Garo: The Carved Seal of Flames Pre-Screening Event Report

On September 18th, The Tokusatsu Network attended the free pre-screening event for the upcoming Garo: The Carved Seal of Flames anime.

Everyone was given a goodie bag which included a sealed envelope as they walked in. The host, Hidetaka Tenjin, welcomed everyone and told the viewers to relax as the show was about to start. Quickly after the episode ended, Hidetaka Tenjin politely asked everyone not to spoil the episode itself and proceeded to invite the voice actors, Daisuke Namikawa, Kenyu Horiuchi, Katsuhito Nomura and Romi Park.

Namikawa mentions that he was jealous of the viewers being able to watch the first episode on a huge theater screen, while he and the other cast members sat in a different room. How he had so little screen time in the first episode despite being the main character, as compared to Horiuchu’s character, Herman. A large portion of the talk consisted of Namikawa and Horiuchu joking around with each other, only to have Romi Park ask them if they were a “father-son comedy duo”. She also expressed her frustration over how she couldn’t talk much about her role, as it doesn’t appear in the first episode.

The voice cast was eventually joined by the director, Yūichirō Hayashi, and the writer, Yasuko Kobayashi. They both said they weren’t expecting to have the press conference at such a large theater. Hayashi said he was expecting something smaller, and even jokingly said at his own house with maybe 10 people.

Kobayashi also revealed that Keita Amemiya, the creator of Garo, told her to treat the live action and anime as different things, and create something that wouldn’t be possible in live action. They do, however, use Garo as their core basis. Hayashi further went on that one big difference between the live action and anime Garo is that Kouga is a fully realized Makai Knight, while Leon is still young and in-training.

At the end of the event, everyone was asked to take out the sealed envelope and open it up together. Inside was a signed limited edition artwork by Toshiyuki Kanno.

Image Credit: Cinema Today, Michael Pang