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There're some Mamoru Oshii book lists on the Internet, but they don't have detailed explanations about the contents. My Mamoru Oshii book collection is far from complete, but I'd like to write some short summaries for each of those books.
I apologize in advance for grammatical errors and misinformation.
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title: 人狼マニアックス
(JIN-ROH MANIAXX)
release: 10/01/2000
publisher: Kadokawa Shoten
[contents]
analysis of Little Red Riding Hood
summary of Kerberos universe
character list of JIN-ROH
analysis of the protect-gear's variations
summary of JIN-ROH
interview with Hiroyuki Okiura
analysis of JIN-ROH's layouts
interview with Mamoru Oshii
interview with Kenji Kamiyama
interview with Hiromasa Ogura
design sheets of JIN-ROH
interview with Tetsuya Nishio
interview with Tadashi Hiramatsu
interview with Kazuchika Kise
interview with Takashi Watanabe
interview with Kazuhiro Wakabayashi
interview with Hajime Mizoguchi
interview with Yoshikatsu Fujiki and Sumi Muto
essay by Maki Watanabe
essay by Shinsuke Nakajima
essay by Takao Komine
the original script of JIN-ROH by Mamoru Oshii
staff list of JIN-ROH
[review]
“MANIAXX” is Kadokawa Shoten's anime database book brand. Only JIN-ROH's issue and WXIII's issue were published under that brand.
This book is very important because it includes Oshii's original script of JIN-ROH.
Okiura's film is mostly failthful to the script, but there're some big changes:
*Fuse and Kei's dating scene is very different from the script. It originally takes place in a planetarium. Fuse talks about shooting stars and dogs in that scene. Oshii thought it is the most important scene. However, Okiura deleted it because it's too abstract and dialogue-heavy. Okiura changed the planetarium into the park and the department store. He also deleted the abstract dialogue. Oshii's symbolic story about dogs and human beings is water-downed in the film. The planetarium idea was reused in the Panzer Cop series.
*The gore dream scene is not in the script. Oshii was aware that the Little Red Riding Hood symbol is related to sexual violence, but he didn't emphasize that aspect in the script. He was so shocked and amazed by Okiura's rendition of the scene. "I didn't know that Okiura had such a sexual desire. It's deeply erotic, not like the current anime's bishoujo stuff", he says.
*Fuse asks Kei in the film, "Aren't you going to run?" On the other hand, he just tells her to come with him in the script. She doesn't cry nor says, "At least I know I would have had a place in your heart". Oshii's Kei was just a symbolic character without agency. Okiura added humanity and drama to her.
*Okiura added the scene where Henmi comes to see Fuse before the climax. Okiura tried to show Fuse's emotion towards the situation.
In the interview part, Oshii says that the Tokyo Olympics changed Tokyo and Japan forever. He says the same thing in "Thus Spoke Tachiguishi" too. Before Tokyo Olympics, Japan could have become a different type of nation. People lost against the government, Japan started to be an empty economic superpower. It became a shallow and exclusive place. Kerberos Saga and Tachiguishi series are, in a sense, an antitheses of real Japan.
He also talks about his high school life. He joined the new-left movement because he had no other place. Many teenagers have similar problems even today, but they don't have their safe places. That problem is related to Japan's big change mentioned above.
Many people think, "something is wrong with this world". That's not an uncommon idea, but the situation is pretty different from the '60s and '70s. Today, so many people get addicted to fictions instead of changing the real world. Oshii doesn't necessarily think it is a bad thing, but he thinks that it was caused by the '60s-'70s big change. Tokyo Olympics was the turning point. Something happened around Tokyo Olympics, and Japan chose the wrong way.
At the end of the interview, he shows full respect for Okiura's achievement in JIN-ROH. It is the peak of Japanese realistic animation with no doubt, he says.
Kenji Kamiyama's interview is interesting as well. He explains that the glass reflections in JIN-ROH are not made by WXP. They used "super"/super-impose. Unlike WXP, dark parts fade away in superimpose reflections. That makes the reflections more realistic. Generally speaking, camera operators don't want to use super-impose because it damages perforations.
The same technique was used in water reflections. Ripples were animated with lith-film masks. By masking the super-imposed reflections, they made realistic ripples.
