Production
SME Visual Works (now Sony Music Entertainment Japan) first approached writer Hideyuki Kurata in 1998 to create an OVA, specifically "a 'female spy story'." Before a solid concept took off, Kurata had proposed to center his film on a male protagonist, Hiraga Gennai where he would utilize "electricity as a weapon," and then, a mysterious power involving a "paper user will defeat him." However, his idea was promptly rejected by SME, thinking it would be best to shelve the project. However, Kurata caved, going back to the original proposal: "[We will] feature a female [as our hero]." That said, he would go on to recycle the plot featuring Hiraga in Episode 1.[13] Additionally, he utilized the energy he had leftover "from his ragged thoughts" when he worked on his anime teleplay adaptation of the manga series, Excel Saga.[14]
Kurata has cited the manga Ushio & Tora as a major inspiration for building the action sequences in the early developmental stages. He was partial to the idea of an action anime considering his interest for action films. However, "[t]here were a lot of sports-oriented action scenes [in those movies], such as kicking." Consequently, he was keen to make his action scenes based in human emotions. He was further influenced by the numerous literary styles of authors he had read throughout the years, thinking his protagonist would be a quiet type, "a [woman] of prayer." Somehow, he envisioned the setting that would be most appropriate for his character to be a British atmosphere, directly inspired by the James Bond franchise. "When books are involved in the UK," Kurata commented, "it is inevitable that [it would be] the British Library[13] (although, the setting for his fictional spy organization that was loosely drawn from the real library in question would wind up being located underground the old reading room, the King's Library in the East Wing of the British Museum). He further explored in an interview with the American anime magazine, Anime Insider in 2004 the idea "if it were possible to do an action anime with a more literary, a more scholarly atmosphere, unlike a typical physical action story."[15]
Once he came up with the central idea for a character, "a woman who loved books" and "would scatter paper everywhere," he drew from historical figures to fill the roles of her main antagonists. While Kurata initially planned to use such figures as Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers, he was forced to abandon this idea when he realized "American historical figures tend to be protected by things like portrait rights." To avoid lawsuits, he revised his premise to include German historical figures as an alternative (however, one of his earliest drafts teased the inclusion of Cleopatra, Sir Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci and Goethe)[15] and submitted his pitch to SME, which was immediately green-lit. Koji Masunari was brought on board as director while Taraku Uon and Masashi Ishihama were hired as the character designers (Ishihama would also act as chief animation director). Kurata personally selected Uon as he had praised his artwork: "Many of Uon's women have a glamorous feel to them." Similarly, he asked Ishihama to join his team at Studio Deen after seeing his work in the 1999 OVA, Tenamonya Voyagers. "I was a fan before we met," Kurata said, adding with humor, "I then found out he was a weirdo and his drawings were plain."[13] Artist Hiroko Kazui was added as a key animator where her co-workers have complimented the "cute illustrations" she submitted for Episode 1. For instance, she was responsible for the final cut with Yomiko and Nancy sitting on top of the Statue of Liberty, her character work representing Yomiko hesitantly poking Nancy's finger before being pulled up by Nancy, an early example of their bond. "That was [a] really cute [moment]," Kurata gushed. "Nancy was very cute overall."
Production was well underway when SME suggested that the creative team release a light novel series "to attract a wide audience" for the OVA release. Through SME's partnerships with the publishing companies, Shueisha and Super Dash Bunko, they hired Kurata to pen a novel series before the OVA was set to be released. Although, Kurata has also contradicted these details: "A novel had always been part of the master plan."
Kurata's friend, Yōsuke Kuroda, writer of the Onegai Teacher and Onegai Twins franchise and the owner of Studio Orphee, encouraged him to start with "a novel to act as the original work [for the anime]," which Kurata agreed to do. The workload was split between Kuroda (who offered to write the OVA episodes), Kurata (who worked on the manuscripts for both a novel and manga series) and Uon (who designed the rough drafts of the characters as Kurata fleshed out his concepts).
Uon was initially unaware of the genre chosen for the series (a spy thriller); his designs used City Hunter (a detective romance franchise) as a mood board, therefore the characters were drawn in a hard-boiled detective style before he was asked to change it. After it was made known that he was working on "a pretty serious spy story," he referenced the OVA Agent Aika. "[He created] a line of adult women exuding sex appeal and holding a gun," Kurata observed of Uon's art. "It was like [seeing] someone get shot at [for real]." Uon compared these new sets of drawings to "gekiga."[16]
"She had a manga-like feel in the rough draft [for the novels and later, the anime version]," Uon explained in a few interviews with PALETTA Magazine.[16] "In the early planning stages, Yomiko looked 'sharp,' like another certain agent, 007. Her clothes too had a tighter fit. Around that time, Kurata-san told me to make [her look] more modest. So she became a laid back character," implementing actress Miki Nakatani as a model via Kurata's suggestion since during this period, he was following the 1999 TV drama, Keizoku, starring Nakatani.[16] It was also decided that Yomiko would be a bedhead, "the kind of woman who doesn't fix her hair,"[13] mirroring Nakatani's disheveled appearance as her character, Jun Shibata in the former title.[16]
Kurata continued: "It felt like Yomiko's personality was solidified at that stage: 'I read books while dragging my cart. My room is a total mess, full of books. I have bad sleeping habits...' We started by creating it little by little." Unon proposed that Yomiko's "private life [should be the] selling point!"[16]
"But it seems that something went wrong here," Unon added. "Apparently, she never takes off her glasses, even when she's sleeping!" However, Uon swung the opposite way in other aspects, like increasing her chest size opposed to decreasing it. "The one [who actually gave Yomiko] big breasts," he answered when pressed by Kurata, "is Kuroda."[16] Ishihama would confess that her breasts had been prominently sized from the beginning, "even in the rough sketch [by Uon]."[13] The objective for Yomiko's finalized version took into consideration "round and plump" as well as "spacey."
As animation director (plus, secondary character designer), Ishihama was tasked with the redesigns, which he found challenging. "I was just a newbie designer at the time," he said. "I had to figure out how to draw Uon's art my way;" Uon was an artist he greatly respected. Ishihama would later recall how difficult he found it to stay true to Uon's original sketches while adding his own flare to the characters and learned to draw Uon's style by tracing over his line work.[13] "[In my versions] the number of lines [in Uon's drawings] had been reduced dramatically and it had become simpler," said Ishihama. Kurata mentioned that Ishihama's Yomiko was simplistic compared to her rough drafts, "yet [still] nuanced." Shutaro Yamada, the artist of the R.O.D manga, faced similar dilemmas when working off Uon's sketches as a blueprint. "Drake was really hard to draw," he admitted. "Uon's rough draft of Drake looked older than [another artist's] version [at Studio Deen]." Although Kuroda never received a character design credit, Uon would name the former as the creator of the key design elements that he took inspiration from, especially of Yomiko's distinct hairstyle (i.e. her parted bangs) and wardrobe (i.e. her white coat and suitcase). The coat was an important feature, Unon underscored, because while Yomiko carried around her case, her wardrobe functioned mainly as a convenient way for her to retrieve her paper from the inside pockets at a moment's notice.[16] Later, Kuroda would exit the project due to other commitments.
Kurata embedded parts of himself into his heroine that would further influence the art design - notably her glasses (identical to his own; he has denied this in interviews, yet his staff and fans have insisted otherwise)[17][15] and her Jinbōchō, Tokyo apartment, which was modeled from the "Kurata castle," his private home which was "jammed full of books, a veritable warehouse" that served as an unofficial office space for frequent staff meetings with Studio Deen and later, J.C. Staff. Ran Ayanaga, illustrator of the Read or Dream manga spinoff and one of the original character designers of the anime sequel, R.O.D the TV likened Kurata's apartment to "those used bookstores in Kanda."
When it came to Wendy's final designs and mannerisms, Kurata looked to several outside works of media, not least manga and novels, to develop her personality for the artists to expand upon. Namely, the work of Hisaichi Ishii's manga had a large influence on Wendy, principally her clumsy office girl archetype, and her dark skin tone was loosely derived from the mixed-heritage of the main character in Perīnu Monogatari, a Nippon Animation adaptation of Hector Malot's novel, Nobody's Girl. Non-canonically, Kurata has revealed that Wendy is, in fact, Anglo-Indian in origin, which was vaguely alluded to previously in Uon's artist commentary published in a 2003 volume of PALETTA Magazine to promote the TV series sequel (to clarify, he had only mentioned that she was "blond-haired, half blood").[17] "The [first drawing] I received [of Wendy from the animators] was unexpectedly cute," said Kurata, inventing her for the OVA when he realised that Joker needed a staff member to work alongside him.[16] At this point, Wendy was featured with two possibilities of appearance: a stringy fringe held back by an Alice band and a long middle parting with a plaited ponytail tied with a ribbon (the only similarities that these sketches shared was her British Library uniform with World War I-era detachable sleeves - or half-sleeves, and that she wore her hair down to her waist compared to her final version). "When the tension in Read was getting high," added Kurata, "I thought she was the kind of character who would break things down. [...] [And] she was so cute that Director Masunari said, 'Let's make this kid a regular'." It was only then that Kurata decided to introduce Wendy in Episode 2 and have her become a recurring supporting role in Volume 1 (and all subsequent installments) of the
As for Nancy, Uon toyed around with various ideas and physical attributes - cropped pixie, square bob cut, bangs, side part, oval-shaped glasses, even a field agent costume that was perhaps more revealing of her cleavage - all with the goal that she had to be a complete "contrasting character to Yomiko." Uon commented: "[I] also considered her as a blonde beauty," which was ultimately scrapped for her signature darker shade. In his sketches for the male cast, Uon had entertained the concept that Drake would dress more modest (in a button-down instead of casual army gear or a vest), though his shaggy mane, which was shorter in the back at first but would transform into a short ponytail, would be transferred over to the final version. Joker still wore his hair aggressively slicked back, though the ends were kept longer - nearly shoulder-length - and his choice in wardrobe featured a roll-neck jumper opposed to a suit or his British Library uniform. He also happened to be more expressive, to which Uon noted: "[His] design is a little wild." At the outset, it was planned that a character who was heavily prominent in Kurata's manuscript of the first light novel and an important asset to the British Library's staff, Jiggy Stardust would be written into the OVA. Uon had gone out of his way to submit the character's rough designs, only to learn that "due to time constraints," Jiggy was eventually axed.
Kurata has stated that he worked on the series backwards: he started with a draft of the second novel since the first novel "wasn't coming together" and from there, once he discovered who his characters were, he asked Kuroda if he could take over as screenwriter for the OVA as he had grown attached to them (the latter agreed). The first R.O.D light novel, illustrated by Taraku Uon, was published in 2000, introducing Yomiko Readman, Nenene Sumiergawa and the core cast of the British Library while the first volume of the R.O.D manga was released the same year, illustrated by Shutaro Yamada,[18] in order to promote the OVA. When the manga finished its initial serialization in Shōnen Ultra Jump magazine, the first OVA disc hit shelves. Both works of literature (the books and comics) borrowed ideas from one another, such as Yomiko moonlighting as a field agent for Joker and her first meeting with Nenene (only featured in the novels and manga and never onscreen in the OVA) as a high school substitute teacher, though were treated as separate entities, featuring the same characters but following a different story arc and canon. Likewise, only the anime - the OVA and TV series - were created as direct continuations of each other.[18][17] Kurata explained: "'R.O.D was always intended to be a mixed media project, so each incarnation tells its own separate story, but you are able to gain a deeper understanding of the 'R.O.D' world as a whole by experiencing all of them together."
While Kurata would later acknowledge the popularity of Yomiko in Japan, he disclosed that in his rough drafts, he had intended for the novels and manga to star Yomiko's boyfriend, Donnie,[13] a field agent and spy for the British Library who just so happened to be book obsessed (and, unsurprisingly, a Paper Master). "Most people who are like [geeks] are men," thought Kurata, "but so are some women. Thus: [this was] the birth of the animated version of Yomiko."[13]
It took up to two and a half years to complete all three episodes. On a monthly basis, the staff would hang out at coffee shops to discuss the production's progress and exchange ideas, later graduating to once-a-month-four-hour phone meetings. "We were constantly going over tiny points," said Kurata; it was not unusual for him to tweak a line of dialogue as a last ditch effort or even rearrange an entire deadline schedule. He was then invited to a studio meeting late in the final stages to watch the dubbing sessions for Episode 3. "My jaw hangs wider each time I see the mind-numbingly high-quality artwork," he was quoted. At the time, it was one of the most expensive OVAs produced.[19]
