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Interview

Noritaka Kawaguchi p1

Readersvoice.com aims to collect a few interesting reading tips. For this issue I went along to see anime producer Noritaka Kawaguchi give a talk about his company's latest movie, Makoto Shinkai's Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below. It's a visually stunning movie about a 12-year-old girl Asuna who travels to a hidden world, Agartha, to find Shun, a mysterious boy she met from this underworld. She travels with her teacher who is searching for his dead wife. The story draws on a Japanese legend where Izanagi-no-Mikoto lamented the death of his wife Izanami-no-Mikoto and so undertook a journey to Yomi, the shadowy land of the dead.

Someone asked producer Noritaka Kawaguchi about the clouds in Makoto Shinkai’s anime Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below.
The producer said Makoto Shinkai had grown up in a country town.
The town was in a valley, so they could only pick up three tv stations.
So as a boy Makoto Shinkai would spend up to six hours lying down and watching clouds pass overhead.
The producer, Noritaka Kawaguchi, said the director’s sister had told him that.
He gave an interesting talk recently, mostly in English with a little help from translators, at Robina Community Centre at the Gold Coast, Australia, as part of the Gold Coast Film Festival.
He also gave a tour of a room full of original art work from Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below.
It’s the story of a 12-year-old girl, Asuna, who meets a boy, Shun, when he saves her from a strange creature. The boy is from a mysterious underworld, Agartha. Later the boy dies and Asuna goes to Agartha in search of him, along with her teacher Mr Morisaki, who is trying to reunite with his dead wife.
The story draws on a traditional Japanese legend: Izanagi-no-Mikoto lamented the death of his wife Izanami-no-Mikoto and so undertook a journey to Yomi, the shadowy land of the dead. There’s a good summary of this legend on Wikipedia: it’s like a horror comic.
Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below is in the traditional 2d animation style, and is similar to Miyazaki animations like Spirited Away, especially the beautiful landscapes, and fantasy creatures like a Kuzaltol.
Drawings were made in pencil on paper, then these were scanned then colored in Photoshop. Lightwave was used for compositing.
Producer and CEO of CoMix Wave, Mr Kawaguchi, said he spent a lot of time reading scripts sent to his production company CoMix Wave, in Tokyo.
But he still found time to read comics and he loved Japanese comics authors.
He liked Space Brothers by Chuya Koyama, a manga which originally appeared in Kodansha’s Morning Magazine. Two brothers, Mutta (born 1993) and Hibito (born 1996), see what looks like a UFO headed toward the moon. They decide to become astronauts. It’s now being made into a movie.
He also read the website Anime Anime, which is in Japanese.
He described the director, Makoto Shinkai, born in 1973, as a genius.
He said that unlike most directors, Makoto Shinkai could do everything: writing, directing, compositing, backgrounds.
Mr Kawaguchi said he originally contacted Makoto Shinkai after seeing a five-minute movie he’d put on the internet: She and Her Cat. The award-winning movie was told from a cat’s point of view about its owner, a young woman. It can be viewed on YouTube.
He said he thought he could make the director “the top of the world”, and he said he was still doing this.
Check out the next two pages to see how the movie was made.

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-copyright Simon Sandall.