The Crunchyroll Original Series High Guardian Spice, a colorful anime-inspired fantasy cartoon about four magical girls in training, is finally available for all to stream. To celebrate the long-delayed, inexplicably controversial series' release, CBR had the chance to ask some questions to High Guardian Spice's creator Raye Rodriguez and to publish four exclusive pieces of concept and production art.
To address the elephant in the room, Crunchyroll would not take questions about the controversy or delays. With those subjects off the table, this interview instead focuses on the show itself, its anime influences, and the news that Rodriguez has multiple new animated series in development, including a DC superhero project with Warner Bros. Animation.
CBR: You've been drawing these characters for a long time. How have they evolved since you first created them?
Raye Rodriguez: The backstories of each of the girls have become a lot more fleshed out as the years went along, but the core of each girl is pretty similar to what it was when I came up with High Guardian Spice back in 2013. I think the girls evolved the most when we started writing the show -- having more voices than just my own, and putting the girls into new situations caused them all to grow a lot!
Of all the girls, I think Sage has changed the most. She’s always been a book-smart witch and Rosemary’s BFF, but I think her initial personality was more cool girl and less nerd, haha. She’s still got that cool girl in her though, she just needs to grow into that person. She’ll get there one day, I believe in her.
I've seen the first two episodes, and it's all very cute and family-friendly, but for some reason, they have a "mature audiences" warning. Are we gonna see heads bitten off Madoka-style or something?
Haha no, I wouldn’t go into this show expecting any big Madoka-like twists. There’s some violence, blood and curse words later on that I think are more on par with Naruto -- stuff that’s normal in shounen anime but never shown in American kids cartoons.
I love the opening and ending sequences. Tell us more about how those were developed.
Thank you! The opening and ending sequences are some of my favorite parts of the show! I always knew I wanted an anime-inspired OP&ED -- I started by compiling a bunch of my favorite anime openings and endings, and sent the videos over to our composer Steven Argila. Our writers collaborated on the lyrics of the opening song, and our supervising director Audu Paden and I collaborated on the ending lyrics. With the references and lyrics in hand, Steven wrote our songs! He did a great job, there were several months where I had the ending song stuck in my head, haha. I think we recorded a version of me, Audu and Sage’s voice actor Lauren White singing it in meows? No idea where that went!
Once we had the songs down, one of our episode directors, William Ruzicka, storyboarded the sequences. I gave him that same playlist of reference videos, and we had a lot of fun going through them and finding stuff we liked and wanted to include! I wrote out the beats I wanted to hit in each sequence and did some super rough thumbnails, and then let Will do his thing. His storyboards turned out beautiful (his storyboards are always beautiful), I especially love what he did for our opening sequence!
There are some really sweet anime ending sequences that are just illustrations, like in Petite Princess Yucie and some Sailor Moon endings -- I thought it’d be fun to have HGS’s ending sequence have that same kind of slice-of-life, storybook feel. I did all of the character drawings for the ending art, and one of our BG painters/color stylists James Batrez drew and painted the backgrounds! I wanted to show what the girls' lives are like off-screen :)
What's your favorite magical girl anime?
Princess Tutu, always and forever! Duck is possibly my favorite character of all time? She’s silly and cute and just wants to help -- the entire series Duck is put through hardship after hardship, but she always makes it through smiling, she never gives up hope. It’s a beautiful message and I think the world could use a few more Ducks.
You're working on a few new projects, including one set in the DC universe. Can you tell us anything about those?
I am! I can’t say too much yet, but I’m developing a brand new animated adult drama that I am very excited about. I’ve had the characters from that show in my head since I was in middle school, so it’s a real dream come true to finally bring them to life! It’s a show that’s unlike anything I’ve seen in American animated TV before, so I’m VERY STOKED!
All 12 episodes of High Guardian Spice are now streaming on Crunchyroll.