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.