13 idols portray the struggles, hopes, and passions of life. Centered on relentless challenges, setbacks, and friendship, this is the story of how they find their true selves and move forward. Life is woven with challenges and setbacks, hope and despair. But with companions to share those moments, any hardship can be overcome. And every emotion and experience remains as beautiful traces of life. We expressed these through video.

“Feel free to do anything as long as it’s not obscene.” With that request, I made sure the world of the music and the poem, its mood, and its forms would become as strange and disjointed as possible. The references I drew on were works that feel feverish and nightmarish to watch, such as Stephen King’s The Devil Truck, Sam Peckinpah’s Convoy, and Ken Russell’s Gothic. Above all, I wanted to express the absurdity of a gigantic thing racing at full speed, and the image of something that crosses some kind of limit or is mixed together until it turns into an uncanny form. If you trace the history of Gothic, from the Christian view of life and death to the monsters like gargoyles placed on church Gothic architecture, there is a sense of life and death repeating like summer and winter. I am always drawn to the coexistence of ambivalent things. The zombie in the passenger seat is always embodying the ambivalent state of life and death. Though dead, he wears a T-shirt that says “flesh and blood,” or gets an IV drip, as if he refuses to accept death. The method is my usual collage, but it is difficult to create something without straying from the world I have set up. The shape of the truck, on which I put special emphasis, also has to maintain a certain level of consistency from the front, the diagonal, and the side in order to connect properly. A lack of consistency is in a sense an inherent quality of collage, but this nauseating lack of balance was the most exciting and enjoyable part of my recent work.

A little journey of tiny paper skaters. This time, gliding smoothly through the Cultural Forum Kasugai in my hometown of Kasugai City, Aichi Prefecture. I’m so glad events are gradually starting up again this spring 🌸 Bunka Forum Kasugai https://www.kasugai-bunka.jp

A Music Video work created in advance of the TV series that began airing in April 2024, this original CG anime Girls Band Cry was conceived, planned, and produced by Toei Animation.