Interview: The Staff of The World's Finest Assassin

The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in a Different World as an Aristocrat is an isekai reincarnation story about a professional assassin's attempts to assemble the ideal team for killing the Hero. ANN spoke to the original creator Rui Tsukiyo about the appeal of dark fantasy, as well as to the anime's director Masafumi Tamura and series composition writer Katsuhiko Takayama about their approach in adapting the story for anime.

©2021 Rui Tsukiyo, Reia/ KADOKAWA/ Assassin Aristocrat Partners

(For author Rui Tsukiyo) You have quite a reputation for writing dark and violent stories. What's the appeal of this kind of story to you?

TSUKIYO: The biggest advantage of writing dark and harsh worlds is that it makes the protagonist's exploits stand out. Overturning a sad and unfair situation has a lot of catharsis. That there is the appeal of a dark story. Also, I feel that readers these days are looking for protagonists who are decisive and ruthless above all else. A dark fantasy is compatible with that kind of character as well. For as long as the current trend continues, I think that the deep-seated popularity of dark fantasy will continue.

What do you think of assassins within the worldview of this work? Are they good, evil, or something in-between?

TSUKIYO: They are evil, but they are necessary to defeat an even greater evil. In Japanese, there's the expression “necessary evil,” and it's the most fitting in this case.

The World's Finest Assassin is set in the Alvan Kingdom, where the nobility has a strong influence. They inflict harm to the country through legal methods, and the nobles that make the people suffer are never held accountable for their actions. One could imagine that if left unchecked, they would even cause the country to crumble. Under these very specific circumstances, assassination is the only option. It is not justice; in a country with a judicial system, it would undoubtedly be evil. But if it weren't for that evil, it would be difficult to even live.

I think that's what gives this title a unique atmosphere.

©2021 Rui Tsukiyo, Reia/ KADOKAWA/ Assassin Aristocrat Partners

What's the appeal of protagonists who don't hesitate to kill when the situation demands it? Do you enjoy writing that kind of character more than someone who would worry over killing a person?

TSUKIYO: I prefer protagonists who don't hesitate. An assassin who hesitates in the first place would be a disaster. If they're going to hesitate in front of their target, then they shouldn't have taken the job in the first place.

Also, as I expressed before, readers these days are looking for strong and decisive protagonists, so I avoid writing characters who hesitate. That said, while it's good that they don't hesitate, a character who feels nothing after they kill is difficult for readers to sympathize with.

Don't hesitate before the act. But afterward they look back on what they have done and their heart is moved. By maintaining Lugh's humanity in this way, I myself can like him as a character and enjoy writing his story.

The relationship between Lugh and his father is warm but there's also a feeling of something uncomfortable. What did you keep in mind when writing their interactions?

TSUKIYO: The theme of The World's Finest Assassin is that an assassin who has lived his life as a tool comes to desire life as a human. By coming into contact with the warmth of the people around him, he grows. Right from the start, I decided that Lugh's parents would be kind and humane people that get involved with him deeply. Furthermore, his father Cian has to be a professional assassin whom Lugh can respect. From there I worked backwards and developed Cian's personality.

What's interesting is that in the anime's eighth episode, Cian says that it's fine for Lugh to quit as an assassin aristocrat. It wasn't part of the plot; it just naturally came from his mouth. It was a moment that made me aware that he wasn't just a character who acts according to predefined traits—I could write him as a person who lives and behaves like he's a natural part of the world.

©2021 Rui Tsukiyo, Reia/ KADOKAWA/ Assassin Aristocrat Partners

(For director Masafumi Tamura) This anime is a co-production between SILVER LINK. and Studio Palette. Could you describe how the work was divided between the two studios?

TAMURA: The odd-numbered episodes were handled by SILVER LINK., while Studio Palette handled the even-numbered episodes, the OP, and the ED.

The protagonist has three different voice actors throughout the series: Junpei Morita, Makoto Koichi, and Kenji Akabane. What were you looking for in each of their performances?

TAMURA: In order to pass down the elderly assassin's vibe and his manner of speaking, I had Koichi and Akabane sit in to observe Morita's voice recording sessions. Through this, they were able to become his successors.

I'm totally in love with Morita's voice; he nails the cool and capable guy. I told Koichi to maintain the elderly assassin's vibe; even as a child, he speaks in a calm and collected way and gives off the impression that he is never overly exerting himself.

I agonized a lot about the timing of the switch from Koichi to Akabane. I told Akabane that when the character speaks to the heroines, he is never flirtatious or tries to puff himself up. He always acts in accordance with his calculations and plans.

How did you decide on the flow of the action scenes? To what degree did you visualize each character's fighting style during the pre-production? How much was left to the individual staff members of each episode to improvise?

TAMURA: When creating the action scene at the start of episode 1, I wanted it to be easy to discern each character's position. I handled the storyboards for the fantasy world scene at the start; it took around two hours just to think of the cuts for Tarte's spear action scenes in particular. When figuring out the character positions, the camera work, and the action, I didn't use any 3D work or motion capture; I completed it all with just hand drawings.

I experimented and challenged myself with all sorts of things. Because the magic is used by shooting a gun, I put magic circles inside the light of the muzzle flash. I also made sure Tarte shoots out clovers because that symbol is one of her charm points.

As for the individual animators, I made sure to ask ones who are skillful at action to handle those scenes. It's not something everyone can do, after all.

©2021 Rui Tsukiyo, Reia/ KADOKAWA/ Assassin Aristocrat Partners

The opening animation directed and storyboarded by Ayaka Nakata is very stylish. What kind of discussions did you have about the opening?

TAMURA: When putting in my requests for the opening theme song, I asked for a piece that conveys the image of the duality of light and shadow in the form of a change of key. When I heard the demo song, I was a little uncertain because it sounded too cool as an anime song… but an idea for the opening visuals immediately popped into my head.

At first, I intended to draw the storyboards for the opening myself, but I had difficulty putting the image in my head to paper myself. While I was deliberating over it, I got introduced to Ayaka Nakata from Studio Palette. When I saw some of the footage she'd created, I felt in my gut that she was the one, so I excitedly asked for her to take on the production.

For our meetings about the opening, I listened to the song with Nakata and told her about my image for the sequence: Light and dark, a black-and-white monotone, colors that gradually manifest, each character appearing as the song modulates, silhouettes inside silhouettes, and so on. If I recall correctly, the meeting took around four hours.

For her own part, Nakata was reading the script, so she had a great deal of understanding of the story. The meeting went very smoothly; we had fun and went into a lot of depth. And when I saw the storyboards she submitted, it was 200%—no, 300% greater than the visuals I wanted to do. I was so moved that it made me want to participate in the opening myself, so I drew the part where Tarte walks and treads on a mask.

I fell head over heels in love with Nakata's visual sense.

(For series composition writer Katsuhiko Takayama) What was your first impression of the original work?

TAKAYAMA: Web novels and isekai reincarnation stories are popular in Japan right now, but this was actually my first time working with the genre. The way the protagonist exploits the change in environment and the technological gap in order to obtain a superior power is a staple in classic fantasy/science fiction. It brought to mind things like Starwolf, The Skylark of Space, and A Princess of Mars, which made me feel nostalgic. It's very interesting how this kind of narrative structure has seen a revival in today's isekai reincarnation stories.

How did you decide on the number of volumes that the anime would cover?

TAKAYAMA: We started with the fact that it would be 12 episodes in total and worked backward from there. We figured out the point where we wanted to conclude with the final episode, and then we figured out whether each of the individual episodes leading up to that point could be developed into satisfying stories. The light novel editorial department and the producers from various places gave us various suggestions, but director Tamura and I were almost exactly alike in our thinking, so we came to a decision regarding these points.

If we were to just follow the overarching plot and focus on the story developments, then we would be able to get through a lot of volumes, but it would have a lot less dramatic weight. The drama develops according to the emotions of the characters. Focusing on the plot over the character drama would be fine for an anime that's concerned with the main subject of the story, but it could cause the individual episodes to have a disjointed theme, depending on how the source material is arranged. Having said that, if you were to create all 12 episodes with a sparse number of events, then the story developments would be too slow and it could become boring.

This time, we decided on making it a story where the characters live and struggle with drama. In order to depict the drama, you need to see it unfold in real time, so we approached this adaptation with an emphasis on giving the individual episodes a sense of weight. Honestly speaking, even with this approach, we didn't have enough time. If we were to keep the 12-episode structure but give each episode five more minutes, then I think the end result would have been even more compelling.

©2021 Rui Tsukiyo, Reia/ KADOKAWA/ Assassin Aristocrat Partners

What kind of challenges do you face when it comes to adapting a novel to anime? How does it compare to adapting a manga or writing for an original anime?

TAKAYAMA: It's simplest to write the script of an original anime. The reason is because you can write a screenplay tailored for the anime format from the start, so you can focus on the creative work. When you're adapting something for anime, it might lighten your workload to trace the source material directly, but there's no guarantee that you'll recreate the appeal of the source novel. Fans who have read the source material beforehand might enjoy it as “confirmation work,” but the audiences experiencing the title for the first time (especially seasoned anime fans) will sense that it's an unpolished script for an anime.

A novel is created to suit the storytelling format of a novel. A manga is created for the manga format, and a game is created for the game format. When you're trying to adapt that into anime, you won't be able to express the appeal if you don't tell the story in a way that suits anime. You might even ruin it. With that in mind, it's necessary to adapt the original story to a script while changing it to suit the anime medium. You have to jump through a lot of hoops on a practical level on top of the creative work, so it's quite a handful.

In particular, when it comes to a novel written in first-person like this one, it's not very compatible with a visual medium that depicts the events through the third-person perspective of a camera. In a first-person novel, the reader experiences the events alongside the protagonist, so even during a lull in the story or drama, there are plenty of scenes that are interesting to read. It's the same appeal as an RPG or visual novel. Unfortunately, if you transplant that into a third-person visual adaptation or express aspects of the story through the environments, then it could result in a boring scene in some cases.

So what are you supposed to do? The answer is different every time. If there's one thing I can say, it's that I always aim to write a fitting script that makes the story feel like it was penned as an original anime right from the very start. It is very difficult to do this if you lack the fundamental skills to write an original anime in a compelling way.

Which anime-original scenes are particularly memorable to you?

TAKAYAMA: It has to be episode 1. We wrote scenes set in the future and past by extrapolating from the source material's themes. We were able to express a precise and holistic view of the series with the future scene of Lugh carrying out his assassination duties with his team of heroines and in the pre-reincarnation scene of his life as a grizzled assassin.

The bulk of the additional scenes within the series proper were written through interpolation. Almost all of them involve fleshing out the descriptions within closed scenes in the source novel, so there's nothing that deviates wildly from the original. But episode 1 has original scenes that were not touched on directly in the source material. We wrote scenes before and after the start of the main story in a way that builds on the themes without taking the viewer out of the story.

©2021 Rui Tsukiyo, Reia/ KADOKAWA/ Assassin Aristocrat Partners

The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in a Different World as an Aristocrat anime is streaming on Crunchyroll.