Anime Lovers

At this year’s New York Comic Con, we had the opportunity to speak with Digimon: Digital Monsters franchise producer Hiromi Seki about the iconic series on the heels of its 25th anniversary. Digimon Adventure first hit screens in 1999, introducing soon-to-be fans to a group of brave characters and young heroes tasked with the seemingly impossible goal of saving the digital and real worlds. Ahead of our interview, Seki-san took part in a panel in celebration of the series’ anniversary and answered some additional questions in a moderated discussion. Our conversation started with the origins of the franchise, tracing different aspects of Digimon and leading to some excellent insight and perspective from Seki-san.

Portions of this interview have been lightly edited for clarity.

Creating Digimon

Seki-san’s career has been an incredible one, especially with an equally incredible franchise like Digimon remaining successful and popular for so long. To start our conversation, it made sense to hear from her what the start of the Digimon Adventure project was like and how she originally came to work on that project.

“First, it started with the portable gaming device. The company that made this portable game is the same company that created Tamagotchi, which is a very famous, popular Japanese game. With Tamagotchi, you raise the egg, and you hatch it and grow it. So similarly, it’s the same principle, you raise a tiny monster into a big one. That was the concept of the portable game. This gaming company was called Wiz, and it was part of the Bandai Group. 

Bandai approached Toei Animation because this game wasn’t selling too well, and Bandai thought that maybe if we made an anime to it, then maybe this game would sell better. So that’s how they approached Toei Animation. From Toei Animation, we proposed to Bandai that maybe not just the monsters — we have to combine the people, humans, so that the users, the gamers, can relate to the story and the characters in the game. The monsters in the game, they don’t speak the language, so we can’t communicate with them, right? When it becomes anime, we can hear the voices of the monsters, and what kind of conversations the monsters may have with the human characters, and that will help the users, gamers, kind of grow attachment to the monsters in the game, and be able to relate to the characters more. And that’s how I got involved in this project.”

As far as the story itself was concerned, she noted that an incredibly important aspect was the aspect of evolution and change, not just for the Digimon, but for their human partners as well.

“When it comes to anime, we’re the ones coming up with the story or the concept, so the director and the producer come up with the concept together. But what we wanted was to have the monsters evolve in the game. But we wanted to have their human partners and their children also grow as well so that their growth can synchronize, and that’s how we came up with this concept.”

Seki-san shared a similar sentiment during the Digimon panel earlier that day; one of the first things to be discussed was what about Digimon, from her perspective, makes it stand out from other anime and makes so many people resonate so deeply with it. In answering that question, Seki-san referred to another popular series and contrasted its monsters with digital ones.

“Before I talk about Digimon, can I talk a little bit about Pokémon? So actually, Digimon started two years after Pokémon premiered in Japan. So back then, Pokémon monsters never really grew or evolved. And the reason is, you know Pikachu, right? And how adorable Pikachu is? We thought why not just keep it as it is? Because it’s so adorable. They didn’t want to change it. And we thought that with Digimon, we can create a story where the Digimon can evolve and change, you know, champion and ultimate and whatnot. And the partner children can also grow together. That’s the kind of story we wanted to create. I believe that combining the evolution and the growth of Digimon and children together was one of the appeals of why this series was loved for such a long time.”

Seki-san also shared an anecdote during the panel about the very beginning of Digimon and how she and Director Mamoru Hosoda came up with the idea of heroes miraculously entering the digital world.

“But I’d like to tell you about this episode, the anecdote that I’ve never shared with anybody yet. Not a lot of fans in Japan know this either. Probably just me and Director Hosoda that we know about this story. So Director Hosoda and I worked together on creating a scenario, a script for Our War Game (The movie Digimon Adventure: Our War Game!). And the script you create, you have to submit it to your higher-ups, our bosses. So we submitted the script for Our War Game, and the president of Toei Animation at the time was Mr. Tsutomu Tomari, and we got a direct phone call from him.

He told us that the script was really interesting, but he wanted to have one more point that moved the viewers, the people, the audience’s heart. So I remember clearly, Director Hosoda and I received that request from the president, and thought ‘What more can we do to add to the script?’ Director Hosoda was very confident about the script that we wrote together, so he was a little shocked to receive that kind of feedback. Not knowing what to do, Director Hosoda asked for advice from his senior director, Mr. Kunihiko Ikuhara, (who) directed Sailor Moon. So what Director Ikuhara told Director Hosoda is ‘When I was making the Sailor Moon film, I got the same type of request from the president.’

What Director Ikuhara proved to Director Hosoda was that President Tomari has a really keen eye when reading scripts, and what he points out is always correct. Hearing that advice from Director Ikuhara, that really gave courage and the push that Director Hosoda needed, so he worked on the revision of the script. Because Director Hosoda was feeling positive about doing the revision, now it was easier for me to give him feedback and try to make it better.

So I told him that another point where we can move people’s hearts might be a miracle. That might be what we need. And so we had a discussion about it, and the miracle that we found in the story is that we use computers in our daily business, but what if we go into the world of computers in this digital world and fight alongside each other, together, that would be a miracle, right? Right now, having an avatar in the digital world, on the computer, is a normal thing, we see that all the time. But remember, this was 25 years ago, so that idea, nobody thought about going into the computer. So that’s how this idea of Tai (Taichi ‘Tai’ Kamiya) and Yamato (Yamato ‘Matt’ Ishida) going into this world of computers, we don’t know how, but miraculously they go into this world, and that’s how this story was developed.”

25 Years, Thousands of Digimon (And Counting!)

Turning back to the interview, and looking back at the series, there were a few more things I wanted to know from Seki-san. For one, I wanted to get an understanding of how it felt to be part of such an amazing project that’s continued for this long. Her answer was simple but powerful.

“It’s almost like looking at my own child growing up. That’s how I feel.”

And that child has gone through multiple iterations over the years. There have been multiple Digimon anime series produced by Toei Animation since the original first aired in 1999, with the original Digimon Adventure getting a sequel series (Digimon Adventure 02) and several entirely new sets of characters being introduced in other series such as Digimon Tamers (my personal favorite). I asked Seki-san what was behind the decision to create an entirely new series as opposed to having a single series that continued across multiple seasons.

“So if we continued the story of the same human characters, then the only story we can tell about the Digimon are of the same partner Digimon characters. When we started the series, we started with about 286 Digimon, but then it grew and we’ve lost count. I’m sure it’s above 1000. So a lot of Digimon; we don’t even know how many we created. But because we have that many number of Digimon, anybody can find their own partner Digimon. A compatible Digimon partner for you is somewhere in that thousands of Digimon.”

Secondly, I wanted to get a sense of how old and new fans were targeted via choices in the story and the marketing. As with all of her answers both in our interview and during the panel, Seki-san shared some perspectives that I doubt many would have noticed on their own, discussing how viewers look at themselves relative to the characters on screen and how that perspective needed to be adjusted as the viewing base aged.

“When you think about the proportion of the child, depending on the age, it’s 4 to 5 heads high. And a smaller child, it’s maybe 3.5. But when we grow into adults, we become taller, so it gets bigger. It’s really about the proportion of the characters. When you are launching something for children, then we will have a bigger head and smaller size. And when we are targeting an older generation, then we would have maybe 7 to 8 head tall figures. When you are young and you are about 8 years (old), then you have this admiration towards somebody taller and bigger than you, right? But if something is about the same height as you, then it’s not the admiration you will have, it’s more about relatability. You can relate and sympathize, right? That’s the proportion of the characters we pay attention to, you know. Who are we making these characters or stories for? When you are drawing a hero or a heroine, then it needs to be admiration. The viewer needs to feel the admiration, so we do that. But, if we want the viewers to feel like they are friends or relatable comrades, then it needs to be about the same size and proportion as that targeted audience.”

Similarly, just as there are many different ages, personalities, and backgrounds with Digimon’s human characters, there are even more literal Digimon, with upwards of a thousand having been shown on screen at the time of this interview’s publication. Given the staggering number of Digimon and the high variety of Digivolutions, I asked Seki-san about the process the team takes for coming up with exciting and cool concepts like these and what considerations are made to keep things new and unique.

“Biological evolution, Darwin’s theory of evolution, we have that, but because there are so many different kinds of animals and creatures, they each have different types of evolution. How they evolve is different based on the species and animal. So, we take into account — what kind of evolutions happen in nature.
For example, there are certain fish, when they’re born, they’re gender neutral, they’re not assigned a gender, but as they grow, they start to grow into a different gender. There’s another kind of relationship where, suppose that I’m a parasite, and you’re the host body, and the parasite will feed on the host body, and they sort of co-exist in a way. That kind of evolution and that relationship also exists in nature. So we try to incorporate the diversity that actual nature has into our stories and characters. A parasite on a human host or whatever have you is almost like a combination evolution. That’s where the inspiration comes from.”

To close, I asked Seki-san about her feelings towards the reception at this year’s New York Comic Con as well as any final words she had for fans of the franchise. As part of her answer to the con reception, Seki-san referenced Producer Yu Kaminoki-san, who is leading a newly formed Digimon team at Toei Animation and was introduced for the first time to fans at the panel earlier that day.

“Last year when I came, it was for the promotion of The Beginning (Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning), the film that came out last year. But this year, we didn’t bring anything, but the fans have this hope and expectation about what is going to happen next. We strongly felt that. We have a new producer leading the team, and everybody’s curious about what she’s going to do. So I hope that you’ll be the witness to see what’s in store for this IP.”

“Thank you so much for loving Digimon Adventure for 25 years. However the evolution of Digimon is going to continue, so I hope that you keep up with us and continue to support us. That’s all, thank you.”

We’d like to thank Hiromi Seki for taking the time to speak with us about all things Digimon. As part of the New York Comic Con panel, fans were treated to some images from the upcoming Digimon Adventure Beyond project, a special music video that will commemorate the 25th anniversary with brand-new animation. Series veteran Hiroyuki Kakudo-san will be returning as director and working with Rie Nishimura-san, who was the Chief Animation Director for the most recent Digimon film. More information on Digimon Adventure Beyond and the future of the franchise will be shown in March of 2025 at the live event Digimon Con.

© Akiyoshi Hongo, Toei Animation
© Akiyoshi Hongo, Fuji Television, Toei Animation