00:00:02 John Daub: Greetings and welcome. This is Shinjuku in Tokyo. I'm at D-Art Studio again. They're making the opening, the animated opening for the Only in Japan channel. And I'm so excited because today we get to meet the characters. Here is the board that we came up with. If you were watching the livestream about half a year ago, we were brainstorming ideas for characters that we might want. We have sushi, wagyu, geisha, ninja, some things like that. Cultural stuff like Kabuki. And now we get to see some of the progress. We get to see some of the characters that are going to be making it into the opening. This is big news. We kind of have a rough idea that it's going to come out sometime in September-ish. But it's a work in progress and that progress is right here. This is me. That's me in a kimono. I look 20 years younger but I love it. And some of my posse here. All of them are characters that sort of represent what Japan is. Wow, I do look really young. I like this. There's the hat. That's the hat I'm wearing right now. Oh, this is so cool.

00:01:22 John Daub: Alright, cool. So now this is Henry and Arthel, D-Art Studio. Welcome back again. Check out the link in the description, you can see their Instagram page and some of the progress, some of the stuff that they're working on right now. Actually, they're working on some top secret projects that we can't talk about. You have a seat. Henry, you can pull up a chair. Alright, we have a ton of characters. Check it out. What I'm going to be doing is turning this camera down so you look at the characters. What do you think is the best place to start at, Arthel?

00:01:56 Arthel: We'll start with the main characters. You and your posse.

00:01:59 John Daub: Me and the posse. Although, ironically, this is the only one that's not cleaned up. It's the only one that's not cleaned up yet. It's not cleaned up, but you're going to get a chance to see these, everybody. So definitely leave your comments and thoughts in the chat below. Alright, so here's the main characters. Of course, you saw it in a brief intro. Here we have John, and he's wearing his kimono. He doesn't have his hat on right now, but I think we'll leave that up to you. Should the hat be there or should there be no hat? Hat or no hat, interesting. Then, but of course he's wearing a traditional kimono from Japan. He's got the, so maybe John would know this. What are these sandals called?

00:02:52 John Daub: The geta (wooden sandals).

00:02:53 Arthel: Yeah, the geta. Oh, so, yeah, thank you. Geta. And Megan. And Nash. Everybody knows that. And they're like, you live in Spain, you don't know. Okay, then here's, and then these two characters are actually Tomboon's characters.

00:03:11 John Daub: Right.

00:03:11 Arthel: And, so Tomboon's characters, we've now changed their clothing. So if you go to Tomboon's website, you can see them in their normal gear. But here we have the schoolgirl. She's wearing also a kimono. And we have Tomboon's cat, who's in this, in John's world, he's a ninja.

00:03:34 John Daub: I like that, yes. And for those of you who can't see it too clearly, but you can just say that that's my wife for now, okay? But it's actually a Tomboon character. Kanai sort of looks like that. Yeah, so that's really, I guess it's like really Kanae Daub, and she's kind of acting like a Tomboon character in this case. She's cosplaying a Tomboon character.

00:03:58 Arthel: Do you have any pets?

00:04:00 Henry: Pets, yeah, actually I used to have a hamster.

00:04:03 John Daub: Okay, so this is your hamster. I'm a hamster cosplaying as the other Tomboon characters. It could be hamster. I guess when you have the face covering, you can't really see the ninja face mask going on here. Um, there were, okapi is one of them. Do you know okapi is a half horse, half zebra looking thing?

00:04:21 Henry: Yeah, that's right.

00:04:22 John Daub: Dude, there's just, this anime opening would just be crazy if there was that many characters. And I'm sure you, they wouldn't be as excited to have 100 more characters inserted in there. So, the what has been decided has already been decided. This is it, folks. This is the presentation. No more, no more. Alright, let's go, let's move on to some of the characters here. We're gonna start off with some items here. And Arthel's gonna kind of explain what they are.

00:05:03 Arthel: Okay, so here's the next one. Of course, Japan is known for its comic books, which is called manga. And so we definitely had to have a manga character in there. Mangaka in Japanese means the person who draws manga. So here, the mangaka's character is the artist. It might be easier to stand, actually. So you can't see the questions going on here. Oh, I love this one. And then, of course, the next thing that's well known in Japan is the toilet. Well, actually, it's not the toilet itself, but the features of the Japanese toilets, right? This one's, he said, this one, I'll pass.

00:05:44 John Daub: I pushed the button before and it had squirted my face. It's happened before. Yeah, the bidets in Japan are amazing. You say you'll pass until you give it a try. And then you have to pass again.

00:05:53 Arthel: Yes, thank you, baby. It's called bidet. And this is a favorite thing. Actually, this is my favorite thing. When I'm looking for apartments, actually, I just move. And it has to have a bidet. If it doesn't have it, I'm like, you know what? I can't live here. Game over.

00:06:06 Henry: A washlet.

00:06:07 Arthel: Now, the bidet is for the women and the oshiri (rear) is for the men. There's actually two buttons for everybody. See, now, because we're standing, we turn it around. Yeah, there's two buttons. One of them is the bidet for women and then the oshiri for the men. So there's two. Two squirts. And you got that actually captured in the toilet. There's two hands. One for each part.

00:06:32 John Daub: Let's just keep that to ourselves. I love this vending machine. It's got arms and a tail. And, you know, the next crazy thing about Japan that everyone loves is the oishi drink and the vending machines. You know, they have hot drinks, cold drinks. And the drinks change per season, which is kind of cool. So that's that. I just noticed this. That's the face. The eyes and the nose and the mouth. I love this. Do you see the face? I guess when you cut off the top half, you can see it. It's a little bit clearer. And this is the brains. Interesting. You can see inside the brains.

00:07:10 Arthel: Next one is the manhole.

00:07:13 John Daub: Manhole. Like actually in Japan, every little town, it's broken up via little towns. So every town has their own individually carved and designed manhole cover. So as you go around, when you look down, you'll constantly see different designs on all the manholes. And they're really nice. It's not something that's like real simple, like just the name written on it. It's everyone has their own like illustration on the top of the manhole cover. So it does kind of stand out. Tyler so far likes oishi drink. Tyler, there's a lot more you're going to like here.

00:08:04 Arthel: So let's get a little bit of cultural stuff here. This is the omamori (good luck charm).

00:08:08 John Daub: Omamori. In Japan, omamori, they have omamori for just about everything. Omamori means like a protection trinket, good luck charm. And they come in these little packs and I'm sure there's Only in Japan videos, so check out the channel about it. But you can go to the temples and when you go to the temples, you can buy these little protection things. Yeah, the omamori. And they put, inside the omamori is actually the trinket that tells you, that'll protect you for a specific thing. If you want to have a baby and you want it to be healthy or do well on exams. Protect your car from crashes. Exactly. 500 yen can buy that. 500 yen can buy your protection for a year. Very cool. I like this. You can see the hands on here. Are there any aspects of it? This is the hair. It's got the hair. It's got the eyes and hands and yeah, and the hair. And then this is kind of the traditional like lotus flower, I guess. I like it. This one is also pretty yokai-ish, ghost looking. At first, this is a kimono. I like that. But you can see here, that's a kimono and it looks like it's ghostified, which is awesome. Yeah, it's got a little, it's like a flying kimono. It's got its own little life now to it. And yeah, kimono's pretty self-explanatory. So they'll be fluttering on the screen, kind of? Yeah, it'll kind of be flying around like the butterflies that are its patterns.

00:09:42 Arthel: Right. So all of these objects, some of them cultural, some of them electronics, gadgets that just define Japan, they'll be moving inside the anime? Yeah, they're all going to be somewhere in animation doing something, you know, kind of representative of their shape and characteristic. So you'll get to kind of, the main characters of course are John and Kanae Daub. And the posse. And the, you know, the Tomboon little kitty. And then the rest of these characters are yokai and then things like that will be around.

00:10:13 John Daub: Now this one, this one is part of the soul of this series, the square watermelon. Look at that. For everyone who doesn't know, of course check out the channel, but you know, like Japan is crazy with their fruit. And the fruit are really expensive, but they taste really good and they're really sweet. And one of the craziest things about the watermelons in Japan is they have different shapes. Square, like a perfect square. A perfect circle and also a pyramid. You got to pay for that perfect square. Yeah, you have to pay for it and it's really expensive because I think it's like $500 or something like that. Yeah, I like it. It's got, this is, Zentsuji, the city that has the patent on this is going to love this. All the lines are perfect. The farmers are very, very critical on the lines of it. I love it. And this one is the sushi gang. Sushi gang, sushi gang. Okay. That was my little bit, my attempt at trap. But, so you got the sushi gang and the most common sushi, I guess. So you got ebi (shrimp) and saba (mackerel), I think that one is. And the egg, tamago (egg), and that one's just the rice. Just the rice. Maybe the poor little cousin or the little sister. The baby's. I guess after they grow up they can get their identity. That's when they get their, who they're going to be. You're an egg for two minutes. I love it. He's just, he's in like puberty now. He's waiting as the sushi chef is preparing his adulthood. Sushi gang, sushi gang. Yeah, sushi gang. Oh, that song's a dick. Now I'm going to have that in my head now.

00:12:02 Arthel: Oh, wow. I like this one already. It's got a weapon. But, all right, this is the takoyaki balls.

00:12:06 John Daub: Takoyaki (octopus balls). So, this is kind of in Kansai in Osaka. They're known for their takoyaki, which is squid. There's like squid inside these little fried, I don't know, flour. Or something like that. It's a batter. It's a unique Japanese. You can't really explain it if you don't have it because it's very, it's as Japanese as sushi is. I love this design. It's like, there's the feet, one pair of feet, which is the body here, one body, two arms, and six pairs of eyes. Yeah, a whole bunch of little ones hanging out inside there. Like those aliens in the UFO catcher, right? I get kind of like that feeling. It's really cool. Man, everyone, like all of your commenters, man, they're like so informed about Japan. They all know the names of everything. They know the Japan. Great. Oh, oh, you have to have it. Definitely. I'm going to have Mr. Ramen. Oh, you got to have this in there. Everyone, like ramen's huge in Japan. People come all over just to try out the ramen.

00:13:12 Arthel: I've actually never tried ramen.

00:13:14 Henry: Really? Because it has a pork base.

00:13:17 Arthel: Not all of them. Yeah, there's like a, you can get like chicken and stuff now. Yeah, you can get stuff like this. There's halal ramen, which I believe is, has, doesn't have pork in it. And there's a chicken. Yeah, there's some weird ones. This one would be pork based is what you're saying?

00:13:33 Henry: Most likely.

00:13:36 John Daub: He's got his arms crossed like, yes, original ramen. I like, it looks, yeah, he looks a little snooty. I like that. I am a bowl of ramen. He's got a personality to him. He's an angry ramen. I am the best. There are other dishes like sushi, but I am number one. I like it, right? If you rank me, put me at the top. And of course we have wagyu. So wagyu is steak in English. Where does he get the wasabi from the nose? You just pick it out of your nose and you get the wasabi? Actually. You dig deep in there. It's like, you want some wasabi? I got it for you. It's the hot stuff. Oh, and the kiku flower. Look at that. Very nice. Cause some decorative things and maybe some delicious marbling on there. Oh, I like it. Little flower.

00:14:36 Arthel: All right. So now, now move into some of the characters. Oh, this is one more that should have been in the tech. And actually before we get too far, like our character designer, she's not here right now, but Hiichi, she's a great designer and the main characters were designed by, so these, these characters were designed by Hiichi and she's amazing. She's always, she has a lot of art gallery shows and things like that here in Japan. And she does a lot of illustrations. There's the D-Art logo. And give a Google search to that name. Her accounts will come up. You can see some different illustrations about her. And then the main characters were actually designed by Reijan even though I wrote Hiichi on them. Oh, no, no, no, that's not true. Those were actually designed by Reijan.

00:15:23 John Daub: So now next big in Japan is, oh, we skipped the JP robot. Oh, is this, this one? JP robot. Oh, okay. Let's talk about this really quickly. My first instinct is Pepper.

00:15:36 Arthel: Pepper.

00:15:36 John Daub: Pepper, that dreadful robot that looks at me. Ugh, it's like Toby (crow). Yeah, these robots are all over Japan, you know, like in the stations, in the train stations, in the department stores, everywhere. Creepy. They, yeah, you can get, I guess they just give you directions for things now. You can get directions and, and I guess you can buy tickets or you can do something like that. I've seen them in the cell phone stores, but I haven't seen them outside. I've seen them outside. They're everywhere. In Shinjuku station, they have two, a girl and a boy. I guess I just ignore them. Is this a boy or a girl? No, man. He's gender free. I'm thinking a girl. I don't know. It's gender fluid. Non-binary. It's non-binary JP robot. And, uh, and then we have salaryman.

00:16:29 Arthel: Yeah. You got it. Curry Lord's robots, no gender. Then, and then we have salaryman. He's got Bluetooth, huh? Goodnight. So, yes, the salaryman, that's big in Japan. We, you know, just business folk who are always wearing suits every day.

00:16:50 John Daub: They are. They are wearing suits. I like this. This is more of the modern salaryman. The older guys probably get a belly popping over it, you know. This guy looks a little too good for your average. I don't know. I was thinking maybe more of a comb over. Oh, yeah, right. A little barcode action going on here. Get it, you know. A little bit more like. Yeah. He's the, what do you call it? The boy's love. Yeah, he's a boy's love type of dude. Look at this. Yeah, man. He's really good. Yeah, he's got a nice head of hair. Yeah, he's got the beautiful eyes. He's got that stare. Beautiful eyes. Very soft. No stubble. Well shaved. It's everything that I'm not. I love it. A little K-pop-ish. All right, very nice. I like the cut of that man's suit.

00:17:46 Arthel: Okay. And, of course, sumo. Probably should give him a name. It's called sumo. His name is sumo. His name is sumo. At least sumo wrestler.

00:18:01 John Daub: Like, you wouldn't call him a baseball player. This is baseball. He's baseball. So, yeah. So, of course, yeah. The sumo wrestler also, he's got those eyes, man. He's also kind of in the boys' love style. He's kind of sort of a little bit boy. He's a little handsome. He's going to be hanging out with that salaryman, I think. Now there's nothing wrong with it, but I don't know. Got eyes.

00:18:25 Arthel: All right. And finally. This is one that was important to me because they run the country. The obaachan (granny).

00:18:33 John Daub: Obaachan. The world. Obaachan. So, you got the little obaachans, you know, little old ladies. How are you all doing out there? I'm an obaachan. Yes, Japan is overrun with them. Yes. They control the world of Japan. They control the world, man. You got that steel fist in the back. Look at that. How dare you take my seat on the train? She's like, get ready to give you the iron palm, man. Oh, yeah. Stomp your feet with her cane. Look at that weapon of choice, the cane. I like it. I like the kimono. Very nice. She keeps the traditional style, the traditions of Japan alive. I like it. Yes.

00:19:18 Arthel: Then, some of the other things. A lot of the other characters that everyone suggested will appear, but not as actual animated characters. They're going to be in the background. So, we'll kind of show you that. So, the other ideas that you... Let me... I can put that in here. They'll be in there. There's more than this, but these are the ones as the main characters. They will have some animation in the animation. The other ones will just be in it. Which is a lot of work to animate any object, but to have multiple objects animated is a lot of work, right? In this intro. It's short, and has more characters than Pokemon.

00:19:58 John Daub: Yeah. Mr. Das remembers, that actually could be the tofu lady. I did a video, Why Do Japanese Live To Be 100, and I featured a 106-year-old woman who... And her secret was she started making tofu in the 50s when they said it was good for their cholesterol. Wow. That's great. And then it... So, she handmade tofu, and that was... That her son is now... Who's like 80, is still doing the business. Pretty good story. That's amazing. So, that could be her. So, we get to start like... It could be her. I like that. Tomiko-san, you are now immortalized. I like that. This is you at 20 years younger. Yeah. She's... Very good.

00:20:43 Arthel: Those are all the characters.

00:20:45 John Daub: I hope you all liked them. Yeah. We're kind of looking forward to getting to the next process. The next process will be kind of roughing out the layout, just the world, and the storyboard. That'll be the next thing. This seems like the hardest one. The design of the characters and the setup. This took the longest time just to get all the characters and just going through the list and stuff like that. Trying to figure out which ones and what they should look like and trying to come up with designs that people would think was cute and interesting. And when you look at it, you're like, oh, that embodies Japan. So, character design is really the heart of animation and story in general because you look at the character, you know exactly what this character represents. You look at the old lady, you're like, oh, okay, she's got the kimono and she represents the spirit of old Japan. And it's hard to find that with every character. So, that is the hardest part. So, the opening is an opening. It's not really a lot of time to build characters' personalities, but yet, even in those 12 seconds or 10 seconds or whatever the length is, you can still get a feel of who they are. That's really unique, I think. It's like a really fast opening. These characters are going to just be flying by quickly, most likely. But just by their design and things, you can still kind of get what Only in Japan represents, right? These characters are only in Japan. Oh, yeah. And here's the posse. Yep. And the gang. There's the gang, everybody. There's a tengu there, which I think we've passed over. Oh, yeah. Oh, the tengu. Right here. Tengu, yes. One of the other yokai. I actually featured this in Kyoto, if you look at the Kyoto livestream from about four months ago. We had like the biggest one in Kyoto, which is pretty crazy. The nose was suspended by cables. It was destroyed in a typhoon. Oh, I kind of feel like I remember. Oh, that's great. We got it with Henry on the left side posing with it. Very, very, very cool. Good. Yeah, I really appreciate the hard work that your team has been doing. D-Art Studio, everybody. Check out the Instagram in there. And you're working on anything big that you can talk about?

00:23:09 Henry: Not that we can talk about, but some pretty big stuff. One anime episode that another studio produced that we just helped out on is actually going to be airing next week. So give us a follow, and then you'll get to see what anime that is once it airs.

00:23:25 Arthel: Where will we see it? Well, we are a production studio, so we produce things from scratch, just like your opening here. But then we also assist with other studios occasionally and actually help out on their television or film productions. So a famous anime series that's already airing, we helped out on a little bit. So we can't really say. Not yet, but you'll see next week if you give us a follow. Can't say it. But then some other really big things will come out later in the year. So just keep following us. You'll see all the stuff we're doing.

00:23:58 John Daub: Yeah, definitely check out their Instagram page and follow it because you'll probably see it there first. But these guys are pretty big. Some of the projects are massive. Can you talk about that? I mean, I don't want to talk about anything that you've done in the last six months, but just lots of... Because they're massive, there's so many NDAs. That means non-disclosure agreement. Don't talk. Don't say anything. Non-disclosure.

00:24:26 Henry: Well, stuff we've worked on we can talk about. I mean, yeah, our studio, for anyone tuning in for the first time today who didn't see the previous videos that we did. We're just a few years old now, although Arthel and I have been working in the Japanese anime industry for many years now. At this studio that we've had just for a couple years now, Adidas commercial, a few music videos, a few pilot films, Indigo Ignited, The Doll or Shoujo no Piano in Japanese, Exogenesis, a Teflon Funk teaser trailer. And those are just the things that we produced 100% in-house. And then if you're interested in watching our other shows, you can go to our website, if you search up the anime that we've worked on, we work on big titles like Tokyo Ghoul and Overlord and things like that.

00:25:15 John Daub: Very cool. All this stuff. Are you hiring?

00:25:18 Henry: Yes, always hiring. Always hiring. But they require... Depends on the projects being produced at any given time. Specific positions. And it kind of requires a little Japanese and... It's an international team, but we are in Japan and yeah.

00:25:41 John Daub: I get it. Tokyo Ghoul is one of my favorite anime shows.

00:25:44 Henry: Cool. Thanks. We helped out.

00:25:48 Arthel: And JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Oh yeah, we did JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and... I would have to look at the list to remember because to be honest... It's a lot of stuff. We do work on quite a lot of them. They've been doing a lot of stuff. Overlord, of course. I've been doing Overlord. Arthel and I have both worked on the Naruto franchise. And the Only in Japan opening. Yeah. But now the biggest of them all. This is the biggest project that we've ever worked on. So really, really excited about it.

00:26:17 John Daub: Finally. And it's not hard work. Only in Japan opening. Yeah, only in Japan. This is what we worked for. This is what our whole life has been geared towards. So it's all about. Like, you know, just getting this opening team. That's the quality we're getting with this opening. The expectations cannot be higher now. Exactly. All right. Thanks guys for getting us. So I guess you'll do the storyboard and everything.

00:26:39 Henry: Yeah. I'll do the storyboard and everything in there. And maybe there'll be one more update.

00:26:42 John Daub: Yeah. Another update. I'm actually going to be making a documentary on the making of this. So we'll be able to show you the process of how we've gone from brainstorming, which you saw in the first livestreams at the end of last year. And then to where we are today. And then the final product. So it'll be on the main channel after you've seen it a couple of times. And all of a sudden I'm going to sneak in a making of video because then you would have seen it a couple of times. Go. What are these characters? Blah, blah, blah. And then you will have seen the making of on the main channel too. And I think that's what makes this special because this is for you guys. This is for the viewers who've been watching the series for so long. You know, the viewers, all of you guys inputting things. John. He really wants to have you guys involved in making his intro and helping out. So this is for you. You know, the characters and things that are showing up. You know, these are all of you guys ideas. Thinking it and trying to make it. You didn't even watch the board. Yeah. Is that that's been up there for six months. This is the only board, you know, we're not going to watch it. This is everyone's ideas. All the viewers, you know, they were trying really hard to stick with us. Where I think it was like an hour long. That was a long one. Wow. That board shall never be washed. I shall purchase that board from you. How much is it? $50? Thank you, Tyler. This board is coming to you. Okay. Oh, man. That's wonderful. All right. Thanks, guys, for the update. Once again, D-Art Studio hard at work on various projects. There's the logo right there. I love it. We'll be back again for more information. I'm now inside by the door. It's a weird echo. Bye, everybody. Have a good day. Good night. Hit the like button. If you like this, you want to see more and leave me some comments below. Tell me what you think of the characters. Which ones knock it out of the park for you? Which ones? Maybe we should work on some more ideas. Whatever you want. Leave in the comments. I'll see you again.