CHARACTER INFLUENCES
This is Volume 3 of the magazine Dengeki Tokusatsu Tsuushin, issued in the year 2000.
The cover and contents convey how popular Kamen Rider Kuuga was (and how heavily it was being promoted),
and we can get a rare sight of a fresh-faced Odagiri Jo (Godai Yusuke), who appears more enthusiastic here than would become his typical image.
It also contains a lot of info about other Tokusatsu, including an article with some very valuable Timeranger information, an interview with producer Hikasa Jun and screenwriter Kobayashi Yasuko,
wherein they discuss the various ideas and changes behind the the settings of the Timeranger characters we now know.
This information isn't very widely known, so I think it would be good to share it here. I selected and translated the parts of the article where they discuss the characters, and inserted my comments as well.
HIKASA JUN'S INTERVIEW
| INTERVIEWER |
| What's the intention of having alien members in Timeranger? / タイムレンジャーのメンバー内に宇宙人を設定した意図を教えてください。 |
| HIKASA JUN |
| Having an alien character expands the show's world. There's contact with other planets in the future, and with aliens living on Earth,
it would be strange not to include one in the 4 characters from the future. / 宇宙人をひとり置くことで、作品の世界観が広がるといった理由です。未来の世界は異星との交流があって、異星人と暮らしているという設定ですから。未来人を代表する4人の中に宇宙人がいないのも変かなと思いまして。 |
| SLAVA'S COMMENT |
| INTERVIEWER |
| Even though they're aliens, they don't have too much special makeup. / 宇宙人でもヒューマノイドタイプで、過度なメイクを施されていませんね。 |
| HIKASA JUN |
| Too much makeup erases the actor's expression, and we preferred instead to emphasize the actor's characteristics, so stopped at dyeing his hair purple.
We considered giving him pointy ears or a horn, but decided against such a typical expression of an alien. /
特殊メイクをするということは、結局役者の色を消す危険性もある。それをするよりも僕らが選んだ役者のキャラクターを生かしていきたいと考え、髪の毛を紫にする程度に抑えたのです。
じつは耳をとがらせようとか角を生やそうという話も出たんですが、今更そんな初歩の宇宙人の表現はやめようということで。 |
| SLAVA'S COMMENT |
| INTERVIEWER |
| How did you decide the casting of the 5 actors? / ５人のキャスティングはどのように決められたのでしょうか。 |
| HIKASA JUN |
| The character settings were already decided to some extent, and we started meeting actors that matched each of them. However,
about a month passed from the initial auditions to the final decisions, and we were also working on the script during that time,
so there was mutual influence between the two processes. For example, Sion is an alien who's good at working with machines,
and Ayase a cool warrior bearing an illness. We looked for actors with about two characteristics like this in mind,
but sometimes we didn't find actors who matched both. For example, in the planning stages the character with the illness was supposed to be a young man good at machines,
but once the actors were chosen we decided to slide the machine setting to the alien character. /
ある程度５人のキャラクター設定ができて、それぞれの色分けが出来たところで役者さんに会い始めたんです。ただ、最初のオーディションから決定までひと月以上ありましたから、それと並行して、企画の煮詰めもやっているわけなんです。
するとお互いが影響しあうんですよ。たとえばシオンというキャラクターの場合。宇宙人という設定と機械いじりが得意という設定があります。
アヤセだったらクールという設定と、病をかかえた戦士という設定、こうしたふたつ位のイメージを考慮して俳優を選定するんですが、そのふたつのイメージを兼ね備えた俳優さんが見つからないケースもあるわけです。
企画時には機械いじりが好きで病をかかえた青年という組み合わせだったものを、俳優が決定することによって、じゃあ、機械いじりはこの宇宙人くんに持ってこようとか、そういうスライドはありますね。 |
| SLAVA'S COMMENT |
KOBAYASHI YASUKO'S INTERVIEW
| INTERVIEWER |
| Tatsuya has special karate skills; is that because Nagai Masaru is good at karate? / 空手が得意なのは、永井さんが得意だから？ |
| KOBAYASHI YASUKO |
| That's right. Originally he was going to be good at Kendo. If there's too big a difference in fighting skill between him and the 4 from the future,
the action scenes with the 5 of them would be unnatural, so we decided to make him a martial arts master.
A normal person wouldn't suddenly be able to fight even after transforming. /
そうですね。最初は剣道が得意にしてたんですよ。戦闘レベル的に４人とあまり差があると、５人揃ってのアクションが不自然になってしまうので、何か武道の達人にしようとは思っていました。ズブの素人が、いきなり変身しても戦えないですもんね。 |
| SLAVA'S COMMENT |
| INTERVIEWER |
| Pink's character and positioning were what changed the most with your involvement in the story. / そのピンクの設定、ポジションが、小林さんが関わられて一番変わっていった部分だと思いますが。 |
| KOBAYASHI YASUKO |
| That's right. Originally she was going to be a cute pink character. But I wanted to change the treatment of pink characters.
I felt like we were entering an era where "cute" was no longer the highest praise for a woman,
so I wanted to make her a character with the most experience and will to fight evil among the five of them. From a long time before,
I had wanted to see a "cool" woman character, a "cool" pink. / そうですね。最初はフツーのかわいいピンクでした。でもそろそろ、何とかピンクの存在を変えたいなって。
”かわいい”が、女の人をほめる最上級の言葉っていう時代が終わりつつあるのではと感じている部分もあって、悪を捕らえる意識も経験も５人の誰よりもあるってことにしたんです。”カッコイイ”女。”カッコいい”ピンクですね。
これは結構昔から。考えてました。野望、でしたね。(笑) |
| SLAVA'S COMMENT |
| INTERVIEWER |
| How about the other 3 members? / 3人については？ |
| KOBAYASHI YASUKO |
| Having one alien character was decided from the beginning. Everyone really liked that setting so I thought I shouldn't change that.
The setting for the other three was for an intelligent, professor-like, mature alien, a sickly, polite young man, like Souji Okita, and a pretentious celebrity.
The final settings were influenced by the casting choices. Kuranuki having a terminal illness was too sad... /
宇宙人が１人いるっていうのは決まってたんですよ。スゴく皆さん、気に入られてましたので、これは崩せないなって思って残していきました。
最初の３人の設定は、頭がいい博士的な、大人びた宇宙人。病を抱えた、沖田総司みたいな若者、デスマス口調の。それと、キザな芸能人。で、キャスティングに合わせて現在の設定に変えていったんです。
倉貫くんが短命だと、ホントにかわいそうになってしまうんで・・・とか考えていって。 |
| SLAVA'S COMMENT |
| INTERVIEWER |
| Why did Ayase's job change from celebrity to racer? / アヤセが芸能人からレーサーになったのは？ |
| KOBAYASHI YASUKO |
| That changed when we were thinking of what jobs everyone would do at Tomorrow Research. / それは、トゥモローリサーチでの仕事を考えた結果ですね。 |
| SLAVA'S COMMENT |
| INTERVIEWER |
| How about Domon being a pro fighter? / ドモンがプロファイターというのは？ |
| KOBAYASHI YASUKO |
| Once the characters started getting shifted around we ran out of settings, so a pro-fighter was a new idea we came up with at that stage.
/ いろいろと調整しているうちに設定が足りなくなったので、アイデアとしてあったものをあてはめました。 |
| SLAVA'S COMMENT |
| INTERVIEWER |
| It's funny that he wasn't an elite fighter, and moreover was exiled for being late to a match. / それがエリートではなく、遅刻して追放されたズッコケてきなノリですが。 |
| KOBAYASHI YASUKO |
| The story would be too dark if all of them had serious issues, so we wanted one character who was satisfied with their life in the 30th century,
and then they would be unsatisfied with not being able to return, having left siblings behind. /
あんまり全員、重いものを背負ってる人だと、暗くなっちゃうので、３０世紀の現状に満足している人も１人ほしかったんです。それで帰れないことにものスゴく不満を持っている。残してきた兄弟もいる、という設定に。 |
| SLAVA'S COMMENT |
| INTERVIEWER |
| The other 3 members are determined to arrest Dolnero, don't have good memories of the 30th century, and are in despair about their lives...
Domon is necessary to the drama to convey to the viewers the magnitude of what's happening by his own emotional reaction. /
他の３人は、ドルネロ逮捕に執念を燃やしたり、３０世紀にいい思い出が無かったり、人生に絶望していたり・・・なるほど。
ドモンはドラマに必要な、動揺することで起こっている事の重大さを視聴者に伝える役割も、担ってますね。 |
| KOBAYASHI YASUKO |
| That's right. The other 4 don't react very much./そうですね。ほかの４人はリアクションがなくなりがちなので。(笑) |
| SLAVA'S COMMENT |
SLAVA'S THOUGHTS
Sion was originally planned to be a dignified, swordsman like character with a terminal illness.
However, when the alien setting was attached, he may have had non-human looks with elf ears and a horn.
After various modifications all those attributes didn't stay within one person, but if they had he may have looked like the image to the left (based on my imagination), with a strong fantasy touch,
which could have changed the whole show's atmosphere.
Considering that Timeranger has sci-fi elements such as the 30th century future and aliens it wouldn't be strange for such a character to appear,
but by avoiding such an obvious route, the show acheived the realism for which it is highly praised.
The uncanny depiction of Sion blending naturally into the 20th century lifestyle despite being an alien is one of Timeranger's defining attributes.
I had always felt that Ayase and Sion's positions slightly overlapped, and it turns out that some aspects of their characters were exchanged,
which is why they start to appear similar, even if that's not the case at first.
Ayase's character also went through a lot of changes, and it seems like some aspects of him weren't completed until the last minute.
Personally I feel like he stands out the least in the finished product, and if his position were that of the machine-tinkering young man, rather than having a terminal illness, that may have been even moreso.
That would also have made him too similar to Nagare from the previous year's Go Go Five.
The setting of the pretentious celebrity sounds interesting, but that would leave him without anything to do at Tomorrow Research.
Ayase seeming not to stand out is due to his internally facing his illness and restraining his emotions, staying cool and not sharing much of himself with others,
and once we understand how that character setting came to be, it isn't really true that he doesn't stand out at all.
Domon's character hardly existing at all until the later stages of planning is also interesting.
In the end, he becomes a somewhat typical yet unique character.
Yuuri originally was also nothing like the character she ended up being, 
and her character and positioning were greatly changed when Kobayashi Yasuko became the main writer, when she became the Yuuri that we know.
It's explained simply in the above interview, but considering that we now live in a world where a boy can transform into a Pretty Cure main character,
I want to draw attention to how the writers made Yuuri into the effective leader and stronger than the other characters 20 years ago.
On the other hand, Tatsuya's character is the only one who doesn't seem to have changed very much,
just with his preferred martial art changing to karate from kendo. I wonder what Naoto Takizawa's original setting was like.
He appears when the story is already well developed, so I imagine his setting was created from the early stages.
In that case, one can imagine that one of the members may have become a suited actor, like in Zenkaiger.
However, we already saw something similar with the Hazardian Dappu in Carranger, so it wouldn't be new.
Including an alien character who looks like and is treated like a human was actually a fresher and more innovative idea.
Considering convergent evolution such as carcinisation, in which all crustaceans evolve into a crab-like shape, an alien member who looks no different from a human may actually be more realistic.
They're talking about Sion here, but if we apply it to the whole series, we can understand why the alien TTPB members in episode 1 were all so humanoid.
This clarifies that the instant alien we took such issue with wasn't just lazy character design,
but rather an attempt not to go with a typical alien depiction. (It does seem like the horn idea they mention might have ended up as this faux hawk though.)
I feel like I can finaly forgive him. The result we see here was their attempt to "emphasize the actor's characteristics."
By the way, I imagine Sion would have had a much harder time blending into the 20th century if he had pointy ears and a horn.
In the booklet that comes with the DVD,
Sion's actor Kuranuki Masahiro mentions that he wore three quarter length pants to the audition, which the director really liked,
and reading that together with the above comment suggests that the inspiration the directors received from the three quarter length pants Kuranuki Masahiro just happened to be wearing that day must have been a deciding factor in Sion's character image.
Sion wears three quarter length pants in both summer and winter. He was originally planned as a serious swordsman character, but his being shifted closer to a 2d character like Koshiro (Izzy) from Digimon must be due to his Hikarigaoka-kids-like three quarter length pants!
Thanks to the creators pushing against stereotypes 20 years ago, not just Yuuri, but all of the characters don't seem old-fashioned even today.
For example, in the famous film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the visuals and themes are still futuristic even today, but the society seems stuck in the era that the movie was made.
(That's interesting in itself however.) In other words, the Timerangers don't seem like products of the show's era.
After Timeranger he actually played Okita Souji on stage,
so it makes sense that he would be chosen in the initial auditions. The right picture is him at that stage.
(Okita Souji was a young sword master in the Shinsengumi who died early due to a sickness.
He often appears in anime and games, so many people may know him.)
It seems like the professor-like aspect of the character must have been passed onto Tac.
By the way, I've long had a theory that the actor who plays Urawa Makoto in Chapter 17,
seen to the left here, was originally auditioning for the part of Time Green, and considering that about a third of the other roles he's played are for young samurai in period dramas,
the above information seems to add evidence to my theory if we imagine that he was being considered for the original character setting.
It seems like Kobayashi's answer above may be why Ayase's job doesn't feel very futuristic compared to Domon's "New Century Grappling."
I wonder if my insticts were right and the setting as a pretentious celebrity was really based on Kawamura Ryuichi?
Speaking of which, Ryuuichi likes racing and owns his own racing team, so I think there's a good chance that Ayase's character was based on him.
This explanation sounds like a masterpiece dish being created out of leftovers from the fridge.
(The picture is a dish called Sweet Strawberry Pasta from a famous cafe called Mountain in Aichi Prefecture.
They also have Matcha Adzuki Pasta, Banana Pasta, and Apple Pasta. I chose this as an example of "a masterpiece dish created out of leftovers,"
but these dishes aren't actually made from leftovers and are supposedly quite delicious.)