――Please tell me more about your maiden work as amateur artist.

My maiden work actually changes each time I'm trying to describe it in an interview! (laughs) When I was in high school I joined a circle called "SF research group," where I made my first 8 mm animation. You may call that the first work I ever made. It was about a bunch of aliens that came to earth to destroy a school, and at the end two giant robots were fighting in the schoolyard. At the time I was reading "Starlog" magazine, so I knew that, when making a doll or a puppet one has to start with the framework. Beginning with the problem of how to make holes in ball joints, I spent my whole summer holidays to make the evil robot. The righteous one I made out of a reorganized plastic toy-model of Gundam, so in the end the bad one was the one with the better movements. But still, it was something I'd better not show around now.

──Was there any audio-visual creator you considered a hero at the time?

I didn't know many more than Ray Harryhausen back then, and I was definitely attracted by his technique to make special effect movies by shooting frames one by one. Well, I was reading the first issues of "Starlog" and joined the SF research group, so obviosly I was interested in special effects. I assumed that the production of movies with special effects required good skills in mathematics, though, and for me who was an analogue person anyway it looked like my only chance was to put films together out of single frames and count one by one. That's what my plan to make animations looked like at the time, which is one reason why I had to repeat two years in school before entering university. (laughs)

──Then you entered Musashino Art University, didn't you?

Yes, I started with a metalwork course in the Department of Industrial, Interior, and Craft Design. The Department of Imaging Arts and Sciences didn't yet exist at that time. I wanted to join another circle there, and what I picked was the animation circle. We're talking about an art university, so of course there were students that were into arts, but at the same time there were some strange nerd type of robot freaks, and this mix made the group pretty interesting. It was the time when MTV started ground wave broadcast in Japan, and they had those jingles with the clay animations that were much different from all that kids' stuff. Also among the video clips were some with interesting animations, and it was actually an era where a whole range of techniques was introduced to the world through music videos.

──Is it true that you composed the music for "Pulser" yourself?

The initial idea was to make the music for "Pulser" all by myself, but since I can't read scores I thought I'd start with sound effects created on the computer. The computer, though, was a tool I wasn't really familiar with either, so I asked my younger brother (Noriyuki Bowda) for assistance. The first things he taught me were to save documents and to load things without pressing unnecessary buttons. For certain phrases I had vague ideas in my head, and for the writing of the scores I asked m sister, who was playing piano. Half my family was involved! (laughs) The result came out surprisingly well, so I decided to buy a Korg synthesizer for my next work. But the input window was so tiny, the manual so thick, and everything so obscure that considered myself at the end of my musical career before it began. What I did then is, I asked Naoki Yamashita, who is now working together with me and does all the music, to help me out. He made in fact the music for works such as "Robot Palta" or "Kaidohryoku REAL," so the sound for "Pulser" was the beginning of a partnership that has been going on for a pretty long time.

──Do you always have clear musical images in mind when creating your films?

It usually starts with a certain sound of machines in my head. Then it goes like, I throw that image, and what comes bouncing back to me I throw again. I do this kind of ball game two or three times. For the actual creation process of the films it's always the visuals that come first, and once the music comes on top I think about how to make use of it best.

──You're frequently using the motif of a cogwheel.

Yes, I like the image of pictures of machines and plans and stuff, although you better don't ask me to decipher things like timetables because I hate that. My self-produced works convey kind of a feel of life, or at least I'm expressing my own image of being alive. Take the heart, for example, and you have a pulse, or take the movements of an inchworm and you have another form of a cycle. I believe that in all living beings and also in machines there's a part that keeps changing in a helical cycle that repeats itself over and over again. For me the image of the cogwheel is that of something like the smallest unit in this cycle. However, this is an explanation I came up with just now, and if you ask me again tomorrow you might hear something different. Cogwheels are also easy to count when shooting frame by frame. (laughs)

──Are there any artists that influenced you?

People I'm influenced by, or better, the people that I really like are those I consider rivals. Well, one criterion I judge an artist by is certainly the degree of craziness, and the wilder the better. I like Stanley Kubrick, and that's probably because I think he's expressing something like people's crazy sides, or the desire to flip one's lid, or the fear of freaking out, or whatever you want to call it. In my own works I can't express such things.

──"Kaidohryoku REAL" is quite a crazy one though!

But it's not going as deep as people's minds. Rather than dealing with the brain and its impulses, it only goes as far as the spinal cord. The expression is only reflexive, although I guess it would be interesting if I could do something like that as part of the story.

──Would you be interested in making a 'storytelling' feature film?

It would be wonderful if I could, but I'm not sure. Kids that like to draw are usually dreaming of a career as a manga artist, don't they? One important factor that made me choose animation was my awareness of my inability to write stories. Essay class in school usually looked for me like, I write a line, and then draw a cartoon above. For "Robot Palta," though, I made a story, so it seems that I've learned to write.

──Including the stories, what do you think about creating works in collaboration?

In case of an assignment I think it's possible, but as far as my own work is concerned I don't want to do that. Every thing that runs under my 'own works' is at the same time a testing site without limitations where I can try and see what I can do and what not, and there I definitely don't want to rely on other people's skills. I only call a work my own one when everything from story to visuals comes out of myself.

──Are you sticking to manual work because that's the homework you set yourself?

Not necessarily. As long as there's demand for my work I think I have to deliver handmade articles, but where it makes things easier I should switch to digital technology. The composition is a part that's much easier to do digitally. For the time being my idea is to assign digital technology and computer graphics with the thankless tasks.

──Please tell me about what you are presently working on.

There's a plan for a compilation of short films to accompany all verses of Basho's "Fuyu no hi." The list of participating artists is quite impressing, and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished work as a spectator myself.

──Is there any future project you're nursing at the moment?

Projects one begins to nurse change anyway, and if I talked about something concrete now it would look like a complete lie later. What I can say, however, is that I'm recently helping a performer, who has appeared in one of my works, with the stage setting for a piece, and during this work I have realized that the main problem when animating figures is the imitation of bones' movements. With puppets I'm rarely doing such things as delayed movements of fat, for example. As a future theme for me I think there is still a lot to study and observe in human motions in order to create interesting movements, and there's a lot that's left to challenge.