──You were born in 1963, so you must have been watching "Space Cruiser Yamato" as an elementary school student...

I was an animation fan indeed, but I wasn't as mad as those freaks nowadays. When I was in junior high school they started airing old volumes of "Yamato" again, and it became so popular that "Animage" and other specialized magazines began to surface. Resources were still few, and I was eagerly collecting every piece of information I could get. In high school then it was the time of "Mobile Suit Gundam", and the number of magazines dedicated to animation began to increase. There was quite a big fuss about animation, but I wasn't as much into it as you might think. I prefered manga, and was reading girls' mangas all the time. Fusako Kuramochi, Mariko Iwadate and Margaret Bessatsu were the most popular female manga artists, and I devoured everything from Shueisha and any other publishers.

──Was it OK for boys to read girls' comics at the time?

Yes, and there were in fact lots of people who were on the same wavelength. Yumiko Oshima, Moto Hagio and Akimi Yoshida were already there, and there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it. At the same time I was interested in the likes of Katsuhiro Otomo and the so-called "comic new wave." I was reading "SF Comic Chronicle" and other ?underground' kind of young men's comics -- or whatever you want to call it. What I didn't like was the somewhat sultry atmosphere of such boys' stuff as "Weekly Jump" for example. I hated stories about guts, endeavor and sweat, and I still don't read them nowadays.

──So, while you were reading all those mangas, you entered Musashino Art University...

Yes, the Department of Visual Communication Design. It was in my second year at high school that I decided to make a living out of drawing, be it manga or illustration, so an art university was the most obvious choice. To graduate from high school and suddenly become a freelancer didn't seem like a good idea, and I thought it couldn't be wrong to brush up my skills so that graphic design would be an alternative in case I failed with my drawings. At university I was drawing mangas for fun, but then Kodansha's "Young Magazine" gave me a newcomer prize, and that made me think of manga artist as another option. At the awards' presentation party I met Katsuhiro Otomo, and I ended up assisting him with "AKIRA" later when he needed help.

──You also got involved in the manga version of Otomo's movie "World Apartment Horror," didn't you?

That's right. Once, when we went out for a drink, he told me that he was going to make a movie, and asked me if I had ideas. I eventually helped him with the scenario, but now I realized that it was a half-hearted thing, and not really interesting.

──But looking at your ideas it appears to me that, no matter what the topic, the concept of blending reality and fiction has been the common ground of your work ever since...

Yes, I do think that I'm basically doing the same thing over and over again. I always begin with a matter taken from real life, and move from there to something bigger, create some kind of link to a higher, natural or subliminal sphere. It's without doubt a credit I have to give to my gift of imagination that I discovered when I was a kid, and I've always been trying to interweave imagination and association in my stories and arrangements. Like in a play within a play, I'm bringing together time-lines that in reality couldn't exist next to each other. All I'm actually trying to do is create something like Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five"...

──Concretely speaking, you're talking about "Chiyoko Millennial Actress," aren't you? Are you having a special feeling for the actress as an "existence beyond space and time"?

The actress was only necessary to set up the play within a play, and I don't have any particular feelings or whatsoever. Even when I watch a movie and try to read the director's thoughts, I usually feel for the situations rather than for the characters. My emotional involvement in such scenes as, for example, people getting up at night and do some dreamy thinking, is quite strong. Another important factor for me is relationship. In the case of "TOKYO GODFATHERS" it's the balance between the three protagonists, even more than the story or the characters themselves. I can't say that I'm seeing a projection of myself in either of them, but I rather feel as if I was projected onto the relationship between the three individuals.

──Are you always working out such relationships beforehand when writing a story?

Yes. Recently I've been thinking that, in a way, a bit more carelessness might do good, though. For example, the signature of Toru Emori's voice came out much stronger than I had imagined, and due to that the balance among the three characters changed significantly. After the recording I began to feel pretty insecure, but in the end I realized that the new constellation wasn't bad either -- thanks to Emori's voice. It was different from the scenario I had originally in mind, but it worked out fine. Now I believe that it's a good approach to be ready to abandon my own original image for the sake of even better results.

──Isn't that a somewhat Oriental philosophy?

Yes, you're right. I'm totally aware that I'm gradually shifting toward Oriental ideas. During the actual production I'm not following a strict line, but ? although always having it under control ? I'm rather negligent. It's a bit like Lao-Tze or Chuang-Tze I suppose. Not that I was planning to move in this direction though...

──I see. Let's take a look at your next work. "Paranoia Agent" is a series for TV, which marks a dramatic change from your previous films for the cinema. What prompted you to do that?

During the makings of my previous three films, a mountain of unused ideas for both stories and arrangements has piled up in my drawers. Not that I dropped them because they weren't good enough, but they just didn't fit into any of the projects. It hurts to see material go to waste, so I looked for a chance to recycle it. Plus, in the case of a film to be shown at theatres, I'm working for two years and a half, always in the same mood and with the same method. I wanted to do something that allows me to be more flexible, to realize instantly what flashes across my mind. I was also aiming at a sort of entertaining variation, so I decided to go for a TV series. I'm looking forward to meeting and working with a new team.

──How is the story going to look like?

Let me begin with the budgets for each case. For "TOKYO GODFATHERS," for example, we had roughly 30 million yen for a section of ten minutes. In the case of TV, that's enough to produce two complete volumes, or 40 minutes of material. That's mainly due to the lower staff costs, of course, so the production team here is of a different size. It's the same thing when calculating by the number of frames that make up a film. "Godfathers" has 5,000 per ten minutes. In the case of TV animation the budget we have for a whole volume is not even enough to produce 5,000 frames. You see, it's a big difference. From my point of view, the price-performance ratio in my animated feature films seems to be much better than in those by others.

──Is the size of your staff for this one different from that of your previous productions for the cinema?

Let me begin with the budgets for each case. For "TOKYO GODFATHERS," for example, we had roughly 30 million yen for a section of ten minutes. In the case of TV, that's enough to produce two complete volumes, or 40 minutes of material. That's mainly due to the lower staff costs, of course, so the production team here is of a different size. It's the same thing when calculating by the number of frames that make up a film. "Godfathers" has 5,000 per ten minutes. In the case of TV animation the budget we have for a whole volume is not even enough to produce 5,000 frames. You see, it's a big difference. From my point of view, the price-performance ratio in my animated feature films seems to be much better than in those by others.

──Can you give me some concrete numbers?

For "Perfect Blue" we made less than 30,000 frames, I think. "Chiyoko Millennial Actress" had 32,000, and "TOKYO GODFATHERS" about 42,000. An average larger animated film for the cinema is made of around 100,000 frames, so you see that I'm working with an extremely small number.

──That's interesting. In the case of TV, you're exposed to the critical eye of an even larger number of fans -- animation maniacs in particular. Is their response something you're concerned about?

No, not at all. After "Perfect Blue" I already understood that critical remarks that make me think, "I hit where it hurts" or "better be careful with that in the future," amount to nothing. That's because my self-criticism is much more harsh! (laughs) That puts a far greater pressure on me. Favorable judgements and praise from people for this and that interesting part are only natural responses, since the making of a work has to be interesting for myself in the first place. I don't want to ignore fans' opinions, but I wouldn't bother to go and ask them. Frankly speaking, I'm perfectly fine with doing interviews and chatting with people like you. (laughs)