Earlier you noted that Streamline would take a day per episode. They must have turned over quite a profit. With you guys putting so much more time in production, how does that affect your profit margin?

JK: I couldn't say because we don't own or distribute it. We just produced it.

TJ: I live in a cardboard box behind the studio, so I don't know.

So did Pioneer give you more of a relaxed time schedule for this?

JK: Not really. But they implied that they wanted us to do it right rather than do it quickly. I think Pioneer is cool with all their titles that way. For them, quality is a very important issue. They would say, "Yes, here's the deadline, but if it's an issue of quality then take more time."

TJ: Money weighs in occasionally, but that's just it, they weigh it. If they can afford to do it better then they'll do it. The older philosophy of dubs was how much can we get done for how little.

JK: I think as the audience has grown significantly there are now more discriminating tastes. Now people will say, "Your dub is crap. I'm not going to buy anything from your company anymore." But now, subtitled VHS is going the way of the Dodo and DVD is taking its place, so you're going to get the dub whether you like it or not.

Regarding the amount of work you put into it, certainly the director isn't worried about the budget.

TJ: I certainly don't. That's Jonathan's job.

So you definitely have the artist sensibility as you approach a work.

JK: Taliesin is director first and he will spend the time getting the best performances he can out of people. I will usually be supportive of him up until the point he gets to take twenty and I think take three was good enough for us. Sometimes you know you can get it out of the actor if you just have the time, and other times you know you're beating a dead horse.

TJ: I've gotten much better at gauging that. Every show has gotten a little smoother, which is good because every show's gotten a little harder too.

Concerning "NieA_7," I notice that you retained the Japanese title even though it makes little sense, or insinuates little about the show. I know that in Japanese, the relationship the written characters have to one another has a lot to do with their meaning, and the title for "NieA_7" seems to borrow from that tradition. How do you address these types of cultural/language hurdles in your treatment of the script?

TJ: When I was 16 or 17 years old, I got to talk to a man who was a professor of Chinese language. He explained to me his philosophy of language. So much is lost because degrees of intensity aren't translated. There are all these interesting ways that you can bring the idea of what someone is saying to what they're supposed to be saying. Most people don't put the time or effort into doing it because it takes too much time.