Source: Famitsu
Siren: Blood Curse: Archives 19~27
Good evening. This is Clockwork Toyoda. Thank you for visiting.
This blog aims to bring you the charms of Siren: Blood Curse. Today is part three of the archives, dealing with items 19 to 27.
Archive No.19 - Altar Doll
Toyama: We wanted to put in all the things we were now able to do on the PlayStation 3. With this archive, the visuals change depending on the time.
Toyoda: The idol's face changes depending on the time you view it, right? I've found four patterns, but what about the time when it changes?
Toyama: From 7pm to 1am it's normal, from 1am to 7am its head enlarges, from 7am to 1pm it's painted white and from 1pm to 7pm the doll's head is impaled.
Toyoda: Did you buy four of the same doll?
Toyama: It would have been wasteful with the budget, so we only used one doll (laughs).
Toyoda: Huh!? But if you messed up you couldn't do it over!
Toyama: We melted the doll with fire, so the staff were probably in a cold sweat (laughs). By the way, we made the whole altar so the real thing was quite big. It was quite hard to manage, so we were wondering whether or not to throw it away...
Toyoda: What a waste! If you're going to throw it away, I'll gladly take it!!
Archive No.20 - Seigo Saiga's Notebook
Toyoda: This is one of the straightforward archive files so there's no much to explain about it, right?
Toyama: Yeah, there's nothing really (laughs). It's supposed to be on top of an operating table, so... It's supposed to show that Yukie Kobe has been following Saiga around, which is why she is sacrificed. If you look at the photo in the top right of the next archive, "Yukie Kobe's Notebook", you can see this, but there's a sneaked shot of Saiga going into the hospital from the second floor (laughs).
Toyoda: The photo is too small, though (laughs).
Toyama: This was the first scene we shot with the guy playing Saiga, Seiji Hattori. I think he must have been confused too. Like, "Where is this scene going to go?" (laughs)
Archive No.21 - Yukie Kobe's Notebook
Toyoda: The photo of Yukie is cute.
Toyama: Actually, this one was quite troublesome too. We had no photos of Chiang Li-Mei, the actress playing Yukie Kobe, in clean nurse clothes...
Toyoda: I see. So you had nothing but the blood-stained nurse outfit from the shibito.
Toyama: Right, right. So while we were sorting out this photo we found a picture of Sato dressed up as a nurse, thought back and thought, "What was this used for?" and merged that with the picture of Ms. Chiang (laughs).
Toyoda: Ms. Sato is popping up all over the place (laughs).
Toyama: So it's a bit like an aicolla of Sato (laughs).
Toyoda: I'm not sure that's exactly what that means! (laughs) So Yukie is special, right? Out of the episodes she's the only one whose chest moves, isn't she?
Toyama: Huh!? That's the first I've heard of it. We weren't really trying to put in anything like that specifically... But the one in charge is pretty serious about things, so maybe they thought of it seriously like a physical necessity (laughs).
Archive No.22 - Mana Cross Brooch
Toyama: For this we used something we made out of styrofoam.
Toyoda: And the back?
Toyama: That came from a different brooch we had and modified. We laid out a red cloth on the stone paving at a park, lit it up with the light from a lantern...
Toyoda: Hold on a moment. You even had a lantern? (laughs)
Toyama: Yeah (laughs). Actually, to match it up with the red cloth we used in the archive we put a red cloth in the episode itself. Even the smallest things have an impact. Even if it's kind of strange.
Archive No.23 - Plank with Strange Characters
Toyama: This is another of the pieces of wood we found in an abandoned village and photographed, then matched everything that appears in the episode to it...
Toyoda: Did you know what shibito characters you wanted to put on it?
Toyama: We did. We knew from the start we wanted to put "uroborosu no wa wo mawase" (turn the wheel of Ouroboros) from the start.
Toyoda: Roughly how big was the piece of wood?
Toyama: About 30 centimetres.
Archive No.24 - Sacred Painting "Bestowing Nourishment"
Toyama: We actually put a hanging scroll on the wall of a building in an abandoned village, took out the middle bit and replaced it with a picture drawn by the illustrator. It was done by the designer of the shibito.
Toyoda: Did the designer decide what to do with the image?
Toyama: Sato gave some rough instructions to begin with, and the designer did it based on that.
Archive No.25 - The 3-Metre Alien
Toyama: This is one of the UMA archives, a parody of a three-metre tall alien, the Flatwoods Monster. We wanted something that would even make sense overseas.
Toyoda: Well, it's a mine, so there are some superhuman shibito in the mix too...
Toyama: That was kind of an accident. Superhuman shibito don't really have that much meaning to them (laughs). We noticed that the Flatwoods Monster looked like a keyhole-shaped tomb and planned for it to look like a grave, but for some reason the final product ended up looking totally different (laughs).
Archive No.26 - Sam Monroe's Notebook
Toyama: Until the designer mentioned this to me I hadn't even noticed myself, but the notebook used here is the "uncool notebook" mentioned in archive no.11, "Bella Monroe's Diary" - "Daddy bought me a really uncool notebook, so I gave it back" (laughs).
Toyoda: Oh, wow! It really is! The drawing Bella did of a robot is the same as the robots printed on the notebook in the archive!
Toyama: It's so trivial no one notices (laughs). I guess it shows how poor Sam is. Being so careful to use the notebook his daughter threw away (laughs).
Toyoda: It has such serious things written in it too, with a design like that (laughs).
Archive No.27 - Miyako Hymn
Toyoda: Is this an actual photograph of a gravestone you modified?
Toyama: It is. By the way, this is another of the archives for which we fixed the design and then matched the designs within the episodes to it.
Toyoda: Is the grave that of one of Miyako's ancestors?
Toyama: It means that Miyako = sacrifice. In terms of the story, it's an important archive that signifies the beginning and end of the loop.
Good Evening from the Development Team
This is Chiang Li-Mei, who plays Yukie Kobe, during a shoot. This is her being photographed in the dirty nurse outfit that appears in the archive's story. Due to a mistake in preparations we had no clean clothes for her. But when you look at what we ended up using, you can't tell at all... (Toyama)
Afterwards blood was applied, transforming her into her familiar shibito version.