Reddit AMA Recap: Masashi Ishihama

Recently, the anime director of the currently released Anime adaptation of Horimiya from Funimation and Cloverworks did a Reddit AMA. Aside from series directing, he has also worked as an animation director or key animator on various other series, including Persona 5 The Animation, Bleach, ERASED, PSYCHO-PASS 2, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and The Tatami Galaxy, along with an impressive track record of anime he’s been involved with even before he became a director.

On how he was chosen to direct Horimiya.

Aniplex went to CloverWorks with the proposal to adapt Horimiya into an anime. Then the CloverWorks president approached me to direct it.


On whether or not he watched romance films before doing the Anime.

In regards to directing Horimiya, there wasn’t anything particularly unique I did to prepare outside of reading the manga.


On learning from past experiences in the animation field. And if he drew from personal experiences when working on an Anime dramedy such as Horimiya.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons over the years while working on the past works I’ve been involved with. So while working on Horimiya, all of those lessons learned were applied. That’s how I was influenced. When I’m directing the anime adaptation for Horimiya, we really wanted to stay true to the manga’s story as much as possible, so I didn’t really want to put any of my personal experiences into it. However, during the directing of each individual scene and episode, there were a lot of moments that reminded me of my past experiences, hardships, past loves. There was a lot that I explored internally throughout directing the series. But my personal experiences did not influence the direction of the series.


On what goes on a daily basis within the animation studio.

My typical workday is hard to answer since it depends on the day and what’s going on. I wake up in the afternoon, have a bunch of emails to check on and confirm. Send them back to whoever sent it. When there are recording sessions that day, they can take the entire day. Some days, I’m in meetings with other people and that can take all day. In the evening, I try my best to spend time with my family.


On the awareness of fans and audiences outside of Japan.

Honestly speaking, I do feel like I am working on this series to deliver to the entire world, not just in Japan. This is something that is going out to the international community, and there are a lot of fans out there. I am aware of that when working on the series. Even on Twitter, I receive a lot of messages and followings from people outside of Japan. That gives me even more aware that people outside of Japan are paying attention and have a passion for this series.


On the challenges and creative process of putting the Horimiya Anime together.

In regards to the challenges I faced, it’s more a challenge we all face as a team. When you’re animating/adapting a manga, we cant adapt every scene or chapter. It was a very big challenge to pick which chapters to include in the animation. The manga was popular and we wanted to respect the readers’ feelings and emotions they have for the series. Again, what chapters or scenes to leave out and which to include while still leaving the series whole at the end was one of the biggest challenges my team and I had, so we debated a lot on that subject. In terms of surprises when working on Horimiya, when the anime adaptation was first announced, we got a lot more responses and reactions from the international community, more so than from the Japanese community. I really did not expect that. We thought this would be more of a Japanese thing and really didn’t think that the international audience would be as interested. But there were so many people who had read the manga and were very excited about the adaption, so that was a great surprise.

On favorite characters and favorite story moments so far in the Horimiya Anime

My favorite character is Toru Ishikawa. As far as my favorite scene or moment goes, this is probably one of the hardest questions I get because I love every scene. My favorite moment actually hasn’t been released yet so I can’t really tell you the details. Just to touch on a little bit of it, there is a certain relationship that meets a resolution. That is basically one of my favorite scenes. Please look forward to it!