Interest
Fate/Grand Order Babylonia Director: Anime Production is Still Ahead of Schedule
posted on by Kim Morrissy
Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia's director Toshifumi Akai spoke to Animage about the state of the anime's production at the end of 2019. He said that production is still ahead of schedule, relative to other two-cour anime, and that work is proceeding in an orderly way on a number of later episodes.
"With anime these days, there are many cases where the work only finishes right before the broadcast day, but with FGO Babylonia, we're getting a good rotation going, and I hope that stays true for the second cour," he said.
Akai mentioned that production started on the anime at a very early stage, which allowed the production staff to experiment with the aesthetic during the production of the first three episodes. By episode 3, he had settled on a look that he was satisfied with, minimizing the use of filters in order to create clear and crisp visuals. Nevertheless, the compositing requires a lot of time and work in order to achieve this look.
Looking ahead, Akai pointed out the high number of action scenes that will be in the second cour. He said that it only occurred to him recently that almost every episode has a huge battle scene, which would normally be very taxing on resources. However, he feels "blessed" as a director because every scene so far has managed to stand out and look cool.
Akai said similar things in his interview with Newtype in December: the preparations for the anime were assembled from "an early stage", and there are hardly any two-cour anime that are as "blessed" as Babylonia is in regards to the schedule. He added that when it comes to two-cour anime, the second cour is always an uphill battle for the animators, so there's plenty of fight still to go.
The Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia anime premiered in Japan on October 5. The series will air for 21 episodes until March 2020.
Source: Animage February 2020 Issue
