Anime Expo 2024: The Übel Blatt Staff Talks With Anime Herald

Note: Due to the time-sensitive nature of our coverage, this will debut on the main Anime Herald site on August 2. We apologize for the inconvenience.

• Interviewer: Seth Burn

• Date: 7/7/2024

• Editor: Samantha Ferreira

Anime Herald: Übel Blatt is dark fantasy. Is that something you always were attracted to?

Etorouji Shiono: Not particularly. Honestly, it’s kind of based on a request I received from an editor. “It might be easier to capture the attention of older fans if it included something a little bit more dark.”

Anime Herald: If you had not received that feedback, how might the story have developed?

Etorouji Shiono: First of all, we probably wouldn’t have done fantasy. Übel Blatt might not have been possible if that were the case. Since the theme was set from the very beginning, that heavily influenced the direction this took. If I hadn’t written Übel Blatt, I probably would be writing something like light modern reading.

Anime Herald: Übel Blatt was particularly popular in France. Did that surprise you? Did you get any chances to meet the French fanbase?

Etorouji Shiono: When I heard it was very popular in France, it defied my own understanding. Even today, I don’t understand why that was.

Anime Herald: Did you ever get a chance to talk with the French fans and learn why that was?

Etorouji Shiono: There weren’t any direct conversations with the fans in France. Nothing like that happened.

Anime Herald: Moving forward towards the anime, when you were writing Übel Blatt, did you think at all about a future anime in the future?

Etorouji Shiono: Personally, I never thought about an anime adaptation of it. Way back when there were a couple of tankobon editions out, I think someone reached out to me about an anime, but it never materialized.

Anime Herald: Why do you think it materialized now in a way it didn’t then?

Etorouji Shiono: I don’t know why things ended up that way in the past, and recently when I heard about the anime adaptation, I was very surprised. Maybe it was just its time.

Anime Herald: With the creation of Crunchyroll, Netflix, and the popularity of streaming, anime is now much more popular in America than it used to be. How do you feel about your story reaching a new audience? A new generation?

Etorouji Shiono: I’m a bit undecided about that because the anime hasn’t finished production yet. The feeling of this being a reality is still very thin for me.

Anime Herald: Have you seen any of the promotional videos? Have you been following the process?

Etorouji Shiono: I’ve been gradually watching the process. Even so, I haven’t seen anything that’s finished and complete. In fact, I think that today is the first day a complete video is going to be announced or shown. Up until now, the feeling that this is reality hasn’t been there. Now that I’m seeing a finished product, it’s real to me. I’m finally feeling like this is going to happen.

(Editor’s note: At Anime Expo it was announced Übel Blatt will air in January 2025.)

Anime Herald: How did you feel when you found out you’d be coming to Anime Expo?

Etorouji Shiono: What did I feel when I heard that… Well, I had never been to the United States before, so I thought “Yes, I get to go to the United States!”

Anime Herald: Now that you’re here, what do you think?

Etorouji Shiono: My impression was that it looks like something I’ve seen in a movie.

Anime Herald: Which movie?

Etorouji Shiono: Beverly Hills Cop.

Anime Herald: Now that you're living in the Beverly Hills Cop universe, is there anything you're looking forward to this weekend?

Etorouji Shiono: Maybe seeing Shohei Ohtani. Also, we’re going to have a tour of the Warner Bros. studio.

Anime Herald: That’s fantastic. Speaking of the Dodgers, tonight the Hololive characters will be singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

Etorouji Shiono: I wasn’t aware of that.

Anime Herald: Do you read manga or watch anime these days? If so, what have you been reading or watching?

Etorouji Shiono: I don’t watch that much anime, but if I had to specify something I’ve been watching recently, Pop Team Epic.

Anime Herald: Ah, King Records.

Etorouji Shiono: If we’re talking about manga, I’m reading Dungeon Meshi (Delicious in Dungeon).

Anime Herald: Übel Blatt was a particularly violent manga. I’m guessing it will be a highly violent anime. How do you feel about seeing that violence on screen?

Etorouji Shiono: I don’t know if this answers your question, but when people watch the anime, when they see blood on the screen they are going to think “That’s red blood.”

I say that because there are some anime adaptations where the blood isn’t red.

Anime Herald: That’s true. Is there any particular scene that you are looking forward to seeing animated?

Etorouji Shiono: There’s a girl from the original manga (Elseria Rahnclave) and I haven’t seen how she’s portrayed in the anime?

Anime Herald: I guess I’ll ask the producer. How is she portrayed?

Producer: The character’s name is Elseria. At the very beginning of the story, she’s an enemy of Köinzell. I would say it’ll be very interesting to see how she evolves and changes. She’s a very popular character. It will be very interesting to see what happens with her. That won’t come until the second half.

Anime Herald: Do you have any questions for us?

Etorouji Shiono: Is there demand for literature like Übel Blatt in the United States?

Anime Herald: Are you familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo?

Etorouji Shiono: Actually, I’m not.

Anime Herald: Are you familiar with Westerns where a character is seeking revenge?

Etorouji Shiono: I’m familiar with Westerns, but none in particular come to mind.

Anime Herald: The idea of revenge. People love revenge. The movie Taken is a revenge story. No one expected it to be such a huge movie, but people love revenge. Have you seen Taken?

Etorouji Shiono: I’ve heard of it.

Anime Herald: Let me give you some context. Some people have kidnapped his daughter. He has tracked down their phone number. He calls them and gives ‘the speech.’

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom I can tell you I don't have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you." -Liam Neeson, Taken

They respond “Good luck.”

That is a revenge story. Übel Blatt is a revenge story. What makes Übel Blatt unique among revenge stories is that the villains are publicly recognized as villains sometimes in the story. The seven were viewed as heroes, and then society realized that they weren’t. I’m curious, why did you write it like that?

Etorouji Shiono: The story is about Köinzell searching out his enemies, the traitors, and killing them one by one. That’s something that’s repeated in the story. I thought that if I kept repeating the same pattern over and over again without introducing some variation, it could get old fairly quickly. My thought was “let’s make it a little interesting.”

Anime Herald: Can you share any stories from the production?

Producer: This is a story from right after the voice-over sessions were concluded.

What was interesting is that, even though this is a dark work, it’s about revenge. It’s a very heavy, emotional story. Despite that, the voice actors who worked on the anime got along extremely well. They were very happy-go-lucky. It was a fantastic experience for them. I thought, “What a fascinating gap.”

You have this dark, heavy story, and yet everyone who worked on it as a voice actor, they had a very friendly working relationship. They just had a good time recording it.

Anime Herald: That’s wonderful. What was your initial reaction to reading Übel Blatt?

Producer: This project was suggested to me by Mr. Oichii. He asked, “What if we produced an anime based on this?”

The original manga is from quite a while ago. My first impression was that I remembered reading this story from when I was a child. I remembered Köinzell, and his adventures and revenge. I thought “I know I had some contact with this when I was a child.”

I remembered the characters. They were very memorable. I didn’t remember the details of the story quite as well. I remembered how different the characters were. The story is dark, but the main character is an adorable boy. That’s a striking gap.

Anime Herald: Was that gap something you tried to play up in the production?

Producer: There’s a difference between what works well in manga and what works well in anime. One of those major differences is the voices. We have a panel later about that where we’ll have Yūya Hirose. I think we were lucky to have him as one of the voice actors on the project.

He’s very positive and happy. He has this kind of cute voice, but it’s not a “girly” cute. It’s more of a “neutral” cute. I thought “I’d like to know what Mr. Shiono thinks of his voice. His opinion was ‘I didn’t think it was weird. It didn’t seem out of place. It seemed very convincing for the role that he is playing.”

Köinzell’s voice is that of a male, someone not too old or too young. It has to have some roughness to it and some cuteness to it all at the same time.

Anime Herald: Was that a hard thing to capture when you were looking for a voice actor?

Producer: It’s interesting. Köinzell’s uses some strong language. He says “Kill!” and “Kick your ass!”, so there has to be some roughness to it. But at the same time, he’s a young boy. We were thinking “We’ve got to find someone special.”

In talking with (director) Takashi Naoya, he had worked with Mr. Hirose on a different project, and I had also worked with her on a completely different project from that as well. We kind of simultaneously both reached the same conclusion that Mr. Hirose would be the best person for this. We auditioned him and it worked out.

When I listened to his audition tapes I was immediately convinced. I thought, “This is really good.” Then the sound director listened to her audition tapes and said “Yeah, I think he’s perfect for this.”

Later, we had a casting meeting where we all voiced our opinions. I said “I think it should be Mr. Hirose.” Then, the sound director said “I think it should be Mr. Hirose as well.”

What was interesting is that the director did not say anything. He didn’t mention Mr. Hirose. I was thinking, “Uh oh, this isn’t going to work out.”

At the very end, after everyone had voiced their opinions, he finally said, “I have to be honest, I also think Mr. Hirose is the best person for this, hands down. I just didn’t want to say that at the very beginning, because if I say that she’s the best person for this, everyone else is going to follow along in Japanese style. I wanted to get opinions from the ground up. It just happened that she was perfect for this and everyone agreed.

Anime Herald: That is a wonderful story.

Do you have any questions for us?

Producer: For this anime, we can’t fit the whole story into it. But hearing your comments about how revenge is a universal theme, that Americans are interested in stories about revenge… My question is, are there any existing works out there, particular of anime, that if you like this, you’ll like Übel Blatt?

Anime Herald: The answer is complicated.

It’s very hard to predict what someone will like just because they liked something else. Two things can have similar stories, but in one of them you liked one of the characters, or one of the villains, but in the other you just never connected.

Having said all of that, if you are familiar with Clint Eastwood, back in the day, he played a character known as “The man with no name.” If you can find a story with a main character like that, that might be interesting.

(Editor’s note: This is “The Dollars Trilogy”)

Producer: I looked it up. I know “The Dollars Trilogy.”

Anime Herald: Thank you very much.