Interview with the Translator: The Twelve Kingdoms, The Animated Series

Kate: The Animated Series combines a number of characters and plot lines into one. Did the series occur after all the books were written except Silver? Or while they were being written? How does Twelve Kingdoms anime compare to the anime of other series?

Eugene: The NHK series debuted in 2002 after the publication of The Wings of Dreams. The author then took a long break, publishing Hisho's Birds in 2013 and Hills of Silver Ruins in 2019.

Especially these days, the approach NHK took seems more the exception than the rule. Many manga and light novels are episodic enough that a cour of an anime or live action adaptation can stand on its own. But there are cases where the entire run of the manga plots out a single, cohesive story.

The 2003 version of Fullmetal Alchemist was made before the manga was finished. Hiromu Arakawa worked with the studio to create an ending unique to the anime. The anime was then remade in 2009 as Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, this time faithfully following the manga to the end.

The 2001 release of Fruits Basket ended on a less cordial note, with artistic differences leading Natsuki Takaya to disavow the series. She exerted more creative control in the unabridged 2019 release.

Made in Abyss and Demon Slayer released a cour of the anime, did a theatrical release, then a second cour. Chihayafuru has been periodically going on hiatus until the manga progressed far enough for another season. The manga is finally ending so hopefully the anime will now catch up.

When NHK licensed the Twelve Kingdoms, they must have gotten it into their heads to do everything at once and smush all the books together. Somebody in marketing probably insisted there had to be a teen male lead as well. I think this approach was unfortunate, especially with Shadow of the Moon.

Shadow of the Moon would actually be the easiest of the books to adapt, a straightforward heroic journey and road movie with a single POV and two main characters. It'd be nice if someone could do an unabridged adaptation of the Twelve Kingdoms, at least the first two books in the Youko arc.

Kate: Hills of Silver Ruins will reference an event in the series (such as Taiki not initially choosing Gouysuaa—though I gather one of the books addresses this event) that would frankly have confused me if I hadn’t watched the series. The event is important since Taiki uses this previous event to push himself to pretend to select Asen.

Is Ono relying on previous knowledge by readers? Or is Ono's perspective similar to Jackson's with LOTR: You didn't watch the first film (read the prior books)? Too bad! We're moving on!

Eugene: There are passages in Hills of Silver Ruins that cannot be understood without reading The Demon Child. On top of that, Hills of Silver Ruins picks up right where The Shore in Twilight leaves off. The author is assuming that if you've gotten this far, you've already read the rest of the books.

Kate: In one post, you comment that hopefully Taiki can eventually be reunited with his shirei in the future. My initial reaction was, “Really?! They may be protective but yikes! Sociopaths!” However, after watching the series, I felt the same!

On the other hand, having now seen the entire series (hooray, interlibrary loan!), I’m glad I read the majority of the books first. I think I would have been quite confused otherwise. One (unnecessary) character (Asano) entirely disappears, only to re-merge later in a very odd fashion. Taiki’s story begins, gets rolling…then abruptly cuts off. Youko’s meeting with Suza and Shoukei is far too long, which is regrettable since it is a powerful story and delivers a fantastic climax. The most power-action stories—Shouyuu and Enki’s—are delivered rather late in the series.

Were you influenced by the series at all during your translation process?

Eugene: Although watching the NHK series got me interested in the books, my opinion of the series declined sharply after I started reading the books and it became more of a distraction than a help. To be generous, you could argue that NHK stole a march on the whole isekai boom to come, but it had the effect of diminishing the centrality of Youko's character.

Kate: I recently was able to interlibrary loan Star Blazers, an animated series from my childhood that I remembered despite growing up in a house without a TV. As Wikipedia remarks, “Many fans regard Star Blazers as more ‘adult’ than other cartoons shown in the United States at the time, as personal tragedy, funeral scenes for fallen comrades, and the extinction faced by humanity were left intact. The very Japanese theme of ‘the honorable enemy’ was also a tremendously important aspect of character development”—all this despite the show being somewhat “bowdlerized” by American producers.

The thankful lack of afterschool messaging is what I remembered. Anime and manga appear to have those elements! Twelve Kingdoms is remarkably dark in places. How do other anime compare?

Eugene: Rewatching Demon Slayer: Mugen Train got me thinking that the dream sequences would provide plenty of fodder for Freudian analysis (or maybe it's more Jungian), though they didn't have nearly as much fun with it as they could have.

When it comes to psychoanalysis, practically every character in Fruits Basket needs serious therapy, but of course, that subject never comes up. Aside from the cinematic forensic psychologist, clinical psychiatry gets little respect in Japan, in both fiction and reality.

I don't think there's a single shrink in A Silent Voice. A Hollywood version would have one in every other scene (and audiences would wonder if there weren't any).