DA
08-06-2009, 04:57 PM
The Halo Legends anime was announced at Comic-Con a couple weekends back, but as creative director Shinji Aramaki put it to Famitsu magazine this week, it wouldn't have happened at all if it weren't for his wife being such a Xbox 360 fan.
"I've always been a fan of video games, and my wife told me that Halo 3 is the best game on the 360," Aramaki said. "I just sort of got addicted after that. It's a very intricate world. It's hard to do such an epic story in movie form these days, but it's easy to get into it as a game. There's just enough humor in it, too. It's a great piece of pure entertainment."
Halo Legends is a collection of seven short episodes, each exploring a different aspect of the world behind Bungie's shooter series. "First, I went over the concept materials and studied the backbone of the game's world," Aramaki noted. "I wanted to develop the world of Halo from many different angles in the anime, so I built plotlines for ten or so short stories. I worked with Frank [Halo franchise development director Frank O'Connor] to select seven of those and then sent work requests to a few of the studios I know, like Production I.G and Bones. I gave each studio the episodes they're most suited to develop and told them to add whatever unique touches you like. The resulting variations you see turned out very well, I think."
The anime will debut in part on Xbox Live this fall, followed by a worldwide DVD release of the complete project in early 2010. "It's been very exciting," Aramaki said. "I'm also very happy to have Mamoru Oshii on as creative director. Everything that fans want to see is in this film, so I hope they're looking forward to it."
"I've always been a fan of video games, and my wife told me that Halo 3 is the best game on the 360," Aramaki said. "I just sort of got addicted after that. It's a very intricate world. It's hard to do such an epic story in movie form these days, but it's easy to get into it as a game. There's just enough humor in it, too. It's a great piece of pure entertainment."
Halo Legends is a collection of seven short episodes, each exploring a different aspect of the world behind Bungie's shooter series. "First, I went over the concept materials and studied the backbone of the game's world," Aramaki noted. "I wanted to develop the world of Halo from many different angles in the anime, so I built plotlines for ten or so short stories. I worked with Frank [Halo franchise development director Frank O'Connor] to select seven of those and then sent work requests to a few of the studios I know, like Production I.G and Bones. I gave each studio the episodes they're most suited to develop and told them to add whatever unique touches you like. The resulting variations you see turned out very well, I think."
The anime will debut in part on Xbox Live this fall, followed by a worldwide DVD release of the complete project in early 2010. "It's been very exciting," Aramaki said. "I'm also very happy to have Mamoru Oshii on as creative director. Everything that fans want to see is in this film, so I hope they're looking forward to it."