Accomplished director and animator Kiyotaka Oshitaka sat us with during ACEN to talk about his past year promoting Look Back, an animated adapation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s one shot manga. We chat about his new studio origins and why he likes a divisive fruit like Durian even so much as making it the name of his studio.
Kawaiik Kakkoi Sugoi: Welcome to Chicago, Oshiyama-san. I wanted to ask you some questions about you and your studio today. So, starting off, Since founding your studio, what led to the decision of naming your studio after a distinct and possibly divisive fruit?
Oshiyama: Personally, I like Durian myself. I believe that Durian it’s a divisive fruit where people who like it, really love it. Almost like an addiction to a degree. But for people who don’t like it, they describe it as a fruit that smells like rotten onions and say that it’s a fruit that they will never try. And so what I feel is that my art style is also fairly divisive in the sense that it’s a very distinct style. So, I named it in the sense that it’s very similar to how I view my art style or how I think people will view my art style.
KKS: Appreciate the honest answer. Since founding Studio Durian, what is the north star you’d like for the company to strive towards?
Oshiyama: Following the success of Look Back and being asked if I’m ever going to expand the company. Personally, I feel by expanding the company, there’s a lot of freedom and flexibility I might lose when it comes to producing anime. So I don’t have any plans to grow as big as possible. I want to keep it as small as possible. On the other hang, as things progress, my thought might change throughout the years. If it’s not plausible to continue this way, then there might be a chance to switch my stance.
KKS: It’s been almost a year since Look Back’s premiere and since then it has garnered numerous awards and critical acclaim. How would you “look back” on the past year promoting the film and interacting with fans?
Oshiyama: After I made Look Back, at first people were commenting on how a good movie came out. But as I get more and more awards, both domestic and international, I’m very thankful for them. The public eye shifted and people looked at me differently. I’m sure my fellow artists or fellow creators might not change how they view me, but I feel on the business side, because of all these awards that stacked up, the way they view me changed a little bit.
I’m not specifically aiming to win all these awards. That’s not what I’m thinking when I create these films, but I did feel good when I received them. I’m very thankful.
Once I received these awards, there’s a lot of outside pressure to create something to surpass the previous work. There is somewhere within me that might get pulled by that. I’m trying my best to shut out all that pressure and to continue just working on how I want to work.
KKS: You also recently released a short movie titled “Aka no Kioku” where you again wore many hats including (Direction, Storyboard, Script, Character Design and Key Animation). What did you learn from the previous productions going into making this short? Personal observation, you really like to depict people at their desks.
Oshiyama: I’ve been in the industry for over 20 years now. There isn’t one thing I try to implement. But in the case of “Aka no Kioku” I’d say I put a lot of effort and thought into the background art and art style. I did a similar processing style with Shishigari, another short film I worked on. I think there’s a lot of similarities. So I made it easy to understand the things that I had in the past and to incorporate them into the work. So “Aka no Kioku” is a work that I was offered to do by the Fukushima Prefecture. And usually I don’t do any of these works where it’s like a branding sort of work, but since Fukushima is like my hometown, I felt a little bit of connection, which is why I agreed to do it.
And as the title says, Aka no Kioku, I felt that it ties to a lot of the thoughts that I have for my hometown. And there’s a lot of things that I feel for it. And so I felt that it was a good opportunity for me to really express how I feel about my hometown throughout the movie.
As for your observation, it has been kind of a bit of a coincidence that I’ve been drawing people who are going at their desk, but if you could see my previous works, it’s not always the case. And I would say that it’s not something that I want to do. It just happens to be that way.
KKS: Lastly, I would like to know if there’s anything that‘s inspired you lately on a new idea or technique.
Oshiyama: So because I’ve really worked on my own personal work for a long time, there’s not a whole lot of things that I gain from the outside or a lot of influences I gain from the outside. But recently I have been thinking, there’s a lot of things I do unconsciously that I decide to put more focus on to make that unconscious part more like a conscious effort. So that’s something new that I’ve thought about.
Commonly when people say in Animation, everything is deliberate and in Live Action movies there are things that are coincidental. But recently, I’ve felt that common sentiment is a little different and there are more coincidental, non-deliberate things in animation as well. When you’re drawing there’s a lot of things where you’re on autopilot. I’m a director but I’m also an animator. And for the works that I’ve produced, I’ve drawn a lot of frames for all these movies. And as I’m drawing it, I really do notice that there’s a lot of unconscious things that I do, like things that I’m doing on autopilot. And I feel that because of that, that contributes to that non-deliberate, very unconscious little details within the animations that I make.
And so I’ve more recently felt that there’s a lot of, that’s part of the beauty of, or part of the appeal of human hand-drawn animation. A lot of the reasons why I came to this conclusion is because, in Look Back, we put a conscious effort into directly translating the animator’s lines, the hand-drawn lines onto the screen. And so because there’s a lot of focus on that, I felt that that’s where I started to think about all the unconscious or non-deliberate feels to the animation.
KKS: Thank you so much for that incredibly in-depth response. I appreciate you giving me the time for this interview and hope you enjoy the rest of your time in Chicago!
Thank you Anime Central for faciliating this interview
About Kiyotaka Oshiyama
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