Director Masahiro Ando talks about “Sword of the Stranger”

“The Core of the Beginning and the Plan”

It all began when producer Masahiko Minami from BONES asked me for a proposal for a new movie. I am a director who started out as an animator. So I chose action as a genre because I wanted to do a movie where I would have fun moving the characters around. I chose the samurai genre because the feeling of tension around the core of the story, “living and dying as a human,” fit the action. The story being about a man and a boy was in the first short proposal, and that stayed until the end.

“The Historic Background and the Main Character”

I didn’t choose this genre to depict someone famous, so as a setting I chose a fictional country during a war-torn era, and I named the main character No Name to emphasize his anonymity. I hoped that this would make it easier for me and the viewers to empathize with him. This is a method used by director Akira Kurosawa and in Western films.

“The Difficulty of Samurai Anime”

A live action actor can act just by standing there, and can engage in sword fighting as many times as he wants to. But in animation the characters are fake, so we need to add something to make it seem real, or else no matter how many times we draw sword action scenes, the viewers will get bored. In order to continue the feeling of adventure, the story line before and after the sword fight needs to be more solid than in a live action film. So that is where we get creative.

“The Device of Sword Action”

The actual killing—the moment one unsheathes his sword and fights—will look nice as long as you leave it to a skilled animator. So as a director, I focus on the details of the setting of where they fight, the process leading up to the fight, the weather, and the time of day so that it looks natural. I try to make a realistic sequence and build up the tension of, “when will he unsheathe?” I believe this is the way to show sword action that viewers will remember.

“The Appeal of Fumihiko Takayama’s Script”

He is somebody that I always wanted to work with. When I talk with him, our values are very similar, and we were able to work together with the idea of making a classic samurai animation. And as you would expect given his reputation, it was a very solid script, and there is nothing vague about the characters and their words and actions. Everything is validated. The realism in this movie can probably be attributed mostly to the Takayama script.

“The Meaning Behind the Word ‘Stranger’ in the Title”

It’s a combination of a “peculiar guy” who sealed his sword in a time of war, and “alien or stranger.” This could point to No Name, Luo-Lang, or Kotaro. They are the ones who have fallen out of the normal social framework, meaning they are not involved in such things as social climbing, having large ambitions such as obtaining immortality, or creating a simple foundation such as a family. I commend the title to the way they live. Two of them are drawn to each other, and two of them will face one another in a battle that leads to death. Either way I wanted to draw out how “a man approves of another man” in this film.