Starting Point: 1979-1996

Nausicaä is the name of a Phaeacian princess who appears in the Odyssey. I first learned of her from Bernard Evslin’s book Gods, Demigods & Demons: An Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology (published as part of Shakai Shisōsha’s Modern Educational Pocketbooks series and translated by Minoru Kobayashi), and I was instantly attracted to her. After that

It’s not that we just want to make our animation workers feel good. We need to ask ourselves: what do we need to do in an environment where it is increasingly difficult to make films? Providing a strong organizational structure in itself may be an act of self-interest. But we will be at an impasse unless we improve working conditions for our animat

In that context, I do worry about today’s young people. When watching animation, it’s not enough to fall in love with a particular explosion or combat scene; you also need to consider what the overall work is trying express, and whether what has been expressed succeeds. I know that some animated works are pure entertainment and don’t even have a pa

Sequences that weren’t particularly interesting were increasingly regarded as a way of giving the staff a bit of breathing room in their tough schedules.

We are now living in a society that is wealthy yet poverty-stricken. We are able to listen to large amounts of music and watch large numbers of videos. But only a small fraction of these move us.

it wasn’t good for her health either. But still, she continued to work. In effect, she was a workaholic. Part of me that feels that no one should work that hard. But part of me also wants to have the energy and dedication she has for her work. It would be easy if we were merely trying to produce a quality of work that corresponded to our limited bu

In learning about Nausicaä, I recalled a certain Japanese heroine. I’m quite sure that she appears in the collection of short stories known as Tsutsumi chū-nagon monogatari (Tales of the Tsutsumi Middle Counselor) from the eleventh century. She was known as a princess who loved insects and apparently ran about in nature even after coming of age, de

Related to that, there was a film called The NeverEnding Story. It was somewhat changed from the original story. A dragon appears and has a very obvious face. You can tell what it is thinking from its face. This was totally uninteresting. For us something is far more likely to become an object of our longing when we don’t know what it is thinking.

In reality, it’s impossible for creators to keep working at the same pace year in and year out. The harder you try to make one good program, the more difficult it is to achieve that same level of quality over and over again. If you really want to create good shows year in and year out, you have to create an organization or system that makes this po

Loss of motive. Japanese animation is testimony to the horrors that occur when people keep producing works that don’t assign independent motivations to the protagonists based on some sort of value system.