This is the MV for Akiyama Kiiro, a male solo musician, and it had been a while since I’d done a boys’ MV, so I wondered if I’d be okay—but in terms of the song style and the content, I really felt it matched me perfectly. When I first got an email asking if they could put me forward as a director candidate, I still only knew the song title, but just seeing the word “Sonic Move” made me imagine almost exactly what the current concept would be. So I was like, “Please let me do this!” For lighting, it was Hirai from Office Doing, who I’ve worked with for a long time. Hirai is honestly such a great person, absolutely the best. He’s helped me so much since the days when I didn’t know left from right, and I’m always insanely grateful. And for the camera, I did it myself. There’s the saying “use a specialist for each job,” so part of me always wants to leave shooting to a cinematographer, but with green-screen work, it’s not an ordinary shoot, so if you don’t shoot with editing in mind, it’s basically meaningless. Lately I’ve also been vaguely thinking it might actually be faster to do it myself, so this time I shot it myself. There was only one subject, and I wasn’t planning to do any camera movement anyway. Still, I really want to get over this whole “I want to do everything myself” thing... I rented an FX6 because I wanted to try it, but it was so ridiculously pro-level that I had no idea how to use it and it was difficult, and with my level of understanding there was no way I wouldn’t totally bomb the shoot, so I didn’t even bring it. In the end I shot with my usual a7s3, and honestly it’s the best—easy to use, beautifully clean footage, absolute strongest. Love it. I recorded in ALL-Intra. Compared with H.265, editing is like ten times lighter, and when I was editing an MV shot in H.265 before, the accumulated edits toward the end made it so heavy that AE stopped working and I couldn’t even render it, which was way too dangerous, so ALL-Intra is definitely the way to go. With ALL-Intra, even if the edit gets heavy toward the end, it barely holds up. You need V90 SD cards and the files are big, but well, that’s a tiny trade-off. You can always convert only the parts you need to ProRes, but I end up doing all kinds of things all the way through anyway. So I shot a bunch of things, even rented a stunt bike for the motorcycle scenes, and wrapped the shoot smoothly. For offline editing, I had director Kotaro Saito, whom I often ask, do it, and although he polished it into a nice shape, editing with only green-screen material and no clues in the background is still hard, isn’t it... sorry... So from there I tweaked it a lot, big and small, to match my own tempo and sense of timing, and it was fun. For the CG too, the background for the motorcycle scene was made by a creator named Ai Ikeda, and it was amazing. The other scenes—the game center and the cityscape—were made by me. But you know, unlike the idol groups I usually work with, there’s only one person, so it’s just so much easier. Having that kind of freedom to make it interesting is the best. I could have done camera movement and tracking to get that realistic coolness, but since the subject was just one person, I decided to shoot it fixed and then do the camera work in CG afterward. From an editing standpoint too, this was overwhelmingly faster. Removing tracking markers takes several steps, and tracking itself takes time. With a short deadline, I didn’t want to spend time on that. If you think about shots where camera movement really matters, honestly up to around a trio, fixed shots might be fine. Well, it depends on the deadline. Anyway, since this time too the deadline was one of those classic major-label-short-turnaround situations, I shot with a shot list and system that anticipated the later editing schedule. In the end, I barely used any footage with actual camera movement, and almost everything was shot fixed and then moved afterward. By the way, from shooting to deadline it was less than 20 days, so for me it was cutting it pretty close. Since there was no time, I was making a bunch of things in parallel, and I didn’t have time to refine this and that, so I kept spreading out predictions—using instinct and experience to anticipate “if I do this, it’ll probably turn out like that”—and I made it with almost no detailed checking until the end. Still, I’m glad I was able to really push it right up to the very last moment. It’s really great work when making it is fun. Thank you very much. But in the end, the best part was that before making this, I had bought and studied a course on coloso by director/VFX artist Reo Wakui, and that was seriously, insanely useful. I’d been making green-screen videos for ages, and I was like, “Wait, I had no idea how to pull greens or handle masks at all this whole time!?” Thanks to that course, keying became much easier all at once, and as a result, even with color work—which I’d always been bad at—I’m not good yet at all, but I got to the point where it feels like if I study a bit more, I might actually be able to do it well. Things like linear workflows and ACES are apparently standard now, and I really would never have known that if I hadn’t bought this course, so I’m glad I studied... Also, I really think if I understand lighting and color correction, I’ll be the strongest. I’ve gotten this far just working alone by instinct with no knowledge at all, so if I study, I’d be way too powerful, right? My potential is insane. I also want to understand CG. I seriously don’t get it. I’m always making things by feel, just feeling my way through... Oh, and after this was released, I was ego-searching and found out that the drummer on this track was Hiroshi Kido, someone I’d met a few times in Kyoto when I was around 20. We were almost the same age, and back then I was also in a band and pretending to be a drummer, but Hiroshi suddenly appeared in the local live-house scene around that time as an absolutely incredible drummer. I thought, wow, amazing—and soon after, he became the drummer for Kenichi Asai’s band and turned pro. As for me, I kept smoldering away for several years, living a trashy life, the band broke up, I quit music, and now I’m where I am today through video work, which I started as a hobby. I doubt he remembers me, but it was nostalgic and somehow made me happy. So this is one way people can meet again, huh.

Since this was the music video for the opening theme of the hit anime *Ya Boy Kongming!*, we prepared costumes inspired by all kinds of party people. I thought this was the kind of project that avex is often known for, where they force a Japanese cover onto a foreign dance track like MAX’s “TACATA’” or DA PUMP’s “U.S.A.,” so rather than making it feel like a standard female idol dance MV, I wanted it to have a sort of joke-like quality. That’s why I took the feel of a Para Para instruction video, or those avex trance MEGAMIX videos that were everywhere in the ’90s and 2000s, and warped it through a 2022 sensibility to create a kind of outrageous spectacle you’ve never seen before. The background is constantly shimmering and insanely acidic, creating a totally incomprehensible cutting-edge design where momentum, madness, coolness, lameness, and stylishness all exist at the same time. The animation near the end, which shows Shibuya—the setting of *Ya Boy Kongming!*—being covered in hearts by a kaiju’s heart attack, was created by Rapparu!!!!! Thanks to this animation, the MV gained so much depth and became a very moving piece of footage. Rapparu’s animation is truly the best.

It was so fun to make that I can barely think of any other project I’ve enjoyed creating this much. Once I got into the work, it came together in no time at all. I just kept digging deeper and deeper into my own sense of humor, making it based on whether I could laugh first and think, “This is amazing! So cool!!” When the ocean scene (0:56–) came together, it was so funny that I was moved. Seriously, so cool. That said, I think the members who can really embrace this kind of comedy are amazing. People like that are incredibly rare. I think it’s because of the breadth of everyone’s expressiveness. I mean, you can’t even tell whether they’re doing it as a joke or seriously, right? They’re all completely serious. That’s why I think it’s the best, and that’s what really moved me. By the way, although I made this look like low-quality VHS footage, it was actually shot in 8K with a Sony a1 camera.

I just absolutely love the song! The moment I heard it, colorful candies started spinning around in my head. Since it’s “daishikyuu,” I wanted to make something fast-paced, chaotic, and above all super cute, so we had lots of costumes prepared, along with a bike, props, and all kinds of things for the shoot. With the theme of dreams you see while sleeping, I imagined a story like this: you desperately need to wake up, but you can’t get out of the dream world and end up going on a wild rampage! Also, I planned it with an image of a struggle over who has dominion over the dream—whether it’s Kana-chan’s dream or Sakina-chan’s dream, whose dream is it, anyway!? In the end, the domination battle element was removed, and it was shaped into more of a dream world, a cute little space, and that sort of image... When I listen to the song, it gives me the image of the two of them playing sports, and I pictured them wearing baseball uniforms in a gyaru style. I thought it would be absolutely adorable, so we went with it. (Kind of like Ayaya’s “Tropica~l Koi Shite~ru” lol) I also pushed for us to film the bike scene. When you think of speed, you think of a bike. The animation is also gorgeous, and for the very first OP animation, I asked misa to create something based on the idea that it takes place inside a girl’s dream. It’s insanely cute and amazing. The animation for the first chorus is the scene where they blow away the nightmare, and that was created by RaParu-san. I’ve loved RaParu-san for a long time and always hoped we’d get to work together someday... so I was really happy that my wish finally came true. And for the flashy effect animation in the baseball scene, of course it had to be Tetsuya Tatamiya-kun, the reliable go-to for effect animation!

Commentary: I was asked if we could create a 12-episode video series in collaboration with Chiaki Harada, so I decided to make a video in which a real girl is speaking those lines within the world of Harada’s work.

The Tokaido Shinkansen is Japan’s main artery connecting the two major cities, Tokyo and Osaka. Between Tokyo sta. and Shin-Osaka sta., the Shinkansen passes through various popular tourist spots in Japan, such as the port city of Yokohama, hot spring town of Atami, Mt. Fuji, and the ancient capital of Kyoto, literally running through Japan. For your travel, the smartEX App will enable you to make a train reservation even from overseas and is recommended.

　

Description: I remade the short version of the video I created for April Fool's Day into a full-length version.

Description: None in particular.

It turned into a surreal system combining hand-drawn 2D animation and my own 3DCG animation, so it was pretty tricky—but also incredibly fun. For all the character movement, I got through it by mixing motion capture I performed myself using HTC VIVE with Mixamo. Rendering was done in Unity, with line art output using Pencil+4 Line for Unity.

Commentary: I was so happy to finally get to work with Kentaro Kobayashi, whom I’d admired for 20 years. I was really nervous too. I got to do a 3D scan, and then I had all sorts of fun with the 3D-CG version of Kentaro Kobayashi—twisting him, making him glossy, running crowd simulations, and more. I also created the program logo while I was at it for the opening movie. Since the show is a CG-based program, I used what are called primitives—the basic 3D models such as cubes and cylinders that come standard in C4D and Maya—and combined those primitives to make the logo.

Using photogrammetry, we turned every member into 3DCG and flung them all over the place with crowd simulation. The live-action footage shot in Harajuku is also incredibly cute, making this a fantastic piece.

A music video for the sister idol unit made up of Kanano Senritsu and Sakina Tonchiki, who are active on TV, as idols, and on YouTube. I got to work with them before too, and this time I was especially able to do a lot of interesting things, which made it a lot of fun. The three outfits are insanely good, and the hair and makeup are amazing, so no matter what we did it would turn out cute, but I made sure it wouldn’t end up as an idol MV that was just “cute” and nothing else.

Video Director

The MV for Satoko Shibata’s “Koukai,” which I got to shoot earlier, has become a new signature work of mine as well. At first I was congratulating myself, thinking, “Man, I’m such a genius to have shot something this amazing!” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that what makes this video great is simply that Ms. Shibata is such an incredible artist; it’s not that I’m the amazing one lol... (sweat) I think Ms. Shibata is incredible. She’s not ordinary. Not just the song, but especially the lyrics are truly amazing. You can really come to understand the beauty of poetry as an art form. So, about this video: my impression of Ms. Shibata is that she’s basically quite natural and down-to-earth, but since she’s just plain (pardon me) beautiful and cute, I wanted to bring that out to the fullest. So I asked other people to do the hair, makeup, and costume, and said, “Make her look like Twice’s Nayeon!!” That’s how we shot it. (I was amused to see someone in the YouTube comments who had clocked the Nayeon reference for Shibata-san.) The flowers and jewels in the background were drawn by several people. Yamada Minori is a young animation artist I discovered on Twitter; her profile said she graduated from Tama Art University, so I asked her to do it, and as expected, she was absurdly good and I was seriously blown away. Her usual style doesn’t seem to be all about flashy technical skill, but art school grads really do have such strong foundational drawing ability... This kind of skill really felt like something you’d put in a frame (?), and placing it right next to Shibata-san’s face made the drawing even more effective at highlighting her beauty. Other artwork was also drawn by Hiroro Sato and my wife, Chiaki Sakamoto, and their pieces had a nice, distinctive flavor too. Since it’s a collage, the balance is fun.

STORY The high school baseball player from Megalocity High was hailed as a future prodigy, a super high school-level genius slugger, but one day he lost his life while trying to save Dr. Yamada Belmara and his granddaughter, Rinda Yonekura, who were attacked by the massive criminal organization Death Guitar... However, the great criminal organization Death Guitar feared that even in death, the courage power of that high school baseball player had blasted through the Neo Drum Justice Gauge and sent the ball flying over the fence, so they performed evil cyborg Drummer surgery on him in order to exploit that justice power for their own wicked ends. But the moment he was revived as an evil cyborg drummer, he was rescued by Dr. Yamada, who had been captured and forced to cooperate by the massive criminal organization Death Guitar, and escaped from their hideout. The high school baseball player struggled with the conflict between the side of himself that was a baseball player and the side that was a cyborg Death Drummer (dissociative identity disorder), but through the surgery and treatment performed by Linda, the granddaughter who inherited Dr. Yamada’s genius brain, he was able to integrate both sides and acquire a single identity as Iron Gaban. Iron Gaban fights by transforming his drumsticks into a Metal Iron Bat in order to crush the evil that plagues the world and defeat the massive criminal organization Death Guitar!!!!! (By the way, the Metal Iron Bat is designed with spikes on the snare and toms, inheriting just the right balance of both drumming and baseball. Its shape also resembles Kyoto Tower, but that is because it serves as a fast-breeder reactor that amplifies the Galaxy Monster Energy caught by Kyoto Tower, the base of Iron Gaban and Linda. Furthermore, perhaps because of the evil feelings incompletely implanted in him by the massive criminal organization Death Guitar, he has no hesitation whatsoever in full-swinging the Metal Iron Bat at an enemy’s temple.) Meanwhile, in order to oppose the existence of Iron Gaban, the massive criminal organization Death Guitar secretly abducted and imprisoned the high school baseball player—an ultra high school-level genius pitcher whose skill was said to be Major League class—on the day of the Koshien final, and subjected him to evil cyborg surgery to turn him into Mega Bass. The regret of having been unable to fulfill his dream of winning Koshien merged with the evil cyborg feelings implanted in him, and he was revived as Giga Bass, who had returned to this world to destroy it in a form even Death Guitar had not anticipated. Giga Bass, having gained power so great that no one could control him, pressed the MEGA BASS button on the stereo mini component built into his body, and by thermally boosting the shoulders and elbows that, for a pitcher, are his lifeline and would otherwise crack, shatter, and be destroyed under the strain of his own power, he completely shattered the control panel in his brain and awakened as Iron Rider, able to throw balls that would tear the earth apart...

A music video for a really young, straight-up rock band — they were like 19 or something. Before filming, I told the drummer, “Think of the drum kit as a tank, and just go, ‘Woooooah!!!’ and charge forward like that.” He did exactly that, so I was glad. I think what’s important in rock like this is whether you can imagine the drums as a tank and the guitar as a machine gun and actually play that way. And I think the guy with the sunglasses on guitar really gives off that machine-gun vibe, don’t you? The other guitarist, too, during the solo, looks like a storm is blowing in from the front and he’s holding it back with the sound of his guitar — really cool. Also, with rock, it’s about whether the instruments themselves look cool, right? It’s important whether you’re using cool-looking guitars and drums. As for why I shot it from the side: it was because I couldn’t be bothered to have them face the camera head-on and face each other at the same time. Unlike girls, boys usually tend to be kind of awkward and guarded when it comes to being filmed, and I didn’t want these young rock guys to get nervous and stiff, because I wanted them to be full of youthful energy and play freely, so I deliberately shot from the side and kept the camera out of sight.

ZOMBIE-CHANG “Mona Lisa” Almost all of the visual ideas — training at the gym, breaking through a window and flying into space, falling into Paris, and so on — were придумед by ZOMBIE-CHANG’s Meyrin herself. I received the demo while traveling alone in Cambodia, so I listened to it there the whole time. I especially listened to it while touring Angkor Wat, so even now, when I hear this song, those images come back to mind. A scene of ZOMBIE-CHANG flying through the sky on a bicycle like E.T., amid the ruins and thickets around Angkor Wat. (I forgot to include that scene in the MV!!!!!!) I really think this song is insanely good. There aren’t many songs I keep listening to even after making a music video for them, but I’m still listening to this one all the time. It really hits me right in the chest. The melody, the lyrics, and that vocal. There’s something special about it. It’s so good. ZOMBIE-CHANG is absolutely amazing, so I was really happy to be able to make this MV. Cambodia was such an amazing and interesting country, but I guess I’ll never go again. I’ve already been to Angkor Wat.