Anime : Armored Trooper Votoms

[Aer]

Je n'ai jamais pris la peine d'aller au bout de 2022 déjà

Oshii c'est a double tranchant, certes ça rassure par principe mais ces derniers faits d'arme n'ont pas de quoi se taper le cul par terre non plus. Espérons qu'il soit inspiré par son sujet.

[Zêta Amrith]

Armored Trooper Votoms : The Grey Witch sera composé de deux "films".
Le premier paraîtra en salles le 20 novembre au Japon.

Ryousuke Takahashi est associé au projet comme superviseur.
Shinobu Tsuneki (GITS:SAC, Psycho-Pass) et Yoshiro Sono sont les mecha-designers de l'anime.
Complice de toujours de Mamoru Oshii, Kenji Kawai est crédité à la bande-son.

[Zêta Amrith]

Gilgamesh and Balarant divide the whole Astragius Galaxy. These two forces have been engaged in a war for nearly 100 years, the cause of which remains unclear. In the final stages of the "Hundred Years War", a female officer, Maki Stauffenberg, is assigned to a front-line base on Valkyria II, the second planet in the Asgard star system. She has secretly been given the task of investigating Ash Vamps, a soldier known as the "Witch", for being the only one to survive even the most brutal operations in a punitive unit composed of ragtag soldiers. The truth of the battlefield can only be known on battlefield. Maki decides to participate as an AT (Armored Trooper) pilot in a forced landing operation into enemy lines ordered by Ash's unit. In an operation that seems impossible to survive, the battle situation is heading towards despair by the moment. As Maki pursues Ash amidst the flames of war, she gradually approaches the truth hidden within her.

Le rendu est plutôt bon (quoique très proche des films MSG Hathaway) mais pourquoi nous refaire exactement la même histoire que Chirico et Rochina avec un genderswap en guise de nouveauté ? Faut-il que Votoms devienne la risée du monde civilisé comme l'est Gundam depuis une vingtaine d'années ? J'espère bien qu'il y a un twist de prévu au programme.

(Day one quand même. Enfin, month one. Ou year one.)

[Zêta Amrith]

Hideo Kojima et une brochette de military otakus ont été conviés à l'avant-première du nouveau Votoms et l'accueil fut pour le moins dithyrambique. Evidemment on parle de nihonjin donc la politesse endémique veut que chaque flatulence soit géniale et protégée de toute considération critique, mais une chose paraît certaine : dans cette industrie de danseuses neutralisées, la combinaison Takahashi x Oshii se démarque.




>Interviewer : How did this project come to you in the first place ?

>Oshii : It started about five years ago, when I received an offer from Asanuma (Makoto), the president of Bandai Namco Filmworks at the time. When White Base (the nickname for Bandai Namco Filmworks' office) opened, I paid them a courtesy visit. The first thing he said to me was, “Mr. Oshii, how about doing Votoms ?” So I immediately answered, “I'll do it !” without a moment's hesitation (laughs). The reason was that I had been saying for ages, “I want to do Votoms !” I said as much when I had a discussion with (Ryosuke) Takahashi-san for another project, and he told me, “If a project like that ever comes up, by all means, go for it.”

>That said, I didn't even know this was going to be a 50th-anniversary commemorative work for Sunrise, nor did I know that no related works had been produced in the past fifteen years. There are so many Votoms spin-offs that I hadn't really kept up with that side of things.

>Anyway, I made one condition of my own: “I want you to arrange a meeting with Takahashi-san. I can't direct this without getting his permission directly. This is his work, after all.” When I was younger, I was pretty aggressive and overconfident, and Takahashi-san had lightly admonished me about that attitude before. I also wanted to properly apologize to him. So I started by saying, “I was terribly rude to you back then. I'm very sorry. I've been asked to work on Votoms, but would it be all right with you if I did it ?”

>Interviewer : What did Takahashi-san say ?

>Oshii : He said, “Yes, you're free to do whatever you like,” but then added that there was just one thing he wanted me to respect: “Nuclear attacks. Absolutely no stories about atomic bombs.” Takahashi-san belongs to that generation, after all. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a mushroom cloud in any of his works.

>Interviewer : You've certainly used them quite a lot yourself. Was that why he felt the need to warn you ?

>Oshii : Maybe so (laughs). I've included them countless times, starting with Urusei Yatsura (laughs). In any case, I told him, “Understood. I'll make sure to respect that,” and only then did I finally feel that I could approach the project with peace of mind.

>Interviewer : But this time, aside from the mecha, almost all the characters are new. What's the thinking behind that ?

>Oshii : When I spoke with Takahashi-san, my immediate instinct was that I wouldn't be able to tell a story about Kiriko, the protagonist of the series. After all, Kiriko is Takahashi-san's character. I also worked on two installments of the Tokusou Kishi (Keitai Sousakan) series, and I asked Miike-san (the general director, Takashi Miike), “Is it all right if I do whatever I want ?” and got his permission. But I didn't use the mobile phone robots (Phone Bravers), which were Miike-san and the others' idea. I left them in the drawer, so to speak, with the setting that they weren't being used. Ultimately, those kinds of characters belong to their respective directors, so I can't use them.

>It's the same this time. That's why, when I'm working on an established series, what I end up doing is a spin-off. Takahashi-san never actually said to me, “You're not going to bring Kiriko into this, are you ?” But that's how I heard it (laughs).

>Interviewer : This time, instead of Kiriko, two women who are new characters to the Votoms series take center stage. There's Ash Vamps, a sergeant nicknamed the “Witch” because she always manages to return alive from the battlefield, and Maki Stauffenberg, a captain in a propaganda company who arrives to investigate her. Ash shares her name with the heroine of Avalon, while Maki has the exact same full name as the protagonist of your novel Kerberos : Panzer Cop, which was also adapted into a radio drama. Maki even has the same occupation, doesn't she ?

>Oshii : I often put characters with the same names into different works (laughs). You'll just have to watch and see what comes of that. To begin with, I'm not very good at coming up with character names. Most of the time, I borrow them from soccer players or other real-life figures (laughs).

>Interviewer : I see ! But that doesn't mean their character designs are based on previous characters, right ?

>Oshii : As far as the character designs are concerned, I had them drawn based on real-life actors. We developed Ash and Maki while keeping actors I like in mind, too. Creating entirely original characters isn't that easy. It's the same when writing novels. You need to have some real person to use as a point of reference.

>Interviewer : Was that constantly moving forelock also your idea ?

>Oshii : No, that was Kise (Kazuya), who handled the original character design concepts for this project. It must be a pain to animate (laughs). Speaking of hairstyles, Ash has a blunt-cut bob, and she's an intense woman. I love troublesome women, after all (laughs). Even if some people say, “Oh, another bob haircut,” there's nothing I can do about it. That's my archetype. The bob is my archetype of womanhood. And by archetype, I mean that it's something I continually return to as a source of inspiration.

>Interviewer : You also seem to have a particular attachment to the idea of the “Witch.”

>Oshii : When this project first came up, the very first idea that came to mind was the “Witch.” You could even say that the “Witch” is my central theme, just as it is for many other directors! What exactly is a witch ? For me, whether I'm making films or writing novels, it's the central theme that runs through everything I continue to create.

>Everyone is trying to depict witches, aren't they ? (Roman) Polanski is a quintessential example. That's why I like him. Another quintessential archetype is the “少女” (young girl). That's an eternal theme, too. The girl and the witch are actually one and the same thing. Whether she's a young girl or an older woman, either way, she's a witch.

>So why am I so fixated on them? Because they're supernatural, bewitching beings. They're all the same witch ; only their outward appearances differ. You could say that films are stories revolving around these kinds of femme fatales—women of destiny. One reason there are so many films with girls and witches as their themes, I think, is that there are so many male directors.

>Interviewer : Gundam has had The Witch from Mercury and The Witch of the Kurse, too.

>Oshii : Exactly. There's The Witch from Mercury (the Mobile Suit Gundam : The Witch from Mercury series, which aired from 2022 to 2023), The Witch of the Kurse (the Mobile Suit Gundam : Hathaway's Flash – The Witch of the Kurse, released theatrically in 2026), and now The Gray Witch. There are witches everywhere in the Bandai Namco sphere. So when I proposed this title, the response I got was, “Um, would it be possible to change this ‘Witch’ part ?” Naturally, I pushed back : “Absolutely not ! We're making a story about a witch, after all !”

>Interviewer : There are three potential witches this time, aren't there ? I'm also curious about the meaning of “Gray.”

>Oshii : There's no doubt that this is a story revolving around a witch. You'll find out what “Gray” means eventually, too. Look forward to it !

>Interviewer : One more thing. The protagonist of GHOST IN THE SHELL / Ghost in the Shell, Motoko Kusanagi, and the protagonist of The Sky Crawlers, Suito Kusanagi, are both characters who don't die. Likewise, Kiriko, the protagonist of the original Armored Trooper Votoms series, is an “Inviolable Space Being” (Inochi no Kōtai-sei), someone with an extraordinary ability to survive. There's already speculation that Ash, who always returns alive from the battlefield, might also be an extraordinary survivor like Kiriko.

>Oshii : You'll find that out eventually, too. Ash has her own moral code. Incidentally, Maki will also reveal a different side of herself in the second half. I hope you'll look forward to that as well (laughs).