by Tatsuya Endo, the author of the hit manga “SPY×FAMILY ”, depicts a spy. Katsumaru Enkaku maintained Japan’s public order as a spy hunter during his time as a public security police officer. It is a gorgeous conversation between two people familiar with spies in their respective worlds, fiction and reality.
In the first episode (all eight episodes), Tatsuya Endo told us about the difficulties he had in making the anime. From a creator’s perspective, how do manga and anime differ? From the first episode, plenty of behind-the-scenes stories can only be read here. Katsumaru Enkaku was surprised at how accurate the portrayal of spies was in “SPY x FAMILY.”
I don’t watch many spy movies. Katsumaru: My wife and child are big fans of “SPY x FAMILY,” and I look forward to meeting them today. I did. Why did you choose “spy” as the theme in the first place? Endo: I don’t have a strong desire to draw something like a spy, but I’ve always liked military-style things and have an interest in war-related things, so when I combined that with the theme of lies, it was natural for me to draw something like a spy. Became.
However, I haven’t seen many spy movies, and I’ve only seen one or two 007 movies. Katsumaru: Oh, is that so? Even as someone who follows spies, the information about the spies that appear in the story has been well thought out. How on earth did you acquire such knowledge? Endo: Mostly books. And then there’s the documentary footage. There was an old movie called “Shuri” that depicted a battle between North Korean special operations forces and South Korean intelligence agencies, and I liked that movie. The setting in which Katsumaruo’s Lloyd is a spy and his wife Yoru is an assassin reminded me of the film Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
Endo: When the series started, that title was mentioned in the comments, etc., but I’ve never seen it… (lol). I didn’t have much time to prepare for serialization, and since it’s a comedy, I thought I wouldn’t have to worry too much about the setting as I drew it. It incorporates the knowledge I’ve gained from books, but since it’s a manga, it retains that extraneous feeling of, That can’t happen, right?” Katsumaru: It has a perfect balance between realistic depiction and entertainment. Spies are integrated into everyday life, and some even create fake families” just like in “SPY x FAMILY.” There have been cases where married couples lived without realizing their husbands were spies. Endo: What I’m most careful about is that balance. It’s a process of determining the “minimum level of reality” in each scene.
A famous manga artist thinks about the big difference between manga and anime. Katsumaru: How concerned are you with the difference between reality and manga,” Mr. Endo? Endo: That’s a tricky part. It depends on a case-by-case basis, but in manga, there are quite a few places where they try to hide the reality for the time being. If you’re alone, you need more time to research everything. But with anime, you must create detailed settings, so there is little room for deception. When the anime team asks me,What’s going on here?” I often say, “I’m sorry, I haven’t thought about it…” (lol). Katsumaru: Didn’t you decide on the exact setting of the scene or era? Endo:
The period setting is somewhere between the 1960s and 1970s. I’m trying to figure out things like, “I think this technique is just about possible.” It also softens the reality of the political form. The Cold War between East and West is part of the motif, but if you tell the reader that it’s a conflict of ideologies, it won’t make sense. So, I have put it into a form that is easy to understand as a manga.
There are some parts that I need to learn about. Similarly, spies probably have few horizontal connections in the real world for security reasons. However, as a manga, we had to include conversations between spies to develop the story. Especially since it’s a comedy, it would only work with dialogue. It takes time to pick that flavor.
