Disclaimer/Read me once! ¦ Previous convention feeds. ¦ Question Requests(Alpha). ¦ Used a static url! (Permalink)

Transcript will begin when the panel starts.
Note: ( ) is usually commenting on the panel and was not said.

13:39:06 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> (Supposely this will start late...up to 15 min late)
13:44:49 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> (This room is almost empty....)
13:52:31 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Welcome to Ozaki's panel
13:53:13 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Hello everyone
13:53:20 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Thank you for coming to the panel
13:53:23 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> and today is Otakon's first day
13:53:31 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> and it's already time, and thank you so much
13:53:45 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> and I have been to otakon 2 years ago and I'm really happy to return back
13:54:31 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So let's begin
13:54:55 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> I've done many sunrise panel and i've done several t&b panels
13:55:01 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> but i've never been features as a named panel before
13:55:07 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> at this point, i make it up as a i go along
13:55:30 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So I dunno good or bad, we got a cozy crowd here and let's just take it easy (paraphrase)
13:55:51 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> And so just to get started, let me go after some of the titles i've worked on at this point
13:56:07 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> First would be the 3 mobile suit zeta gundam theatrical productions
13:56:22 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> And my debut work as a producer was sgt. frog
13:56:49 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> And then kaiketsu zorori, dinosour king, terrors of the abyss, inuyasha the final act
13:57:00 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Battle Spirits
13:57:06 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> and tiger and bunny, and so on
13:57:22 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> I guess that's about it for titles
13:57:46 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> And since I'm a sunrise man, I can probably field any gundam questions
13:58:01 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> And I was involved in the development of Code Geass so I can probably answer questions there
13:58:09 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So now that you got the underlying facts, ask away
13:58:47 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Q: Whenever you are in a troublesome situation in a production, who do you turn to for advice?
13:59:06 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> A: There's not particularly one person that I go seeking advice from
13:59:26 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So within our office, in order to get a fresh perspective, i talk to people working on other shows
14:00:12 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So just having conversations with other teams gives me ideas, gets things going..and lets me get things out
14:00:43 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> And often just by having a conversation going back and forth, it helps sorts things out in my mind again and sometimes the solution will present itself
14:01:05 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> But often, instead of talking, I go home away from work, take a shower, soak in the bath and boom, ideas
14:01:25 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Q: What's been your favorite series to work on so far, and what's your best memory working in the industry?
14:01:54 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> A: It's really hard to rank all the stuff you worked on
14:02:24 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Memory wise, I'd have to say sgt. frog because it was my first work as a producer
14:02:47 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So you see a lot of homages to gundam and other shows in sgt. frog
14:03:16 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So sometimes, when i'm sitting there throwing in the homages or the parodies, i go past a certain point
14:03:51 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> There was a case after such an homage/parody where after it went to air, I had to go apologize to the gundam department of sunrise
14:04:21 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> But after repeated times, it's gone to the point where i can go to them "im going to this in the future so be ready for it" and so they are understanding at this point
14:04:37 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So as for memories, the things you remember are the things you got into trouble with
14:04:52 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> And for recent, i'd have to say my experience working with Tiger and Bunny
14:05:13 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So as you guys obviously know, tiger and bunny has a lot of real life logos over the body
14:05:32 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> It took a lot of effort to work with the companies that work on the body
14:06:07 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So maintaining the balance with the various clients is something i have to be careful about, even with hero tv, with how long one company is displayed for
14:06:31 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So I can't have that logo onscreen longer than a company or I can't have it not show up for too many episodes
14:07:02 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So after we mapped out the whole 25 ep run, i had to go to the artist and say "treat them equally, good luck"
14:07:27 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So the fact that origami cyclone doesn't show up, we got the understanding from the company that this is the situation
14:07:50 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> but i make sure that sure that each logo is featured prominently in a memorable scene
14:08:39 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so you can't help but certain heros are featured more than others in story telling, so in order to guarantee that each sponsor got featured every ep, we put them all in the opening
14:08:47 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> we were patting ourselves on the back for that idea
14:09:07 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Q: So based on how much the sponsors were involved, so how much of the production value and revenue came from the sponsors?
14:09:18 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> A: That's a question we get a lot
14:09:20 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> but it's far, far less than you expect
14:10:11 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so it would have been great to be several 10's of percent to the profit of show overall, but..... no
14:11:15 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> But there may not be actual amount of profits gleened from the sponsorships, but from the cross promotional stuff, them doing campaigns and ads in return, in terms of ads and publicity, you can't really put a price tag, but it was definitely a positive thing to happen to the show
14:11:30 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Q: As someone who works at sunrise, how would you character the corporate character of Sunrise?
14:12:37 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> A: One of the main things i feel is the strength of sunrise is that the company has been around for 30 years and that they are primarily focused on original ips, not stuff based on manga and novels
14:12:39 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> they make original shows
14:13:02 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> for myself, being in an enviroment where i could eventually develop an original show is (a great thing) (lost)
14:13:37 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So compared to other companies, sunrise does do a bunch of original shows, and it's a great place for one to develop shows, and a great numbers have been hits, and sunrise does do shows that haven't been, but the majority have been hits
14:14:20 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> viewed from a sponsors point of view
14:14:51 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> a company that does original titles, a lot of sponsors aren't willing to take the risk, it's easy to back a popular manga series being animated, but given sunrise's track record, they are more willing to sponsor a sunrise IP
14:15:39 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So you know, with shows like Code Geass, and Tiger and Buny, sponsors are willing to give them a chance
14:16:00 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> i think should another company comes up a concept, i think they would have a harder time finding sponsorship
14:16:28 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> but over the last few years, there has been a good trend from original shows coming out not just from sunrise but from other companies, (and i think this is good for the industry) (lost)
14:17:03 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So with the expansion of original shows being created, it really trains up and gives experience to producers, directors, and anime production staff, and that's definitely a good trend
14:18:07 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so even though i had said that sunrise focuses on original ips, it does do anime series of existing series, like sgt. frog, but we like to think, that increating the animated version of these titles, we add depth to these titles
14:18:27 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> and for example, i think the way that sgt frog was created with all the gundam parodies, i think that's only possible because sunrise did it
14:18:43 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> and another show that we did is gintama from a manga
14:19:38 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> and even though it's a title that i'm not involved in, but by animating it, we're able to add in certain voice actors, design, and able to do the tempo of the cuts to give you something you don't get from the manga
14:19:59 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> and one of the original titles that's been adapted for the screen that i've taken an interest in is attack on titan, even though it's not a sunrise title
14:20:13 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> and i'm a big fan of manga, and i was following that series from the beginning
14:20:34 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> and being a producer as well, i've often thought how well would i animate the series
14:21:12 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so before this show was animated, i really couldn't come up with a hook or a concept to give it the extra content that you would add to the manga to make it work
14:21:47 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so one of the things i like to put a focus on is that the shows i work on arent' just for the japanese, i have to keep the world in mind when i work on them (paraphrase)
14:22:27 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so not really fully understanding the censorship laws in the US or EU made it really hard to throw in my name in the hat to work on it
14:22:44 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so having seen it's popularity in the US and across europe
14:22:55 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> even though it's another company, i can't help but applaud them for their work
14:23:39 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> just the way the intensity of the impact of the giants, and the speed of the animation depicted with the maneuver devices, i'm very impressed, but let's go back to sunrise
14:24:45 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Q: Looking at how the Tiger and Bunny schedule has gone vs how the Phi Brain schedule has gone, (basically asking how sunrise splits up it's work)
14:25:15 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> A: Speaking from Sunrise's stand point, we have 13 tracks that can work on shows
14:25:41 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So of the various tracks, there is a producer for each and a production line for each, and sometimes multiple tracks will work on one show
14:26:28 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So the various producers woking on the shows after finsihing the season decide whether they want to go second season or movie or whatever (paraphse)
14:26:55 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> that's not the kind of situation can make on their own, it depends on the tv stations and the other sponsors too (paraphrase, lost)
14:27:12 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so the relase schedule for phi brain was decided between sunrise and nhk
14:27:48 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so of course being it's NHK, the PBS of japan, there is a whole aspect of the puzzles that's incorporated into the show because it has to be educational
14:28:11 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so because it's NHK, they don't really focus on theatrical stuff, they decided to keep making a 30 min tv show
14:28:26 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> i think your brain would break if you had to solve puzzles for 100 minutes
14:28:38 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so using that as a hook to talk about another companies work, i really like detective conan
14:28:52 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so i'm a big fan of the comic and series, and i've been reading it for 20 odd years
14:29:27 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so having taken part in the production of phi brain, having to come up with a puzzle every week, i came to appreciate and respect conan
14:29:57 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so i'm not just saying that as flattery, i really like the show
14:30:12 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> and the director is here, and we went to the same university
14:31:16 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> (skipped part, going over other staff who meetup together who he went to school with)
14:33:11 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> so as i said, before digressing, the producers on the sunrise side and on sponsor side whether another season or movie
14:34:06 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Q: More theaters for T and B: Rising? NY?
14:34:01 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> A: Come to the sunrise panel tomorrow
14:36:05 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Viz is in charge in the US, so that's why SF, and we're in negotations
14:36:44 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So if you were to mention it to Viz that you would like to see more of it
14:37:10 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Q: Any special consideration when doing Inuyasha TFA to bring back fans who might have lost intest with the large gap between it and the original series
14:37:43 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> A: In Japan, we had several big promotions to announce it was coming back
14:38:10 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Just before it began airing on TV, we started streaming episodes of the first series on the web
14:38:24 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Of course we encouraged stations to do rebroadcast of the original series
14:39:11 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So with a cross promotion with shogakukan, we had them promote it to a series, and we put a banner (band) on the manga to announce it was coming
14:39:53 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> I have to say, it is Inuyasha after all, we had confidence people would want to come and see the final act of the series
14:40:33 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> I didn't work on the first series, but a lot of people who did thought they would be doing the final act a lot earlier
14:40:59 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> but the fact is everyone expected the author to end the series much earlier than it did, so they had to wait for that to finish
14:41:06 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> (paraphrase)
14:41:27 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> I'm sorry to have taken time asking the questions, but we're low on time... Two last questions
14:41:42 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Q: Projects that you are currently working on?
14:42:02 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> A: in the process of developing an original ip for the spring of 2015
14:42:33 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> but sunrise being sunrise, being an original title, i don't know if we'll hit spring 2015, but we're working toward it
14:42:55 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> And i think another show based on an existing ip will hit the airwaves in '14 or '15 as well
14:43:13 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> I'd like to hopefully announce this at a con next year
14:43:25 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Last question...
14:43:47 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Q: What's your favorite moment from the English dub of Tiger and Bunny?
14:44:14 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> A: That's a difficult question
14:44:40 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> I'm impressed with how well the voice cast is matched with the characters
14:44:54 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> So I can't really pick a favorite, but I really like them all
14:44:57 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> there are two that really come to mind
14:45:04 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Lunatic
14:46:02 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> (His catchphrase?).... Really like the way the line is delivered.. it's really dark-hero like... really like the japanese voice, but the english voice is.. sexy..
14:46:11 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> Also, Benson
14:46:28 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> When I heard that, i was like that, wow that's what he sounds like
14:46:33 <bay|Ota|Ozaki> thank you for coming to his panel