Producer Michihiko Suwa talks about the difficulties he faced in realizing the collaboration between Lupin III and Detective Conan
The movie '
Both 'Lupin the Third' and 'Detective Conan' are big enough to be made into movies on their own, but how on earth did this collaboration project come about, and why was the collaboration decided upon in the first place? Producer Michihiko Suwa, aka Swatch from Yomiuri TV, revealed part of the secret at the Anime Business Forum + 2014 , held at Digital Hollywood University on February 12th.
Movie 'Lupin the Third vs. Detective Conan THE MOVIE'
http://www.lupicona-movie.com/
Just the week before the Anime Business Forum + 2014 was held, Friday Road Show! aired 'Detective Conan: The 14th Target.' This is the second movie in the series, released in April 1998, and according to the materials distributed by Suwa, it had a viewership rating of 16%, the highest rating in its time slot. Looking at the viewership ratings by generation, it has attracted the support of the so-called child demographic (male and female, ages 4-12) and teen demographic (male and female, ages 13-19), which means that one in five children has actually watched Conan. The fact that a work from 17 years ago could achieve such high figures shows just how widely loved Detective Conan is.
Producer Suwa appeared wearing a Conan jacket.
'Lupin the Third,' a collaboration with Conan, is also a widely known anime. This is based on a manga by Monkey Punch, and the first season of the TV anime was broadcast in 1971. However, due to being labeled as being for adults and the strong competition from other programs, it was canceled after 23 episodes, but a second and third series were made later. Currently, a new TV special is broadcast once a year on Friday Road Show!.
As you can see, both Conan and Lupin are big titles that can be made into specials and movies on their own, and Suwa said, 'No matter how you look at it, there's no need to do them together.' Suwa originally proposed a new Lupin TV series in 2007, but it coincided with the time when Doraemon was changing generations, and the series was not made because it was decided that 'Lupin is not a good idea.' Instead, the idea of a collaboration came up. Television stations place great importance on 'anniversary' projects, and there is a culture of setting off big fireworks if you do it, so the talk moved forward with the fact that Yomiuri TV was celebrating its 50th anniversary and Nippon TV its 55th anniversary in 2008.
The original author is important when planning a collaboration. What helped us in the development of Lupin vs. Conan was that Gosho Aoyama, the original author of 'Detective Conan,' was a fan of Monkey Punch, the original author of 'Lupin III.' Thanks to that, we were able to get to the point where all we had to do was get Monkey Punch's OK on what kind of story to tell, and the TV special that aired in 2009 was completed without any problems.
Suwa pointed out that one of the most difficult aspects of planning the project was the difference in worldview. For example, in a scene where someone falls from a building, in Conan's world, that person is sure to die. On the other hand, in Lupin's world, Lupin will not die no matter how high he falls from. In order to include these two works that never intersect in one picture, there was no intention from the beginning to 'bring Conan to Lupin's world and have him do something,' or 'Lupin will come to Conan's world and interrupt,' and the discussion proceeded on the premise of creating a fifty-fifty work.
The setting for the TV special was a new country in the world of Lupin, where an incident occurred and Conan and Kogoro came to chase after Ran, who was kidnapped. It was a struggle to get there, and one of the difficulties for Conan was that he 'cannot go overseas.' The reason for this is that the boy, Edogawa Conan, has been shrunk by the side effects of drugs given to high school detective Kudo Shinichi, so he does not have a passport. So, in order to go overseas, Fujiko's submarine was used to take him, and that's how the story was constructed. In the story, Conan clings to the wheel of a plane preparing to take off, and sneaks into the cargo bay from there. Suwa laughed at this and said, 'To be honest, it's impossible,' but he still came up with a reason to make the scenario work.
In terms of animation, since it was a collaborative work, in scenes where Conan's characters and Lupin's characters appeared at the same time, for example, Detective Conan's animation director Masaaki Sudo drew Conan, and Lupin's animation director Satoshi Hirayama drew Lupin on top of that. This inevitably made for complicated work, but with this method, the Lupin staff would see Conan drawn first and get motivated to 'make him cooler than this,' and the opposite also happened, resulting in a 'drawing contest,' which allowed for a good sense of tension on set.
Following this trend, the movie 'Lupin the Third vs. Detective Conan: The Movie' was released in 2013. The first poster released had a design that looked like a collaboration, with the tagline 'Let's settle this.'
For the movie, they ran into an obstacle that they had overcome for the TV special. That was the music. Katsuo Ohno is in charge of the music for Detective Conan, and Yuji Ohno is in charge of the music for Lupin III. Both are big names, and just because it was a collaboration, they couldn't just say, 'It's okay to do only half the music this time.' According to Suwa, for the TV special, they used a huge archive of music from the past, so that each work's music would be used for roughly the same amount of time. However, that's not possible for a movie, so they somewhat forcibly assigned music that matched the music line created by the sound director, and explained, 'Please make it like this for this reason,' and were convinced.
The trailer for the movie looks like this, and according to Suwa, it's 'one of the best trailers for Conan movies to date.'
Movie 'Lupin the Third vs. Detective Conan THE MOVIE' trailer - YouTube
The film was made at a total cost of several hundred million yen, and was released with the aim of earning 3 billion yen at the box office, which is the same as the 30 million yen mark that Conan films have achieved in recent years. As of February 9th, the box office revenue had exceeded the target, reaching 4.17 billion yen, and the total number of viewers was 3.53 million, so Suwa said he was very pleased with the results.
By the way, at the end of every Detective Conan movie, there is always an epilogue after the credits, making it a twist that makes you have to watch until the end. Usually, it shows an image that will be the key to the next movie, and a message saying 'The production of the XXth movie has been decided', but for Lupin vs. Conan, since it is such a special endeavor, a special twist that has never been done before has been added. We hope you will all go to the theater to see what it is, but Suwa said that he felt it was good that they were able to create this final twist and the scene at the beginning where Lupin introduces Conan and Conan introduces Lupin.
The 18th film in the 'Detective Conan' series, '
The official poster was released the other day. It features special guests Sota
In the future, the next time you see a collaboration project between two or more famous works, it might be interesting to take a look at what kind of ingenuity has been used to blend two or more works together.
©2013 Monkey Punch, Gosho Aoyama / 'Lupin the Third vs. Detective Conan' Production Committee
©2014 Gosho Aoyama/Detective Conan Production Committee
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