As one of the most outstanding romance stories in recent years, Blue Box highlights the inner worlds and unique sensibilities of its whole cast of characters. The story combines the romantic pursuits of the protagonists, Taiki and Chinatsu, with the passion of spokon, and the adventure of growing up from adolescence.
While the Blue Box manga officially ended on July 13, we can still follow our favorite characters in the anime adaptation currently airing. Blue Box Season 2 explores new sides of the cast and introduces the long awaited Yumeka Goto, a person from Chinatsu’s past.
That’s why we were excited to interview Season 2 director Daisuke Sako about Yumeka, the themes explored during the season, and his takes on the story’s message.
Q: Were there any specific themes or core elements you particularly focused on for Season 2?
A: This time, we wanted to recreate real, named places as faithfully as possible. The idea that “these characters live in this particular kind of town in Japan” was something we valued in the anime as well. We didn’t only feature the obvious, well-known spots. We put a lot of effort into making sure that viewers all over Japan, including people who have never left their hometown, as well as viewers overseas, could watch and think, “Places like this exist.”
Our art staff did a wonderful job of making viewers think, “This is the kind of place where Taiki and the others are,” and “These characters really are in these places,” and that has added a lot to the sense of realism. Some of the locations we chose on the production side are places that aren’t often used as filming locations, and in some cases we deliberately picked that specific spot out of all of Japan. It would make me happy if viewers overseas watched it and thought, “Tokyo can look like this too.”
Q: What kinds of challenges or difficulties did you face while adapting this work into anime?
A: This season is especially about Taiki and Chinatsu, so I wanted to convey a sense that the two of them really exist, beyond just the way they talk, move, and act. To keep the audience focused on the two of them in every respect, we needed viewers not to wonder, “Huh, where is this?” whenever an unfamiliar-looking town appeared on screen. The difficulty was that we had to properly and firmly establish the setting around them.
The manga does have scenes and chapter title pages like that, but there are parts the manga simply can’t follow all the way through. I felt that by properly filling in and connecting those parts in the anime, and making the streets concrete rather than somewhat abstract, we could strengthen the sense that these are people who really live in Japan. I was also thinking that, ultimately, this would make the locations that appear in later episodes stand out even more.
Normally, location scouting means actually going to the places, but with limited time and budget, we can’t travel all over the country… That said, things have become really convenient lately [laughs]. I’ve taken to calling it “online location scouting,” where we scout locations on online maps. Technology has been a real help here, since we can make full use of online location scouting [laughs].
Q: What should fans expect regarding the development of the newly introduced character, Yumeka Goto?
A: I think the new character Yumeka plays the role of conveying what kind of person Chinatsu is. If Yumeka hadn’t appeared, there are parts of Chinatsu’s inner self that would never have been told. And it was precisely because Yumeka was there that Chinatsu, for the first time, came to recognize things about herself and was able to talk about herself objectively.
Yumeka’s arrival created a kind of “friction” that Blue Box had rarely had until then. It isn’t friction Yumeka sets out to cause on purpose. It happens precisely because Yumeka is someone who throws the feelings and emotions people naturally have straight at others, exactly as they are. The fact that Chinatsu was finally able to say things she had never been able to say before wasn’t a matter of Yumeka serving as a plot device. I think it really comes down to Yumeka’s compelling personality and the influence it had on her.
Yumeka’s charm is conveyed through Sosuke, who is also her boyfriend. One of the great things about Blue Box is that other characters properly explain what makes a character appealing. Sosuke really communicates what kind of person Yumeka is and what’s wonderful about her, so I hope everyone pays attention to her interactions with Sosuke too!
Q: What kind of growth or changes will we see in the main characters—Taiki Inomata, Chinatsu Kano, and Hina Chono—in Season 2?
A: I think every character changes this season, but this season really belongs to Chinatsu and Taiki.
First, Taiki is the protagonist, a boy who has feelings for Chinatsu. There are actually several turning points for him, and within them there are moments where he grows, or rather, keeps changing without realizing it. For example, around the middle of the season, there are scenes where he acts selflessly, for Chinatsu’s sake, rather than out of self-interest like wanting her to notice him or like him back. There, I feel his earnest feelings take a step beyond the teenage assumption he started with: that if he worked hard in his club and got stronger at badminton, he might get a girlfriend. Taiki himself is simply acting earnestly, wholeheartedly, and in a sense purely, but the actions he chooses increasingly serve other people. In that sense, I think this season depicts Taiki’s “steps toward becoming an adult.”
Next, Chinatsu. This season, her feelings come to be expressed properly in her own words. She gradually begins to talk, in her own words, about things like where her feelings for Taiki are headed and how they’re changing. That’s exactly why, whenever we had to cut lines at the storyboard stage to fit the TV runtime, we made a point of never cutting Taiki’s or Chinatsu’s lines. We wanted to protect what the two of them say.
Q: What message or realizations do you hope the audience takes away from watching?
A: I think the original Blue Box manga carries a lot of messages. This time in particular, the material covering Yumeka and Chinatsu is incredibly dense, with not a single wasted page or panel. At the same time, it isn’t drawn in a crammed way; there are important words in the pauses and spaces, and inside small panels, and there are many places where you only understand what the words mean after reading them several times. If you connect those meanings properly, the payoff comes months later.
With manga you can go back, but anime only moves in one direction. Of course you can rewatch it, but with video you can’t immediately flip back the way you can with manga. We were very particular about how to convey everything to the audience, without letting anything slip through, in time that only flows one way. That was part of what made it fun, and it was very rewarding.
Within that, there are characters you only see from behind in the manga, and you wonder, “What kind of face are they making as they say this?” In the manga, there are only panels of Chinatsu’s back while she says an important line. What does her face look like from where Taiki is standing? Working hard to imagine moments like that, and thinking about how to direct what you might call the original’s “blank space” in the anime, is the very first thing I believe you have to do when adapting a manga into an anime.
As I said a moment ago, this season we focused on what kind of “face” the characters are making in the moments the manga doesn’t draw. If an expression is completed in a single panel in the manga, in the anime we might deliberately split it into two cuts. I think that’s the real joy of turning something into an anime. If you look for those moments, you’ll see that while we’re following the original faithfully, the anime also expresses things that aren’t in the original.
It might be fun to read the manga and then watch the anime with an eye to how it fills in what’s between the lines.
We want to extend our thanks to director Daisuke Sako amidst out of his schedule for sharing insight into the adaptation process of the manga, and to TMS Entertainment for making this interview possible.
Be sure to catch new episodes of Blue Box Season 2 every Sunday, streaming exclusively on Netflix.
© Kouji Miura/SHUEISHA, Blue Box Film Partners.
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