Yukimura, could you tell us how you felt when you saw the anime’s Episode Fourteen, “The Light of Dawn?

YUKIMURA

I really felt this episode was going to be legendary. Atsushi Kobayashi had done an amazing job storyboarding Episode Five, so I remembered his name. When I saw his storyboards for Episode Fourteen, it became clear to me that Yabuta—the series director—had pointedly entrusted Kobayashi with the most important episodes. So, it goes without saying, I was immensely excited for the episode’s on-air release.

Could you elaborate on that? What was so exciting for you?

YUKIMURA

Well, two things. First, I was blown away by the fact that Episode Fourteen uses the original story’s plot almost completely as I wrote it. Second, the most important part of this episode is Anne’s psychological transformation. The pains that Kobayashi, Yabuta, and scriptwriter (Hiroshi) Seko took to portray that transformation proved how carefully they devoured and digested my original work to the point where the anime exceeds the original in the best way.

YABUTA

I couldn’t agree more. Using Yukimura’s food metaphor, you could say Kobayashi follows the recipe as it is, and tries the dish he has made. Then he adjusts the ingredients until the dish becomes completely his own. The end product is a refined, crystalized film version filled with the utmost respect to the original work. As the director, my job is to check the storyboards for each episode, but Kobayashi’s storyboards have almost nothing that needs to be fixed. He truly expresses the type of atmosphere I’m aiming for in VINLAND SAGA with the utmost precision. I feel so fortunate that he agreed to work on some of the episodes for this series.

KOBAYASHI

Yabuta and Yukimura are praising me so much that it’s hard to add anything else. [Laughs.]

What were your first impressions of the original story, Kobayashi?

KOBAYASHI

From the very beginning, I was itching to draw the farmland arc that will appear in the TV anime’s Season Two. At the end of all the tragedy and violence, the original story portrays a world where the people are trying to figure out how to keep moving forward. Those scenes are so dazzling that I got goosebumps just reading them. You could say I’ve been putting my all into the storyboards for this anime thus far just for the chance to get to those farm life scenes.

As Yukimura mentioned, you previously worked on Episode Five “The Troll’s Son,” which contained original material that was only in the anime. Was there anything you were careful of while making this episode?

KOBAYASHI

When I initially read the original manga, I thought it was first and foremost an action/adventure story. But when I re-read it to make the anime storyboards, I got the impression that it was mainly a story about young soldiers. So, I watched the film Ivan’s Childhood (directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962) for reference and noticed all the adults in this film are unexpectedly kind. The adults in VINLAND SAGA, on the other hand, are the exact opposite. That’s what made me feel like I needed to rethink the original story’s premise all over again.

YABUTA

Oh, that’s right. I remember our discussions during production about the distance between adults in the series and how this would influence how they interact with Thorfinn.

YUKIMURA

This is exactly what I was talking about! See how carefully these two have devoured and digested my work? This is why the anime and manga have the same plot but become completely different works of art. I’ve been fascinated by this phenomenon ever since I saw the anime storyboards for the first time.

The Episode Fourteen of the anime, "The Light of Dawn," is based on the Episodes Twenty-seven and Twenty-eight of the original story (also included in Volume Four of the comic). Yukimura, do you remember anything about the time you drew it?

YUKIMURA

It's been more than fifteen years, but I remember it well. When I sent the premise (pre-draft stage) to the editor in charge, I even told him, "Maybe I'm a genius!" Ha ha! At first, he looked at me doubtfully, but after reading it, he said, "I've known you for a long time, but this is the first time I think the same as you," he said. “The first time” was a bit annoying (laughs).

YABUTA

May I ask a question too? What made you decide to draw that episode of the series?

YUKIMURA

Until that scene, I had depicted the battles with swords and axes, but I felt that something was still missing in the representation of violence. The definition of "violence" for me is: "a completely unreasonable act that violates human rights without allowing any dialogue". In the story, the Vikings were committing awful acts, destroying homes no matter what. When I thought that the representation of "violence" was essential to draw them, the story that Askeladd's band was hiding somewhere came up, and I added this representation of "violence" there.

YABUTA

It's true that when we say "war" we think of a representation of people fighting each other, so the act of unilaterally destroying a peaceful family has a different meaning.

YUKIMURA

Exactly. If a family that was happily enjoying a delicious dinner together, was brutally killed by giant men all of a sudden, everyone would curse the gods saying, "How can something like this happen!?" I thought I had to draw that somewhere in this series, and that was that scene.

YABUTA

I think combining that with Anne's faith gives another interpretation. Where did the inspiration come from to think that Anne's religious beliefs would be essential, instead of just representing the "violence" of Askeladd?

YUKIMURA

If we were going to represent the "violence" of Askeladd and others, we couldn't leave out the Christian worldview. How would they feel about Askeladd and the others, those devout Christians who live peacefully in farming villages? I think there's something about people who don't know fear that makes them attractive. In that world, Christians work hard with fear every day to get to heaven someday, but when they see Askeladd destroy their common sense in such a way, Anne feels guilty for feeling a certain admiration for it. I thought it would also be an honest impression of "violence", so that’s why I made it like that.

YABUTA

Does that mean a part of you felt that kind of attraction for Askeladd?

YUKIMURA

Yes. This is an undeniable fact, and I definitely thought I had to draw it again.

KOBAYASHI

My impression is that there are two types of violence in this world: individual violence and collective violence. But I would like to know what Yukimura has to say about this. Do you personally treat these two types of violence as the same or different?

YUKIMURA

I don’t think I have ever thought of them as different things. Something I have thought about, though, is that there must be a lot of people who don’t want to kill on the battlefield, whether they are in a group or not. In fact, I hear the shooting hit rate is much lower on battlefields than during training. Some soldiers even shoot the ground to avoid killing as much as possible. Despite the battlefield being a place of collective violence, there are always some who do not have feelings of anger of violence. In a place of individual violence, on the other hand, the individual’s motives and actions tend to be on the same page.

KOBAYASHI

Askeladd’s band’s violence in Episode Fourteen is motivated by survival. It’s a type of collective violence without emotion—or even humanity. They are essentially getting rid of a group of people, so they don’t stand in the way in the future. Maybe the complaints about there not being enough violence in the story is because of a lack of this type of violence.

YUKIMURA

That’s exactly right. Most of the violence portrayed thus far is of soldiers fighting each other with passion, so the scene with the villagers in Episode Fourteen is probably the first “real” type of violence in the series. I didn’t initially think Askeladd would do that kind of thing when I first started writing this story. But when I reached this part, I began to feel that Askeladd should be more of a villain and included the violent scene. That’s why this episode is such a game changer in understanding the kind of person Askeladd is.

KOBAYASHI

I don’t think your readers would really accept the cold-blooded violence on its own, though. That’s where Anne comes in. That scene at the end where she talks about her heart racing surprised even us. With Father Willibald also appearing in this episode, both he and Anne bring up the question of God’s existence. Willibald has been dealing with this question since the very beginning. On the other hand, Anne has been innocently toying with the idea until the end of the episode where she ultimately protests to the moon. I thought it would be interesting to portray this scene as a moment of premature existentialism.

YUKIMURA

All of a sudden, she questions if God truly exists.

KOBAYASHI

“How do I move forward in a world where God is far in the distance?” is an existentialist question posed first by S. Kierkegaard (Danish philosopher, 1813-1855), but the idea existed more than 800 years before him. So I wondered what this kind of self-dialogue would look like if it progressed within a Christian world. If we turned that into part of the story—a kind of dish, to go back to the earlier food metaphor—I had a feeling our audience would bite.

YUKIMURA

Wow, you have really put a lot of thought into this.

KOBAYASHI

That said, I didn’t mean to portray the possibility that God doesn’t exist at all. That’s a rather contemporary idea. What Anne is asking in that final scene in Episode Fourteen is what does God do and not do? And actually, Willibald is struggling with the same question.

YABUTA

In the first draft of the storyboard for Episode Fourteen, we ended with a cut of Anne’s hand. It was then Kobayashi who ultimately added the morning scene.

KOBAYASHI

To be precise, I had written the morning scene earlier before submitting the storyboard to Yabuta. But it was about two hundred seconds too long, so I cut it when first asking for the director’s check. It’s only once Yabuta looked it over that I asked for a second chance and cut down the last scene as much as possible to include the sunrise.