The “DARK MOON: THE BLOOD ALTAR” anime, an original HYBE franchise created in collaboration with ENHYPEN, premiered in Japan on January 9 and is now streaming in more than 80 regions worldwide, including in North America and Europe. “DARK MOON” marks the first time a K-pop original story has been green-lit into an anime series after first seeing webtoon and web novel releases. It’s also a global project that showcases a new kind of collaborative Asian entertainment to the world, as K-pop joins forces with Korean webtoons and Japanese anime. To celebrate the fourth anniversary of the “DARK MOON” series, we spoke with director Shoko Shiga. Read on to learn all about what she kept and what she reworked from the original webtoon as it evolved into an anime, and all the other creative decisions made throughout the whole process.
Please introduce yourselves to the “Weverse Magazine” readers.
Shiga: Hello, I’m Shoko Shiga, director of the “DARK MOON” anime. I’ve been working as an episode director for about 12 years on various projects, and “DARK MOON” is my first as a series director.
How did it feel to be leading a project for the first time?
Shiga: Whereas episode directors are essentially responsible for individual episodes, the series director oversees the entire project, so you have to make all the decisions yourself. I find the fact that the overall creative direction is handled that way makes the job an interesting but difficult one.
“DARK MOON” began as the fictional story project of K-pop group ENHYPEN, first as a webtoon and a web novel, and now an anime. As one of the first instances of a K-pop original story being developed into a franchise, I’d love to know what led you to become a part of the project.
Shiga: I received an offer from Aniplex to direct and they told me that they were considering having TROYCA animate. I hadn’t read the original, but when I heard this was an original story made by a K-pop agency and that the main characters were collaborations with real artists, I sat down and read it. It was really amazing, imaginative, and fun—and that led me to take it on as director.
Could you talk about how you felt the first time you read “DARK MOON” and what it was about it that you found so appealing?
Shiga: At first, I thought it was just another vampire story when I sat down to read it. Obviously, vampire stories have always involved having special powers or being immortal, but “DARK MOON” doesn’t feel outdated. They aren’t your stereotypical, Count Such-And-Such monster vampires. And even though the story is dramatic and brutal, the characters are all wholesome and sweet in their own way. I found that to be particularly appealing. The vibe each and every character contributes is what makes “DARK MOON.”
What things in particular did you have to take into consideration when turning the webtoon into an anime?
Shiga: The world you see through anime is actually a very minimalistic one. Most of what we depict in the series revolves around Heli, so to me, “DARK MOON” feels less like a vampire story and more like a miraculous story about Heli and his friends, and what makes Sooha unique. We tried to take the original’s premise of a world where everyone knows there are vampires and they live alongside these creatures they fear and make that feel real.
How did you approach newly written scenes for the anime that aren’t there in the source material?
Shiga: The main group of vampires live full student lives even while hiding their true identities. We felt scenes not directly tied to the main plot still carry a lot of meaning, so we added in a lot of everyday scenes, too. We wanted to give the impression that the seven of them are so close as to almost be of one mind, so we used the script and video storyboards to show the relationship between them in the way they talk and tease each other without ever fighting. We tried to make it feel really natural onscreen how Shion is always the one cracking jokes and ends up getting yelled at, or how they all pile into a room together to chat. Their characters aren’t constantly caught up in different situations, pushing themselves and growing, so we wanted to have those everyday moments in there so the viewers would feel a sense of closeness with them. The idea was that it would lead people to understand what each of these characters is really like. Naturally that includes Sooha and the werewolves as well. All the characters in “DARK MOON” are just living their ordinary, day-to-day lives.
“DARK MOON” is a tangled web of the individual emotions and interpersonal relationships of its many characters. Was there anything you placed a particular focus on in order to convey the way their emotions evolve over time to the viewer?
Shiga: There’s a problem lying at the center of “DARK MOON”—can Sooha, who hates vampires, and the seven boys ever truly come to understand one another? Sooha’s afraid of vampires, but at the same time she also hates them. It might feel sort of stressful to watch, but precisely because it’s how Sooha feels, we made a point of really emphasizing her moments of shock and emotional turmoil. Meanwhile, Heli and his friends find themselves drawn to Sooha, but their feelings are complicated by the fact that they can’t let their identity as vampires be exposed. We tried to capture those moments of wavering emotions at Sooha’s every small word or gesture through facial expressions, physicality, and vocal delivery. As things move progressively forward and new situations unfold, the vampires undergo major emotional shifts as well, so I hope people look forward to seeing that.
What was it like turning the webtoon into an anime? You must have had to restructure the original to fit the anime flow since webtoons are vertically scrolling panels and the pacing is quite different.
Shiga: If you compare manga to webtoons, webtoons are actually relatively close to video. With manga, you flip pages horizontally, whereas in webtoons you scroll vertically. With manga, what makes it a unique medium is that you can control the pacing because you can’t see the next page, but with webtoons, each scene flows seamlessly into the next, with no big transition point. You keep on going without worrying about where you left off. Unlike webtoons, though, each episode of anime is 30 minutes, so in making the adaptation, we had to pick and choose which scenes were important enough to warrant the runtime and then make sure it’s depicted as planned. And in that sense, anime differs from webtoons in that you also need to time where each episode ends just right.
One thing that really got people talking about the anime adaptation was the lineup of voice actors.
Shiga: In anime adaptations, the characters become much more three-dimensional through their movements and their words, and the audience feels a strong sense of connection with them, so my feeling was we first needed to make sure all seven of the vampires would be memorable, and then hopefully viewers would also end up liking at least one of them. A voice makes all the difference. The actors are outstanding, but the audience’s ability to pick up on acting techniques makes things possible. Sometimes they can understand exactly what kind of person a character is from a single line, so we cast actors who aligned with the personalities seen in the original as closely as possible. Since this was also a collaboration with the real-world group ENHYPEN, we looked to the group members themselves for aspects you can’t pick out from the webtoon. It was a challenging but fun process that could only ever be possible with “DARK MOON.” When we first started recording with the cast, I directed them to act in a way that made their friendships feel close and natural, and that it’d be nice if they became close with each other for real. I was particularly interested in capturing the family-like bond that the vampires and werewolves each have among themselves from the outset just the way it is. If they were truly close, it would show in the performances. The same goes for Sooha. There’s a different kind of fun atmosphere once Sooha enters the picture compared to when it’s just the seven of them, so I really hoped everyone on set could be close with each other. And I really do think the recording environment we worked in was quite pleasant.
Before we go, could you each share your overall thoughts on the “DARK MOON” anime adaptation?
Shiga: It’s an anime that’s based on a webtoon, so I hope webtoon lovers, anime fans, and ENHYPEN fans will all enjoy it in their own way. And if the anime ends up being someone’s first exposure to the whole series, and then they get to experience the whole universe open up to them as they read the webtoon and get interested in ENHYPEN, that in itself would make me incredibly proud. And also, adapting a Korean webtoon into an anime in Japan is something that can only happen through creators from different countries collaborating together, and I think that connects directly to the question at the core of “DARK MOON”: Can people still have respect for each other when they’re different from one another? I’ve spent my time with this project thinking how significant it is in today’s world just to be working on something that explores that theme. And I hope that meaningfulness comes across in some way as people watch.