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.

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.

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.

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.