I've translated it because I found it interesting. This was the first time I read an interview about the three main directors of the 90's anime interacting with each other. It seems the interview was done a few weeks before the series finale and published after the last episode aired.
It tells...in some way....... why Ikuhara changed his style of direction; Sailor Stars is sort of......sort of....connected to Sailor Moon R the movie.......and surprisingly Junichi Sato hates HaruMichi.
Interview from Animage magazine, No. 225, March 1997, pages 92–96.
Below is a conversation between the various directors of the Sailor Moon series, considered as a system for delivering pleasure.
It is strongly believed that the clash of talent, artistry, and personalities of its creators is what elevated the work of Sailor Moon.
We had a discussion about Sailor Moon from the different perspectives of the three directors of the series.
Junichi Sato
Born March 11, 1960, in Aichi Prefecture. First director of Sailor Moon. One of the creators of the series. He also participated as an episode director in the third, fourth, and fifth seasons. Worked on the storyboard, plot, and overall direction of the OVA Mahōtsukaitai!.
Kunihiko Ikuhara
Born December 21, 1964, in Tokushima Prefecture. Worked as director of Sailor Moon for three years, during the second, third, and fourth seasons. Also directed Sailor Moon R the movie. Animage readers will know him well from his column Director’s Diary. He is currently preparing the production of his next work, Revolutionary Girl Utena (Shōjo Kakumei Utena).
Takuya Igarashi
Born December 21, 1965, in Saitama Prefecture. He worked as the third director of Sailor Moon in the fifth season. He has given us many memorable episodes, especially those starring Minako; including episode 42 with Alan, 52 with the school bus, 65 with the fight with Makoto, and 141, where she goes on a date with both Tiger’s Eye and Hawk’s Eye at the same time.
Kuma-san: Junichi Sato will arrive later. For now, let’s begin with just Ikuhara and Igarashi.
Igarashi: Shouldn’t we wait for him?
Kuma-san: It's very likely that he will arrive at any moment. Ikuhara, regarding the Sailor Moon series, what were the moments that impressed you the most?
Ikuhara: I had a lot of fun during the first year.
Igarashi: Iku-chan always used to say, "My Sailor Moon ended with episode 46."
Ikuhara: Yes, I said that. For me, Sailor Moon was my first job [Actually, it isn't], and the mistakes are quite noticeable, to the point that watching it now makes me feel embarrassed. Igarashi, among the episodes you directed in the first season, there was one where a woman who knew Minako came to Japan, right? (Episode 42: "Sailor Venus's Past, Minako's Tragic Love")
Igarashi: I also feel embarrassed thinking about my early attempts as a director. The mistakes I made are very noticeable.
Ikuhara: Well, I think it turned out fine.
Kuma-san: Is there any episode that impressed you, whether it was directed by you or someone else?
Ikuhara: Good question. Particularly the first season is etched in my memory. I can remember every episode it contains.
Kuma-san: There was an episode where Sailor Moon fights a bodybuilding instructor, right? (Episode 4: "Usagi Teaches You How to Lose Weight!")
Ikuhara: Yes, that's true (laughs).
Igarashi: That episode is the first one where I was an assistant director.
Ikuhara: There was an episode where Urawa appeared for the second time, the one where he climbs onto the Ferris wheel at the amusement park. (Episode 41: "I Will Never Run Away from Love! Ami vs. Mamoru") I thought it was interesting. Endymion appeared fighting Sailor Mercury, and with his stick, he burst Mercury's soap bubbles (laughs).
Igarashi: I was overwhelmed by episode 26, directed by Iku-chan. Boxy was some kind of foreign priest who spoke strange Japanese (laughs). The scene where Usagi breaks the piggy bank with the Moon Stick was also very funny. The girls gathered at the Hikawa Shrine were wondering if Usagi would dare to do such a thing, and suddenly in the next scene, she does it.
Ikuhara: Yes, that’s how it was (laughs).
Igarashi: During that first year, we didn’t try to force the comedy. The funny scenes weren’t intentionally created, in my opinion. I think they came out in a very natural way.
Kuma-san: In the first season, Sailor Moon was comedic, fun, with a more innocent, naïve tone.
Igarashi: Yes, exactly.
Kuma-san: After all, Sailor Moon is a work aimed at children. To what extent did you take this into account?
Igarashi: To some extent, we kept in mind that the target audience was children. That’s why we tried not to include overly complicated scenes. But at the climax of each season, in order to develop and conclude the story, we ended up with many complex scenes. Perhaps it was difficult for children to digest or understand them. It was after Sailor Moon, with its popularity, became a social phenomenon—so much so that it was even mentioned in mainstream media—that we began working on the series with more focus on its influence on society than on children.
Kuma-san: So, did you change the way you worked on the series?
Ikuhara: Indeed. We came to think of Sailor Moon as a system of delivering pleasure.
Kuma-san: Pleasure? In what terms?
Ikuhara: It’s kind of like, it’s okay for girls to act for their own pleasure. We expressed this in the series, and after its success, this concept became socially accepted. For example, showing that a girl, when she’s angry, can hit another person, in today’s society, means providing pleasure. Until now, in animated products for girls, in comics for girls, there haven’t been many works that positively portrayed a girl hitting or kicking her opponent. I believe that Sailor Moon popularised this as a form of pleasure, and it was socially accepted.
Kuma-san: Something like new values, right?
Ikuhara: For girls, the concept was that controlling emotions was moral, it was a virtue. However, it was said that girls had become free and could experience pleasure. And Sailor Moon concretely and visually portrayed this kind of female model, and also made society accept it. In my view, it’s a new way of delivering pleasure. And I worked with that in mind.
Kuma-san: We could say that this is also a common point with the manga.
Ikuhara: The manga has this tendency even more strongly. At first, I didn’t even understand it myself. It was only after the success that I realised it was a system of delivering pleasure. So, starting from the second season, I worked with that in mind, thinking, "You have to offer some pleasure." It wasn’t enough for the story to be convincing. With the love stories, with the show, the story would have been exciting, but that wasn’t enough.
Kuma-san: Sato is late.
Ikuhara: He hasn’t arrived yet.
Igarashi: Speaking of Sato, I remember he once said, "I wish I could have directed the episode with Kakusui in it." (Kakusui is a character who appears in episode 105: "I Want Power! Mako-chan Has Lost Her Way"; it seems that Sato really cared about this. The episode was directed by Shibara Hiroki.)
Ikuhara: Yes, he said that.
Kuma-san: Kakusui had his own charm. A serious character, but not excessively stiff.
Ikuhara: In my opinion, he had his charm. And it was strange that Makoto held that character in high regard.
(At the end, Sato appears.)
Sato: Sorry for keeping you waiting.
Kuma-san: We were talking about the episode with Kakusui.
Sato: Kakusui? What a great character! I was really looking forward to making an episode with him.
Kuma-san: Really?
Sato: At the end of that episode, Makoto appears saying something behind a glass, right? But it’s unclear what she’s saying. That kind of thing has to have fans!!!
(Everyone laughs.)
Ikuhara: No one remembered that (laughs).
Sato: It was necessary to clarify what Makoto said behind the glass.
Kuma-san: Of course.
Sato: And the next time Kakusui appeared, the final scene would end with him flying to Tibet. And this time, everything would end with him, in the airplane, behind the glass, saying something. Then the ending and the preview for the next episode would come. "*But what did he say this time!?"
(Everyone laughs.)
Sato: I wish I had done something. I’ve been saying this since I first saw the preview for that episode, but no one cared.
Kuma-san: Did you really want to do it?
Sato: Of course, seriously.
(Everyone laughs.)
Kuma-san: What’s the best part of Sailor Moon for you, Sato?
Sato: For me, it’s the snow episode directed by Yoshizawa. (Episode 38: "Snow, Mountains, Friendship! And Of Course the Youma"; directed by Yoshizawa Takao.)
Kuma-san: Ah, when Rei’s heart is touched as soon as she learns that Yuichiro comes from a rich family (laughs).
Ikuhara: Great episode (laughs).
Sato: It was charming. The monster wasn’t bad either. It had snowmen attached to its body, and when it got angry, they also changed their expressions. Yoshizawa’s episodes have always been fun.
Kuma-san: Sato, what do you think of the latest Sailor Moon?
Sato: The latest? Ami is unrecognisable, isn’t she?
Igarashi: Unrecognisable?
Sato: Yes.
Ikuhara: I also thought she had changed. I realised she became like that after Ami's First Love, directed by you, Igarashi (laughs).
Sato: It was your interpretation of Ami, Igarashi. I could have accepted such change, and I really tried, but something inside me stopped me from reaching the end of that short film.
Kuma-san: Sato, you’re awesome (laughs)! So, if Ami has changed, it’s Igarashi’s fault.
Ikuhara: Yes, it’s his fault (he’s been irresponsible).
Igarashi: My fault? But then, Rei’s personality change is Iku-chan’s fault. (It was during episodes 11, "A Clash Between Usagi and Rei? The Nightmare in Dreamland," and 15, "Usagi Anxious! Rei’s First Date," directed by Ikuhara, that Rei became a character with her own identity.)
Ikuhara: No comment.
Igarashi: (laughs) And if Minako's personality changed, it’s because of an episode directed by Sato. (Episode 109, "A Shocking Moment! Their Identities Are Revealed.")
Sato: No, I have nothing to do with that.
Kuma-san: It was Sasaki. (Venus Minako's Nurse Turmoil, episode 78, written by Sumizawa Katsuyuki and directed by Sasaki Noriyo, marks a turning point for the character of Minako. It is from this episode that Minako begins to follow the path of a cheerful and energetic girl.)
Igarashi: Are you serious? Are they that unrecognisable?
Sato: They are completely different characters from their beginnings. So much so that fans have even said, "This isn’t my Ami."
Kuma-san: In episode 27, when Urawa gets the highest grades, Ami very excitedly says, "Urawa is amazing." However, in Ami's First Love, when Mercurius gets the highest grades in the exams, she thinks, "They’re challenging me. He might be a new enemy."
Ikuhara: She’s a completely different character. (laughs)
Kuma-san: Compared to Ami in those episodes, the current one seems quite fickle.
Igarashi: Maybe so, if we compare them, of course.
Sato: The current Ami doesn’t know how to control herself. Where is that self-control?
Ikuhara: That self-control was what defined Ami’s character.
Kuma-san: In fact, even when she was upset inside...
Ikuhara: ...she always maintained composure. (laughs)
Kuma-san: She lost it by always being with Usagi.
(Everyone laughs)
Ikuhara: Yes, and something like that also happened in an episode directed by Sato. It’s the episode where Ami swims (Episode 97: "Water Labyrinth! Ami Under Fire.")
Sato: She doesn’t say things in front of people, but she actually thinks a lot about her soul. (laughs)
Kuma-san: Sato, you hate Uranus and Neptune, don’t you?
Sato: Yes, I really hate them. I always tried to give them as little screen time as possible.
Everyone: (laughs)
Sato: However, at the end of the fifth season, I directed an episode with those two, which I hated more than anything else, and it was really hard for me to pull it off.
Kuma-san: There was a funnier episode, directed by Sato, where the enemy tries to steal Minako’s pure heart. The revelation of the secret identities was saved for the last few minutes of the episode.
Sato: I tried to make that episode as focused on Minako as possible.
Everyone: (laughs)
Sato: Speaking of voice actors, by the time we got to the fourth or fifth seasons, their technical skill even exceeded our imagination. Especially Mitsuishi. When I was creating storyboards or key animation, I’d draw expressions or moods thinking they should look a certain way. Then, when the voices were added, the performance would turn out different from what I had envisioned in the drawings. More than once, the voice acting ended up elevating the animation.
Igarashi: The visuals were outdone by the voice actors performance.
Sato: Rather than saying the visuals were inferior, I’d say it was a different interpretation than what it was "supposed to be."
Ikuhara: That probably means Mitsuishi’s image of Sailor Moon was closer to that of the viewers.
Sato: I get the feeling Mitsuishi picked up on that on a skin-deep level. I directed very few episodes, so compared to the voice actors, I made Sailor Moon with a certain distance—or at least that’s what I felt. And even though I had some ideas or needs regarding the voice work, I sometimes found myself hesitating, thinking, “Maybe Mitsuishi’s take is more appropriate here.”
Kuma-san: I see.
Sato: As for the relationship between the staff and the voice actors, the former were forced to take the latter’s performances into account. During the first year, both the animation staff and the voice actors seemed to work in unison. There was some feedback.
Igarashi: And I thought I understood the characters, but now that you mention it, I'm starting to doubt myself.
Sato: Of course, Igarashi—it’s because you don’t understand Ami.
Everyone: (laughs)
Kuma-san: But he does know Minako well.
Igarashi: Actually, I worked on a lot of episodes starring Minako. And Sato would often get angry because I got carried away and made her say weird things: “Don’t make her say that, you idiot!” (In episode 141, “The Storm of Love! Minako's Big Plan for a Double Date”, there’s a scene where Tiger’s Eye and Hawk’s Eye both stick their heads into Minako’s “dream mirror” at the same time. Igarashi wanted Minako to say, “Two at once is impossible! It'll break like that,” but he gave up due to everyone else’s opposition.)
Sato: Even so, Igarashi is one of the Sailor Moon directors who grew the most over the course of the series.
Ikuhara: That’s because it was almost his debut as an episode director, and then he became a series director for a full season.
Sato: He is good at his job—for example, in how he works with the staff. Like a real director, he explains the content of the work to the staff the way it should be done.
Kuma-san: But that’s normal, isn’t it?
Sato: No, I don’t do that very often.
Everyone: (laughs)
Sato: And even when I try, I end up not expressing myself well. It’s not easy to do things you’re not used to.
Kuma-san: Speaking of Igarashi, we can’t forget episode 106: “A Fated Bond! Haruka’s Distant Days.”
Ikuhara: In that episode, a proto-Daimon appears. When I saw that scene, I thought, “Ooh, how scary” (laughs). It felt like a life-or-death battle.
Sato: At the beginning of the series, we used to avoid giving it a serious tone. But when Uranus and Neptune enter the scene in the third season, there was no way to avoid it anymore. And that was hard for me. Their dialogue was always like, “It doesn’t matter who we have to sacrifice.”
Ikuhara: We didn’t want serious themes to be depicted directly. We tried in every way possible to make them seem like mere illusions.
Kuma-san: You didn’t want to portray them realistically.
Sato: Tomita wanted to introduce the “Bird of Defeat,” and we should have taken advantage of that.
Kuma-san: What’s the Bird of Defeat?
Ikuhara: The Daimons were born by inserting an egg into some object. When they were defeated, the egg would break, but it wasn’t entirely clear whether they had really been defeated. Tomita came up with the idea of having a bird emerge from the broken egg and say, “I’ve been defeated,” and asked us what we thought.
Sato: I agreed with it, but Iku-chan opposed it fiercely.
Ikuhara: Did I?
Sato: You were ferociously against it.
Ikuhara: Really? Well, now I’m in favour of it (laughs).
Kuma-san: That shows how seriously you were taking Sailor Moon at the time.
Sato: From the very beginning, Iku-chan always intended to take Uranus and Neptune seriously.
Ikuhara: I wanted to because I had already understood that Sailor Moon is a work built on the affection one feels for the characters. And I thought I had to treat characters like Uranus and Neptune seriously. Also, because at that time, I was the series director.
Sato: In fact, it was the right choice, considering that Uranus and Neptune, portrayed in that way, had their fans. And since the atmosphere was more serious, if we had introduced something like the “Bird of Defeat,” viewers might’ve taken it personally and asked us not to joke around.
Kuma-san: Will the final episode of the fifth season have a happy ending?
Igarashi: For the ending, there’s a fairy tale I’ve had in mind that I wanted to use as a reference. Do you know the story of “The Princess Who Never Smiled”?
Ikuhara: No. Can you tell it to us?
Igarashi: In a faraway country, there was a princess who had never smiled. Travelling performers from all over the world came to try to make her smile, but no matter what they did, she never did. Finally, a local village boy came up to the princess and said, “Let’s play,” and that was when the princess smiled for the first time. I wanted to overlay that image of the princess with Galaxia. Galaxia always destroyed enemies who attacked her, but Usagi confronted her without any will to fight. I thought that was what triggered the happy ending. I wanted Usagi’s sense of motherhood to envelop her—not to defeat or imprison her.
Sato: Because Usagi is “the mother of us all.”
Igarashi: Yes. That line perfectly expresses how I feel inside. ("Usagi is the mother of all of us" is a line from Chibiusa in the Sailor Moon R movie. Igarashi worked on that movie as assistant director, so you can see how much it means to him.)
Kuma-san: That’s the movie from the second season. Ikuhara’s masterpiece.
Ikuhara: Mmh. Thinking about it now, Sailor Moon R The Movie is sustained only by the love for the characters.
Kuma-san: Love?
Ikuhara: Yes. The anime is built entirely on the affection people have for the characters. And that applies to both the creators and the viewers. While I was making Sailor Moon, I realised I was involved in the project solely because of how much I loved the characters. Later on, since I continued working on it only from that perspective, I started to feel that my career as a director might be in danger if I kept going like that. That’s why I decided to step away from doing things that way with the movie from the second season.
Sato: Iku-chan, that way of doing things is close to how live-action film directors work.
Ikuhara: If it had only been me doing things that way, it would've been fine. But I realised that everyone around me was doing the same thing. The rest of the industry too—and I thought, “This isn’t right. It’s too restrictive.” (laughs)
Sato: It’s a matter of identity.
Ikuhara: I felt dizzy. I thought I could achieve something through my own way of making art.
Sato: I haven’t had many experiences like that.
Igarashi: Me neither. I haven’t had that kind of problem.
Sato: It’s because I don’t really like movies all that much. Although I do like animation.
Kuma-san: Ikuhara, did you already feel that way when you were directing Sailor Moon R The Movie?
Ikuhara: Yes, I already realised that back then. Even so, I had no choice but to keep creating that way, so I did. But from there on, things became more difficult—artistically speaking.
Sato: That’s why Iku-chan started to change his creative approach starting with Sailor Moon S.
Ikuhara: Deliberately.
Sato: Already in the episode where Uranus and Neptune are introduced, I was surprisingly aware of that new kind of development. (Episode 92: “A Handsome Boy? Haruka Ten’ō’s Secret.” It’s the first episode Ikuhara directed in the third season and is done entirely in a comedic tone. It focused more on technique than on affection for the characters.)
Ikuhara (laughs): Why?
Sato: Because I expected the atmosphere to be more similar to Sailor Moon R The Movie.
Ikuhara: The truth is, at that time I couldn’t stand working in that kind of atmosphere anymore.
Sato: You could’ve told me that earlier! In Sailor Moon S, I directed episodes trying to match the atmosphere of the second season’s movie. (Episodes 90 and 97; it seems that for the following episodes, 104 and 109, he adapted more to Ikuhara’s new direction, which leaned more toward comedy.)
Ikuhara: No, I don’t usually communicate that kind of thing. (laughs)
Everyone: (laughs)
Sato: I realised Iku-chan had changed the course and I tried to adapt. But the athletics episode he directed was amazing (Episode 117: “Higher, Stronger! Usagi Cheers” – a unique episode). I thought I couldn’t keep up. At that time, I wouldn’t have been able to imitate that. (laughs)
Ikuhara: That sort of thing—I couldn’t have done it in the first season. But by the third season, the trend in that direction became more evident.
Kuma-san: In what sense?
Ikuhara: I mean, I felt the need to move away from the affection for the characters and try doing things with a different methodology.
Kuma-san: More logically?
Sato: In a way that was different from affection for the characters.
Ikuhara: Exactly.
Kuma-san: Which just shows how strong that affection was.
Ikuhara: Very strong. But actually, this doesn’t only apply to Sailor Moon—I think it applies to all of Japanese animation.
Kuma-san: True. So, shall we wrap up the interview?
Ikuhara: I thought Sailor Moon would continue for much longer. While I was working on it, I kept thinking maybe it would never end. So when they told me it would finish with the fifth season, it was a bit of a shock.
Sato: It finally ended.
Igarashi: It finally had a conclusion.
Ikuhara: Sailor Moon was my youth. (laughs)
Everyone: (laughs)
It tells...in some way....... why Ikuhara changed his style of direction; Sailor Stars is sort of......sort of....connected to Sailor Moon R the movie.......and surprisingly Junichi Sato hates HaruMichi.
Interview from Animage magazine, No. 225, March 1997, pages 92–96.
Below is a conversation between the various directors of the Sailor Moon series, considered as a system for delivering pleasure.
It is strongly believed that the clash of talent, artistry, and personalities of its creators is what elevated the work of Sailor Moon.
We had a discussion about Sailor Moon from the different perspectives of the three directors of the series.
Junichi Sato
Born March 11, 1960, in Aichi Prefecture. First director of Sailor Moon. One of the creators of the series. He also participated as an episode director in the third, fourth, and fifth seasons. Worked on the storyboard, plot, and overall direction of the OVA Mahōtsukaitai!.
Kunihiko Ikuhara
Born December 21, 1964, in Tokushima Prefecture. Worked as director of Sailor Moon for three years, during the second, third, and fourth seasons. Also directed Sailor Moon R the movie. Animage readers will know him well from his column Director’s Diary. He is currently preparing the production of his next work, Revolutionary Girl Utena (Shōjo Kakumei Utena).
Takuya Igarashi
Born December 21, 1965, in Saitama Prefecture. He worked as the third director of Sailor Moon in the fifth season. He has given us many memorable episodes, especially those starring Minako; including episode 42 with Alan, 52 with the school bus, 65 with the fight with Makoto, and 141, where she goes on a date with both Tiger’s Eye and Hawk’s Eye at the same time.
Kuma-san: Junichi Sato will arrive later. For now, let’s begin with just Ikuhara and Igarashi.
Igarashi: Shouldn’t we wait for him?
Kuma-san: It's very likely that he will arrive at any moment. Ikuhara, regarding the Sailor Moon series, what were the moments that impressed you the most?
Ikuhara: I had a lot of fun during the first year.
Igarashi: Iku-chan always used to say, "My Sailor Moon ended with episode 46."
Ikuhara: Yes, I said that. For me, Sailor Moon was my first job [Actually, it isn't], and the mistakes are quite noticeable, to the point that watching it now makes me feel embarrassed. Igarashi, among the episodes you directed in the first season, there was one where a woman who knew Minako came to Japan, right? (Episode 42: "Sailor Venus's Past, Minako's Tragic Love")
Igarashi: I also feel embarrassed thinking about my early attempts as a director. The mistakes I made are very noticeable.
Ikuhara: Well, I think it turned out fine.
Kuma-san: Is there any episode that impressed you, whether it was directed by you or someone else?
Ikuhara: Good question. Particularly the first season is etched in my memory. I can remember every episode it contains.
Kuma-san: There was an episode where Sailor Moon fights a bodybuilding instructor, right? (Episode 4: "Usagi Teaches You How to Lose Weight!")
Ikuhara: Yes, that's true (laughs).
Igarashi: That episode is the first one where I was an assistant director.
Ikuhara: There was an episode where Urawa appeared for the second time, the one where he climbs onto the Ferris wheel at the amusement park. (Episode 41: "I Will Never Run Away from Love! Ami vs. Mamoru") I thought it was interesting. Endymion appeared fighting Sailor Mercury, and with his stick, he burst Mercury's soap bubbles (laughs).
Igarashi: I was overwhelmed by episode 26, directed by Iku-chan. Boxy was some kind of foreign priest who spoke strange Japanese (laughs). The scene where Usagi breaks the piggy bank with the Moon Stick was also very funny. The girls gathered at the Hikawa Shrine were wondering if Usagi would dare to do such a thing, and suddenly in the next scene, she does it.
Ikuhara: Yes, that’s how it was (laughs).
Igarashi: During that first year, we didn’t try to force the comedy. The funny scenes weren’t intentionally created, in my opinion. I think they came out in a very natural way.
Kuma-san: In the first season, Sailor Moon was comedic, fun, with a more innocent, naïve tone.
Igarashi: Yes, exactly.
Kuma-san: After all, Sailor Moon is a work aimed at children. To what extent did you take this into account?
Igarashi: To some extent, we kept in mind that the target audience was children. That’s why we tried not to include overly complicated scenes. But at the climax of each season, in order to develop and conclude the story, we ended up with many complex scenes. Perhaps it was difficult for children to digest or understand them. It was after Sailor Moon, with its popularity, became a social phenomenon—so much so that it was even mentioned in mainstream media—that we began working on the series with more focus on its influence on society than on children.
Kuma-san: So, did you change the way you worked on the series?
Ikuhara: Indeed. We came to think of Sailor Moon as a system of delivering pleasure.
Kuma-san: Pleasure? In what terms?
Ikuhara: It’s kind of like, it’s okay for girls to act for their own pleasure. We expressed this in the series, and after its success, this concept became socially accepted. For example, showing that a girl, when she’s angry, can hit another person, in today’s society, means providing pleasure. Until now, in animated products for girls, in comics for girls, there haven’t been many works that positively portrayed a girl hitting or kicking her opponent. I believe that Sailor Moon popularised this as a form of pleasure, and it was socially accepted.
Kuma-san: Something like new values, right?
Ikuhara: For girls, the concept was that controlling emotions was moral, it was a virtue. However, it was said that girls had become free and could experience pleasure. And Sailor Moon concretely and visually portrayed this kind of female model, and also made society accept it. In my view, it’s a new way of delivering pleasure. And I worked with that in mind.
Kuma-san: We could say that this is also a common point with the manga.
Ikuhara: The manga has this tendency even more strongly. At first, I didn’t even understand it myself. It was only after the success that I realised it was a system of delivering pleasure. So, starting from the second season, I worked with that in mind, thinking, "You have to offer some pleasure." It wasn’t enough for the story to be convincing. With the love stories, with the show, the story would have been exciting, but that wasn’t enough.
Kuma-san: Sato is late.
Ikuhara: He hasn’t arrived yet.
Igarashi: Speaking of Sato, I remember he once said, "I wish I could have directed the episode with Kakusui in it." (Kakusui is a character who appears in episode 105: "I Want Power! Mako-chan Has Lost Her Way"; it seems that Sato really cared about this. The episode was directed by Shibara Hiroki.)
Ikuhara: Yes, he said that.
Kuma-san: Kakusui had his own charm. A serious character, but not excessively stiff.
Ikuhara: In my opinion, he had his charm. And it was strange that Makoto held that character in high regard.
(At the end, Sato appears.)
Sato: Sorry for keeping you waiting.
Kuma-san: We were talking about the episode with Kakusui.
Sato: Kakusui? What a great character! I was really looking forward to making an episode with him.
Kuma-san: Really?
Sato: At the end of that episode, Makoto appears saying something behind a glass, right? But it’s unclear what she’s saying. That kind of thing has to have fans!!!
(Everyone laughs.)
Ikuhara: No one remembered that (laughs).
Sato: It was necessary to clarify what Makoto said behind the glass.
Kuma-san: Of course.
Sato: And the next time Kakusui appeared, the final scene would end with him flying to Tibet. And this time, everything would end with him, in the airplane, behind the glass, saying something. Then the ending and the preview for the next episode would come. "*But what did he say this time!?"
(Everyone laughs.)
Sato: I wish I had done something. I’ve been saying this since I first saw the preview for that episode, but no one cared.
Kuma-san: Did you really want to do it?
Sato: Of course, seriously.
(Everyone laughs.)
Kuma-san: What’s the best part of Sailor Moon for you, Sato?
Sato: For me, it’s the snow episode directed by Yoshizawa. (Episode 38: "Snow, Mountains, Friendship! And Of Course the Youma"; directed by Yoshizawa Takao.)
Kuma-san: Ah, when Rei’s heart is touched as soon as she learns that Yuichiro comes from a rich family (laughs).
Ikuhara: Great episode (laughs).
Sato: It was charming. The monster wasn’t bad either. It had snowmen attached to its body, and when it got angry, they also changed their expressions. Yoshizawa’s episodes have always been fun.
Kuma-san: Sato, what do you think of the latest Sailor Moon?
Sato: The latest? Ami is unrecognisable, isn’t she?
Igarashi: Unrecognisable?
Sato: Yes.
Ikuhara: I also thought she had changed. I realised she became like that after Ami's First Love, directed by you, Igarashi (laughs).
Sato: It was your interpretation of Ami, Igarashi. I could have accepted such change, and I really tried, but something inside me stopped me from reaching the end of that short film.
Kuma-san: Sato, you’re awesome (laughs)! So, if Ami has changed, it’s Igarashi’s fault.
Ikuhara: Yes, it’s his fault (he’s been irresponsible).
Igarashi: My fault? But then, Rei’s personality change is Iku-chan’s fault. (It was during episodes 11, "A Clash Between Usagi and Rei? The Nightmare in Dreamland," and 15, "Usagi Anxious! Rei’s First Date," directed by Ikuhara, that Rei became a character with her own identity.)
Ikuhara: No comment.
Igarashi: (laughs) And if Minako's personality changed, it’s because of an episode directed by Sato. (Episode 109, "A Shocking Moment! Their Identities Are Revealed.")
Sato: No, I have nothing to do with that.
Kuma-san: It was Sasaki. (Venus Minako's Nurse Turmoil, episode 78, written by Sumizawa Katsuyuki and directed by Sasaki Noriyo, marks a turning point for the character of Minako. It is from this episode that Minako begins to follow the path of a cheerful and energetic girl.)
Igarashi: Are you serious? Are they that unrecognisable?
Sato: They are completely different characters from their beginnings. So much so that fans have even said, "This isn’t my Ami."
Kuma-san: In episode 27, when Urawa gets the highest grades, Ami very excitedly says, "Urawa is amazing." However, in Ami's First Love, when Mercurius gets the highest grades in the exams, she thinks, "They’re challenging me. He might be a new enemy."
Ikuhara: She’s a completely different character. (laughs)
Kuma-san: Compared to Ami in those episodes, the current one seems quite fickle.
Igarashi: Maybe so, if we compare them, of course.
Sato: The current Ami doesn’t know how to control herself. Where is that self-control?
Ikuhara: That self-control was what defined Ami’s character.
Kuma-san: In fact, even when she was upset inside...
Ikuhara: ...she always maintained composure. (laughs)
Kuma-san: She lost it by always being with Usagi.
(Everyone laughs)
Ikuhara: Yes, and something like that also happened in an episode directed by Sato. It’s the episode where Ami swims (Episode 97: "Water Labyrinth! Ami Under Fire.")
Sato: She doesn’t say things in front of people, but she actually thinks a lot about her soul. (laughs)
Kuma-san: Sato, you hate Uranus and Neptune, don’t you?
Sato: Yes, I really hate them. I always tried to give them as little screen time as possible.
Everyone: (laughs)
Sato: However, at the end of the fifth season, I directed an episode with those two, which I hated more than anything else, and it was really hard for me to pull it off.
Kuma-san: There was a funnier episode, directed by Sato, where the enemy tries to steal Minako’s pure heart. The revelation of the secret identities was saved for the last few minutes of the episode.
Sato: I tried to make that episode as focused on Minako as possible.
Everyone: (laughs)
Sato: Speaking of voice actors, by the time we got to the fourth or fifth seasons, their technical skill even exceeded our imagination. Especially Mitsuishi. When I was creating storyboards or key animation, I’d draw expressions or moods thinking they should look a certain way. Then, when the voices were added, the performance would turn out different from what I had envisioned in the drawings. More than once, the voice acting ended up elevating the animation.
Igarashi: The visuals were outdone by the voice actors performance.
Sato: Rather than saying the visuals were inferior, I’d say it was a different interpretation than what it was "supposed to be."
Ikuhara: That probably means Mitsuishi’s image of Sailor Moon was closer to that of the viewers.
Sato: I get the feeling Mitsuishi picked up on that on a skin-deep level. I directed very few episodes, so compared to the voice actors, I made Sailor Moon with a certain distance—or at least that’s what I felt. And even though I had some ideas or needs regarding the voice work, I sometimes found myself hesitating, thinking, “Maybe Mitsuishi’s take is more appropriate here.”
Kuma-san: I see.
Sato: As for the relationship between the staff and the voice actors, the former were forced to take the latter’s performances into account. During the first year, both the animation staff and the voice actors seemed to work in unison. There was some feedback.
Igarashi: And I thought I understood the characters, but now that you mention it, I'm starting to doubt myself.
Sato: Of course, Igarashi—it’s because you don’t understand Ami.
Everyone: (laughs)
Kuma-san: But he does know Minako well.
Igarashi: Actually, I worked on a lot of episodes starring Minako. And Sato would often get angry because I got carried away and made her say weird things: “Don’t make her say that, you idiot!” (In episode 141, “The Storm of Love! Minako's Big Plan for a Double Date”, there’s a scene where Tiger’s Eye and Hawk’s Eye both stick their heads into Minako’s “dream mirror” at the same time. Igarashi wanted Minako to say, “Two at once is impossible! It'll break like that,” but he gave up due to everyone else’s opposition.)
Sato: Even so, Igarashi is one of the Sailor Moon directors who grew the most over the course of the series.
Ikuhara: That’s because it was almost his debut as an episode director, and then he became a series director for a full season.
Sato: He is good at his job—for example, in how he works with the staff. Like a real director, he explains the content of the work to the staff the way it should be done.
Kuma-san: But that’s normal, isn’t it?
Sato: No, I don’t do that very often.
Everyone: (laughs)
Sato: And even when I try, I end up not expressing myself well. It’s not easy to do things you’re not used to.
Kuma-san: Speaking of Igarashi, we can’t forget episode 106: “A Fated Bond! Haruka’s Distant Days.”
Ikuhara: In that episode, a proto-Daimon appears. When I saw that scene, I thought, “Ooh, how scary” (laughs). It felt like a life-or-death battle.
Sato: At the beginning of the series, we used to avoid giving it a serious tone. But when Uranus and Neptune enter the scene in the third season, there was no way to avoid it anymore. And that was hard for me. Their dialogue was always like, “It doesn’t matter who we have to sacrifice.”
Ikuhara: We didn’t want serious themes to be depicted directly. We tried in every way possible to make them seem like mere illusions.
Kuma-san: You didn’t want to portray them realistically.
Sato: Tomita wanted to introduce the “Bird of Defeat,” and we should have taken advantage of that.
Kuma-san: What’s the Bird of Defeat?
Ikuhara: The Daimons were born by inserting an egg into some object. When they were defeated, the egg would break, but it wasn’t entirely clear whether they had really been defeated. Tomita came up with the idea of having a bird emerge from the broken egg and say, “I’ve been defeated,” and asked us what we thought.
Sato: I agreed with it, but Iku-chan opposed it fiercely.
Ikuhara: Did I?
Sato: You were ferociously against it.
Ikuhara: Really? Well, now I’m in favour of it (laughs).
Kuma-san: That shows how seriously you were taking Sailor Moon at the time.
Sato: From the very beginning, Iku-chan always intended to take Uranus and Neptune seriously.
Ikuhara: I wanted to because I had already understood that Sailor Moon is a work built on the affection one feels for the characters. And I thought I had to treat characters like Uranus and Neptune seriously. Also, because at that time, I was the series director.
Sato: In fact, it was the right choice, considering that Uranus and Neptune, portrayed in that way, had their fans. And since the atmosphere was more serious, if we had introduced something like the “Bird of Defeat,” viewers might’ve taken it personally and asked us not to joke around.
Kuma-san: Will the final episode of the fifth season have a happy ending?
Igarashi: For the ending, there’s a fairy tale I’ve had in mind that I wanted to use as a reference. Do you know the story of “The Princess Who Never Smiled”?
Ikuhara: No. Can you tell it to us?
Igarashi: In a faraway country, there was a princess who had never smiled. Travelling performers from all over the world came to try to make her smile, but no matter what they did, she never did. Finally, a local village boy came up to the princess and said, “Let’s play,” and that was when the princess smiled for the first time. I wanted to overlay that image of the princess with Galaxia. Galaxia always destroyed enemies who attacked her, but Usagi confronted her without any will to fight. I thought that was what triggered the happy ending. I wanted Usagi’s sense of motherhood to envelop her—not to defeat or imprison her.
Sato: Because Usagi is “the mother of us all.”
Igarashi: Yes. That line perfectly expresses how I feel inside. ("Usagi is the mother of all of us" is a line from Chibiusa in the Sailor Moon R movie. Igarashi worked on that movie as assistant director, so you can see how much it means to him.)
Kuma-san: That’s the movie from the second season. Ikuhara’s masterpiece.
Ikuhara: Mmh. Thinking about it now, Sailor Moon R The Movie is sustained only by the love for the characters.
Kuma-san: Love?
Ikuhara: Yes. The anime is built entirely on the affection people have for the characters. And that applies to both the creators and the viewers. While I was making Sailor Moon, I realised I was involved in the project solely because of how much I loved the characters. Later on, since I continued working on it only from that perspective, I started to feel that my career as a director might be in danger if I kept going like that. That’s why I decided to step away from doing things that way with the movie from the second season.
Sato: Iku-chan, that way of doing things is close to how live-action film directors work.
Ikuhara: If it had only been me doing things that way, it would've been fine. But I realised that everyone around me was doing the same thing. The rest of the industry too—and I thought, “This isn’t right. It’s too restrictive.” (laughs)
Sato: It’s a matter of identity.
Ikuhara: I felt dizzy. I thought I could achieve something through my own way of making art.
Sato: I haven’t had many experiences like that.
Igarashi: Me neither. I haven’t had that kind of problem.
Sato: It’s because I don’t really like movies all that much. Although I do like animation.
Kuma-san: Ikuhara, did you already feel that way when you were directing Sailor Moon R The Movie?
Ikuhara: Yes, I already realised that back then. Even so, I had no choice but to keep creating that way, so I did. But from there on, things became more difficult—artistically speaking.
Sato: That’s why Iku-chan started to change his creative approach starting with Sailor Moon S.
Ikuhara: Deliberately.
Sato: Already in the episode where Uranus and Neptune are introduced, I was surprisingly aware of that new kind of development. (Episode 92: “A Handsome Boy? Haruka Ten’ō’s Secret.” It’s the first episode Ikuhara directed in the third season and is done entirely in a comedic tone. It focused more on technique than on affection for the characters.)
Ikuhara (laughs): Why?
Sato: Because I expected the atmosphere to be more similar to Sailor Moon R The Movie.
Ikuhara: The truth is, at that time I couldn’t stand working in that kind of atmosphere anymore.
Sato: You could’ve told me that earlier! In Sailor Moon S, I directed episodes trying to match the atmosphere of the second season’s movie. (Episodes 90 and 97; it seems that for the following episodes, 104 and 109, he adapted more to Ikuhara’s new direction, which leaned more toward comedy.)
Ikuhara: No, I don’t usually communicate that kind of thing. (laughs)
Everyone: (laughs)
Sato: I realised Iku-chan had changed the course and I tried to adapt. But the athletics episode he directed was amazing (Episode 117: “Higher, Stronger! Usagi Cheers” – a unique episode). I thought I couldn’t keep up. At that time, I wouldn’t have been able to imitate that. (laughs)
Ikuhara: That sort of thing—I couldn’t have done it in the first season. But by the third season, the trend in that direction became more evident.
Kuma-san: In what sense?
Ikuhara: I mean, I felt the need to move away from the affection for the characters and try doing things with a different methodology.
Kuma-san: More logically?
Sato: In a way that was different from affection for the characters.
Ikuhara: Exactly.
Kuma-san: Which just shows how strong that affection was.
Ikuhara: Very strong. But actually, this doesn’t only apply to Sailor Moon—I think it applies to all of Japanese animation.
Kuma-san: True. So, shall we wrap up the interview?
Ikuhara: I thought Sailor Moon would continue for much longer. While I was working on it, I kept thinking maybe it would never end. So when they told me it would finish with the fifth season, it was a bit of a shock.
Sato: It finally ended.
Igarashi: It finally had a conclusion.
Ikuhara: Sailor Moon was my youth. (laughs)
Everyone: (laughs)
#SigmundFreud
's in the first season? 
animated very realistically.
