We produced the pilot film for “HIDARI,” the first feature to be directed by Whatever CCO Masashi Kawamura, who also created the original story and screenplay, together with Dwarf Studios and TECARAT, a top-tier animation team that supports the global stop-motion industry. “HIDARI” is a stop-motion period drama that boldly reimagines the story of the legendary Edo-period sculptor Jingoro Hidari, a figure with many surviving works and anecdotes but whose actual existence remains uncertain, weaving it together with historical facts from the Edo period. It is depicted using puppets carved from wood, just like the works of Jingoro Hidari himself. As with the many legends surrounding Hidari, the film brings “wooden dolls to life” through frame-by-frame animation. Please take a look at this unprecedented visual experience, which daringly blends the dynamic action of Japanimation with the analog world of stop-motion.

Motion Graphics Lead

I can’t know what the future holds, so for now, let’s just decide that something good will happen. In 2020, when behavior was restricted by the COVID-19 pandemic, it became difficult even to gather with friends, and I found myself growing used to a reality in which the things I wanted to do would not come true. Those were painful days, filled with anger that had nowhere to go. Yet because “everyone in the world” was in the same situation, the pace of society naturally slowed, and while spending quiet time confronting myself and my family, I began to think about “what has been” and “what is to come.” Perhaps that slow, strolling kind of time was itself something “good.” This film captures one night in 2020, when the Leonid meteor shower fell, as experienced by people of different generations and professions. In the unassuming scenes of everyday life, both difficult moments and good moments are captured. The romantic phenomenon layered over them becomes light, and seeing the protagonists shoulder to shoulder, it is impossible not to hope that “the future will surely bring good things.” It has become a new work that records the “present day” we are living through with perseverance, without forgetting hope. The director is Akihiro Toda, known for his skill in directing young actors and ensemble dramas, including the film Name, based on an original story by Naoki Prize-winning author Shusuke Michio, 13 Moon Girls, and We Will Wake to the Same Morning. The screenplay is by Gaku Kawasaki, who was chosen to co-write with Koki Mitani for the drama Someone’s Watching starring Shingo Katori. The young actors who serve as the protagonists of the ensemble include Kaho Maehara, who has appeared in a series of notable works such as Ah, Wilderness by director Yoshiyuki Kishi and A Girl with a Lehman’s Scale by Yujiro Harumoto; and Karen Otomo, who continues to appear in films by distinguished directors including The Bride of Rip Van Winkle by director Shunji Iwai and Let Me Eat Your Pancreas by director Sho Tsukikawa. Other cast members include Ayumu Nakajima, Yurina Yanagi, Ryo Shinoda, Megane, Soma Sanjoh, Yuuka Sasaki, Hidenobu Abera, and Tsutomu Takahashi, among many others ranging from trusted young talents to veterans. Actors with experiences closely tied to their characters delivered remarkably authentic, breathing performances.

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.