There are few anime directors more internationally revered than Shinichiro Watanabe.
Even those who don’t regularly watch anime will still be able to say “Cowboy Bebop
was great though”.
It’s uncommon that a director is able to make such a big megahit that early in his
directorial career, but he’s followed it up with several critical, if not commercial
successes for the past 20 years.
Here’s 5 things you need to know about Shinichiro Watanabe.
For Shinichiro Watanabe, the process of creating a world begins with the music.
Even when he’s not credited for the role, he doubles up as music director on every single
one of his shows.
The discussions that lead into the creation of a new show often start with a conversation
about the kind of music he’s been enjoying lately.
From those discussions, a world and characters will be created within that theme.
It doesn’t end there either.
When the soundtrack is being developed, he’ll suddenly be inspired to add new scenes purely
based on the music.
Therefore, it’s kind of unsurprising that his latest series is entirely about musicians
and the industry they work in.
Any excuse to get all his favourite artists in one place.
The story of Cowboy Bebop is well known, but it’s worth telling again to get a picture
of how uncompromising Watanabe is.
The show was originally funded by Bandai’s toy division under the premise of, “Hey,
you can do whatever you want, as long as it sells spaceship toys.”
But even with this high level of freedom, Watanabe intentionally didn’t tell any of
the staff what Bandai was looking for from the show.
At the time, the investors were mad, with Bandai pulling out and Bandai Visual stepping
in to save the show.
Although apparently later on when the show became successful, all of the naysayers suddenly
started saying that they knew it was going to be a big success.
Of course, they did.
Space Dandy wasn’t nearly as popular as its creators were hoping for.
This spacehopping adventure which released dubbed in English around the same time as
the Japanese release, by the creator of Cowboy Bebop should have been a surefire hit.
This was a show that gave each episode director a degree of freedom, and to embolden that,
Watanabe went out and contacted literally every creator in the anime industry that he’d
ever wanted to work with, from Masaaki Yuasa, to Kiyotaka Oshiyama and Sayo Yamamoto.
The result is Watanabe’s most visually creative series to date.
Netflix is currently ordering a Cowboy Bebop live action series, produced by Tomorrow Studios,
the team behind the Snowpiercer Netflix series.
Shinichiro Watanabe is on staff as a consultant, which might seem like he’s really heavily
involved.
But when asked what his role involved, he says that he was shown the concept early on
and he gave his opinions, but there’s no guarantee that his thoughts will show up in
the final show at all.
Despite his position as creative consultant, he says that all he can do is pray that it
will end up being good, but if it isn’t, he has no power to stop it.
You might know Watanabe as a science fiction director, and although that is certainly his
favourite genre, he makes an active effort to not make the same kind of show after another.
So for instance, he did Cowboy Bebop, a proper adult space sci-fi, then he did Samurai Champloo,
a martial arts series, then he did Kids on the Slope, a coming of age manga adaptation,
and only then did he make Space Dandy, his next show in space.
In between these are plenty of shows that never get made.
If you think he’s taking a break from directing, it’s actually that he’s pitching stuff
that doesn’t get picked up.
Despite his renown, shows like Terror in Resonance actually took 5 years to get set up, because
his brand of anime is still considered a financial risk.