Miyazaki talk with R.Kelts at UC Berkeley 2009

Still cranky after this years, the old man hasn't lose much of his spirit. Hee. Kelts wrote for Japanese newspaper on pop culture, specifically anime scenes nowadays.

anime

Cranky old man Miyazaki interview with BBC Jonathan Ross

Hahahah, he is already a cranky old man here. Recorded on 2002.

anime

Interview of voice actors/actresses from Gundam Unicorn

Enjoy.

anime

Wall Street Journal Discussion on State of Anime Industry now

Basically this article talks about poor state of animation industry workers and struggling economy as pointed earlier in this blog. Osamu Tezuka pioneering work in anime also brings in the concept of cheap pay for mass production of anime, this is recent result of his vision.

The more detailed link from WSJ.

anime

John Lasseter talks about Hayao Miyazaki

Successful John Lasseter who created shows like Toy Story, A Bug's Life which vaulted Pixar into powerhouse name in animation world talks about his Japanese counterpart, Hayao Miyazaki. He is pratically gushing about Miyazaki, no surprise considering how charming his works have become worldwide.



This discussion is about Miyazaki supposed successor, Yoshifumi Kondo who directed Whisper of Heart. It gives an insight on how American top guns regarded Miyazaki talent and skill as maestro animator.

Interesting thing is discussion on Goro Miyazaki, the son who debut with Tales of Earthsea. Apparently there is schism between father and son which prompted the elder Miyazaki comeback in Ponyo as if to prove a point. Perhaps he felt his son is not to the mettle?

Another interesting human drama here.

Yutaka Yamamoto comments on Haruhi Season 2

What he thinks of latest story arc in Season 2 of Haruhi, the series that he direct the highly acclaimed prequel and considered his magnum opus which becomes anime of the year (2006). I sensing bitterness in him when he talks about this. Not too surprising considering how acrimonious his dispute with Kyoto Animation.

801 Tonari Chan "revived" by Yamamoto Yutaka.

Something got my interest today, Yamamoto Yutaka the former Kyoto Animation director picked up "dead" project, 801 Tonari Chan which is canceled few months ago. Interesting, considering the problematic relationship between the director and the famous studio due to Lucky Star direction disagreement. Yamamoto went off directing Kannagi with poached former A class staffers from Kyoto Animation and now he is directing 90 second short for former Kyoto Animation project. Coincidence? I dunno. The chances is too high for mere coincidence. It smells of good human drama here, IMHO.


Kannagi even featured an "anonymous" anime director that indirectly chiding Kyoto Animation. Here is summary of an interview with him in English. This interview also reveals his comments on current impasse of anime industry, he basically felt the anime creativity has stagnant since days of Evangelion of mid 90s. He is talks on why Kannagi is more superior and original than ToraDora! and Index in this interview. Interesting fellow!

Source

A short clip on Hideaki Anno

Interesting short bio on seminal anime director Hideaki Anno.

Hayao Miyazaki interview in USA (1997)

Good interview of most bankable anime director. Enjoy.

Dollos / ダロス OVA, the story behind it

This short discussion on Studio Peirott's 1st OVA made in 1983. The unmistakeable vibe of Space Odyssey 2001 is strong in this title. Directed by brilliant but difficult Mamoru Oshii, the discussion shows what is going on behind the making on this vintage anime. The vision, philosophy, person interjection and commercial considerations were interviewed in detail here.

Ghibli Museum and Miyazaki the Man

The building that houses the Ghibli Museum would be unusual anywhere, but in greater Tokyo, where architectural exuberance usually takes an angular, modernist form—black glass cubes, busy geometries of neon—it is particularly so. From the outside, the museum resembles an oversized adobe house, with slightly melted edges; its exterior walls are painted in saltwater-taffy shades of pink, green, and yellow. Inside, the museum looks like a child’s fantasy of Old Europe submitted to a rigorous Arts and Crafts sensibility. The floors are dark polished wood; stained-glass windows cast candy-colored light on whitewashed walls; a spiral stairway climbs—inside what looks like a giant Victorian birdcage—to a rooftop garden of world grasses, over which a hammered-metal robot soldier stands guard. In the central hall, beneath a high ceiling, a web of balconies and bridges suggests a dream vision of a nineteenth-century factory. Wrought-iron railings contain balls of colored glass, and leaded-glass lanterns are attached to the walls by wrought-iron vines. In the entryway, a fresco on the ceiling depicts a sky of Fra Angelico blue and a smiling sun wreathed in fruits and vegetables.

A very nice article that discusses about Studio Ghibli, the legacy, despair and hopes from its most illustrious son, Miyazaki on animation in Japan.

Article in Japan Focus

The story of Crunchy Roll

As the new year fast approaches, the news across the anime industry looks persistently bleak: downward-spiraling overseas DVD sales coupled with decreasing profits at home, a shrinking domestic labor force combined with an ever-expanding menu of file-share freebies--and, of course, an anemic global economy for all.

But there is a silver lining on the horizon, and you can test its brightness and durability beginning exactly one week from today.

Next Friday, Jan. 2, California-based Crunchyroll.com, one of the largest and most popular of the so-called "fan sites," or Internet portals for free anime uploaded exclusively by and for fans, is going legit: legal and fully licensed for producer profit.

If you follow this column, this is not the first you've heard of Crunchyroll's foray into unchartered bandwidth. In September, I conducted a phone interview with Vu Nguyen, the site's cofounder and vice president of business, development and strategy. Nguyen recounted for me his team's trips to Japan at the start of 2008 to obtain digital strategies directly from the front offices of Japan's anime producers.

The result? They had none.

"So we decided to give them strategies," Nguyen told me. "Because they're frustrated, too."

I was impressed by Crunchyroll's proactive approach to an industry whose upper management tends toward intransigence. In many of my interviews with anime executives, the mere mention of hemorrhaging profits via the Internet inspired winces at best, and at worst, outright antagonism--as if I'd inserted an obscenity into the conversation.

No doubt, Nguyen and his colleagues have benefited from their timing. While DVD sales figures have been slipping in all media, for anime, North American numbers have dropped precipitously, by an estimated 200 million dollars or more from their peak roughly five years ago.

The news isn't much better inside Japan. Years of declining birthrates have produced a shrinking youth consumer demographic, one that can hardly pick up the slack of their otaku elders. Young Japanese, distracted and enthralled by their ubiquitous high-tech cell phones, are no less Web-savvy than their overseas counterparts. And recent changes to Japan's employment and corporate structures mean that many of them are working longer hours for less money than their parents did. Why pay for what's free?

Which is exactly the question I put to Nguyen earlier this week. If it was difficult convincing Japanese producers to provide official content to a foreign-based fan site, how hard will it be to persuade foreign consumers to pay for that content--when it was nothing more than a mouse click away days earlier?

Crunchyroll's approach is firm, if not outright draconian. "By the end of this year [next Wednesday], we are disabling user uploads for anime and dramas and removing any content from those sections for which we have not obtained rights. We are transitioning the site from a user upload model to a licensed model, working directly with the producers in Japan."

On Jan. 2, the site's content rollout begins in earnest: "We will be airing several new simulcasts every week," Nguyen continues, "with titles including Naruto Shippuden, Gintama, Shugo Chara, Skip Beat and more. We will also be launching our subscription plan that gives members earlier access to the shows, great video quality and no advertisements. The episodes will be available the same day with English subtitles an hour after Japan broadcast, exclusively on Crunchyroll for subscribers. Episodes will also be available for free with advertising support for everyone up to a week after."

The gamble is obvious: Fans will value quality content and immediate access over the contents of their wallets. Crunchyroll also plans to offer various social networking opportunities to entice subscribers. But here's the rub: "The fans genuinely want to support creators and the industry," Nguyen claims. "They just haven't been educated on how the industry works. We're doing our best to inform them."

In 2009, the Crunchyroll story could prove a fascinating test of the Internet's capacity for self-monitoring behavior, whatever the content: Can human beings in a virtual world put group survival and sustainability ahead of short-term self-gratification?

Source

Personally I think this is future of anime, more and more Net consumers preferred to stream shows rather than using torrents to download them and then watch it while at the expense of the HDD space. The industry might be watching this effort since they are truly worried that declining youth population in local market forced them to "outsource" market so they can stay in business. Some commentators noted that current Japanese anime industry is bloated (50 series a year, unprecedented rate) might suffer another bubble burst just like Japanese real estate scene soon. Economic depression might just do the job.

Interesting concept so far.

Eve no Jikan / イヴの時間 and Pale Cocoon / ペイル・コクーン creator in interview

Eve no Jikan OVA

Pale Cocoon OVA

Yasuhiro Yoshiura is that rarest of artists: He comes across as humble and unaware of the many layers of depth to his work. His most recent anime, Time of Eve, is, according to the series' director and writer, only what it appears to be--a story of humans living alongside near-human androids.

But there is so much that can be read into the tale, which is centered around a unique cafe--called Ibu no Jikan (Time of Eve)--where androids and humans intermingle on the condition that they do not attempt to determine who is flesh and who is not. Within the cafe, the androids have no identifiable characteristics that distinguish them from the human customers; they look the same, sound the same and act the same.

Outside the cafe, however, the androids speak in a more mechanical manner and have digital halos--a particularly beautiful effect--that identify them as robots. One idea, Yoshiura explained to The Daily Yomiuri in a recent interview at his Tokyo studio, had been to identify them with writing on their bodies, unintentionally reminiscent of Jews who were forcibly tattooed during the Holocaust.

The metaphors could be extended to any sort of prejudice--racial, sexual or religious--seen in human relationships. The silence that penetrates the six-part series (and his award-winning 2006 film, Pale Cocoon), too, seems to refer to loneliness or a disconnection with society.

But, that was never the intention, Yoshiura says. "I wasn't out to try and make this some sort of social statement. It's just about a guy who's got this beautiful woman he lives with, and he's thinking, 'She's cute, but I can't do anything 'cause she's not human...ah, what should I do?'"

"There probably aren't that many Japanese who would look any deeper than that to see the issues of racism or social problems," he says with a laugh.

This is not to say that Yoshiura has not found an equally interesting social problem based in science fiction, one that also has shown up in works such as mangaka Naoki Urasawa's Pluto or episodes of Star Trek or Alien Nation: Can--and should--humans treat nonhumans as equals?

"In Japanese anime and manga, it's pretty much a given that robots and androids are treated just as other people. But if there was really a robot standing here next to me, would it really be that easy to interact with him? I don't think so, no matter how much he looks human. I wouldn't know what to do," the 28-year-old says.

Time of Eve, the third installment of which is out now on timeofeve.com and also at streaming.yahoo.co.jp/p/t/00502/v05087/, is not Yoshiura's first film to deal with this social interaction. Mizu no Kotoba (Aquatic Language, 2002), which Yoshiura completed while studying at what is now Kyushu University's School of Design, has a surprise, if unnecessary, twist at the end involving robots. Here, too, the storyline is more about inter"person"al relationships than anything to do with robots.

So, why all the robots and androids?

Yoshiura says he has been a big fan of Isaac Asimov, particularly his Three Laws of Robotics, from his I, Robot, ever since middle school. In fact, the Three Laws are referred to in Time of Eve, which also deals with android prostitutes, much like Spielberg's A.I., in the latest episode, which is available free for this month.

Outside of the literary world, Yoshiura has found inspiration in the films of Terry Gilliam--Pale Cocoon was an homage to the lonely, desolate society of Gilliam's Brazil--scriptwriter Andrew Niccol (The Truman Show) and The Simpsons, among others, though the humor found in those materials does not transfer well to animation, according to the director.

An obvious comparison, one Yoshiura does not seem to mind, is to anime auteur Mamoru Oshii, who has tackled both the issues of sentience in androids (Ghost in the Shell) and the use of silence to portray loneliness and disassociation (The Sky Crawlers).

Made with a combination of 2-D character designs with 3-D backgrounds, Yoshiura's films look contemporary, high-quality and engaging. For the young director, who has won awards at numerous international film festivals, this method was born out of practicality more than aesthetic reasons.

"I didn't have the ability to really draw very well, so when I was making the films by myself, that combination of 2-D and 3-D was what gave me the best results," he says.

"There are very few people who can just toss off a drawing of a character and a beautiful background," he says as he flips through a book on the making of Hayao Miyazaki's Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away). "Japanese audiences have a thing for hand-drawn characters...If everybody was a great animator, then I think fewer people would use 3-D, and that would result in much more 'Japanese'-looking films."

Unlike his earlier works, Yoshiura is making Time of Eve with the help of a team of artists, making it possible for him to make this Internet-based series, as well as to consider the possibility of extending it in the long-run style of a U.S. TV show.

But working with others has drawbacks, such as communication challenges, he explains.

"I had always wanted to work with other people, but for practical reasons wasn't able to," he recalls. "When it was just me, it was just me. But just because I'm working as a group now...it's not as if it's five or 10 of me working together."

Maybe Yoshiura should consider investing in some androids of his own. But how would he treat them?

Source

Both Pale Cocoon and Time of Eve are excellent works that is completely out of mainstream anime which I loved so much. As the article above mentioned, he is focus on themes of dissonance and social diaspora through high technology. Not as obtuse as Oishii, he able to convey the narrative effectively.

Soft Power Discussion no 5

SOFT POWER, HARD TRUTHS / From anime to action


Michael Arias, the first and so far only American to direct a Japanese animated feature film, 2006's award-winning Tekkonkinkreet, once told me that animation, live action film and video game technologies were fast uniting, and that the remaining differences between the three would soon become imperceptible.

Arias' singular achievement is an exemplar of the cross-cultural phenomena about which I frequently write. Born in California, Arias has lived on both U.S. coasts, working primarily in film, computer-generated imagery (CGI) and software development. A trip to Japan to help develop a Back to the Future ride for Universal Studios Japan led to an eventual residency, and a devotion to the Japanese culture and its approach to movie making.

"There's not as much money to be made [in Japan]," he conceded to me years ago. "But there's a lot more freedom."

Among other prizes, Arias's animated version of Tekkonkinkreet, based on the original manga by Taiyo Matsumoto, won Japan's Academy Award for Animation, despite competing against domestic giants like Hideaki Anno, director of the revived Evangelion 1.0.

In the mid-1990s, Arias developed a software program known as "Toon Shaders," which integrates traditional hand-drawn images with CGI. It was used by no less than maestro Hayao Miyazaki in Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke) and the Academy Award-winning Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away).

I caught up with Arias recently, while preparing to introduce and screen Tekkonkinkreet at universities and museums across the United States next year for the Anime Masterpieces (animemasterpieces.com) project.

And what is he up to now? Live action.

Arias's new film, Heaven's Door, will be released in Japan on Feb. 7. At a screening in Roppongi, Tokyo, last week, I was struck by the parallels with Tekkonkinkreet. Like its predecessor, Heaven's Door features a pair of misfits attempting to survive in a crumbling world. One is older, presumably more experienced; the other is a naif. And in both films, they are attempting to reach resolution by the sea.

Also as in Tekkonkinkreet, 360-degree shots make the viewer move with the camera; brightly colored settings punctuate scenes of artful static; and a sense of apocalyptic dread adds urgency to every little act.

I asked Arias about these parallels earlier this week. "A lot of that stuff I only realized seeing the movie finished," he told me. "There's no doubt that Tekkonkinkreet and Heaven's Door share a lot of the same DNA. But a lot of it just kind of crept in."

What didn't just creep in are the big-name Japanese stars headlining the film, including TOKIO lead singer Tomoya Nagase and Japanese-Russian-American model, actress and singer Anna Tsuchiya. They and others should guarantee a big roll-out early next year.

Arias says he's drawn to emptiness and longing, exploring the "missing limb" in our interconnected lives. His younger brother died when Arias was 8 years old, he told me.

"I guess I'm drawn to these stories of some kind of perfectly matched partner who's gone. Some kind of strange sense of absence," he said.

Source

Tekkon Kinkret is surreal and unusual anime experience, a fusion of 2 cultures can be felt here strongly. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who is looking beyond mainstream animes have to offer. Not as obtuse as Oishii's work but not that simplistic either.

Another rant from Miyazaki

Nostalgia is one of the moods frequently associated with the works of anime director Hayao Miyazaki, but in a lengthy press conference late last month in Tokyo, he showed complex feelings on the subject, sometimes criticizing nostalgia and sometimes appearing to indulge in it.

Miyazaki is the director of animated masterworks such as Kaze no Tani no Naushika (Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, 1984), Tenku no Shiro Laputa (Castle in the Sky, 1986), Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro, 1988), Kurenai no Buta (Porco Rosso, 1992) and Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away, 2001).

Some of his films are set in the near or distant past, while others are set in storybook-style fantasy worlds filled with cozy, antique trappings. So it is natural that the topic of nostalgia would come up when the director agreed to take questions at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan.

Miyazaki said he has pondered "which period [of Japan's history] was best...to find out where we should have stopped. And I realized it was not possible to stop. For example, there are people who feel nostalgia about the 30s of the Showa era."

The Showa era (1926-1989) took in most of the 20th century, but the Showa 30s (1955-1964) have become cherished in popular culture as the end of the postwar era, when Tokyo Tower and the first Shinkansen were built, the nation hosted its first Olympics, and hard-working families strove to obtain the "three sacred treasures" of a television, refrigerator and washing machine.

Miyazaki, 67, remembers the time firsthand. "People have the delusion that things were good in those days. But actually, the fact was that it was a very unhappy period," he said.

"There was much frustration at that time, and there was a violent impact that people created on the nature of Japan, such as in the seas and in the rivers and in our mountains. Much rubbish was piled upon the environment by us...I recall in my boyhood, friends around me who were not able to attend school or eat properly," he recalled.

He went on: "And if people think that the Edo period [1603-1868] was a good period, there were many unfortunate things about that period as well, except that people were able to give up and bear things, but we have forgotten how to do that."

Miyazaki said he has come to realize that "paradise is memories of our infanthood. In those days we were protected by our parents and we were innocently unaware of the many problems around us."

Seeing modern children immersing themselves in a "virtual world" of manga, anime, video games, television and cell phones, the director seemed to long for the infancy of society itself--the Stone Age.

"In our country, a sense of balance seems to have crumbled down so that there is no place where we can take care of sheep or cattle or run around barefoot. Rather, we are surrounded by a virtual environment," he said.

"I think there are things that children have to learn before they learn to read and write. And these are the things which people during the Stone Age were able to do. In other words, to create fire and to be able to maintain that fire or to extinguish that fire, and also to understand the nature of water and to climb up trees and be able to use ropes and be able to use a knife," Miyazaki said.

He said that the government should take responsibility for teaching children such skills, adding: "Rather than have the government do this, this is something which parents and local communities should be doing. However, in pursuit of economic growth, what Japan has done is to destroy such local communities. So this is something which we must regain."

Yet at another point in the press conference, he said: "We should not just think about...the ridiculous things that the government says, but rather we should liberate our children from nationalism."

When he was asked to expand on his comment about nationalism, Miyazaki said: "The problems of the world come from the fact that nationalism feels that the world's problems are due to multiethnicity. So at least in my case, I will not create films in which when there are people who destroy evil, peace comes about.

"In other words, I feel that when making films it is necessary to be aware of the fact that all problems that exist, exist inherently within yourself, within your society and among your family members.

"In regard to the town we love or the country that we love, there is the possibility that they may turn into something which is not good for the world as a whole. This is something which we learned from the past war, and this is a lesson which we should not forget," he said.

Part of the international goodwill Japan currently enjoys comes not from military strength but from the worldwide popularity of Japanese anime, manga and video games, especially among young people. The phenomenon is known as "soft power."

Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli is a major source of such power. But when he was asked to comment on the topic, the director waxed enigmatic: "In our studio, we often talk about it, and although steamboats have disappeared from the seas, there are still vessels that are powered by diesel and turbine engines. But what we talk about is the fact that even in such an environment, one sailboat can be allowed to exist."

At the moment, the nation's most prominent manga and anime fan is Prime Minister Taro Aso. On that topic, Miyazaki was less enigmatic: "It's embarrassing."

"That is something that he [Aso] should do in his private time," he added.

Miyazaki said he did not envy the prime minister's job, especially when it comes to environmental problems, about which the director feels alternately optimistic and pessimistic.

"The thing I would not want to become the most is the prime minister of Japan," he said. "It's truly an unrewarding job because you cannot tell the truth to people who do not want to hear the truth. So I believe that people will not learn until things become tremendously horrible.

"This country consumes more than it produces. What our country can produce is only able to support the lives of 32 million people...That structure whereby we do not have food self-sufficiency, or the fact that the underwear we wear is made in China, is at the core of the uncertainty of our nation."

Miyazaki said dramatic changes in economic structures would be impossible, but that gradual change was necessary. Slipping into pessimistic mode, he said, "But if we go slowly and take time to make those changes, then I am not confident that we will make it safely to be able to stave off the end of civilization."
(Dec. 5, 2008)

The article

Another sign of his increasingly schizophrenic stance towards something he is famous for and himself. I have to confess this, it is confusing.

But Ponyo rocks.

Makoto Shinkai Interview

The famous anime maestro who helmed ground breaking Voices of Distant Star alone interviewed in this article. He is hailed as new Miyazaki which I beg to differ. Miyazaki is very generalist anime director whereas Shinkai is very intimate and personal director. Miyazaki paint his work on big, big very public canvas with themes of pacifism and enviromental issues, Shinkai is more to personal feelings of loss, regret, love and nostalgia. He is more Pollock Jackson than Van Gogh in a way.

Shinkai seems to me though, obsessed with sky pans. I do wonder why.



Full interview here

Some sort of summary from Makoto Shinkai fan site here

Here is some select lines that interest me a lot.

Interviewer: Cats are recurring characters in your movies. Why?
Shinkai-san: During The Place[...] I had found a new-born kitten that I decided to take care of. Also, when I was young my family had a cat and during the movie, I have found 4 cats that I decided to keep. I live in Shinjuku and there are a lot of abandoned cats. Feeding the cats has helped the team to relax.

Interviewer: There are two recurring themes in your movies which are loosing touch and communication. Why?
Shinkai-san: I did not plan it as recurring, but yes indeed, it is. At the time of Voices[...] I had a girlfriend. In Japan, SMS had started but not much, nothing compared to now. When I was sending an SMS to her and she was not replying, I was worried and so times even jalous. We were living in the same city but sometimes it was feeling as a huge distance, as if we were around different stars.

Enjoy.

Death Note creator speaks

Death Note artist interview.

A short article about the person who is behind massively popular and touted as intelligent anime, Death Note.

The second article talks about live action movie adaptation of the work.

The one of the few.

Anime through an American eye
By PATRICK MACIAS

"I was staying with a Japanese friend of mine when I first saw Matsumoto-san's manga. Keep in mind that I'm not someone who is an otaku (obsessive fan) at all. I don't really read manga much, even today. I just had some time on my hands and I was looking for something to check out. My friend, who knows my tastes very well, suggested I might like it. He pulled out this three-book version of "Tekkonkinkreet" and said "nakeru yo," which means something in Japanese like "keep a box of tissues handy." It was probably 1995, right around the time of the sarin gas attacks and the Kobe earthquake. There were these black helicopters buzzing around and you could turn on the TV and see people getting stabbed in real time".

The full article.

This man is responsible for Animatrix and generally considered as big figure on anime fandom in USA. His views are interesting, considering that he is one of the few gaijins in Japanese anime industry.

Tracing the genealogy of gekiga

LOS ANGELES -- Presented a copy of the latest English-language collection of his work, Yoshihiro Tatsumi turns it over in his hands and says, "This looks too beautiful to be a comic book."

Designed by acclaimed American cartoonist Adrian Tomine, "Abandon the Old in Tokyo" indeed is handsome. A weighty hardback with a black cloth spine, it must mark quite a contrast with the cheap paperbacks and weeklies in which the anthology's comics first appeared.

The stories, dating from 1970, all center on simply drawn characters navigating a claustrophobic world heavy with ink and carefully chosen detail. Sparse of dialogue, they turn on images of human degradation, quiet despair and outrageous violence carefully arranged to cinematic -- even symphonic -- effect. The underlying beat is that of escapist fantasy pounding its head against hard reality. This seems quintessential of Tatsumi's brand of gekiga.

Full interview is here.