――There are a lot of scenes of daily life in Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms.
ISHII: Yes, there are. You need a lot of original images if you want to show natural movement, so the animators worked very hard. When checking the work, director Okada often said, “I want there to be more movement like this”. With actions we see every day, like “sitting in a chair” or “holding something”, if it’s not done right it looks strange. Also, we were very eager because it was going to be a theatrical film.
――When did you first meet director Okada?
ISHII: The first time I met her in person was location scouting for Hanasaku Iroha. But since then we didn’t have a lot of time to speak face to face, maybe just a few days location scouting for another job. This time, working with her in the same space, seeing her powerful script, I felt like I saw another side of her. It’s like there’s a little girl inside an adult. For example, she would draw caricatures of me during work (laughs). I put it on the side of my desk. When I would get frustrated, I would just look at the caricature and think, “don’t forget to smile”.
――What was your working relationship with director Okada?
ISHII: As chief animation director, I am responsible for making the characters expressive. So, there were a lot of times when director Okada had very particular notes. For example, like “the face is not that angry, but there is a lot of different emotions within them”. Director Okada is very particular about delicate emotional expressions. She sat close to me, so if I was drawing and still couldn’t figure it out, I could ask her, and then was able to better grasp the expression.
――What do you think about the character Maquia?
ISHII: I was moved when I first read the script, but I don’t think I really understood her as a character at that point. In my work up until now, I sort the character individuality into categories and I draw the character’s expressions based on that, but I felt like that wouldn’t really work for the character of Maquia. On the other hand, that’s not to say that I understood how Maquia would feel. Instead, I approached it from the position of myself, walking alongside Maquia, wondering what kind of face she would be making at a particular moment, and then drew her expression with that distance between us. I hope that people can feel all the different emotions of the characters as they watch the movie.

Yuriko Ishii’s main works include Hanasaku Iroha (main animator), Another, Nagi no Asukara, and Kuromukuro (character design and chief animation director for all three).