Manga author Kusanagi Mizuho and voice actress Saitou Chiwa talk about Akatsuki no Yona in an interview conducted (by Kishino Eka) around the time the anime first aired. It’s mainly a dialogue on the mutual respect they share, and how they influence one another in their approach to the series. This includes both serious stuff and some extremely cute conversation about the hugs they’ve shared.
There’s also a neat tidbit in there from Kusanagi regarding how the anime project took a long time to materialize, to the extent that she was more relieved than excited when it was officially set. This doesn’t necessarily mean the anime was an exceptionally troubled production from the get-go, but it’s interesting taken in context with the show’s switching distributors and soliciting uber-late as a result of VAP’s leaving the production committee during the broadcast, a rare occurrence. It’s also worth noting that the show’s first opening theme was an instrumental track, uncommon in the modern age where music publishers very aggressively use anime OP/EDs as a space to market their artists.
Kusanagi also mentions a pilot film which had been in production prior to the TV anime. I personally suspect that that footage may have found its way into the TV anime, as a brief battle scene covered in the first 40 seconds of episode 1 and the last 2 minutes of episode 2.
Original Article: http://natalie.mu/comic/pp/yona
Note while reading that I opted not to translate the bottom two-thirds of page 1, as it contained only one-line character bios and some flavor text.
Animetics 