than a valued and key member of a writing team..." <-- ...Yes and no. I'm not sure what HE thinks about it yet (I can make guesses based on the personal decisions he's made for his career and my knowledge of the industry, but I won't claim to know what he actually thinks here), but for most big writers who work freelance like him, they DO get treated like a commodity when the series is being conceived and the marketing is the focus of its conception. However, unless a production company or director or whoever interferes and disregards the writer without a discussion, you will almost always see the writer being treated well by his co-workers. To exemplify both points, he was hired to write Madoka because of his reputation and because they thought they could sell his name. But upon seeing his original drafts, Urobuchi said he was surprised to find that the crew really liked it as it was and said they didn't want to change anything. He ended up making most of the initial draft changes himself. And when he said no to their suggestions, they listened to him because he had reason to reject their proposals. On other teams, he was more of an equal player to the director (Psycho-Pass) and co-writer (Fate/Zero). On smaller projects, he helped pioneer things (Gargantia), but he took his hands off the steering wheel for a while to allow the other writers to contribute their parts while he guided them. So each project is different in how he's treated, but as a writer, he is able to decline any job offer he doesn't like and opt out at any point. He hasn't shown any disappointment for his involvement in any project, big or small, yet. 5) "...overruled on what sounded like a way more sensible idea with the Madoka movie for a more shocking and twisting ending." <-- Misconception of what he said and what went on. In the very early drafts of the film, he had one ending jotted down, but Shinbou and some of the other crew brought up questions that challenged his original idea. Shinbou gave one suggestion and Urobuchi ended up liking it and going with it, eventually centering many other scenes in the movie around it to lead into the twist at the end. He wasn't outright rejected and he was never forced to change anything. He was a team player and created something he felt was more solid than his original idea--so he claims. Whether or not it was more sensible than his original idea truly depends on how they would've directed the film as a whole to lead into it. It's long, but I hope that helps. Urobuchi is a fascinating writer AND person. I'm glad I finally got to read his ANN interview--on my birthday, no less! =D |
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