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.

They asked me to make it feel chaotic, and said, “Don’t hold back — if you think it might be too much, that’s exactly right lol,” and I thought, what lovely people. We shot performance cuts of each member in front of a green screen, then added tons of CG to the background and foreground. Since “TRADITIONAL” means tradition, I casually placed CG elements such as ukiyo-e and emojis — forms of culture born in Japan — all over the screen, as if a Showa-era kid were mindlessly sticking stickers all over a wardrobe. When you pack in this much CG and 2D effects and move them around a lot, it gets compressed when uploaded to YouTube and turns into a mess, so we upscaled it to 4K before uploading. Even if you just upscale HD to 4K and upload it, playback in 4K has less compression noise, so I thought it might be best to deliver in 4K whenever possible. When I showed the finished video to the members, they were really happy and said, “What the hell is this!!!!” lol. Even with emojis piled on like this, when Wienners does it, it doesn’t come across as silly. They’re an insanely chaotic pop band, so I think it’s amazing that even in a heavily layered, over-the-top chaotic video, the members don’t get overshadowed. It turned out to be one of my absolute favorite music videos.

Dotsuitarunen “Ice Cream” (MV) It turned out absolutely insanely good. It’s ridiculous. Too cute. This video was made because I wanted Dotsuitarunen, who had fulfilled their dream of major-label debut, to keep shining even more from here on out. Before Dotsuitarunen’s major-label debut, I had made a few videos for them. Back then, Dotsu had a ton of momentum in the indie scene and looked really cool. They even ended up doing a solo show at Akasaka Blitz... way too amazing... But after their major debut, watching their activities from the outside, I could really sense that they were struggling. There were also members leaving the group, and I wondered if they were losing their way. In the middle of that, I received an offer to direct the MV for “Ice Cream,” a track on their first album. It was such a pure song that I suggested making it into footage of just a cute girl walking around, without showing the members at all. The record label people were on board and said, “That sounds great!” I was looking for a transparent, fresh, beautiful girl, and Uyuu-san, the super-beautiful winner of Miss iD 2018, fit my image perfectly. Since Uyuu-san and I had quite an age gap, communication and the distance between us during filming were a little tricky, but when we were chatting after the shoot and I asked, “Do you watch YouTubers and stuff?”, she got into it and said, “I watch them a lot!” and we had a great time talking. If I had started with YouTube talk from the beginning, maybe we could have become closer and brought out even more of Uyuu-san’s cuteness. That’s something I really regret. At first I thought we’d film by the sea, but I felt that the riverbank along a river was more youthful and tear-jerking, so we shot on the banks of the Edo River near Matsudo Station. I think it was nice that the city could be seen in the distance, which gave it a slightly bittersweet feeling. Uyuu-san has transparency, freshness, and overwhelming cuteness, so I think that’s what gives the video its CM-like major-label feel. “This is what it means to be active on a major label, isn’t it?” — this MV is my own answer to that. The illustrator Shinshu Oki, who is close to Dotsu, watched this MV and said, “It’s like you scooped up the diamond-like parts within Dotsu.” I was so happy to hear those words.

The music video for “Koukai,” a track from Satoko Shibata’s Love Holiday The idea of filming Shibata-san’s face in an extreme close-up as she leaned out of a car window hadn’t even been conceived until the day of the shoot. In fact, on the day itself, we were filming scenes of her singing while playing guitar in a park. However, when I asked Shibata-san what image she had for the song, one of the things she mentioned was “an image like riding in a car and feeling the wind,” so we decided to also shoot that cut while traveling by car. And when we actually tried it... it was amazing. So I asked Shibata-san and her manager right then and there, “...Can we just go with this for everything...?” They kindly agreed, so after that we kept shooting car scenes nonstop. Then after the shoot ended and I went home to check the footage we had captured, since I had been filming handheld, the image was shaking all over the place (crying) So I immediately bought a gimbal to reduce camera shake, and we were able to reshoot two days later. When Shibata-san told me she imagined “riding in a car and feeling the wind,” the specific image that came to mind was the refreshingly great scene in The Dark Knight where the Joker escapes in a police car he stole from the police. I decided to film it in that mood, so from the very beginning I shot it as an extreme close-up of her face. Luckily, the weather on the day of the reshoot was incredibly nice. When it came time to do the grading, I aimed for a vivid, light-filled, refreshing feeling. It’s a video where it would not be an exaggeration to say that all you see is her face the whole time, and yet it never feels boring to watch because of Shibata-san’s humor, her cute charm as a woman, and her expressive power—or rather, her sheer humanity. I think this MV was born because Shibata-san herself takes responsibility for her own expression and carries it through to the end.