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The three girls of Karamazov were born to depict the concepts of truth, goodness, and beauty.
As her name suggests, Michika carries the theme of “beauty.”
What is gothic?
What is girlhood?
What is eternity?
What is beauty?
When you keep writing about art in that way, the concepts of time and place eventually disappear.
Feel it from the opening nail scene, and from the choice of classical music.
This episode, in particular, has those things scattered everywhere.
That is the kind of episode it is. Episode 6 is built almost entirely out of poetic feeling, to the point where even being understood makes it complicated.
Refusing to be understood may be the most sincere attitude toward her theme.
The makeup scene, also used in the character PV, was done by Abe-san, who handled the storyboard.
They picked up the part I wanted to express in my script. Abe-san’s storyboard work will appear again near the end.
A rare streaming scene in this anime.
Even though it is an anime about streamers...
From Kache, who carries rock and punk as themes of “a way of living that cannot fit into society” and “how to resist a suffocating world,” comes talk of Marilyn Manson.
Around here, Kache is also twisted by strange subculture in her own way, even if not as much as Michika. Manson and A Clockwork Orange, meaning Kubrick, are scattered throughout the anime as symbols of violence, resistance, and gothic sensibility. By feel, I think we secretly talk about Manson at least once per episode.
By the way, I did not write the stuffed animal’s line.
That was born on-site.
Michika’s appearance resembles Ame-chan simply because, when I built her out of the elements I personally like, she ended up close to her. I only realized it afterward. Then Ohisashiburi got mad at me and said, “Stop adding more twintails, they’re going to overlap as characters 💢,” and from then on I reflected on it. I stopped thinking, “Everyone should have twintails because that’s more beautiful.” At first, there were even more of them...
Michika and Ame-chan share many visual motifs because the gothic motifs that come from my unconscious are the same. Even without saying it directly, Michika has moments here and there where she is just as intense as Ame-chan.
If the game’s heroine had been Michika instead of Ame, it would have become an even more uncontrollable work than the original.
To put it in Digimon terms, they are the same species up to the Champion stage. From there, the branch just splits depending on whether they evolve into KAngel or Michika as their Ultimate form.
If I had to say one thing, Michika had Kache and Nechika.
That is luck, in a way. And because of that, human beings acquire different traits and polish their own original sensibilities.
A nostalgic BGM from the original game.
The live-action staff worked hard on this. I greeted them at the preview screening, and since they were clearly the kind of people who love doing this sort of thing, they were already excitedly sharing their impressions even at that stage.
Someday, I hope we can do something even more incomprehensible.
Thank you.
Her world is not connected to the people passing by.
This is not Kowloon Walled City.
It is based on the image of a certain arcade modeled after Kowloon.
There was a time when I had no money and could barely make it into Tokyo, so I lived in Tsurumi for 40,000 yen a month. I used to go to that arcade in Kawasaki all the time. I remember being happy, in that early way, thinking that if a building this wonderful existed, then moving to Tokyo had been worth it.
I was young.
Cubism KAngel.
Come to think of it, after episode 5, the character songs started being posted, and Sasuke Haraguchi finally joined the anime too.
It is nice, making one thing together with everyone.
In the arcade corner, I was playing Vampire Savior.
I think it was 100 yen per play. That was expensive, so partway through I switched to Quiz Magic Academy because it was more efficient in terms of play time.
Footage of someone working an arcade lever with long nails is probably pretty rare, isn’t it?
For me, human activity and crowded, grimy arcades are fused together.
That was fun, and in Kowloon it felt even stranger and more comfortable.
Prince KAngel.
So dazzling.
It is the kind of scene that makes you want to keep your eyes closed for a long, long time.
The Café Terrace at Night.
Come to think of it, Tatsuya Kitani also did the theme song for the Van Gogh exhibition.
A theme song for a Van Gogh exhibition? What does that even mean?
At this point, it is the night Kache terrace.
Actually, the staff properly drew it.
You can feel how serious Yostar Pictures was about episode 6. I admire episodes where every background is done in an oil-painting style, like episode 17 of Sengoku Collection.
A practice piece by the person who drew it.
Unfortunately, it was not used in the episode.
This really is an incredible episode.
The Kiss of Judas.
Cute.
Cute.
I am happy we could recreate a screen like Russian Ark in anime.
There are a lot of Russian elements. Culture should be inherited, after all.
Kache from her two-tone era.
A little nostalgic.
I like Mondrian’s painting of amaryllis.
Blue and red.
Beautiful.
The art of composition formed by the background.
This scene made me feel grateful to the staff all over again.
The Karamazov scenes land so well because of these colorful grids.
Around this time, I think I properly watched Toy Story for the first time and thought, “A doll fused with a spider is so cool.”
When I first bathed in this video and music, a shock ran through me like it had pierced the ceiling.
I was still a young fool who knew nothing.
But there was a charm I could not put into words. I did not know the reason, but I could not look away for even a second.
I trembled and understood.
This is art.
So this is Britain.
So this is glam rock.
Rain.
I watched this scene while thinking it somehow felt like Digimon.
There is something Diaboromon-like about it.
Cut open my womb.
I hope nothing sleeps inside but red flowers and jewels.
And so the inverted cross is delivered to the girl who calls herself Judas.
When I submitted the script for episode 6, everyone had the resolve to say, “Let’s just do it like this.”
No matter what, we would keep this flavor as it was. It is also tuned differently from episodes 4 and 5.
The cage-like wire frame that makes a skirt swell outward is called a crinoline.
It is a form of dress I became drawn to while playing Otokadol.
Showing the bone structure on purpose.
And so, Michika overcame the trauma of her acne.
I love this texture so much I cannot stand it. But if I kept doing things like this forever, I would go strange, so it is all condensed into episode 6.
Even though it is an episode with especially many abstract scenes, I hope it also holds an important position at the middle seam of the cour, carefully weaving together the scattered themes of the whole work and letting them converge.
The one who happened to carry that role was Michika.
That must be fate.
Episode 7 is Nechika’s episode.
It will have a different taste again, but she is a character who can strip away the roundabout parts and move things forward concretely.
Please look forward to it.
The person I most want to deliver my work to is always my twisted teenage self.
I consider that exposed sensibility the most precious thing.
That is why, no matter what happens, this work has chosen to put it out as it is.
For the few people it would never reach otherwise.
As people grow into adults, they hide that bare knife.
The gloom of adolescent boys and girls is the loneliness I most want to face.
I believe it is an eternal sparkle that can only be expressed in that one fleeting instant.
Of course I love Hidari-sensei as an illustrator too, but this end card request to Hidari-sensei came from O-Hisashiburi’s direct nomination.
For Michika’s song, I had already been consulting Haraguchi-san about the musical image.
It absolutely had to be this.
So this is what it is.
That was Gokubara Michika.
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