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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: AVALON "PRE-PRODUCTION BOOK"
release: 07/25/2001
publisher: Bandai Visual
[contents]
proposal document and commentary
proposal document 1
proposal document 2
draft script and commentary
draft script
storyboard and commentary
storyboard
mechanical design sheets
biography of staff and cast
staff & cast credit
dub cast credit
[review]
This is a collection of Avalon's preproduction document. It is included in Avalon DVD Memorial Box.
It covers a full storyboard of Avalon, but that's not so important. The storyboard is not so different from the actual film.
What matters is the proposal documents. Those documents reveal that the early ideas were pretty different from the film. For example, the protagonist is a man called Ryu in the early version. He dived into Avalon to find out his buddy called Rei.
Oshii put a memo into the early document. In that memo, Oshii shows some inspiration sources:
Game freaks should be like characters from "The Warriors" or "A Clockwork Orange". Oshii also says that Avalon's world should be different from so-called "cyberpunk" worlds like AKIRA or Blade Runner.
Futuristic production design tends to look cheap, so Oshii decided to use more traditional aesthetics in Avalon. Oshii introduces "1984", "The Element of Crime", and "Fahrenheit 451" as inspiration sources.
An inspiration source of the game idea is Wizardry. (According to another book, Oshii heard of Wizardry from Kazunori Ito. Before that Oshii was so addicted to Ultima that he openly said "my job is Ultima".)
The main characters were supposed to go to "The Sunken Labyrinth" in this early version. The protagonist looks for his friend called Rei in that labyrinth. Oshii calls it "a near-futuristic version of Apocalypse Now".
The "ghost" girl already exists in this version, but "Nine Sisters" doesn't appear yet.
In the next document called Ver.25, the story became pretty similar to the film. The protagonist was changed to a woman called "Ash". Bishop, Stunner, Ash's dog, Wizard, Class REAL, and many other ideas already exist in this version.
However, the ending is different from the film. In this version, Murphy's corpse doesn't disappear. When Ash looks at dead Murphy and looks back, Ghost/ the girl is smiling there.
Those two versions are Oshii's original plots.
From the next version, Kazunori Ito joined and wrote the script. It seems that the idea of Nine Sisters was added at this phase.
Ito wrote it in a full script format, so it has scene headings. The storyline is almost the same as Oshii's second plot and the film, but Ito added more explanatory words into the script. Ash speaks more than her in the film.
The ending is different from the film. Murphy sinks into the underground after his death. Ghost/ girl takes Ash to the outside of the building. Ash sees a huge ad board of "Avalon" there, and an unrealistic flying wing aircraft comes in.
After finishing Kazunori Ito's script, Oshii went on a location hunting tour to Poland. After coming back to Japan, he started making a storyboard.
The iconic line, "Don't let appearance confuse you", was added at this phase.
By the way, Murphy's last line is "事象に惑わされるな" in the Japanese version. It can be directly translated as "Don't let things confuse you." That "things" obviously has a philosophical context. It is the same thing as Husserl's "Thing and Space". I'm not sure how intentional Oshii was in choosing that word. If he was aware of the context, "appearance" doesn't look like a perfect translation. Maybe Oshii tried to say something about epoché. Murphy should say "Go back to things themselves" in that case, though.
