Design
The Kerberos saga officially started in 1987, as a radio drama series followed by a black and white live-action feature The Red Spectacles. Since then, it was adapted and extended to various media such as manga series, live-action films, anime films and radio dramas with recent novel, animation and short live-action film spin-off episodes.
Even though Jin-Roh is the last episode of the feature trilogy, its plot is actually a prequel as it relates events happening before the Kerberos Riot which is the starting point of the two other movies. Returning characters are Bunmei Muroto from The Red Spectacles and three others who previously appeared in the manga series Kerberos Panzer Cop, these are Isao Aniya, Tatsumi Shiro and Hajime Handa. The Kerberos and Little Riding Hood character concepts first appeared in the 1987 original radio drama While Waiting For The Red Spectacles. The featured fictitious organizations and groups as well as the Protect-Gear are key parts of Oshii's Kerberos saga, as are the Tachiguishi. The latter being not featured in Jin-Roh, which can be explained by the anime direction not assumed by the original story's creator but by another person. Artistic direction is partially different compared to the manga, variations include character design, most notably uniforms - which are Germanized to harmonize with the German warfare - as well as the Protect-Gear design which is slightly different than the manga version though. In the other hand parts of the general design are faithful to the manga, being vehicles or weapons.
Jin-Roh's Kazuki Fuse is inspired by StrayDog's Inui which was himself partially inspired by Toru Inui featured in Kerberos Panzer Cops Act 1. Fuse seems to be drawn after Yoshikatsu Fujiki, who played as Inui in the 1991 live-action film StrayDog. This Japanese actor does voice cast for Fuse and some of his facial expressions as Inui are used for the anime character. The similarity is obvious in both works' last, tragic, scene.
Jin-Roh was originally planned to be the third and final live-action feature film of the Kerberos trilogy, but its production wasn't possible until 1994, while Oshii was already working on Ghost in the Shell. As the filmmaker wasn't able to produce two films in the same time but didn't want someone else to direct his final episode, Oshii decided that the third episode would be an anime instead. He committed Jin-Roh as a debut film to a trusted young collaborator, Hiroyuki Okiura for he worked on animation movies such as Ghost in the Shell (character designer) and Patlabor: The Movie 2.
Read more about this topic: Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The reason American cars don’t sell anymore is that they have forgotten how to design the American Dream. What does it matter if you buy a car today or six months from now, because cars are not beautiful. That’s why the American auto industry is in trouble: no design, no desire.”
—Karl Lagerfeld (b. 1938)
“What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)