—About the depiction of the Sea of Decay: in the early scenes, such as the village where Yupa ends up, it’s rather eerie. At the end, the Sea of Decay where Yupa and Asbel are traveling appears very bright. Miyazaki: We see birds that harm humans as harmful and those that are useful to humans as useful. It’s all arbitrary. The impression we have of

What I mean to say is that I didn’t start out writing and drawing Nausicaä because I specifically wanted to talk about ecosystems or the need to protect the environment. I started out intending to set the story in the desert, but when I drew some illustrations they weren’t very interesting, so then I came up with the idea of setting the story in a

They say that Disney Studios failed to nurture successors. The core animators, called the “Nine Old Men,” stayed at the top too long. They became stale and lost their energy. In reality, Disney did try to cultivate new animators. Disney formed a school and trained animators and unearthed talent, even bringing animators to the U.S. through immigrati

From a senior of mine in the industry, I once heard that when Tezuka was working on the production of the Saiyūki (Alakazam the Great) animation feature, he reportedly advocated inserting an episode showing the hero monkey, Songokū, coming back and finding his girlfriend (also a monkey) dead. But there was never any reason for the girl monkey to be

For the past few years, I have put forth ideas for film projects with the following ethos: “To offer a sense of liberation to present-day young people who, in this suffocating, overprotective, and managed society, find their path to self-reliant independence blocked and have become neurotic.”

Every day children are born and every day children grow up around us, whether or not we animation creators come up with a motive for our characters. And the challenges they confront haven’t decreased in the slightest. They may no longer identify with and be encouraged by champions of justice as in the past, but they still want to be encouraged, sti

I’ve always thought that, if given the chance, I might as well do what I really want.

In terms of animation, however, I think I have the right and responsibility to say the following—everything that Mr. Tezuka talked about or emphasized was wrong.

We are now living in a society that is wealthy yet poverty-stricken. We are able to listen to large amounts of music and watch large numbers of videos. But only a small fraction of these move us.