Ryuuichi Ichino on Taiga's themes and tone

 

[This is a small excerpt taken from director Ryuuichi Ichino's interview in the Ultraman Taiga Chousenshu. This particular interview can be found on page 83, the 5th question he's asked by the interviewer]

 

Interviewer: [...] Taiga had a lot of heavy stories, didn't it.

Ichino: There are people that claim that for episode of Taiga that airs, a character dies. That many episodes end on an upsetting note. Ever since the beginning, the producer wanted this show to be hard-hitting, so the team wrote the show with that in mind and moved the show towards a more heavy tone.

Since the main theme of Taiga is exploring whether humanity and aliens can coexist, we had to make the viewers feel like the lives of the other really mattered, something that we felt could only be expressed by the pain of a life lost. And I don’t think that we should avoid showing death. I wanted to make people feel that pain – that a living being losing it’s life is tragic.

When I was a child, seeing Pigmon getting destroyed by Red King felt like getting punched in the gut. After it all ended I thought to myself “Oh, so he died” –  I came away from it learning just how valuable and important life is.