Hideaki Anno Talks Deep About Himself! Hideaki Anno Talk Event: Live-Action Edition

Movie directors, actors, and actresses from all over the world gathered at this year’s recently held Tokyo International Film Festival. This largest film festival in Asia was held in venues throughout Roppongi from Oct. 23-31. Among the movies screened at this year’s TIFF, animation in particular stood out. There was a lineup of world premieres for works popular the world over including Big Hero 6 and Attack on Titan.

At TIFF, events were also held that put the spotlight on Hideaki Anno, an important name among creators of Japanese animation, called “The World of Hideaki Anno.” This developed into a program comprised of his vast filmography that included his time as an amatuer, his time as an animator, the anime he has directed, and even live-action works. Five talk events at which Anno discussed his past works were held. This report looks at one of these talks, the “Live-Action Edition.”

Hideaki Anno is well known as an animation director, but three of the works he has directed are actually live-action. These are Love & Pop, Shiki-Jitsu, and Cutie Honey. At the “Live-Action Edition” talk event, Anno discussed each of these works one at a time.

Love & Pop: After making Evangelion, there was nothing left to do in animation.

The movie Love & Pop is based on novelist Ryu Murakami’s novel of the same name. According to Anno, this movie was planned during production on The End of Evangelion, released in 1997. The catalyst that led to the movie’s production came from making the live-action parts used in The End of Evangelion that were recorded with a consumer video camera.

Because the quality of the video taken with the consumer camera was fitting enough even for a movie, Anno considered whether a movie could be made using such a camera, and he started planning.

Anno feels creating Evangelion was the limit for what he can do in animation, saying that he is completely empty in terms of inner subject matter. So, he made Love & Pop, a story organized entirely around using what is in reality.

A method of filmmaking completely different than that of anime was used for filming, including the open attitude of the four main high school girls, scene creation with an awareness of subjectivity and objectivity, and more. Anno explained that through filming Love & Pop he changed the way he makes films.

Shiki-Jitsu: I simply wanted to film beautiful scenes.
The movie Shiki-Jitsu is based on the original work Touhimu by Ayako Fujitani. Fujitani also appears in the movie as the lead actress. This movie was filmed completely using 35-millimeter film rather than digital cameras.

“I made Shiki-Jitsu because I wanted to do beautiful live-action shooting,” said Anno. It seems that at the time, he had returned to his hometown to appear on a TV program, and, though he didn’t really like his hometown’s scenery, thought it would be interesting as a movie. Anno explained that he only included in the movie scenery that he liked.

That scenery includes a factory and a railroad. Also, a famous fact among anime fans is that among Japan’s scenery, Anno has a fondness for telephone polls. Beginning with Evangelion, countless telephone polls have been depicted in his anime works. This fondness came through during the talk event with comments from Anno like, “Anime that depict telephone polls has been increasing, but there still hasn’t been an accurate depiction,” and, “(Telephone polls are being removed from Tokyo) so I have asked politicians to save the telephone polls...”

Cutie Honey: Producing a live-action movie I fully realized I was not experienced enough for

Cutie Honey is the movie adaptation of a manga of the same name by Go Nagai. Because Anno had created a beautiful movie with Shiki-Jitsu, he came up with the idea of an anime similar to live-action that would be for entertainment. He said that since he had never filmed a tokusatsu work similar to Kamen Rider, he wanted to try making one.

He went on to explain that although the production company has been decided on, it will be another three years till anything truly begins. It seems the start has been greatly delayed due to circumstances with the production company. “A democracy that uses a parliamentary system doesn’t match with film production,” Anno resolutely declared. The budget has also been drastically reduced from what it initially was planned to be. According to Anno, he wasn’t able to change the scope of the film to match the reduction in scope due to budget cuts. Because of the initial plan being whittled down little by little, the work became unfinished. Looking back on the movie, Anno commented, “If it were an anime, I’d be able to deal with it, but since I don’t have enough experience with live-action films, it’s beyond my power. Erika Sato’s performance as Cutie Honey was superb, but nevertheless I think the work shows my lack of ability in being able to make it well.”

Tokyo International Film Festival Official Site

This is a Tokyo Otaku Mode original article.

 
 
Hideaki Anno
Hideaki Anno
 
 
Left: Hideaki Anno | Right: Ryusuke Hikawa (anime and tokusatsu researcher)
Left: Hideaki Anno | Right: Ryusuke Hikawa (anime and tokusatsu researcher)

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