EX: Ein's my favorite character!

WS: That explains a lot. (laughs)

EX: What is that supposed to mean? (laughs)

WS: Nothing... (laughs)

EX: It's Kawamoto-san's favorite character too!

WS: I know...

EX: Anyway, how did you come up with the data dog concept?

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Spoiler: WS: Well, you know his secret, right? There's a neural computer in his head. Anyway, Kawamoto-san likes characters who are talented but don't show it from their appearance. Ed is like that too. Anyway, (script writer) Nobumoto-san said "Let's put a dog in it!" She likes animals. So I proposed we make him in a special way... He's a genius dog, but he knows that if they find out he's a genius, he'll be sold to a circus. So he pretends to be a normal dog! We had an idea for an episode where it's all Ein's monologue in his head. But it didn't make it. It was the original idea for Episode 11, but we had to change it. At first, the idea was to hear the monologue without knowing who's talking and only figuring it out at the end. But there were many difficulties with this idea, and in the end we had to abandon it.

EX: If you had done it, who would you have cast as Ein's voice?

WS: I don't know... That would have been really hard.

EX: Kawamori-san also worked on COWBOY BEBOP. What did he contribute to the show?

WS: He did the terraforming concept at the very beginning and he came up with the idea of hyperspace. And, he and I did the story for Episode 18, "Speak Like a Child" together, but that was it.

EX: Is directing a movie different from directing a television series? How?

WS: Yes, it's very different. Because with a television series you can have a whole range of episodes—from comical to serious—but since a movie is one continuous thing, it would be very incoherent if I did the movie that way. That's the difficult part—mixing the right amount of comedy and serious essence to come up with the best end product.

EX: Did you have trouble finding a look for any one character?

WS: Ed. The original concept for Ed was a boy character. There was also another girl character originally on the crew. But eventually they just merged into this one character . Many anime had hackers, but we thought, "There's never been one like Ed before." It was very unique.
And what I said about the rejected designs not being used—that's not true for Ed. The "Boy Ed" character design was used in Episode 5 for one of the boys who stole the dirty magazine. He's the one with the cap.

EX: What's next?

WS: We have many things in development. After the BEBOP movie, we might do a promotional video for a musician in England, but I don't know about what's after that. My wish is to do a live-action movie and an anime TV series.

EX: What would you like to say to your fans outside of Japan?

WS: Thank you to those of you who have been supporting us. It might take a year to complete this movie, but please be patient and wait. We're making a good movie! And of course, Ein will appear!

EX: Yes!

Ein.

Special thanks to Hasegawa Hiromi for translation assistance during the course of this busy day.