Starting Point: 1979-1996

I felt Tezuka’s “hand of God” in these scenes, in the sense that he was consciously and deliberately trying to depict some apocalyptic beauty and impress everyone. It was the same thing that I felt with Shizuku and Ningyo. What had once been imaginative for the creator between 1945 and 1955 had simply become another trick in his toolbox.

Looking back on it, though, I should have trusted my first impression. That sort of thing has happened several times to me. Using my own sense of what’s proper, I’ve twisted and suppressed my initial subjective impressions. Well, I don’t do that anymore. Even when looking at today’s politicians, I just rely on my impressions.

Earth’s population could reach ten billion in the future, but of course with humans we also have to consider the possibility that it could decrease to 200 million. Just as there have been plenty of such examples in the past, any number of tragic events could happen in the future. So how do we go on living? If you ask me, the only solution is to mak

Nowadays we can watch more than enough animation anytime we want. But no matter how good the animation is, when we have too much, it is no longer of good quality. When you listen to music on a Walkman from early in the morning to late at night, your ears start to hurt. It’s exactly the same with an overdose of animation. It’s an oft-repeated aphori

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

The author’s views of an End Times or Armageddon come from his own latent insecurities and fears, so he brought an awful lot of this pessimism with him, and I had some serious doubts about the appropriateness of this in a series for children. Even if someone’s lost all hope for the future, I still think it’s incredibly stupid to go around stressing

We human beings think that if children are right in front of our eyes, the only way to feed them is to cut down the trees around us to cultivate fields. This is the unstoppable dynamic of human civilization. When we do so, those children have children whom they want to feed, leading to ever-increasing numbers. This is how we will wind up with a pop

Compared to some of the works from the 1950s that I will always hold as a gold standard, the animation that we are making in the 1980s resembles the food served on jumbo jet airliners. Mass production has changed everything. The emotions and thoughts that should be so moving have given way to showiness, nervousness, and titillation. And work that s

To do this, I sometimes slept on the floor of the studio, consoling myself with the idea that when we overcame this extraordinary situation, I would be able to sleep in my own bed the next time around. Of course, when we eventually finished producing the series I realized that what had seemed an extraordinary situation wasn’t unique. I realized tha