I am currently producing a work tentatively titled “A,” and this piece was created as a prelude and foreshadowing for it. Within a short runtime of about 10 seconds, it is filled to the brim with elegant motions evoked by the music. Unlike my usual self-initiated works, this piece and the next one (“A”) aim primarily to express, as purely and directly as possible, the simple emotions that the music calls to mind, setting aside detailed intentions and lines of thought. As a result, while introducing vivid colors with bright yellow-green as the main tone—something I had tended to avoid until now—the rest is largely kept in monochrome, emphasizing that one color even more strongly. Although it is a modern motion graphic grounded in a flat, pop-oriented style, I made heavy use of post-processing such as color shifts and noise, pursuing rich textural expression and aiming for a gap that leaves even this fleeting runtime feeling somehow warm. Around the 3-second mark, I attempted an illusion-like expression in which an X (the bowling strike symbol) encountered after passing through a tunnel transitions into a three-dimensional rotation. Incidentally, in my self-initiated work “Glancent,” released last February, I also created a similar connection in the latter half, where 2D graphics seamlessly transitioned into a three-dimensional structure. Since these kinds of “illusion” effects are not often seen in the realm of 2D shape motion, I would like to actively devise more of them going forward. Now that commercials and visual works making heavy use of motion graphics interwoven with text, images, and video—while incorporating short-form shape motion—have increased dramatically compared with a while ago, is there still room for what pure【shape-only】 or【2D-only】 motion can do? At a time when creators are becoming saturated and are also being threatened by the presence of AI, what more can I do as someone who continues to pursue handmade shape motion in the most literal sense? I want to explore the potential of a short, one-shot shape motion that can be seen as a return to origins. In the end credits, the conventional 【Music】 credit becomes 【つかったおんがく】, and 【Video】 becomes 【今見とる映像を作った人】, flexibly departing even from the format I had maintained as a template up to now, and suggesting prospects for a new style of work in the future.

For the official music video of Dios’s new song “Tasogare,” released in January 2025, I was in charge of some of the cuts. My part consists of two cuts, from 0:29 to 0:32 and from 0:33 to 0:45, totaling about 15 seconds. From the start, the director wanted me on board and cited my self-produced work from three years ago, “Motete!,” as a reference. The method itself — combining motion graphics with footage of my own hands — may already be becoming something of my signature. In “Motete!,” the goal was to create a strange, one-of-a-kind sensation, where hands and shapes guide one another and are guided in return, as if each possessed free will. For this piece, building on that experience and refining it further, I shifted away from a flat, clean style and instead went for an alluring look where dark yet vivid, eerie gradients intertwine, much like “nostalmic” (2023/2). This work feels almost like a mixture of the methods and style approaches from my previous two self-produced pieces, with the hands and shapes boldly and three-dimensionally intertwining as if they had always been there together, elegantly carrying the chorus. As a result, it seems I was able to express a world quite different from the one in my earlier independent works. In the chorus, the lyrics first say, “the gap in the night when I know I can’t escape from you.” Too brief to satisfy, too much to forget. The song uses “tasogare” as a metaphor for something that bewitches and captivates in that way. The chaos resulting from being driven mad by twilight and becoming dependent on love in that “gap in the night” is what is sung in the first chorus. The fact that it is “impossible to escape” is expressed by having the alluring shapes rolled between the two hands. Rather than simply trapping them, it suggests being played with in the palm of invisible hands, despite seeming free. Also, in “the gap in the night,” the scene transitions to a cut where an actual gap is filled by the night itself (the black background), revealing a bright, gradient-infused “sexiness.” However, in the following lyric, “carelessly reached out my hand,” the visuals do not literally show a hand reaching out. Rather than depicting the lyrics too directly, I devised the direction with a subtle balance: at first glance the connection seems thin, but upon noticing the finer details, the meaning comes through clearly. In this music video, where extensive use of 3DCG and a relatively flat style not especially wrapped in effects fill most of the runtime, my section stands out as an extremely unusual presence. But in terms of the overall dynamics, I think it also worked clearly as a contrast.