2018.02.19
2018.02.19
Written by Mari Okada
Horikawa answers often-asked questions on Twitter, so I’d like to answer one as well.
“Your works often have long titles. Why is that?”
What a great question! A great question, but a difficult and painful one… That’s because basically, for titles of original projects, the staff meets during discussion of the scenario and gives out many ideas before deciding. There are actually only three titles I came up with all by myself (one of them being P.A WORKS’ Nagi no Asukara). Yes, that’s right: the titles I come up with are never chosen! I have a long history of failure!
For example, when I worked on the P.A. series Hanasaku Iroha. I love the title, but it was an idea from Tatsuto Higuchi, who helped on the script. Thank you Higuchi for the wonderful title! Give me some of your good sense for naming things!!
Anyway, I am really bad at coming up with titles. I couldn’t think of one for this project either. It was just a temporary name, but I thought for a while, just Maquia is fine… But the promotional team said: “Okada, your works always have long titles, so please think of anoher title”. Aaaahhh!
Long titles are hard, and it took a lot of grumbling, and talks with the staff, and we missed the deadline. I had no idea what to do, so I asked the promotional team if we could hold a meeting to decide the title. We wrote a lot of options on the whiteboard, but there wasn’t anything that everyone agreed on, so we instead came up with several keywords we wanted to use for the title.
I thought of the world “promise”. A promise is a beautiful thing, but it can also restrain you, or someone else. They can be shackles, or provide a sense of safety. A promise has plusses and minuses, but can also be a source of support.
Combining it with the words the promotional team came up with and mixing them around, we finally settled on “When the Promised Flower Blooms”. It is a title of great importance. The promotional team did such a great job during the preview tour. I didn’t have a lot of contact with them during production, but I got to know all of them individually during the preview tour, and was so happy to learn more about their passion for the project. I hope we get to work together more in the future!
Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
When we finally decided the title, we were overjoyed and pasted it on the wall, and Ishii drew a picture on it for us. I’m so glad Maquia and Onora look very happy… Sorry it took so long! Oh, and give our regards to the King as well.