AT	A couple of questions about Mahoromatic: Where does the second season pick up in the story?
Mr. Yamaga	In the comic book series, the first season covered up to the third book. The second season will pick up from the beginning of the fourth volume. However, the Tv series has surpassed the comic book in its speed and the Tv series is going to end before the comic book. The author has said that you can't really end it in the same way, you just cant. So the later half of the second season is going to be very different from the comic book.
	In fact, Gainax itself has not been given the details of the way that the comic is going to go. So we are kind of .. trying to find our way in the dark.
AT	What was it about the Mahoromatic story that said to you, "This is going to make a great animation. People are really going to want to watch this?"
Mr. Yamaga	Originally, Pioneer had brought the comic book to us and presented the series. We did not really look at it very carefully. We realized that it was a particular genre called the Maid genre. We hadn't done that yet and it seemed a little bit interesting, so we decided to make Mahoromatic.
AQ	What does FLCL mean?
Mr. Yamaga	FLCL was originally designed by Mr. Enokido and the director, Mr. Tsurumaki. They came up with it themselves. Even within the series, the question of what exactly is FLCL is thrown out there..
Mr. Akai	In fact, I asked the director, "What exactly does FLCL mean?" and the director said, "I don't really know."
Mr. Yamaga	When you abbreviate longer words in Japanese, you take the first couple of syllables of each word and connect them up.. It seems like the younger generation has been doing that with absolutely everything. He wanted to give the aesthetic of a longer title that had been shortened but in reality there is no longer title.
Audience	So feel free to make one up.
Mr. Yamaga	Since the title doesn't really describe anything. It was very hard for the advertisers and distributors to say, "No, we don't want to do that." because they weren't exactly sure what it meant. {Laugther} It is really hard to argue with something when you don't know what is going on.
Mr. Akai	In fact, when the studio was younger, since they were biting everything that moved, it seemed that they stranger they were, the less likely that they were going to be opposed. They [the sponsors] just saw it as, "Oh, good old Gainax, saying those weird things again." They didn't really want to deal with it so they just let Gainax say whatever they wanted.
AQ	How did the creators present FLCL for approval?
Mr. Yamaga	Since King Records made a lot of money on Evangelion, the connection between King Records and Gainax was pretty much, "Oh, it's Gainax, we'll probably make some money on it", and they let just let it through [the approval process]. Since it was a direct to video release, there was less controversy over content because it was direct to video.
AQ	How did Mr. Tsurumaki present it to Gainax?
Mr. Yamaga	Since Mr. Anno didn't really want to do animation after Evangelion, his 'kohai' (understudy) was supposed to make an animation series, but seemed to take a while to come up with a concept. So when he did finally come up with one, it was like, "Okay, that sounds good."
AQ	What is up with Ebichu?
Mr. Yamaga	When Mr. Anno was making Evangelion, one of the voice actors, Mz. Mizuki, was reading this comic book called Ebichu that had all this obscene text. They thought, "What if we get Mz. Mizuki to be this little mouse which reads this comic book and make a series out if it." That is pretty much what Ebichu is.. they just went with it.	You can't buy Ebichu in the Gainax Store. This doll was released as a special prize for UFO Catchers.
AQ	This summer, Hamtaro will be on the cartoon network. We hope that Ebichu will be on in the evenings. {Laughter}
Mr. Yamaga	Im am not exactly sure if you could put that on air in the United States.
Mr. Akai	The thing about Ebichu is that it looks really cute but the text and the dialog is very 'controversial'. {Laughter}
Mr. Yamaga	In the theatrical release of Hamtaro, Mz. Mizuki is actually playing a role. However in an interview she was rather disappointed when she found out that she couldn't say the interesting things that she says in Ebichu. It is very difficult to translate. Almost impossible.
AQ	Is there any chance that they (Gainax staff) are going to voice act any characters in their own series?
Mr. Yamaga	No, I'll never do that.
Mr. Akai	There is an animation shop chain called Animate and they have a character called 'Anime Store Manger', a shopkeeper. The illustrator who is doing the drawings for the character is also doing the voice acting for the commercials. He is actually a friend of theirs from college. He actually did voice acting in Royal Space Force.
	He did a soldier very far away saying 'Attention' in a fictional foreign language. He (Mr. Yamaga) actually did the breath, 'huff huff', of the main character. The noise made by the main character throwing up was done by the character designer. {Laughter}
Mr. Yamaga	I've been told many times that I have a nice voice and that I should do voice acting but I can't act. There is no getting around it. It is very easy to tell people to do something but it is rather difficult to do it [Ed note: He really does have a nice voice.]
AQ	Do either of you get involved in approval of merchandise of Gainax products?
Mr. Yamaga	It depends on the series. For Evangelion, we did actually approve it at Gainax.
AQ	I like Clamps's Clover. It is absolutely gorgeous. Do you know if anyone is going to make an anime of it? Are you guys interested in doing that?
Mr. Yamaga	Hmm, Clamp is very very difficult. Clamp actually likes Gainax a lot, but we've seen Clamp working on an animation series and we really, really, don't want to work with them.{Laughter}
Mr. Akai	Clamp likes Gainax a lot and Gainax likes Clamp a lot, but in order to keep this good relationship we'd rather not work with each other. {Laughter}
AQ	Where does Gainax get their inspiration?
Mr. Akai	That is a very difficult question to answer. Some of it they've been wanting to do since they were children. For some of them, they are walking down the street and it just hits them and some of it they are kind of half-forced into doing.
Mr. Yamaga	When I am just sitting around, I don't seem to get any inspiration. When I decide to work on something, I sit down and start writing. About a day or so into it I get an idea and go from there. If somebody told me to come up with an extremely touching story about this plastic bottle [points to bottle on table], I really wouldn't be able to do it right now. but if I thought about it for 3 days, I'm pretty sure that I could come up with something that would make people cry.{Laughter}
AQ	When can we be expecting that?
Mr. Yamaga	Give me 3 days and I will make you cry. {Laughter}
AT	Gainax has a long line of successful computer games. We wonder if there are any plans to internationalize some of the older games and release them in the US. What about the new games in production? When you develop them do you do so with an eye towards releasing them internationally?
Mr. Akai	I have been really wanting to make games for the INTL. market but I have been having difficulty doing so. There are a variety of reasons but now I feel that just making the games.. I am overwhelmed just by making the games.
AT	What about the older games? Like Princess Maker and Princess Maker II, releasing those back in the US
Mr. Akai	It's not going to be very difficult to make an English version of Princess Maker and Princess Maker II, but to actually make a marketable product that could be released in the US. I don't think that I could do that right now.
Mr. Yamaga	He doesn't really understand how to distribute it in this country.
Mr. Akai	In reality, I don't really understand how it works in Japan either. {Laughter}
	Right now, we make the game, make the game, make the game and now it's done, buy it. We realize that is probably not the best way of going about it but that is how we do it. That won't quite work in the US
Mr. Yamaga	Gainax is a corporation that has 100 people but doesn't actually have a marketing department or a sales dept. In terms of distribution, they are kind of not quite there.
AQ	Aside from Evangelion, what has been your most profitable Anime and your most profitable product.
Mr. Yamaga	There really hasn't been a profitable series besides Evangelion. In fact, That was such an anomaly, it kind of did something strange to Gainax. they didn't know how to deal with it because it was so profitable. In fact, the more interesting the story was, the more money that they put into it, they would lose more and more money. Until then they were hoping that they would get some of the copyright money but until then they were always kind of hungry and then suddenly there was too much food, and they ate too much and they kind of a got a stomach ache. And that is what happened.
Mr. Akai	What he meant by getting a stomach ache is that they stopped making animation and then they did tax evasion.
Mr. Yamaga	The structure of the organization has never really been concretely established. But, it is getting better year after year and it seems that we have been turning a profit on Mahoromatic.
AQ	Is there a series or game or some product that Gainax has done that they wish that they hadn't done?
Mr. Yamaga	Do you mean like not do it at all or make a mistake in the process?
AQ	Something either artistically they decided was a bad thing or financially it was so bad that they wished that they had never gotten into it.
Mr. Yamaga	Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water is the series that we feel regret for. We feel that they didn't do the best job possible.
Mr. Akai	In fact, they were working for another corporation when they made Nadia. They did all of the creative work, yet they had absolutely no rights to it. A lot of people have come to them asking questions about the series or about merchandising and they really can't answer because it is not their series. They just did all of the work.
	Originally, NHK would send them the script, saying this is how exactly they want it done. The director, Mr. Anno, what he would do was take the fax, staple it and throw it in the garbage. For some strange reason, every single week they would get the scripts.
Mr. Yamaga	Since NHK wasn't getting the product that they thought they were getting and the delivery of the product was getting slower and slower, NHK actually called them to scold them. In fact, Gainax got really upset and ended up yelling at NHK.
Mr. Akai	Since NHK is half run by the government, they've kind of cycled through all the people, so there are all these fresh faces. Yet in Grouptux(sp?) and Gainax there are pretty much the same people that were working on Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water are still working there. Now, they (NHK) are making lots of money on the Nadia DVD and they wanted to have a reunion party but they did not realize how incredibly bad the situation was originally. They (Gainax) decided that it would not be a good idea because there would be a very big conflict.
Mr. Yamaga	NHK was very happy about it. They were very friendly about the reunion party but the people from Gainax were perplexed.
Mr. Akai	When Atlantis got released, NHK actually asked them what exactly they thought about Nadia. They were kind of puzzled because they are kind of a subsidiary and it was not like they had any kind of decision making power.  So they were mystified as to why NHK bothers asking them.
	On the internet, there was a lot of talk about how Atlantis was so similar to Nadia. Of course, Disney says that they have never seen or heard of a series called Nadia. NHK came to Gainax because of this and asked them how they felt about this implication that Disney was plagiarizing the series. They didn't really have anything to say because they weren't the parent corporation. It was not like they had any rights anyways.
Mr. Yamaga	We actually tried to get NHK to pick a fight with Disney, {Laughter} but even the National Television Network of Japan didn't dare to mess with Disney and their lawyers. What we said to them was, this really had nothing to do with us but if it did we would definitely take them to court. Of course, it is all a lie. We actually did say that but we wouldn't actually take them to court. We would be so terrified about what they would do to them in return that we wouldn't dare.

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