Original interview from SCREENα vol.8 2026, original interviewer: 横森文; genga from the official 2nd PV.
Ghost in the Shell had a huge influence on me, both creatively and in how I see life.
— First of all, please tell us about your encounter with Ghost in the Shell.
I encountered Shirow Masamune-sensei‘s manga [“攻殻機動隊”, 1989-1991] and Director Oshii Mamoru’s “GHOST IN THE SHELL: Koukaku Kidoutai” [“GHOST IN THE SHELL / 攻殻機動隊”, 1995] movie around the same time. I loved both, and both influenced me. What personally struck me the most—and this is true of both—is the way they turn even the outermost frame of the work itself into part of their expression.
— What do you mean by that?
For example, the original author Shirow Masamune-sensei usually writes notes in the margins of the page, essentially a declaration that “this is manga”. It’s as if there’s another layer on the outside of the body, and his expression feels multi-layered. Director Oshii does the same thing, on top of establishing that “this is anime”, he then turns that expression back on itself to create meaning, with something like “but it’s incredibly and relentlessly dark”. I suppose it can be described as making the meta-layer itself into a site of expression.
I feel like Ghost in the Shell opened the door to that sensibility for me. That’s why both the manga and the movie had a huge influence on me, both creatively and in how I see life. Even as I live my own life, I feel like there’s always an annotation coming in from a layer above.
— What would you say Director Oshii’s influence was in particular?
I believe Director Oshii’s works are actually really humorous and wonderful. The direction is never monolithic. Characters mutter away without moving a muscle. Watched on that layer, it feels serious, but if you watch it one layer above, it’s like, hold on, this is anime…!? What do you mean it’s this dark and static for an anime!? That’s how it starts to feel. It’s like he builds a “waiting for you to call it out” structure right into the work, on the very top layer. I always get the feeling that he’s trying to surprise you, or make you laugh.
In life, we sometimes get swallowed up by our own emotions, but no matter what the emotion is, it only holds true within that particular “field of meaning”. I’d like to keep that in mind, and hope I can always go about my life with a smile on my face. The one who showed me that approach, of building in a multi-layered structure and planting humor within it, was Director Oshii, I think.
— Ghost in the Shell, made by the very person who opened your eyes to all this, already stands as a masterpiece. In this context, what made you decide to instead deliberately lean closer to the original manga in adapting the same work?
From as early as the proposal phase, it was already decided that this time it would be “based on the original manga”. That said, how closely to adhere to the original was left up to me; they kept it vague, without pinning down anything specifically. But once we were actually about to begin, listening to the opinions and inputs of various people made me change my mind, and I decided that: “We’re actually going to adapt the original itself into anime”. The reason being, the original manga The Ghost in the Shell has a very long history, and it’s a work packed with as many personal feelings to it as there are people who love it. To take that, reinterpret it, and put my own version out there felt somehow wrong, like I’d be appropriating the work. That’s what made me change my mind. After all, I’m an anime-maker, a moving-pictures director. It’s up to the original author to decide what to depict, and what’s up to me is the how… That’s the mindset I intended to approach this project with.
So… anyway, I just gave it everything I had (laughs). I mean, Shirow-sensei‘s original manga is anything but easy to follow, you know. What does this even mean, why does this particular phrasing show up here… Of course all kinds of puzzles came up, so at that point all I could do was give it my all.
— I agree, the original really is a challenging read.
I went into it feeling it was okay to admit the things I didn’t understand. When you think about it, human beings actually understand very little about the world. It’s even hard to say we truly understand ourselves. And in reality, even the pros don’t really know how to make an anime that works. In the end, I’ve come to feel that whether you understand it or don’t, whether you have some intention behind it or not, none of that actually matters all that much. What really matters is to open your heart and let your body act, I guess?
When I let my hands move on their own, the phrasings and the comedic sense that I struggled to grasp at first just clicked. In that instant, I felt the original work and my heart melting into each other. I think what I was trying to do was fuse with the original manga spiritually, somewhere beyond intent or understanding. Whether I actually pulled it off, I don’t know, but that was my approach. So, yeah, all I could do was throw my whole body into it.
— And as part of your approach, it seems you chose to use very little CG in the production.
Since I was trying to do things the way I just described, I chose to stick to hand-drawn animation. I thought it would be beneficial to challenge the limits of the body. Even the scenes with the Fuchikomas (the AI-equipped tanks) rolling around were hand-drawn to a considerable extent. But it’s not like I intentionally tried to lower the usage of 3DCG. Before the production started, I tried my hand at some 3D software, and I feel like there are many interesting expressions that you can only achieve with 3D. So, for this project, the desire to do the things that you can only pursue in 3D became a sort of underlying theme in my own mind. Anything we could pull off by hand if we put in enough effort, we drew by hand; in exchange, the idea was that this would free up the energy to pour into the spots that could only be achieved in 3D. For example, the action sequence where the Fuchikomas get shot at and scramble to escape; I wanted to swing the camera around freely, so we built a set in 3D exactly to the art-direction specs, and shot the scene within the three-dimensional space where we actually had the Fuchikomas run around. We made the entire set for just a handful of cuts, so it was really a luxurious use of 3D. But ultimately, the richness of the result came through on screen, so I’m glad we did it. It turned out a really, really fun cut. I’m truly grateful.
Additionally, we meticulously used 3D for a bunch of other things, like the cars and roads. It made me re-evaluate the strengths of 3DCG, and I think it’s that the depiction of space is more mathematical than what humans can draw. Hand-drawing is a world of physicality, so when mathematics—something the body can’t intervene in—suddenly enters that world, it’s as if you’re being shown, forcefully, that the world doesn’t belong to humans. There was a floaty kind of pleasure in that, and I found it a lot of fun.
— In leaning closer to the original’s artwork this time, what did you come to newly appreciate as the appeal of Shirow-sensei’s work?
Shirow-sensei‘s art feels very warm, soft and gentle. His drawings have a lot of heart. That feeling was something I wanted to treasure in the animation itself. As I said earlier, I wanted to challenge this project purely as a moving-pictures director, delegating all the decisions regarding its ideology and philosophy to the original work. However, during the actual production, there were some scenes where it was necessary I made those decisions myself. On those occasions, I gazed at the manga, and tried to think my way into the mindset of the person who made those drawings. So, what I was really doing was assimilating myself as much as possible with Shirow-sensei through his art, sort of like a spirit medium channeling the dead [Shirow Masamune is, for the record, still very much alive, t.n.]… It really was quite a spiritual way of working.
— I have to say, I’m very surprised. This project is your directorial debut, and usually you’d want to stamp your own personal touch on your first work. To set that aside and devote yourself to channeling Shirow-sensei‘s worldview like a medium… that’s a pretty remarkable thing to do.
I mean, I can’t confidently say that I understand Ghost in the Shell. That said, I couldn’t very well make it while still not understanding it either, so I think that was the only way. It meant entrusting my own body and career to someone else’s soul, so that part really did take some resolve and felt like a real challenge, even to myself. But I wanted to venture into territory I didn’t understand, and I did actually manage to reach that unknown place, so it was fun. I feel like I became a different person after working on this.
In terms of the visual construction, I believe the aspect Shirow-sensei treats with the most care is the fact that “the characters exist in their world”. So, I particularly paid attention to the credibility of the space, and to make the movement that exists there feel authentic. There are all sorts of ways to perceive space and motion, so unless you unify everything under a single cognitive tendency, the whole worldview starts to unravel. I did my best in that regard… However, unifying things right down to the cognitive tendency of space in a TV series did feel like a pretty tall order. I’ve heard that with theatrical films, you can chase this kind of attention to detail much further. So, if I could someday carry this world all the way to a feature film, that would make me really happy.
The Movies that Influenced Director Moko-chan
There are multiple works that influenced me. “101 Dalmatians”, which demolished the boundary between dog and human; “Jurassic Park”, which made me want to be a velociraptor; “Titanic”, which made me want to be rich. I also love “Congo”. It was after I saw the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” that I first thought I wanted to make films myself. (Stanley) Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” is the work that made me realize that even the choice of camera lens is a form of expression. Basically, I’m drawn, above all, to works with astonishing visuals.
