The following is a verbatim transcription of the Princess Tutu: Concept to Anime discussion panel from Ushicon 2019 on Saturday, February 16, 2019.  Since it is verbatim, it will include grammatical errors as opposed to perfect speech. 

The guests are as follows:  Ikuko Itoh, Junichi Sato, Yasuno Sato, and Jay Hickman. 

Throughout the panel, Yasuno Sato-sensei was playing the OST for Princess Tutu for fitting moments of the discussion.  I will only reference the song changes when it is necessary to understand the context, or if the translator had to translate a response to it (If the translator didn’t translate it I have included it as well). I have also included links to the songs with time stamps so you can follow along and not be lost without any sort of context.  

Also a fun little note:  During the panel when Itoh-sensei arrives the first thing she does after sitting down at the table is she turned to Jay Hickman and gifted him an exclusive concert event button of Mytho, whom he voices in the dub.  (These buttons sold out quickly at the concert event last year so it is a rare item).

– Panel Starts – 

Greg (Emcee): As all of you should know, but if anyone is like recently arrived to the convention.  Yasuno-san is our audio expert.  She has done the music for anime that includes Princess Tutu.  She had a great panel yesterday talking about the stuff she has done in the anime industry regarding music*.  Junichi Sato as I’m sure you know is the director of Princess Tutu.  He also helped with the creative on that.  And then everybody should know that Jay Hickman is the voice of Mytho for the American English language release of Princess Tutu.  The goal of this is to help you guys get an understanding of how something goes from just an incredible idea in one woman’s head to a fully-fledged anime.  If you have some interesting points about Princess Tutu in general that you would like to ask, or if something prompts something raise your hand.  If I acknowledge you please put it-  I’m not – we’re not necessarily going to answer any questions or need any speed, but I want to get a feel of if people have something they would rather focus on in terms of stuff, but that is our general goal here with discussion so that’s where we’re gonna go.

Junichi Sato:  Shall we talk about the original concept for Princess Tutu while we wait for Ms. Itoh to show up?

Greg: Yes, if you please.

Junichi Sato:  Princess Tutu is a special show.  It’s not usual for a concept pitch by an animator to actually make it to the production of the animated show.  Princess Tutu was exceptional in that the show pitched by the animation director of Sailor Moon [Ikuko Itoh] got animated and reached the audience of the United States.  If you look at the credits, it doesn’t say “Original Story by:”  it says “Original Concept by Ikuko Itoh.”  This “Original Story by:” is a pretty coveted credit.  It is not something that is easily granted.  If I had wrote the story as a director, I would often not get credited for that.  So the credits of original stories tend to be held by the production companies, and so royalties of the show go to the production companies directly, and some of the cuts might end up in Itoh’s or my hands.  And thus, is the story of Princess Tutu as well.  So in fact, it wouldn’t be possible for us to do any merchandising of Princess Tutu ourselves.  And so, the actual company that holds the original story rights to Princess Tutu is (GANSIS), and they disbanded recently. 

So two years ago when the Blu-ray box set for Princess Tutu was released the original rights’ holder (GANSIS) was no longer, and so there was guessing on who was to be the consultant on this.  And normally, the next in line –

– Itoh-sensei comes in –

Ikuko Itoh: I’m sorry! I overslept! (In Japanese)

Junichi Sato: ( The translator continues from where he left off)—is the Production studio, and that was the case for Princess Tutu.  So basically, in the case of Princess Tutu, everyone pretty much agreed that this was a story by and was made by Ikuko Itoh.  And so, we had pretty good freedom with Princess Tutu, and so last year we were able to do the Princess Tutu Musical Festival (concert event).  And this miracle is basically Ikuko Itoh who is sitting right next to us now.

Ikuko Itoh: I don’t have the context for this, but thank you very much. – bows –

Junichi Sato:  Basically, we’re praising you.

Ikuko Itoh: (In English) Thank you!

Junichi Sato:  So the idea is to talk about how Princess Tutu came to be from concept to production, and so it is your turn to talk about it.  Let’s ask you about how you came up with the idea for Princess Tutu.

Ikuko Itoh:  I think it was the time I was working on a show called “Sailor Moon” at a studio called Toei Animation.  I liked to listen to classical music as I did my work.  And I started to notice that the same piece of music tends to be used over and over in media such as TV commercials.  So, I started to wonder why people tend to like using the same compositions over and over.  So, I started to wonder if it would be possible to make anime that would entice people to watch over and over and listen over and over through the power of music.   And the special I honed into [what we’re listening to right now] is The Nutcracker, a staple of Christmas all around the world. 

Song Playing is: (1:23:25) 

Junichi Sato:  Actually, this might be Swan Lake, but we will switch over.  (Yasuno Sato changes the music from Swan Lake to The Nutcracker Overture (2:16:18)).  So we can think of various settings that you can set your story to such as a school-age story, shoujo manga style, but why did you put it in a fantasy setting?

Ikuko Itoh:  It’s because whenever I chose a title to work on, whether it is science fiction or a school story, I always want to find an element of fantasy in my works.  Basically, it is something for me to conceive and if I don’t find any element of that then I will turn it down.  And so, there are some shows by Junichi Sato that I have turned down.

Junichi Sato:  – !  (audience laughs) In a fantasy setting you have to build the world from scratch unlike school-based stories or slice-of-life stories.  Did you find that risk daunting?

Ikuko Itoh:  Are we talking about Princess Tutu?

Junichi Sato: Yes.

Ikuko Itoh:  I do like closed worlds.  I like the sense of contradiction or the sense of suffocation that comes up in a closed world.  I also cherish it when the audience is also drawn into that kind of suffering.  So I always wanted to come up with – and use that kind of world setting if I did a story of my own.  But, Mr. Sato is not good with stories that have an element of fear in it, and so it was a little difficult to ask him to work on it.  But I was really relieved when he accepted the role of director.

Junichi Sato:  And I was wondering when you would come to me.

Jay Hickman:  If I may, I have a question both for Itoh-san and Sato-san related to this.   I was curious because in the US the concept was so different to US audiences of a classic European fairy tale, and a story built around that. And I was curious if this was the same way in Japan.  Was the concept of an anime built around a European fairy tale very different for Japanese audiences, and if so how did you market it?

Junichi Sato:  It is possible that the Japanese audience didn’t particularly take it as a special difference.  So the physical setting of Germany may not have been something familiar to the Japanese audience, but a transforming girl to fighting was very familiar to the Japanese audience.

Ikuko Itoh: And since this was a tag team between director Sato and myself I think they had a particular expectation that it was going to be transforming girls fighting.

Junichi Sato:  So the physical setting may have been an enticing point for the anime otherwise.

Ikuko Itoh:  I have always been fond of architecture, and when I found the town of Nördlingen in Germany I was enticed to find a town that was built in a meteor crater.  I thought that was perfect for the setting of the story.

Junichi Sato:  You are fond of Germany, aren’t you?

Ikuko Itoh:  I got to travel to Austria and Germany for the first time, and there was a time when I wanted to write a guidebook for “The Sound of Music.”  And so, in order to do that, I started learning German, and so I got enticed to write about Germany.

Junichi Sato: I did think that the Japanese audiences tend to be fond of stories that take place in Europe.  Because when you have adventure stories, a lot of it do take place in medieval European type of settings.

Ikuko Itoh:  And back then I don’t think most of the Japanese people were familiar with the German town of Nördlingen, and I thought that would be a good point to pick it.  

Junichi Sato: It is true. I was not very familiar with the place.

Ikuko Itoh: The location hunting was done only by myself and the scriptwriter.  And the director [Junichi Sato] was not fond of flying.

Junichi Sato:  I overcame my fear. It’s fine.  But back then I was invited to come along, but I made a lot of excuses not to go.  I insisted that I only needed photographic references taken by Ms. Itoh. 

Ikuko Itoh:  But when he started working on other shows such as Aria and Sgt. Keroro he started going overseas a lot.

Junichi Sato: And of course, I have no problems flying to Texas now. (Audience applauses)  So let’s see some of the miracles that Ms. Itoh performed.   Ms. Itoh said that she wanted to make a show that is based on classical music, but that is actually a very difficult endeavor.  Because normally budgets don’t allow an anime soundtrack to be made by a full orchestra, and it would be impossible to record multiple titles such as Swan Lake and the Nutcracker.   This was only made possible because the record label King Record had a library of classical music soundtracks.  Because normally the label might have some stock of some soundtracks, but they necessarily might not have the proper license to use it. So normally a recording might be licensed for say a CD release or for a single purpose.  King Record just happened to have multiple use licenses for their library.  There may be many record labels in Japan, but King Record was about the only company that was capable of doing this kind of licensing.  So thanks to the minor miracle that King Record also happened to be a financier for anime titles that we were able to get for Princess Tutu.  And now, Ms. Itoh, did you realize that we had such licensing difficulties?

Ikuko Itoh:  I am but an animator.  I do not have that kind of background.  For some reason, I had full confidence in Princess Tutu as a project.  Though I am pretty sure that I thought that things could actually go through.

Junichi Sato:  That kind of groundless confidence is very important because people around you will work very hard for you to realize it.  Speaking of music, there still were some soundtracks that even King Record didn’t have the proper license to.  That’s where our composer Kaoru Wada comes into play.  He had to start looking for the sheet music that once existed in the past.

Yasuno Sato:  – Accidentally plays Swan Lake.  – In Japanese:  “No, no, no, no.  This is wrong.” (1:18:25)  – Turns on ( Giselle Entrance) (2:31- 4:09 )

Junichi Sato:  Since we have the female director of the music here shall we hear some of the hardships the music department went through?  How was it working with Mr. Wada?

(The following portion of the discussion panel will be a little confusing without the use of the Princess Tutu soundtrack.  I  have linked throughout so you can follow along with the appropriate music.  Use this link for the main Youtube video with the following corresponding time signatures below. ).

Yasuno Sato: Hello.  What we had set for us is that the Director and Ms. Itoh had a certain soundtrack that they wanted to use in Princess Tutu, and they were original classical music but King Record did not have the license to use.  And also other soundtracks such as the slice-of-life music for Ahiru or the scary music for Drosselmeyer had to be rewritten.  Ahiru’s theme is originally from the Nutcracker.  This is the overture from the Nutcracker Suite, that is the theme for Ahiru.  A lot of different versions, such as slice-of-life, or sorrow, and comedy. Comedy scenes were based on this theme for Ahiru.  Let’s take a look at Ahiru’s slice-of-life version.  (Turns on the prologue song (0:00)) Ah, that’s wrong.  That was the prologue.  (In English) One more chance.  This is it.  This is Ahiru’s slice-of-life (2:16:34).  There are a few other arrangements of the overture.  Let’s take at the comedy version (1:05: 34).  This is also based on the overture, isn’t it?  Now, let’s hear the sorrowful version (40:00).  I think it was a hardship on Kaoru Wada that he had to come up with various different arrangements based on the Nutcracker overture.  If you listen well to the various soundtracks in Princess Tutu, you will find various different arrangements written by Kaoru Wada of the Nutcracker march and other songs throughout.

Junichi Sato:  Everyone else worked damn hard to make possible your wish.  Do you like it?

Ikuko Itoh:  It is very difficult to translate my concept into specifics, so I quoted from Bruce Lee, “Do not explain.  Feel it.”

Junichi Sato:  But for the rest of us if we had any questions about how to work and go about making Princess Tutu we had to consult you.

Ikuko Itoh:  That is because, Mr. Sato, you did not come to us with the location hunting.

Junichi Sato: I had proper reference photos so that was completely unnecessary.

Ikuko Itoh:  One difficulty was that pretty much all of the technical directors did not go on location, so they did not listen to what I wanted to tell them. It was difficult to give the fine nuances because they did not go. 

Yasuno Sato: – Turns on ominous music – (1:10:10)

Junichi Sato:  This is how we the staff felt back then.

Ikuko Itoh:  I knew that one day I will be able to have my say.  Eventually, I did get their heartfelt apologies from the technical directors.

Junichi Sato:  Ms. Itoh, you are capable of performing a lot of miracles, but you were not able to bring all the technical directors to Germany.

Ikuko Itoh:  I believe I was capable of bringing Ms. Sato here to Texas.

Yasuno Sato: – Cheers –

Greg: (In Japanese) Thank you very much! 

Junichi Sato: Twice so far for me.

Greg:  (In Japanese) Excuse me. 

Audience (1): How did you go about casting for Princess Tutu?

Junichi Sato: Normally this is done between the director and the producer, but since this was Ms. Itoh’s show we had her decide on the casting.  Itoh always insisted that Ahiru’s voice can only be done by one particular voice actor.

Ikuko Itoh:  This was a new voice actor who showed up for the audition of Magic Users Club.  I was surprised her voice was different from any kind of other voice I had heard before.  The more I heard her voice the more I was convinced that this was the voice for Ahiru. I was very surprised that the English voice for Ahiru sounds just like her.

Junichi Sato:  It was Luci Christian who did the English voice?

Jay Hickman:  Yeah.  That is correct, and I can offer too, that so often historically when anime comes to the US and is translated into English frequently the director of the show or the studio behind the show will take sort of the tone of the cast and the voices into slightly different directions.   That was not the case for this one.  I was made aware from the studio and from the director that as soon as they saw this show and as soon as they heard the voices, they knew it was going to be really important to get a tonal match as best they could from the Japanese actors to the American actors because it was so integral to the storytelling, and they were aware of that and wanted to be faithful to that when it came to the English language version of it.  And casting from the American side that was very much a part of their process was finding a good tonal match for all the actors.

Ikuko Itoh:  Jay-san, how was it like playing English Mytho?

Jay Hickman: It was as I mentioned from time to time it was challenging.  But I really enjoyed the challenge when I was first cast and the director told me what he had in mind for me to play this role, and he showed me the role and explained “Teenage ballet dancer, he’s very soft-spoken, very youthful sounding, and completely emotionless.”  I said, “Are you sure?”  But, getting involved with it as we started the process, I think myself and all of the cast recognized that we were working on something really very special and everyone became emotionally attached to the story and it’s characters, and I think we all put a little extra effort into it.  But specific to portraying Mytho and the challenges that come since he is—he starts completely emotionless and then slowly, gradually, gains a little bit of emotion, and a little bit more and a little bit more that was obviously a great challenge, but I look back on it as one of the great roles of my career just because of that opportunity to accept that challenge and to help tell this beautiful story.

Ikuko Itoh:  Was it easier to perform Black Mytho in the second half?

Jay Hickman:  Yes and no.  Obviously, the emotional core was a lot more easy to latch onto, however there a lot – ummm.  I actually had to “Caw” like a crow.  And that was challenging.

Junichi Sato:  I think we spent a lot of time going over the casting of Japanese Mytho as well

Ikuko Itoh:  I thought that his character was the most difficult in getting the expression right so we spent the most amount of time finding the right voice actor.  If you look at the voice actor for Mytho,  Naoki Yanagi he is very well built and looks nothing like the anime character. 

Junichi Sato:  So basically, we’re asking voice actors whose profession is to bring out the emotion in performances to perform emotionless, so that would probably be a challenge to them.  And if someone tried to perform without emotion they might be deemed a bad actor otherwise.

Ikuko Itoh:  He did often say that he had to meet the role of director (I am actually not sure what they actually said due to background noise). 

Junichi Sato: Back then, today a lot of Japanese releases be released subbed, but back then it was normal for Japanese titles to be dubbed so we were very curious to hear and see what kind of casting and performance was done for the English version.  It’s not rare to hear an English dub cast that sounds very different from the Japanese cast.  Our first impression of the English version of Princess Tutu is that it was very very close to the Japanese cast.   Ms. Itoh, at what point did you have the chance to listen to the English soundtrack?

Ikuko Itoh:  I think I got the retail release version.  Luckily, there was a Princess Tutu event close to here in Austin, so I had the fortune to meet Jay and Luci.  And this only took place here in Austin. 

Junichi Sato:  So does that mean you heard the English for the first time in Austin?

Ikuko Itoh: No.

Junichi Sato: Does that mean that you got the North American DVD from King Record?

Ikuko Itoh:  Yes, because likely there would be no other company that would provide me the North American version.

Junichi Sato:  I actually went to purchase it out of my pocket. It was a nice DVD release with a lot of special features.  

Ikuko Itoh:  Since the International packing is done independently of my efforts I am always looking forward to what kind of jobs they do for it.  We do like the opportunity to add new elements when there is a new release, so I was very happy that for last year’s Blu-ray boxset and complete soundtrack CD release we were able to add new artwork.  It is hard to go back 14 years and reproduce the art style that I had back then.  But I had been blessed with so many opportunities to go back for a virtual release that I am getting quite good at it.

Greg to Audience (2):  (In Japanese) Excuse me.  (In English)  You had a question?

Audience (2):  Yes.  Going back to the casting of Mytho.  What influenced the decision to do negative emotions first instead of joyful emotions?  (Translator: Please repeat?)  What influenced the appearance of negative emotions rather than joyful ones?

Junichi Sato:  Perhaps because the story would get a little to upbeat with the appearance of happier emotions first.

Greg:  Her daily life music wouldn’t fit anymore!

Junichi Sato:  Is there another question?

Greg: Yeah.

Audience (3):  The cast and crew of Princess Tutu seem to be very close together, very familiar with each other, very comfortable with each other is that because you all worked – a  lot of you worked together on previous titles, or was there something unique about the production of this show that brought everyone close together?

Junichi Sato: It’s not always that the cast and the production staff get along well on a particular show.  You can say that for Princess Tutu the cast was in love with Princess Tutu the show and its characters. I think we were able to gain trust because Ms. Itoh had a passion for the show. 

Ikuko Itoh:  My impression was that there was so many new voice actors cast for the characters that they followed my lead like young “chicks” (She said ducklings though as a pun for Ahiru the character).

Junichi Sato:  Otherwise,  actually that I stayed after at the studio for 2-3 hours for her parts.

Ikuko Itoh: It was director Sato and giving her special training.

Junichi Sato:  But she still persevered and followed.  And we have one of Ahiru’s themes here. (Swan Lake is playing) (1:18:25-1:22:28)

Audience (4):  There are so many of the different ballet(s) that you pull into Princess Tutu.  What made you specifically choose those ballet(s) over other ones?

Ikuko Itoh:  I think these were the titles that the worldwide audience could identify with. 

Junichi Sato: I believe “The Nutcracker” was something that Ms. Itoh, you had in mind from the beginning, and you started with one of the characters whose name is “Drosselmeyer.”

Ikuko Itoh:  I thought it would be a good to let the audience identify the show with a familiar name and pieces.  Starting with basic concepts such as how people might conceive Ahiru or Duck might be, or what kind of person Drosselmeyer might be.  I thought it was important to have an accessible image for everyone.

(The Nutcracker is playing in the background). 2:11:50

Junichi Sato:  If we listen to this piece we can get a general idea of what kind of show this might be.  If you talk about a show where a duck turns into a human girl and transforms and fights you would have no idea what this show would be about.

Greg: Ok.  I think we’re about to wrap up.  I mean, we’re about out of time.  One more thing, I want to thank all of you.  (At this point, Greg asks Jay Hickman and Ikuko Itoh to pick numbers that indicate who wins the complete soundtrack set). 

Junichi Sato: Do you know if this is available in the states?

Greg: It is not.

Junichi Sato:  I thought we’d be able to plug it, but uh…  *pouts*

Greg:  I’ll have to tell the licensor that we need it.  One more round of applause for our guests!

Everyone Except Jay and the Translator: Bowing and saying “Thank you very much!”

Yasuno Sato:  See you!

– End Transcript –