Not quite as lengthy as the .hack but some fine little blurbs from the cast and crew! Same formatting styles as that thread apply here. I get the impression is these interviews were probably done at the time of the first season was starting and probably before season 2 aired.
We asked each of the staff and cast members these three questions about Tsubasa:
Challenge: What was your biggest challenge
Impressions: What are your impressions of the series?
Message: Do you have a message for our readers Yui Makino (voice of Sakura)
Challenge: I was thrilled to play Sakura, but I knew it was a big role and big responsibility. I worked very hard to bring her to life.
Impressions: The original manga was so fantastic I just knew the anime would be a big hit, too. I think it's a show everyone can enjoy, regardless of age.
Message: My goal was to give people a sense of Sakura's warmth. I've been in the entertainment biz for a while now, but this was my first voice acting experience. I hope I lived up to everyone's expectations.
Miyu Irino (voice of Syaoran)
Challenge: Syaoran's an awesome character, so I knew i need to put a lot of work into the role. I was pretty worried about my delivery because i'm not the best speaker, but I just put in lots of practice and tried not to stumble over my lines.
Impressions: Tsubasa offers hopes and dreams. It's pure fantasy anime!
Message: I hope I was able to bring Syaoran across as I saw him-honest, passionate, and very cool.
[I don't know where the manga was chapter wise when the anime was being made but poor sweet Miyu, he has no idea what he's in for when we hit the Tokyo arc]
Daisuke Namikawa (voice of Fai) [the magazine uses the
Fay localization; makes sense given that was the convention from the early manga translations]
Challenge: Fai grins a lot, but there's something mysterious about him. Sometimes he'll interject something completely unexpected but always right on the mark. The hard part for me was keeping his presence strong while still making him hard to figure out.
Impressions: It was every bit as amazing as I knew it would be!
Message: Of course I put forth my personal best, but it was the atmosphere of cooperation that really made this production fun to work on.
Sayaka Ohara (voice of Yuko)
Challenge: Yuko is an otherworldly character who seems to have a bigger perspective on everything, but she's got some surprising vices. The mismatch between those two parts of her personality is what's most appealing, and I thought a lot about that as I played her. But most of all, I just tried to stay relaxed!
Impressions: I was impressed by the grand story. From the dimensions-crossing travels through other worlds to a whole host of encounters in each place, it's one wild ride!
Message: I felt incredibly lucky to be a part of this production. Oh, and if you need to travel through dimensions in search of a priceless object, just call the Dimension Witch!
Tetsu Inada (voice of Kurogane)
Challenge: To feel as much love for the character and story as I could muster.
Impressions: I hope this is one of the roles people remember me for.
Message: Kurogane and I had all kinds of fun in this show, maybe too much fun!
Mika Kikuchi (voice of Mokona)
Challenge: I was the only real novice in the cast, so I just tried to keep a positive attitude and do the best I could. I felt really lost during recording, especially at first, but Mokona is basically just talk, talk, talk, so the main thing for me was keeping the energy level up! [Kikuchi really comes from live action Super Sentai shows so she was really new to anime voice work at this time].
Impressions: The first time I saw the footage I was blown away by how beautiful it was! The production environment was really warm and friendly, and I hope that warmth came through for the viewers. This was a labor of love for everyone that was involved.
Message: Everyone else was so much more experienced than me, but I still tried to make Mokona as wonderful a character as possible. Age-wise, I was right in the middle, so I thought of myself as the one who was there to cheer everyone up. Tsubasa is just a beautiful, amazing story, I hope you all enjoy it! [Irino is my age so he would have been 15; i think the youngest of the cast]
Shinichiro Miki (voice of Touya)
Challenge: Nothing in particular stood out as a challenge.
Impressions: It's a terrific show.
Message: I just hope everyone likes it, I certainly did my best.
[well that was short and simple]
Kouki Miyata (voice of Yukito)
Challenge: I wanted to grow mature right alongside Yukito.
Impressions: Interesting characters, beautiful art, compelling setting-this show has it all!
Message: Now that Tsubasa is finally here, I promise it'll be every bit as good as you hoped! I put everything I had into Yukito, so I hope you enjoy the performance!
Kazuhiro Nakata [voice of Fei-Wang]
Challenge: It was hard to distill everything I knew about Fei-Wang into a concise performance that retained his tensions and focus while still portraying him as cool and calculating.
Impressions: I was most excited by the mystery of it all. What new and strange worlds would Syaoran and the others visit? I was on the edge my seat the whole time!
Message: I want people to feel the same anticipation I felt wondering what Fei-Wang's true intentions were and how he planned to carry out his grand schemes.
Sanae Kobayashi (voice of Xing-Huo)
Challenge: Nobody knew much about Xing-Huo at first because she didn't have many lines, and that made it hard to know how I fit into the production. The things Fei-Wang says are the only clues you have to go on, but I hope everyone can still find things to enjoy about the character.
Impressions: I was impressed by Syaorans's pure hearted devotion to Sakura. The underlying message is that you can be both strong and kind as long as you have someone to live for. This show inspired courage.
Message: Are you excited now that Syaoran's journey is at hand? Tsubasa is beautiful to watch, and I tried to make my performance worthy of the spectacular visuals!
Maaya Sakamoto (voice of Tomoyo)
Challenge: Princess Tomoyo comes off as easygoing, but she's got an inner core of pride and dignity that I wanted people to see.
Impressions: All along I knew this show was going to be something special. The art is beautiful and the voice acting's superb, not to mention the wonderful music and sound effects!
Message: I was lucky enough to get to sing the ending theme too! I think it turned into an amazing song that really matches the world of Tsubasa.
[Sakamoto seems to be a favorite of CLAMP she's been apart of a lot of anime before and after this]
Kaori Nazukia (voice of Chii)
Challenge: My main motivation was to truly enjoy playing my character. I tried to breathe life into each one of Chii's lines because the words themselves are significant.
Impressions: The thing that impressed me most was the hugeness of it all. The story is so epic and exciting to watch. I was eager to find out what would happen next!
Message: I was sad that my character didn't show up on screen so much, but I put all of the passion and energy I had into delivering the few lines I did get!
[at least she has a whole Season 2 episode!]
Yuko Kaida (voice of Souma)
Challenge: I wasn't sure at first how much screen time Souma would get, so I put a lot of effort into voicing every single line, trying to imagine all the twists and turns the story might take.
Impressions: All you have to do is watch and you can see how much loving care went into this production. It truly is a fantastic series!
Message: Tsubasa is a well-crafted production and I feel proud to have been apart of it. I did my best every step of the way, and I hope everyone loves it just as much as I do!
And now the staff:
Hiroyuki Kawasaki (scriptwriter)
Challenge: All through production, I stuck to the basic formula of having a climactic scene in the second half of each episode. The hard part was dealing with the huge amount of information tin the original story. Every time I picked up the manga and read a few pages it felt like my internal memory circuits were overloading!
Impressions: Tsubasa is brimming with interesting and appealing characters. Syaoran and the people he meets are all unique in their own way. I couldn't wait to meet up with them again and again every week the series was airing.
Message: My philosophy for the project was: Tsubasa no matter how you slice it" and we were able to achieve that by playing to all the strengths of the original manga. I'm certain this series will be remembered as a classic.
Kouichi Mashimo (director)
Challenge: During production, the Bee Train studio was in a constant state of pandemonium! Trying to keep on schedule for a TV production is more nerve-wracking than the most intense video game you can imagine. My challenge was to make sure we never lost our sense of humor.
Impressions: Tsubasa is the kind of show that slowly works its way into your heart.
Message: All I ask is that you watch the first episode and see for yourself.
Masashi Koizuka (art director) [though my research only lists him as a conceptual designer rather than Art Director. Fun fact he's since gone onto directing Attack on Titan 2-4]
Challenge: Before this project, I'd only done realistic design, so it was hard adjusting to the cartoonier look you see in Tsubasa. I was also expected to produce art that looked fashionable, or at least stylish. It was a real challenge and I deveoted a lot of time to getting it right.
Impressions: This series is a true adventure. My feeling was that the presentation should be two-pronged; nonstop action combined with Syaoran - the heroic young male that female viewers swoon over!
Message: I want people to pay close attention to the sword-wielding-Kurogane. Toward the ned of the series, he he adds another layer of depth to the story through the use of a very starting item!
Shin Watanabe (art director)
Challenge: Tsubasa invovles hoping from one world to the next and each world has to feel real to the audience, so I did exhaustive research on all of them. But the biggest challenge was creating background settings that were dynamic enough to complement the plot development.
Impressions: The manga had a big fan following even before production started, but my hope was that people who were unfamiliar with the original story would still get sucked in once they started watching. [you among us who only watched the anime, did he succeed?] Tsubasa offers a spirit of adventure to young men and women with big dreams of the future. [perhaps that's what was so appealing to me as a high schooler]
Message: I tackled this project with passion and resolve-just like Syaoran, who bravely accepts his fate and never once sinks into negativity about it. I sincerely hope this show will live on in the hearts of everyone who sees it.
Makiko Kojima (color designer)
Challenge: it was tough transforming the color palette into something usable for a TV anime series while still retaining the well-balanced color scheme of the original. [Frankly I think she gave it a nicer color scheme compared to the few color splashes of the manga but that's me]
Impressions: Hmmm...nervous excitement?
Message: I just tried to do my very best.
Katsuaki Kamata (filming director) [more accurately Director of Photography]
Challenge: I work for Studio Twinkle, and this project was our first experience filming in an HD-compatible format, so I was worried about issues like rendering time and data volume. But somehow or other we made it through!
Impressions: My first impression after reading the manga was the anime adaptation was going to call for loads and loads of special effects!
Message: My goal for this project was to take all my years of know-how as a filming professional and make Tsubasa the most visually satisfying series possible. I hope I succeeded.
Yuichi Mari (concept designer)
Challenge: The main thing I wanted to capture was the sense of "softness" I got form the manga. You feel it everywhere when you read it, but I knew that was a man, it was going to be hard presenting something like that in a natural way. If oyu sense the same "softness" in the anime visuals, than I've done my job.
Impressions: I think this is a show everyone can love-at least I hope it is!
Message: I just hope my works was up to the high standard set by the women of CLAMP in the original Tsubasa manga.
Yuki Kajiura (music)
Challenge: Tsubasa is set in a world full of interesting characters and different realms that they go back and forth between, so I had to find a way to inject a sense of that diversity into the music. But at the same time, I wanted a unified musical soundscape for the series as a whole. It took a lot of thought to get the right sound.
impressions: The original manga was a highly individual work, and with all the strong personalities on the anime production staff, I knew were in for a volatile mixture of ideas and philosophies that would make for a very interesting show!
Message: All the songs I composed for the series were influenced by my acquaintance with the colorful world of Tsubasa. I hope you enjoy them as much as you enjoy the show itself.
Minako Shiba (character designer) [rest her dear soul
]
Challenge: Usually, once a character designer creates the main characters for a series, all that's left is doing guest characters on an episode-by-episode basis. But with this show, every time the characters moved to a new world it was a complete redesign! For production reasons, we had to alter the designs at they appeared in the manga, but I was very careful to not lose the essence of what made the characters so attractive in the original. [contrast to the OVAs which are the most like the manga designs]
Impressions: This is a show that anyone can love.
Message: All my effort was for one purpose-making sure you enjoy Tsubasa!
Hiroshi Morioka (assistant director) [and co-director on S2, and the man who brought us Bishonen Batman!]
Challenge: Tsubasa is about a group of friends who travel from one world to the next, meeting lots of new people and forming closer bonds between themselves along the way. I worried most about how to present them in the most appealing way possible. I wanted to make especially sure that the inner strength and inherit appeal of Syaoran came through loud and clear.
Impressions: This anime will appeal to you whether you're a CLAMP fan or not. It's just good wholesome fun, the kind of thing you can sit down and watch with the whole family.
Message: One of Syaoran's catch phrases in the manga is, "When I decide to do something, I do it!" The Tsubasa production staff really took those words to heart. I hope all of you get the chance to see the show yourselves!
Toru Nakano (sound director)
Challenge: Dozens of applicants came to the voice auditions, and I want to thank all the actors and staffers who participated. I'm most proud of the fact that we were able to achieve such a strong unity of vision on character voicing between CLAMP and the sound production staff.
Impressions: Once you've seen Tsubasa for yourself, you spirit of adventure and compassion will be sparked by the many examples of courage and kindness in the show.
Message: We all put in long hours working to bring you a sonic experience that's every bit the equal of the gorgeous visuals you see on screen. This is one of those show that will define my career. All I ask is that you watch the show with an open mind-instead of comparing it to other CLAMP anime, try to see it as the fresh new production it is!
