Katsuhiro Otomo and Sinji Kimura (木村 真二) were the special guests of CATSUKA show No.123 that aired today in NoLife, a French thematic television channel focused on geek culture and Japanese music. Apart from a bi-monthly TV show that aired on the NoLife channel for 8 years, CATSUKA is also one of the oldest websites in the world dedicated to animated cinema, dating it's start back to year 2000.
The conversation is available with French subtitles here:
OTOMO & KIMURA'S COMMENTS
ON HIPIRA-KUN...
KIMURA: I worked on the backgrounds for AKIRA, indeed. But at the time, Otomo was someone who was inaccessible to me. I never had the chance to meet him during that film. Later, I worked on a film by Takashi Nakamura (なかむら たかし), who was an animation director on AKIRA. It was CATNAPPED!①. I was the art director on that film. Otomo watched the film and praised the work on the backgrounds. He then suggested I join him to work on STEAMBOY. That was the first time I met him and collaborated closely with him.
OTOMO: Hipira-kun is a series... Primarily, it’s Kimura’s work. I helped out at the end, with the storyboards and the e-konte for the final episodes. But fundamentally, it’s his direction, his work.
KIMURA: I chose to use 3D computer-generated imagery (CGI) for the visuals. Even though I work in animation... I’m not really an animator myself. I’m drawn more to 3D. The true subtlety of animation work, drawing the movement with pencil and by hand, escapes me. Naturally, my characters tend to be in 3D. In Japan, fundamentally, most animated productions are adaptations of manga. When we want to bring these titles to the screen, somehow, we tend to use cel-shading quite easily to preserve the graphic nature of the characters.
OTOMO: We don’t start from 3D to go toward the characters.
KIMURA: Indeed. It’s more of the reverse process.
OTOMO: We start with drawings and move toward CGI. That’s the main difference with the U.S.
KIMURA: Since I primarily work on backgrounds, what interests me is having characters that can blend into them harmoniously. That’s why I choose 3D cel-shading.
ON HIS PASSION FOR CYCLING...
OTOMO: In the past, Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿) had gathered the Ghibli team. He has a small cabin in the mountains, far from Tokyo. He invited his team there as a challenge. He would host everyone on the condition that they come by bicycle. It’s in Nagano, 150 km from Tokyo! It was especially animator Kitarō Kōsaka (高坂 希太郎) who started this movement because he was a cyclist. He got a lot of people in the animation world to join this race. And it was quite successful for a while. I also participated with them in this race. Rintarō (りんたろう) was also a long-time cycling enthusiast. He often rides along the Tama River, on the edge of Tokyo. As for me, I also go there regularly on Sundays. So I often ran into Rintarō, Kitarō Kōsaka, and even the novelist Haruka Takachiho (高千穂 遙). We would often cross paths, in a non-deliberate way, which allowed us to exchange, so to speak. I don’t really do much sport, but it’s a good opportunity to move a bit and also lose weight!
ON THE TEAM THAT WORKED ON AKIRA...
OTOMO: At the time, they were animators who weren’t well-known. They were the younger generation. The big animators of the time were already veterans, older than I was. Personally, I was still in my twenties when I started this film! Many talented animators in their thirties were active at that time. But it’s because I was the director that people like Koji Morimoto and Takashi Nakamura joined the team. In fact, people of the same generation came together spontaneously. It wasn’t my intention either. It’s just that these people, young on this project, grew older and all became renowned artists. I didn’t create this team on purpose, that’s just how things worked out. At the time, I didn’t have much experience as a director. What I proposed was, rather than working with a famous director, to collaborate on a fun project with people of the same generation. That’s probably what attracted this team.
Notes by ChronOtomo
① CATNAPPED! also know as TOTSUZEN! NEKO NO KUNI BANIPARU WITTO (とつぜん！猫の国 バニパルウィット) is animation film written and directed by Takashi Nakamura released theatrically in June 10, 1995.
