Paradise Kiss - Production

Production

In an interview in the January, 2007 issue of Newtype USA, director Osamu Kobayashi revealed many of the personal decisions which went into restructuring the manga into a television series. Wanting to avoid straying too far from the source material without approval, Kobayashi worked closely with Ai Yazawa on the new interpretations of the characters. In many instances, Yazawa was concerned that taking the original material straight would distract casual viewers or worse drive them away. Chief among these concerns was the handling of George's bisexual nature and interest in sadomasochism. Yazawa agreed that the dialogue should reflect this, but that actual onscreen depictions (as can be found in the original manga) were to be avoided. However, Kobayashi felt this was not being entirely true to the character, so he included a few hints of this side of George in the final episode. In another instance of modification, this time brought by Kobayashi, the character design of Arashi was modified to suit a scruffier, less slick appearance. "I wanted to make him look like Lupin the 3rd... sort of slouching and walking around with his hands in his pockets," Kobayashi explained. In agreement with the director, Yazawa went for the change.

One area Yazawa and Kobayashi did not agree on was the casting of Shunsuke Mizutani as Arashi. The fact that he was not a professional voice actor, but rather a musician, was the cause of this debate. Kobayashi had wanted a more natural performance that did not sound like the typical voice acting found in anime. "Yazawa and I even had a few rows because of that," Kobayashi explains. "But after she'd seen about three episodes, she finally admitted that Mizutani's voice is a great match, and I was able to relax."

In relation to the clothing design, despite the involvement of noted fashion creator Atsuro Tayama with all of George's outfits, most of the clothing was left largely as originally depicted in the manga. Director Kobayashi had specifically requested a real designer to work on the project, and Tayama's role on the production had originally been conceived as reworking the designs to fit better with the real world, but much to everyone's surprise, the original manga designs by Ai Yazawa were already quite good. So, Tayama mostly was involved in updating the clothes to suit the very latest hot trends, and touching up the designs to make them look and behave realistically when animated. He also provided cloth samples and photographs with all of his illustrations to aid the animators with getting the textures right. Besides George's outfits, the majority of clothing for the other characters was designed by art director Asami Kiyokawa. After the rough designs were completed, fellow artist Yuichi Suehiro drew all of the textures and lace by hand, and then scanned them into the computer and digitally applied them as textures during the animation coloring process.