Crunchy Roll Virtual Expo 2020
Live on the Hime Stage, we were shown a brief clip about the upcoming Shenmue: The Animation.
We were given a short synopsis of the series by the host of the live stream, and then we were pleasantly greated with a short Q&A with Shenmue creator & animation Executive Producer Yu Suzuki, and also, new to the Shenmue family, the animations Director, Sakurai Chikara.
Below is the transcript from the Q&A:
Crunchyroll: What key themes do you want to see in the animated Shenmue?
Yu Suzuki: Shenmue focuses on themes like love, courage, friendship and family which are understood around the world. My hope is that it will express the culture and spirit of Japan at the same time
Crunchyroll: How do you expect fans to feel about the animated Shenmue?
Yu Suzuki: Shenmue’s oldest fans have followed the series for 15 or 20 years now. Part of being that kind of fan is accepting everything about Shenmue, so i think they’ll accept the anime just as warmly
Crunchyroll: What were you excited about being the director for Shenmue?
Mr Chikara Sakurai (Anime director): I mentioned that i was too poor to buy the game when it came out. But I wanted to learn as much about it as i could for free. Getting to finally play it now….its hard to describe. It gave me this very strange feeling. It’s like, I can finally do something i couldn’t do then, so i need to make sure not to go out of control. I had to avoid this feeling of “I couldn’t do this back then, so now I should be able to do what I want with it” I needed to restrain myself and preserve the game’s integrity. I dont know if that answers the question, but that was my approach.
You can watch the full clip taken from Crunchy Roll Expo 2020 live stream here:
Thanks to Crunchy Roll for this fantastic event and footage! We’re super excited to see what’s coming next for Shenmue: The Animation.
