Revolutionary Girl Utena Storyboards! Now on the Internet Archive!!
Hi! Vanna here! Did you know we have scanned copies of the production storyboards for a whole SEVEN out of 39 episodes of Utena? Not bad, I think!!! Most were donated kindly by cscratch, with me buying a couple myself.
I have uploaded all seven as PDFs to the Internet Archive, and you can grab them here. For now, a gallery tour!!! PART 1!
Episode 3: On the Night of the Ball, storyboarded by Kazuhisa Takenouchi
Known largely for his work on Dragonball, this is the only time Takenouchi works on Revolutionary Girl Utena. Episode 3 is notoriously one of the 'b-side' episodes in terms of animation quality, and was probably done out of house so to speak. It does include the banked opening fairy tale, which is incredible to see, as well as a lot of crossed out shots and dialogue. Lots to unpack on that.
Episode 6: Nanami-sama, Take Care!, storyboarded by Jun Matsumoto
Matsumoto will go on to storyboard several episodes, especially Nanami ones! The storyboard is titled episode 8, because these two episodes' releases were switched due to the speedier production of this episode. Originally, the curry episode was episode 6, with this being part of, starting with 8, an increasing focus on Touga and the people surrounding him and how they view him. I can definitely see how the flow would have been incredible if preserved this way, alas!! His storyboards are very clean, and tight. They appear to need little revision.
Episode 9, The Castle Said to Hold Eternity, storyboarded by Juugo Kazeyama, an alias of Takuya Igarashi
Kazeyama often works with Yoji Enokido on projects, and will continue to work on Utena throughout its run, and will even write episode 19, Song of the Fallen Kingdom. We have an interview with him that was published in The Art of Utena artbook translated to English, even! Check it out! We have him to thank for the tea on Akio Ohtori's intended age. ;D
Cool! I hope you liked! I ran out of time before break is over though, so you can catch the rest of our storyboards next time, or check them out yourself, again, either via the gallery, or the IA!
In 2020, there was a documentary hosted by Viktor Andrienko called The Star of David Cherkassky which went over his career and all his projects, I haven’t found any English subtitles for it, so I don’t know what they were talking about, yet I was intrigued by one section where they showed what I assume were some Radna Sakhaltuev storyboards from Treasure Island 1988 for a scene that wasn’t animated:
So it looks like Silver finds either Flint’s actual treasure or some other treasure, he goes to Las Vegas, brings back women, money, and wine, then the pirates and heroes get along with each other?
If anyone who’s seen this documentary knows that these were for, whether it be a deleted scene, an alternate ending, a commercial, or for some sequel project, let me know. You can watch the documentary here (the part showing these storyboards starts about 1 hour and 3 minutes in): https://youtu.be/jNSEMXVkMJs
youtube
One of these days I gotta get somebody to translate the full thing cause I’m sure there’s all sorts of trivia in there. Oh, they also show some more footage from the unfinished movie “Crazy Macaroni”, so that’s cool.
Now, I know this is not my usual content of action sequences.... But this was in my heart. I love me some 1980s and Donnie. It just works. Inspiration comes from the amazing Vee aka @risestarkissomega! Thank you for the wonderful fashion consultant! I had a lot of fun with this! Hope you do too!
The Fashion Advice!
Master Post
Depending on how work goes this year it might be a while before the actual final piece sees the light of day - so I'm releasing the animatic for the Guards! Guards! animated trailer on the unsuspecting public.
I was hoping it could work as both a trailer/intro animation to a non-existant Guards! Guards! animated show, and I think it turned out pretty neat! I hope you enjoy.