A translation of Adventure 02 producer Hiromi Seki and Digimon character designer Kenji Watanabe’s comments on Digimon Adventure 02 production and Imperialdramon’s design, in commemoration of the announcement of the Figure-rise Standard Amplified Imperialdramon figure on May 27, 2020.
“Imperialdramon, who excites you with the feeling of ‘I’ve been waiting for this!!'”
BANDAI SPIRITS sent me a product image with the 3D data and the silhouette and asked me to comment, and the moment I saw pictures of what it was going to look like painted, my heart was just pounding!
This really is proper preorder material! The truly wonderful thing about this Imperialdramon here is that you can already tell what he looks like just from the silhouette.
Truly, the Emperor Dragon indeed. It brings me back to episode 39 of 02, when he first appeared in the anime.
Directed by Hiroyuki Kakudou. No average director would be able to pull off juggling the number of characters and making sure they all got screentime the way he did.
Naturally, there are probably others who might remember 02’s movie, Diablomon Strikes Back.
In the end, this is a Digimon with three different forms between Dragon, Fighter, and Paladin, so he’s attractive not only to anime fans, but also figure fans and game fans, and so you think “this Digimon sure has a lot of reach.”
Let’s drench our thoughts and be entranced by the light and darkness of this Digimon, and its sacred and wicked sides.
Hiromi Seki
Hiromi Seki
Currently a part of Toei Douga (presently Toei Animation). Produced works include:
The Secrets of Akkochan, Marmalade Boy, Neighborhood Story, Boys Before Flowers, Crayon Kingdom of Dreams, the Magical DoReMi series, the Digimon Adventure series, Zatch Bell!!, Tomorrow’s Nadja, Love Com, and many others.
Recently, she also served as planning advisor for the Digimon Adventure series movie Digimon Adventure LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna (released in 2020).
The hardships of a difficult design that’s variable, and yet not mechanical, but seems to be a living being
Here comes the Figure-rise Standard Amplified Imperialdramon!
Imperialdramon was designed to be a Digimon that can transform between a warrior form and a dragon form, but since I also had to keep in mind that it had to be made into a children’s toy, I couldn’t let it do any particularly complicated transformations, and since it’s a Digimon, I remember having a very hard time getting him into a design that made him look like a proper living being rather than being entirely mechanical.
So now, we’ve taken that Imperialdramon and redesigned him for Figure-rise Standard Amplified!
We looked over his entire form again and raised the quality of the part details, and we aimed to match the coolness that this particular series has. We in charge of development are also putting in all we’ve got to fine-tune it, so the finished version is going to be super exciting!!
I still can’t tell you about them yet, but this particular item still has a few secrets!
Look forward to the release!
Kenji Watanabe
Kenji Watanabe
Representative of WOW FACTORY. Chief designer of toy planning company WiZ.
Creator of the Digimon franchise.
Representative works include Tamagochi, Yoicocchi, Magical Witches, and Legendz: Tale of the Dragon Kings.
He also produces and plans the doll and voice actor variety show Dolly ☆ Variety.