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Tokyo International Film Fest Hosts Moyashimon Panel

The staff of the Fuji TV anime series Moyashimon (Tales of Agriculture) took the stage at the 20th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) last week to discuss and promote the anime. The series made its debut on October 11 in the "Noitamina" anime programming block, the former broadcast home of Honey and Clover, Paradise Kiss, Nodame Cantabile, and many other popular anime.

The series, based on the manga of the same name by Masayuki Ishikawa, is about a student at an agricultural university that has the ability to see and communicate with various germs and bacteria. The show garnered the second-best debut in the history of the "Noitamina" block with a 4.9 percent audience share for the debut episode and a 5.3 percent share for the second episode. Currently, the series is scheduled for a total of eleven episodes.

The TIFF event featured a special screening of the first two episodes of the show and the first half of episode three, followed by an introduction of the opening CG animation by CG animation director Tatsuhito Yagi. Some of the voice talent for the germs and bacteria also made an appearance at the event. Moody Katsuyama, a well-known comedian from the manzai group Katsuyamakaji, voices the Cladosporium fungus in the series and showed up at TIFF to improvise an original song called "The Cladosporium are Always Lurking Around." Series director Yūichirō Yano mentioned that some special extras featuring the bacteria and germ characters would appear on the DVD for the anime.

Yagi said that over 100 types of bacteria appear in the anime, all of which were created with computer graphics (CG). He also discussed the use of CG models and animation in the anime opening sequence, which is a combination of CG animation and live-action shots. Takashi Yamazaki, the director of the popular film Always: Sanchōme no Yūhi (Always: Evening in Sanchōme), helped direct the opening sequence as well.

Source: animeanime.jp

Images © Fuji TV, Moyashimon Developers Group