The website for upcoming Summer anime Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace recently uploaded a pair of brief comments from the team talking about the show. They were interesting (dealt with the production schedule and the Ranpo stories Uezu plans to integrate) and short, so I translated them. My Japanese is pretty rusty, so apologies in advance for any mistakes.

Director Kishi Seiji (May 10, 2015):

I’m Kishi, the one currently serving as director for Fuji TV’s noitaminA program, “Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace”. I first heard about this from noitaminA’s producer, Mori-san, in November of last year, when he pitched it as “an original anime paying homage to the works of Edogawa Ranpo”.

Compared to other original anime of recent years, this one has been put together with exceptional speed. Ordinarily, it’d be much more common for us to put about 2 years into making it (laughs). But thanks to that we were able to really concentrate on putting ideas in there. “A work which will make those viewers who do know Edogawa Ranpo grin, that those who don’t can enjoy as an original anime,” has been our goal as we very eagerly work through the process of production.

There’s plenty I want to say, but we’re still pre-broadcast. Above all else, please watch the show.

Scriptwriter Uezu Makoto (May 9, 2015):

Feeling like I was dredging up something from the depths of my memory, I uttered the name Edogawa Ranpo.

Much of the time, there are all sorts of obstacles when you start planning an original anime, but that thought led me to decide “This is it, this is it!” like I was being guided by an invisible hand. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. Quite the mysterious feeling.

Aestheticism, the strange, the bizarre, and making one’s heart race were my motifs.

I start with “The Fiend with Twenty Faces” and “Shadow-Man”. Meeting in an elementary school library and getting sucked into it as kids, this is his and her new story. It’s scary, transient, and a little (a lot?) humorous.

You, like Kobayashi-kun, should face up to the stranger aspects of the modern day.