Every month Phantom River Stone holds a poll among our patrons to choose a topic for the blog in the coming month. After tallying the votes (including accumulated votes from previous months), the winning topic that has been voted this time is:
"Interview: Toei Director Kazuya Murata's Experience Working on Shenmue II"
In interviews, Yu Suzuki has mentioned that, in order to realize his vision for Shenmue, he needed help from people who didn’t even exist in the game industry yet:
“We didn’t have directors, or anyone used to motion capture… so I gathered people from all kinds of fields: movie staff, scriptwriters, even a novelist.”One of those outside voices was anime director Kazuya Murata, who joined the Shenmue II team around 1999 and found himself navigating a development floor unlike anything in traditional animation.
Best known for his work on major anime titles like the world-wide hit Fullmetal Alchemist and the internationally popular Code Geass, Murata stepped far outside the usual animation pipeline when he joined Yu Suzuki’s team midway through Shenmue II’s development. The shift from anime studios to a bustling game production environment brought a whole new set of challenges, from motion-capture sessions to experimental 3D cinematics.
In a 2019 interview, Murata shares what that transition was like and how he adapted to a creative process very different from the one he was used to. His recollections about working with Yu Suzuki and team shed light on a moment when anime and game production intersected, bringing both new opportunities and practical hurdles.
Coming soon to the blog!
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