Production I.G.'s Shinji Aramaki was introduced introduced to the Halo franchise by someone near and dear to his heart: His better half.
"I've always been a fan of video games, and my wife told me that Halo 3 is the best game on the 360," Aramaki stated in the most recent Famitsu. "I just sort of got addicted after that. It's a very intricate world. It's hard to do such an epic story in movie form these days, but it's easy to get into it as a game. There's just enough humor in it, too. It's a great piece of pure entertainment."
Aramaki, best known for directing the Appleseed anime, is one of the noted anime bigwigs working on the Halo Legends animated series of seven short films. Aramaki worked with Halo franchise development director Frank O'Connor to select seven plotlines from the ten or so stories Aramaki hammered out about the Halo universe.
The five production houses involved in creating these Halo anime shorts are some of the biggest names in the industry: Bones, Casio Entertainment, Production I.G., Studio4 C, and Toei Animation.
"I wanted to develop the world of Halo from many different angles in the anime," Aramaki said. "I gave each studio the episodes they're most suited to develop and told them to add whatever unique touches you like. The resulting variations you see turned out very well, I think."
Halo Legends Wouldn't Have Happened Without Director's Wife [1Up]