Scripts and Space Dandy: The Kimiko Ueno interview

Written by A. H. on 27 Jul 2015

It was, as the story goes, a fateful late night e-mail form Shinichiro Watanabe that saw scriptwriter Kimiko Ueno embark upon a journey which saw her bombarded with thousands of bizarre ideas and requests; a journey which ultimately saw her take up a role as the most prolific writer on Watanabe's instant classic Space Dandy.

But how did Kimiko Ueno come to enter the world of scriptwriting, and more specifically a notable career in writing for anime? Having interviewed plenty of directors and the like over the years here at UK Anime, we jumped at the chance to sit down for a chat at the MCM Manchester Comic Con 2015 to find out more about this specific, and rarely chronicled, aspect of the business.

First of all, welcome to the UK! Is this your first time here?

Kimiko Ueno: I came here before twenty years ago - my very first overseas trip was to London.

What are your earliest memories of watching anime?

(After a long pause to think) Creamy Mami... things like that.

Are there any particular series or films you remember from your childhood that inspired you to take the career path that you did?

(Another pause) As a child, maybe Doraemon. Particularly the film Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure into the Underworld.

Was writing something you always wanted to do when you were growing up, or did you have other career goals in mind too?

I wanted to be a film director.

How did you get your first job writing for anime? Was anime specifically always something you were interested in writing for?

I went to film school because I wanted to be a film director, but I realised that it wasn't for me; I wouldn't be able to do it. I liked being at home, so I thought maybe script writing would be better suited to me!

Most US sitcoms have a room full of writers who work together and bounce ideas off of one another to build up a script, but I imagine writing a script for something like Space Dandy is very different - is it entirely a solo pursuit when you sit down to write an episode?

We have a meeting with the director, the producer and the other script writers to come up with ideas that we can use to make a script.

What's typically the starting point when it came to writing a script for Space Dandy in particular - does it start from an idea, a character or something else entirely?

It depends on the story, but it'll start with an idea. For example, I might say "I want to make something about zombies", and then everyone will throw around ideas about what kind of zombie story we could tell.

Are there particular things you have to bear in mind to ensure that your script works well when it translates to animation and events on-screen?

There's a lot of freedom in anime, so you can do pretty much what you like, but you have to make sure that the feelings and emotions are right so that the people watching can empathise with those emotions.

Do you have any particular tricks that you employ in your writing of the script to make sure that those emotions come across?

I just tend to ask people around me whether what I'm trying to get across is coming across in the script.

Once you have an idea agreed upon, what's the process of writing an episode around the idea - what steps do you typically go through from beginning to end?

I start by coming up with the overall plot - then we have another meeting, and from there it turns into a screenplay.