Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea)

8th March 2006

Number 49 - Dragon and Boy and Shuna

When producing the concept for the movie "Tales from Earthsea", we considered the story and characters and the pictures for the background art as parallel processes, but if we had to say which, it was the story which came first.

The first year, I endlessly repeated the process of reading through the books, collecting related information, and writing plots based on this, which I then threw out.

One day, Producer Suzuki, who couldn't stand watching this process of trial and error gave me this advice: "First, why don't you draw a picture that's your image for this work".

One of the pictures I drew as a result was the picture of the boy facing the dragon that was the basis for the initial poster, the one out now.

And round about that time, I heard that Mr. Suzuki had said, "Director Hayao Miyazaki says that if you're going to do Earthsea, you should just do Shuna's Journey".
"Shuna's Journey"[1] is the picture story that Hayao Miyazaki drew in 1982 for Animage Paperbacks. Shuna's journey actually received an immense influence from the Earthsea series.

Based on the picture of the boy and the dragon, and the "Shuna's Journey" keyword, the massive accumulation that would never take shape until now, suddenly took form in a particular direction.
Then, all at once, I had a one page plot:
A boy leaves his country on a journey, he meets a great mage, and a girl, through which he is changed. This plot was the basis for the current story. That was in May last year.

At that point, I finally got a grip on the direction "Tales from Earthsea" was going to take, and had a conviction that "This will make a film"[2].

Translator's Notes

[1]: The Japanese title is "Shuna no tabi" (シ ュ ナ の 旅)

[2]: The actual word used is "sakuhin" (作 品), which means a work of art, work of fiction etc. I substituted the more specific word "film" to sound more natural in English.