Description: I want to keep a hamster. But someday, they will die. Could I endure that sadness and pain? No, I probably couldn’t. “Then why not just keep something that is already dead?” Thinking this way, the girl breathes life into various lifeless objects around her. So when will those already dead things die again? This work is an animation depicting the moment when “death” dies once more. By combining simplified, fancy characters with vividly shot live-action footage, the work creates a coexistence of cuteness and grotesquery, enhancing the appeal of each.

Focus on the glitchy cat.

I imagined this work from the concept of the girls in “Ne mo Ha mo Rumor” winning the Japanese dance championship and then appearing at the world championship as Japan’s representatives next. When I was told about this MV project, I wanted to incorporate something new, so aside from the giant monolithic structure that appears in the video, everything was newly developed for this MV. That includes 20 battery-powered wireless moving lights, 40 LED poles, and the WAVING LED RIBBON that appears in the bridge section. The stage set itself does not move, and I wanted to break away from the idea of “things that are behind the performers.” So I decided to try a theme where the artists and the space become one. In this MV, ribbon performers come right up close to the members’ faces, and by making the moving lights wireless, they can be placed even on the dance floor, allowing beams of light fused with the members to dance together. The LED poles also continuously change shape, dancing alongside the members by mimicking the hand motions of their right and left arms. While keeping the artists at the center, this MV keeps expanding the space around them. I have mainly worked on live performance direction up until now, and AKB48 also value the kind of live, in-the-moment experience you get in theater performances, so this MV was produced with the image of watching one show all the way through. I think there is a certain comfort in watching a performance continuously, and there are always new discoveries no matter how many times you watch it, so I hope people will watch it again and again. I don’t think I’ll be able to pour this much passion into something for a while（笑）。

　

Concept movie for sake MIYOSHI HANA. Released to commemorate the 2021 international competition CINVE, where MIYOSHI Green won Gold and MIYOSHI Blue won Silver. Every step in the process—from how the sake is made to how it reaches someone and is enjoyed—was individually expressed through graphics and animation. Just as the sake is carefully crafted over time, we focused on creating the movie with the same level of care and attention.

This work is an animation based on my past experience of confronting death for the first time, set on the Shimanami Kaido. In some regions across Japan, there is a custom called “honekami,” in which, after cremation, one eats the bones of the dead in an attempt to take them into oneself and overcome grief. Whether I wanted it or not, my family in my hometown had this custom. The first death I experienced was my father’s, but when I was made to try “honekami” as part of the ritual, I could not bring myself to chew the bones. That became a childhood trauma: an experience of being unable to face my father’s death directly, and not knowing how to accept it. Like an imaginary bone stuck in my throat, it could not be put into words, nor could it be forgotten. More than ten years have passed since I left my small, distant hometown at the age of 15. Fireworks storage buildings still remain along the island’s coast. The fact that there were fireworks magazines, rather than air-raid shelters, in my neighborhood made me feel that death and merciless violence existed for me not as something to be endured, but as something to be inflicted. When I think about these things as an adult, I came to link my father’s bones with the fire in the fireworks magazine, and decided to face “honekami” once again. The island’s landscape and sea are full of life, and within their calmness there is an unchanging severity. The shadows of the dead still exist in the same space and time, both now and in the past. Through this project, by blurring the boundary between life and death, I sought to create a confrontation with the bones I could not chew. The visual concept of this project was to merge natural landscapes with childhood memories, and to visually bring memories to life through the accumulation of dots. For this reason, I used colored pens to layer pointillist dots on paper, then filmed the paper under a camera while placing it over transmitted light. In doing so, I hoped to entrust the haziness of memory and the emotions of childhood to the technique as particles of colored light.

This work was created around the theme of the pupa, expressing the intersection of anticipation and unease surrounding Vocalist somunia’s new challenge and the changes that come with it. The complete metamorphosis from larva to pupa, and from pupa to adult, was a fitting motif for conveying a cool, sharp impression that stands in stark contrast to her previously adorable image. The anxiety of changing and the uncertainty of what lies ahead are expressed through the use of mist and clouds, whose far edges are hard to see clearly. At the same time, by viewing the pupa as something like a shell separating the outer world from the inner world, we aimed to depict the gap between inner turbulence and outer stillness. From a desire for what lies beyond her struggles to be something positive, light shines through the harsher spaces in each scene, expressing a hopeful attitude toward change. The pupa writhing within the rugged space dreams of one day spreading its wings as an adult, patiently and cunningly awaiting that moment. This piece was made with the hope that it would evoke that kind of impression—like the calm before the storm.

This is a CG test reel for short animated series under planning and development. Uses a variety of animation techniques, including 3DCG animation, 2D animation, and V R animation software. It is new Magical Girls by the use of dance and musical communication to relax, purify and resolve the enemy, rather than exterminating them through physical combat.