#ichiro okouchi

[randomrichards]

SPY X FAMILY CODE: WHITE

To win a baking sale

Forgers go on vacation

Swallow states secrets

[des-shinta]

Shinta Reviews: Code Geass Part 2: R1 sect

The utterly massive Code Geass Review continues with a discussion of the principle players, and R1's story events.

[ericmicael]

After I found someone saying: "Idina Menzel is against Elsa being a lesbian", I found someone saying "Ōkouchi is against SuleMio" hahaha

[darthcontusion]

I remember when Okouchi was announced for G Witch and I watched the first episode and my first thought was "oh no i remember table kun he's going to be weird about this" and he was so fucking normal i'm really proud of him

[danceofthephilos]

Ichiro Okouchi Interview (SK8 the Infinity Official Guide Book)

Skateboarding was the peak of fun.

Series Composition & Screenwriter Ichiro Okouchi*

*(though his name is romanized "Ohkouchi" in the book, I'm choosing to write it "Okouchi" as he is usually called in English-language sources.)

PROFILE

Screenwriter and novelist. He was in charge of the series composition and screenplays for major works such as Lupin the Third PART 5, Princess Principal, and Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, among others.

—First, how are you feeling now that episode 12 has finished airing?

FAN & FUN! In working on this series, I myself became a FAN of it, and it was a FUN series to create.

—Could you give us your honest impressions of what you thought when you heard the outline for the series?

When I heard it was an original work by Director Utsumi, I accepted right then. Utsumi-san's series have been so enjoyable to watch, after all. I only heard definitively that it was going to be a skateboarding anime after that. I had never ridden a skateboard before, but working with Utsumi-san was so appealing that I wasn't anxious in the slightest.

—Do you have any favorite episodes, or scenes that left an impression on you?

Episode 2 might be the one that made the most lasting impression on me. How I imagined episode 2 and the episode 2 the director wanted to create were different, so it was the episode that made me think, "Ah, it's this kind of series," and solidified the "image" of SK8 the Infinity in my heart. Thinking back on it, it was an important episode.

—Were there any episodes or behind-the-scenes developments that you hated to cut? (lit. "cut while crying")

There are! But, I can't say definitively that we won't use them in the future, so they're secret!

—Do you have a favorite character? Could you explain your reason why?

I like all of them, so it's difficult to single one out. Langa is dazzling, I love him. Reki, I understand your feelings! MIYA is a good kid who diligently worries about others. Shadow, I'm glad you grew up into a lovable character. Joe is an incredible adult, and if I were a woman I'd fall in love with him. Cherry Blossom might be the most pure-hearted. ADAM is the most incredible heel character, and elevated this work to the next level. Kikuchi, please keep supporting Ainosuke from now on!

—Could you tell us your impressions of the voice cast?

Of course everyone's performances were excellent, and the arrangement and balance of the youth and adult groups was wonderful too.

—Can you tell us about the appeal of skateboarding we felt in the series?

As the line in the series goes, "fun!" is what it's about. Not just when you're skating yourself, but talking to your friends, seeing your buddies' tricks, diligently practicing, and falling down are all fun. I interviewed all kinds of skaters, and it was striking how all of them made even the painful parts sound fun.

—Could you tell us any stories you would like to include in a spin-off?

I already wrote two spin-off scripts for the Blu-ray and DVD bonus CDs, so if possible, I'd like to write a continuation of the original work next.

—Do you have any anecdotes about Okinawa, the setting for the series?

The production staff and I all took our skateboards and went on a location hunt around Okinawa. It was spring, but it was already incredibly hot, and we had to scramble to buy hats. In that brightly saturated scenery, skateboarding was the peak of fun.

—If "S" opened in the real world, what part do you think you'd be most interested in?

I'd be happy to be an irresponsible spectator. But I'd at least like to try participating by Adam dragging me by the leg around a corner. (laughter)

—Can you send a message to all the fans who loved SK8 the Infinity?

Thank you so much for watching and loving SK8 the Infinity! The responses echoed stronger and stronger with each episode and filled all of us creators with strength. It was a work where we could feel the strength of everyone's support in a way that's only possible in this era of social media. I'm grateful!

(from SK8 the Infinity OFFICIAL GUIDE BOOK, released December 22nd 2021)

[retro-friki]

I have the attention span of a very nervous squirrel which often results on me starting to read or watch stuff and then completely forgetting about it without even finishing it. I just remembered that I never finished reading the Utena light novels, and also that I was planing on watching Devilman Crybaby and writing about it after reading the manga. (I read the manga and watched a couple of episodes of Crybaby but didn't like how Ryo was changed, however I still think that I should watch the whole thing),

Anyway, I have been thinking of finally finishing the novels and the series and write about them eventually. On the other hand. Do I really want to metaphorically keep getting my face kicked by Ichiro Okouchi?

[suzalulusource]

It's a relationship you can't describe in a word. To simply call it friendship isn't quite right. [...] It's impossible to describe it in a word, but it's a very strong bond. Lelouch as a kid, Lelouch in school, Lelouch as Zero -- only Suzaku sees all of it. Kallen, Nunnally, C.C., even -- none of them sees all of [Lelouch]. Playing together, running away, living, killing each other, even the knowledge of their having killed their own fathers. In terms of revealing who they are, only these two are completely naked. This is probably why the two of them were able to team up in the end.

Ōkouchi Ichirō in an interview for Continue vol. 42 (translation by Celiss Galvea)

[themattress]

Gundam: The Witch From Mercury >>> Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion.

EXCEPT on one major count.

Ichiro Okouchi wrote both giant mecha anime series that balanced campy over-the-top spectacle and wacky school life shenanigans with serious socio-political and military writing along with mature philosophical and emotional themes. The largest differences is that Code Geass was divided into four cours (the first two being just Lelouch of the Rebellion and the second two being Lelouch of the Rebellion R2) while The Witch From Mercury was only two cours, and on Code Geass Okouchi was assisted in the writing process by Hiroyuki Yoshino, who is also known for extreme melodramatic works such as My-HiME and My-Otome.

While possibly an unpopular opinion, I believe that the lack of another pair of cours was actually good for Witch as it helped it avoid the fate that befell Geass. For all its gleeful stupidity, Geass had genuine substance and intrigue in its first pair of cours, and it all went out the window in the second pair. It was better Witch quit while it was ahead than risk the same happening to it. The lack of Yoshino also helped, as it meant Okouchi's worst instincts as a writer were more curbed rather than aided and abetted. A perfect example is to compare a major climactic event in Geass' first season vs. a similar one in Witch. In Geass, the big shark-jumping moment for the show was toward the end of its first season where a major political procedure centered around a princess wanting to do right by the people her family has oppressed but manipulated by more sinister interests was to occur, and of course it would all go wrong and there would be a lot of carnage and devastation that makes things worse instead of better. But instead of this being accomplished in a way that made logical sense that was set up by the narrative and the characters, it's because of an out-of-nowhere, completely uncharacteristic joke that happens to be made when a mind controlling power reaches the point of going outside its user's control. The mind-controlled princess goes on a civilian killing spree and in the end gets put down by a single bullet (which her nation's medical science can't treat despite saving a foreigner who was riddled with bullets several episodes earlier) so that her love interest feels man pain that will advance his character while all the potential of hers is casually discarded. This was the point where Geass lost its way.

By contrast, in Witch we have a major political procedure centered around a sort-of princess wanting to do right by the people her family has oppressed but manipulated by more sinister interests occurring, and of course it all goes wrong and there's a lot of carnage and devastation that makes things worse instead of better. But it is accomplished in a way that, shock of shocks, makes logical sense that was set up by the narrative and characters! It feels like a tragedy that was inevitable rather than one that happened out of nowhere because someone suddenly decided to make a joke about genocide. And of course, the princess-type character actually gets to live with the consequences and grow from them to redeem herself. This is what should have happened on Geass: Lelouch should have deliberately sabotaged Euphemia's procedure just as he was intending to, only to be met with unforeseen and unwanted consequences when Schniezel retaliates with extreme prejudice, similar to how Prospera's sabotage of Miorine ended up setting off Shaddiq to go full school shooter.

So, with all that said, what's the one major thing Geass has over Witch?

While in Witch the main protagonist is Suletta Mercury, her mother Prospera is the character with a more direct correlation to Lelouch: a strategically brilliant, personally manipulative and theatrically charismatic individual who wears a metallic mask and yearns for both revenge and the creation of a new, better world no matter how many lives they have to take to achieve these goals, and who will use their loved ones as a justification for the selfish things they do.

Even though Geass developed a bad habit in its second season of glorifying Lelouch despite his atrocities in order to pander to his popularity, it never fully lost the plot on him (that only happened in the later, separate continuity film Lelouch of the Resurrection, but we're not talking about that garbage here). The narrative's position was still that he did wrong and that he had to pay for it in the end; he himself acknowledged this and even ensured that it happened! Additionally, as awful as he could be Lelouch was a teenager, and he had been wronged when he was a mere child, so there was still a degree of sympathy and leeway that the viewer could offer him, since the adults and systems in his life legitimately failed him.

Prospera, on the other hand, ended up feeling validated for all of the horrible actions she undertook. Instead of accepting and facing the consequences like Lelouch did, she gets off scot-free because someone else rather spontaneously decides to take the blame for her. Her living victims forgive her and the dead people she was seeking revenge for even show up to say they're proud of her! The discussion that she created more victims and by her own vengeful logic is fair game to be targeted for revenge by one of them is never had! Worse is that she was already a grown woman when the tragedy that sparked her into seeking revenge and a better world transpired, and roughly half of her villainy involves manipulating children! Many viewers say the sudden endgame Death Star type laser was the worst thing Witch did, but I beg to differ: that would have been fine had Okouchi been granted more time to set it up, which would have happened if he wasn't forcibly saddled by the higher-ups with a subplot he never intended to eat up the time that it did (Guel and his stupid family drama). There is no such excuse with this decision. Okouchi just decided she was an uwu victim.

I can accept the Death Star type laser. I can even accept Suletta's big Deus ex Machina peace-sparking victory in the final battle because that's kind of a Gundam franchise tradition at this point and there have been far worse versions of it. But I cannot accept a murderous terrorist facing no repercussions and even getting rewarded for their crimes in the end. For all that went wrong in it, Geass knew (at its time as a series anyway) that Lelouch couldn't live Happily Ever After in a peaceful world with his sister; not after he'd denied so many others that same chance. But Prospera gets to live Happily Ever After in a peaceful world with the daughters and daughter-in-law that she abused, and we're just supposed to be OK with that.

You did better here overall, Okouchi, but you still need to go back to writing school.

[recents]

is anyone else obsessed with suicidal characters who have had magical spells or curses put on them so that they can’t ever intentionally try to harm themselves no matter what. body just stops moving. or they’re immortal. and they feel trapped. furious. anyone else think about that situation. hello

[paxesoterica]

Okouchi's a funny guy.

On the one hand, his writing for Princess Principal, Seven Days War, and now Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury does feel like a sincere apology for being weird about lesbians during his Code Geass era, which is a character arc I'd be happy see more writers and artists undertake.

On the other hand, while the queer characters are very likely to live, they and the audience *will* be put through the emotional wringer, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"episode 11 was such a great christmas gift from Okouchi to us c:" DO NOT TRUST HIS LIES. WE WERE MEANT TO GET EPISODE 12 IN CHRISTMAS DAY. DO NOT LET HIM FOOL YOU

[md-guel]

it just occurred to me to back up my stock knowledge with some research

[klug]

I'feel like I have to apologize for gwitch being my first Gundam but well.its not my first mecha I guess

[arbitrarygreay]

Okay, I can't just ignore this. Planetes is a hard science fiction manga and anime about a timeline where the Earth's geopolitical situations already deteriorate a lot by the early 2000s, WW3 happens, and people are regularly going to and working in orbit and on the moon by 2075. Planetes is pretty critically acclaimed! Both the manga and anime are award winning! The writing is quite conscientious about nuance and research and thinking seriously about how various systems make it unfair about the common man all across the globe. For example, for a global corporation working in space, it makes sense that the staff is equally global. We've got Americans, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, and English all working together on the same station. The aspects of living in space, in low-grav and no-grav, as well as the hazards of space walks, debris, and radiation, are all intricately detailed. Except we have a gigantic problem, demonstrated in the anime in episode 11. The story has set up this beautifully complex woman, Claire Rondo. In episode 11, we learn that she fled to the US as a child refugee from South America. She was illiterate at the time, so she doesn't know how to speak or read her native language. Her hard work ethic (determinedly climbing the management track) and very controlled demeanor speaks to a fear of falling back into poverty, which sometimes manifests as a disdain of lower class behavior. Nonetheless, she is drawn to the ideals and integrity of our blue collar protagonists. So far, so good, right? It gets better! In episode 11, she is confronted with a person who also fled the same country as a kid, just like her, but instead of remaining an expatriate, he returned as an adult to try and make things better for his native country, willing to battle international discrimination and classism in the process. Claire is forced to confront her own conflicted third culture kid feelings. This is great! Except, which South American country is this? Well, this is a world in which WW3 has obviously devastated the global south, so the expected areas of conflict have fractured into entirely new nations from what we know. So, what imaginary country will this well-researched, nuance-driven story come up with? Will it be a pidgin creole of Spanish, Portuguese, and English, or perhaps it will be a return to a local indigenous ethnicity? El Tanika. Featuring Lake Wagutchi. Has its own spoken AND written language, El Tanikan. Featuring such names as Caligan Parak, Sistero Tados, and Nurgan Ogran. This is a South American nation. And the most frustrating part is, no one else on the internet has apparently picked up on how this utterly undercuts the entire story, taking it from "well meaning empathy" to "staggeringly racist" in one fell swoop? Some people even cite 11 as their favorite episode, as incisive and powerful political analysis? "What if the Harry Potter books featured an entire arc centered on anti-Asian racism, but her name wasn't even Cho Chang, it was Zacki Gato, and she had immigrant feelings about not knowing her native language, Swatokaa? (developed and spread, including an entire writing system, from scratch within 4 decades)"

[paxesoterica]

You should check out the film Seven Days War sometime; it's pretty chill despite the fact that schoolchildren under siege by the police in an abandoned factory is a major part of the plot. It's not mecha, and the ending's a little abrupt, but it's also one of the better coming of age films I've seen in awhile.

I’m honestly surprised G-Witch was as tame and functional as it was given Okouchi. Everything I’ve seen by him is nuts.

[lamalamam]

the witch from mercury 🤝 code geass

(spoiler)

[danceofthephilos]

Who founded S, and when?

In episode 4 of SK8's dub, Reki refers to Joe and Cherry as "founders" of S, and this has led to a pretty widespread conception in the English-speaking fandom that the two of them were... well, S's founders alongside Adam, that it started when the three of them were in school, that they're still involved in it on a managerial level, or even claims that they founded it first and Adam stole it after the fact.

But what is actually being said here?

It's the word "初期メンバー" that was translated as "founders" in the dub, and while it can mean "founding members", in a sense, there is no implication in the word 初期 of actively being involved in creating something, simply that they were the earliest members (it means "in the initial stage.")

Even more telling is Reki's use of みんな - he's talking about a larger group than two people here. He's not setting Joe and Cherry apart as "founders", he's counting everyone who skated at S at the beginning as "初期メンバー" and namedropping the two characters from that era whose names we know and who are going to be significant to the story. (This reference to "everyone" establishing that there's a larger group going unnamed is also cut from the dub; instead Reki says "Cherry, Joe... man, I bet they'd love to go off about that guy.")

Conversely, looking at how Adam is described...

...it's pretty straightforward.

He's also described in his profile on the official website (and consistently in other official sources that use these character profiles) as 創設者, which does mean founder, explicitly referring to "the person who first established something."

Cherry and Joe, meanwhile, are both referred to as Sの実力者のうちの1人, or "one of the big names at S." They're certainly both respected, influential people within the community - recognition they've earned, not something they're set apart for in any "official" capacity. They've never been described in an official source as 創設者, or in any other way that would indicate they were involved in S's creation rather than simply being two powerful people in the community as it exists now.

There are a few other details that tie into establishing this - mainly disproving the notion that Adam stole something already existing. In episode 5, as they're fleeing from the police, Tadashi says this...

...indicating that Crazy Rock was part of a regular police patrol route before Adam was able to use his money/influence to have it removed, something that Cherry and Joe (particularly years ago, when Cherry wouldn't have had the money he's earning now) would not have had the power to do.

And in episode 12, when discussing the change in course, Joe says this:

Literally saying "it became banned", this is wording on Joe's part that would make no sense for a decision he was involved in. He's describing this as something that happened totally separate from him. Early enough that the funeral course was still being used, Joe (and presumably also Cherry) were not making calls about the management of S like this.

There's also a relevant quote from SK8's screenwriter, Ichiro Okouchi:

When considering Adam as a character, I thought he would need someone beside him. If Kikuchi wasn't there, Adam would become a character who would do nothing but talk to himself, and it would be difficult for Adam to manage S alone.

(spoon.2Di, volume 72)

Part of Tadashi's entire conceptualization as a character was because without him, Adam would be running S alone. Early enough in the development in the series that Tadashi hadn't properly been created yet, S was imagined as something solely belonging to Adam.

Adam is S's founder; Joe and Cherry were simply in the initial group of members, along with other people who haven't yet been named.

Additionally, from only a few pieces of dialog it's possible to narrow down when Adam started S - and it wasn't during the DK era. When Joe interrupts Reki in episode 4, he says this:

Earlier in the same episode, Cherry says this:

And the two of them have this exchange at the beginning of episode 9:

Adam, Joe and Cherry are all 26 years old (25 going on 26, in Cherry's case; he hasn't actually had his birthday by the end of season 1, but this is normal for how ages are listed for anime characters.) Seven years ago would have been the end of their last year of high school (Adam, as the oldest of the three of them, would have turned 19 just over a month after graduating high school.)

When Adam skated with Joe and Cherry was seven years ago, before he left for America, and he hasn't accepted any of their challenges since he returned to Japan. In Joe's words, this time skating together was "way before S started."

So, all together:

For some time in high school, Adam, Joe and Cherry all skated together as a group (sometimes with some other friends/gang members.) Seven years before SK8 season 1 takes place, Adam was sent away to America by his father, ending his friendship with Joe and Cherry. Some time after that (presumably upon his father's death,) he returned to Japan and founded S with Tadashi to assist him in managing it, using his influence to remove the abandoned mine from regular police patrols to protect it, and Joe and Cherry were among a larger initial group of skaters who competed at the time. Since then, he's never agreed to a beef with Joe or Cherry despite them challenging him many times, so neither of them have skated with him since S started.

TL;DR - Adam is the person who started S and he and Tadashi were always conceptualized as the only people running it, and the idea that Adam, Joe and Cherry founded it as a trio comes from a mistranslation in the dub.