“The boobs are important,” anime director’s feedback notes remind animators

22:18 cherishe 0 Comments

Also makes vague yet extremely passionate demand for male sexiness.

Following its launch in 2015, Fate/Grand Order quickly became one of Japan’s most popular, and profitable, mobile games. A lot of that was thanks to the huge pre-existing fanbase for the extended Fate anime/video game franchise, but in order to stay on top of the mobile game marketplace, a developer has to regularly dish out new content, which Fate/Grand Order has done with aplomb.

The game’s current seasonal event is truly seasonal, as the Servant Summer Festival’s visual motif is made up of sunny seashores, dazzling fireworks, and yes, skimpy swimwear.

As a matter of fact, Shun Enokido, action director for the Fate/Apocrypha arc of the anime, simply referred to the above promo video for the Servant Summer Festival as the “2018 Fate/Grand Order swimsuit commercial.” Still, there’s no denying that it’s an impressive bit of anime artistry, and in celebration of the video getting well over one million views, Enokido decided to share some of the production materials through his Twitter account.

For example, early in the video we see Jeanne d’Arc, pictured above, tying her hair up. The mid-production notes for this shot can be found in the top left of Enokido’s tweet.

FGO水着CM2018、100万再生ありがとうございます＆イベント開始記念で、演出修正(という名の原画・作監各位への無茶ぶり)を少しだけお見せします。夏のお供にFGO(とCM)をよろしくお願いします。… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
—
眉毛 (@mayuge1017) August 09, 2018

The Jeanne notes are an interesting insight into how much work goes into even the briefest of anime moments. “The yellow and green sections should be lustrous” reads one note, while another reminds the artist to “Please put lots of fine detail into the facial features.” One particularly detailed bit of direction advises that “The direction her eyes are pointing should be just about like this, so that she doesn’t appear too listless.”

But the note that seems to be the most important, by virtue of it being written in a much bigger font than anything else, is on the right side of the sketch, where we see the large Japanese characters おっぱい大事, which mean:

“The boobs are important.”

Of course, considering the whole objective of the video is to attract eyes to the game’s cast in their revealing summer outfits, the note isn’t really wrong. It’s not like whoever wrote the notes (Enokido doesn’t say if it was him or not) has forgotten that Fate owes as much of its success to the sex appeal of its male characters as its female ones, either. The notes at the top right of the tweet, for this shot of Gilgamesh…