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.

A promotional video for the release of Volume 37 of Weekly Shonen Jump’s HUNTER×HUNTER. In sync with the series’ resumption in the magazine, the Dark Continent arc is revisited only minimally, with a structure designed to intuitively convey the “stirring intentions” of the various characters. To preserve the feel of the original artwork, no coloring was applied, and the complex, multifaceted breadth of the story was expressed through chromatic aberration and analog-style color shifts.

Illustrations and motion graphics for parts of Red Bull’s documentary “Playing it Old School.”

Wednesday Campanella released the music video for “Shichifukujin” today at 7:29 a.m. on Saturday, July 29. The song is also used as the CM song for Pizza Hut’s “Hut Melts.” The track is included on their second EP, RABBIT STAR ★, which was digitally released on Wednesday, April 26 and physically released on Wednesday, May 3. It features a memorable riff built around heavily used voice samples with a deep, gritty tone, and it was one of the songs that got the crowd going at the recently held RABBIT STAR ★ TOUR, thanks to the driving force of its bass and beat. The music video released today is a sequel to the “Momotaro” music video released during the Kom_i era, when she served as the original lead vocalist and performer. It was directed by OTAMIRAMS, who also handled the “Momotaro” MV. In the story, the “Seven Lucky Gods” go up against an “evil organization? The Gikichiku Party” in an election. And then, in a surprising twist, it is revealed that Hoteison was actually the former Momotaro... Whether true or false, this comical yet message-driven work can be enjoyed as an alternate story that expands beyond the song “Shichifukujin.” At the end, the three letters “to be continued” appear once again; the truth behind it is currently unknown, but it leaves us looking forward to what comes next.