Due to prior commitments that even Anime Festival Asia 2009 could not trump, I had to leave directly after the Summer Wars preview/talk session, so the rest of AFA09 will have to be filled in by Kindaichi17. Nevertheless, I promised him I’d post the summary of the talk session, and… well, it’s not a summary. But it is about the session.
We were treated to a preview trailer for Summer Wars, which will be coming out on February 25 2010 in Singapore (according to the text on the trailer). After that, there was some frantic rearrangement of furniture to provide a table and seats for the guests, followed by the arrival of said guests: Mr. Mamoru Hosoda, interpreter Ms. Sakai, and Mr. Justin Sevakis from Anime News Network. Mr. Sevakis appeared to have a list of questions ready, and during the Questions From The Audience segment, he acted as the relay to Ms. Sakai and Mr. Hosoda.
The plot of Summer Wars revolves around Kenji, a relatively regular high-school student who suddenly gets asked to pretend to be the boyfriend of Natsuki, the girl he had a secret crush on in the first place. This is to appease her Very Large family, and Wacky Hijinks are sure to ensue… at least until Kenji helps solve a weird mathematical problem, which somehow messes up the Internet and specifically a virtual world named Oz, causing immense problems in Real Life. And so Kenji has to enlist the help of Natsuki’s family to wage an online Summer War to restore the Internet.
Mr. Sevakis started out with asking about the basic premise of Summer Wars, which “uses the world of Oz to satirize the Internet and digital society”. Instead of the New Media Is Evil spiel that many would have expected at this point, Mr. Hosoda was actually good-natured about it, saying that he “enjoyed the Internet”, because “many people communicate with the Internet”; therefore, “an action movie about the Internet would be fun”.
The idea of avatars in a virtual land representing real people elsewhere is a familiar one to science fiction fans (Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash kind of leaps to mind), as well as pretty much anyone involved in social networking or online games (or, if you stretch the definition, the Internet in general). Mr. Sevakis suggested Facebook and Second Life, but Mr. Hosoda said that he got the inspiration from the Japanese social networking site Mixi, which is very Japan-centric (for example, a valid Japanese cell phone address is required, and joining is by invitation only). If you want an idea of a similar service, Twitter might be it.
Another important theme in Summer Wars is that of family. Or rather, Natsuki’s huge family. In modern-day Japan, especially in urbanized areas like Tokyo, “family” tends to mean the small, nuclear unit. (Mr. Sevakis did a quick raised-hand poll of how many of us in the audience lived together with big extended families rather than small nuclear ones. The results seemed to be close to the Japanese norm: mostly small families.) Mr. Hosoda wanted to bring back the feel of having a big extended family together under one roof: “big families are more lively and nostalgic.”
Summer Wars will be sharing much of the same staff as Mr. Hosoda’s previous movie, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, henceforth shortened to TokiKake to save time typing). However, Mr. Hosoda assured us that Summer Wars is a different movie, so having the same staff would not result in a TokiKake II. Notable staff members who will be returning include screenplay-writer Satoko Okudera, and character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, whom most of the audience recognized as the character designer for Neon Genesis Evangelion.
As the conversation turned to TokiKake, Mr. Hosoda confessed that he was surprised so many people liked that movie. TokiKake’s main character is a high school girl, and so the targeted audience were high school girls. It was only after TokiKake became hugely popular that he realized many people felt the same way as the protagonist, and he felt “very happy” about that. He also asked if Singaporean high school girls were as active as the protagonist of TokiKake (“running around”, the phrase was; Summer Wars will have “a lot more people running around”), but considering most of the audience present were largely neither girls nor in high school, response was muted.
Quipped Mr. Sevakis: “Anime has taught us that we all have a lot more in common with high school girls.”
The critical acclaim for TokiKake also caught him by surprise. Mr. Hosoda best remembers the award at “the film festival in France” (the Annency International Animated Film Festival, where TokiKake received a Special Distinction award), mainly because he thought that full-length films and short films were supposed to be judged seperately.
Mr. Sevakis commented on the art direction of Summer Wars, wondering if Mr. Hosoda collaborated with Takashi Murakami of the postmodernist Superflat movement (it’s too complicated to explain right here and now; think of it as a particular style of art and design). Mr. Hosoda explained that the concept actually started about ten years ago, with the 1999 Digimon Adventure movie. “The same imagery as when (TokiKake’s) Makoto falls through the time warp.”
Mr. Hosoda’s idea was to make it “simple and sharp”, as opposed to plenty of CG. Why? “It’s more cool that way.”
What anime inspired Mr. Hosoda? “My Neighbour Totoro,” he says, referring to the 1988 movie by Hayao Miyazaki. “Ghost in the Shell,” the 1995 movie by Mamoru Oshii. A long pause later: “Too many things.” Too hard to pin down just a few names, it seems.
Mr. Hosoda mentioned that he was flying back to Japan tomorrow (on Sunday, November 22), but this morning he took a short walk around Raffles Hotel, and was reminded that “in the One Piece movie, you can see Raffles Hotel in the background.” (I’m not sure about this; that’s what I think he said, but I’ve not seen any of One Piece, so I could be mistaken.)
What are his impressions of Singaporean anime fans? “Like Tokyo Big Sight,” he says, referring to the Tokyo International Exhibition Centre that is host to many anime (and other) conventions and events. “Same atmosphere.” Apparently we are Very Similar to Japanese anime fans, especially in terms of enthusiasm; I’m not sure if it’s a compliment, but since he seemed cheerful when he said it, we may as well take it as one. Mr. Hosoda went on to say that we in Singapore are very lucky to have Anime Festival Asia, the largest anime convention in Southeast Asia. Mr. Sevakis expressed interest in the person-sized Gundam model at the con, and Mr. Hosoda offered to sell it for “about 300 to 400 million yen”. “If I had that sort of money,” Mr. Sevakis replied, “I wouldn’t be working in anime.”
Time for questions from the audience. The first one asks about Mr. Hosoda’s next project after Summer Wars. He is still thinking about it, but he believes that the “contents will be very simple”: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was a simple movie with just a few major characters, while Summer Wars is a complicated movie “with many characters”. Therefore, the next movie is going to flip back to simplicity.
Another question was whether he would be working on a TV anime series rather than a movie. Mr. Hosoda answered that he used to work on TV anime series (he’s directed a few episodes in a few series, including Digimon Adventure and Ashita no Nadja), but he prefers movies, since they’re easier to disseminate to a larger, more international audience: “easier for everyone to see.”
Which isn’t to say that movies are simple matters: each movie takes three years to come to completion. “One year for planning,” Mr. Hosoda says, “second year for scripts, and the third year for film-making.” The longest part of production is usually the planning stage, since they “try to think about what can make people happy, and what people enjoy.”
On a tangent, Mr. Hosoda was approached as a possibility to direct the upcoming Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya movie, The Vanishment of Haruhi Suzumiya. Unfortunately, he was not the one “for various reasons” (presumably because he was working on Summer Wars at the time), even though “I would love to do it.”
A final question: is there a difference between the Japanese perspective of the Internet compared to the rest of the world? Mr. Hosoda guesses that it is “a little different, probably”. For example, in the US, people on Facebook tend to use their real names, while Japanese on Mixi (and, as another raised-hand poll indicated, Singaporeans) use online handles, preferring not to reveal their true identities, particularly when speaking their honest feelings about something.
Hosoda: “Personally I feel it would be more fun if people use your real names.”
Sevakis: “Unless you get into trouble.”
Hosoda: “That’s part of the fun.”
As a result of Mr. Hosoda’s ideals, the characters in Summer Wars use their real names in Oz, even though they might use a completely different avatar from their real-life appearance. “If you use your real name,” Mr. Hosoda says, “people trust you more.”
Any last comments and advice from Mr. Hosoda?
“When you watch Summer Wars,” he says, “bring someone else to watch it with you. Don’t watch it alone.”