'Goodbye, Don Glees!' Director Says Mother's Ill Health Inspired Anime Film

For Goodbye, Don Glees! director Atsuko Ishizuka the shock of experiencing a sudden illness in her family turned into inspiration for her first original feature film, she told Newsweek.

The anime film, which premieres in theaters in the U.S. on Wednesday and will be released in the U.K. later this year, follows Roma (voiced by Natsuki Hanae) and Toto (Yuki Kaji) whose lives changes when they meet Drop (Ayumu Murase).

The three call themselves "Don Glees," and they go on an adventure to prove they aren't responsible for a forest fire in their town. But Roma, Toto and Drop's journey has more in store for them than just proving their innocence, as they learn more about themselves and also deal with loss and grief.

But Ishizuka explained that the film's inspiration was something closer to home.

Atsuko Ishizuka Says the Movie Is 'About My Mother'

"It's about my mother," the acclaimed director said of the film's themes of loss and grief. "She was actually seriously ill at one point and she was told that she might not have too long to live, and at the time she decided to pass everything onto me. And it made me realize how important I am to her and also she was looking at me as the proof that she existed in this world.

"It was obviously life-changing for her but it was life-changing for me too because I was the one and only treasure to somebody else.

"You know, I didn't think I was going to be that to anyone, but obviously I was. So while I was working on this film, I thought: What sort of experience can these boys have to change their lives like mine did?'"

Despite the sudden scare, Ishizuka added that her mother is, thankfully, still alive; and although she is "unwell now," the director feels she can now joke about the experience: "I was like, 'This is unbelievable. Oh, why did you do that? You almost gave me a heart attack.'"

The Challenge of Making Her First Original Feature

Ishizuka has had a long career in anime since joining animation studio Madhouse in 2004, and she previously worked on notable projects like A Place Further Than The Universe and No Game No Life's anime adaptation.

But Goodbye, Don Glees! is the animator's first original feature film, and that came with some challenges of its own.

"I felt isolated at times just because it's so much solo work involved," Ishizuka said. "But when I was creating the story, it was fascinating. Something I imagined in my head is actually taking shape, and obviously that's how it is; but while I was doing it, I was fascinated by the process myself.

"So it was a little bit like you had a scary dream last night, it was all in your head and you have to explain it to somebody, and obviously other people's dreams are fun or scary, but as a film director or supervisor I have to make it interesting, make it scary.

"So I was doing it, but I was quite fascinated by it at the same time. I [was] creating something from nothing. The characters are [original] so you're creating something from absolutely nothing. And as a scriptwriter, at the same time, I had to create a story from nothing, to create this character's existence from nothing."

She went on: "Creating the story was challenging, but drawing [it]... just [because of] the scale that I had in my head making the animation was far more challenging.

"As you know, animation is about simplicity, you want to simplify, you don't make it complicated, like say backgrounds has to be understood right away, it will be sort of tidy and organized in a way so that it's visually recognizable.

"But I went to the opposite end of the spectrum, I wanted to use spectacular pictures and I wanted details, and I was just getting requests and orders and we had so many trials and errors to get what I have in my head in this animation."

On Her Characters and the Importance of Iceland

This is certainly true of Goodbye, Don Glees!, which sees the characters travel to Iceland to find a place that Drop calls his "treasure," a stunning waterfall location that also houses, surprisingly, a red phone box.

Ishizuka previously used Iceland as a location for the show A Place Further Than The Universe, and she revisited it because she thought that for her characters it would feel "like the end of the world" because of where it is on the map in location to Japan.

The director wanted to explore the idea of the way in which the world around her three main characters could shape and change their life.

"When I say the world, it doesn't mean the Earth it's more like the friends you're with and why that is," Ishizuka said. "I didn't want to keep it too small. It's not [just] about these three young boys in the countryside. They are experiencing things that will change their world and also change their point of view, and I wanted [to get] the audience to have a slightly different point of view."

She added: "Roma, to start with, he's a young boy, sort of naïve in a way. He is not courageous enough to go out of their town; he's stuck almost. His friend Toto, now he's one step ahead of Roma so there's a really nice contrast there, then I wanted to have somebody else change their life, somebody who is completely different from either of them, [Drop].

"Roma and Toto, these two boys in the countryside, need to decide which school they want to go to, whereas Drop has got a different history that Roma and Toto can't even imagine, and they don't even have this concept of someone dying. So, it's a refreshing theme."

Goodbye, DonGlees! is in theaters in the U.S. for three nights, on September 14 and 20 for subtitled screenings and September 18 for the English dubbed screening. The film will be released in U.K. and Irish cinemas from November 30, 2022.

Update 11/25/2022 11:48 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include the official release date for Goodbye DonGlees! in the U.K. and Ireland.