AI

In the 1980s, when the word “content” was beginning to spread, I worked for a time at Company F, a personal computer maker. Hardware alone was becoming hard to profit from, and I experienced on the ground the mood in which value was shifting toward the software that ran on PCs (personal computers) and the information that flowed through them. It was said that the word “content” was born at IBM, the giant of the PC industry in those days, and spread from there. ...

The Lines Humans Draw The lines in a drawing made by human hands carry momentum, languor, suppleness, hesitation, sensuality. Some of these qualities are consciously sought; others emerge unconsciously. In a picture drawn by a person, such qualities are naturally adjusted and woven in. The word “sensuality” does not mean only sex appeal. We often speak of “mature allure,” but this is a complex thing, and eroticism is no simple matter either — because sex appeal has no pattern. ...

What Is the Bank System? Long ago, Osamu Tezuka — creator of Astro Boy, the pioneering television anime — devised a method called the Bank System to produce 30-minute episodes every week. “Bank” means to store. Unlike today, animation at that time was drawn on paper, traced onto cels, and painted by hand. Normally, cels were discarded after a production was completed. But Tezuka decided to keep and organize certain cels rather than throwing them away — bust shots, waist shots, close-ups, walking shots, flying shots, crying, laughing, lip-sync shots, and other footage likely to be reused. This was the Bank System. ...

There is a work called The Congress (2013, directed by Ari Folman) that blends live-action film with animation. It is based on a novel by Stanisław Lem (born in Ukraine, raised in Poland), the author famous for Solaris. A producer approaches an actress whose prime is passing and asks her to sell her current likeness — her image rights. Struggling with a difficult illness and crushing medical bills, she agonizes but ultimately accepts the offer. She is then recorded from head to toe by a full-body 3D scanner — and so the story continues. ...

My name is Sadao Tsukioka. After graduating from a high school with an architecture program, I entered this world as an assistant to the legendary Osamu Tezuka. In 1959, when Tezuka participated in Toei Animation’s feature film Journey to the West, I was dispatched alongside Shotaro Ishinomori as Tezuka’s stand-ins — that was my start as an animator. My drawing speed and skill were quickly recognized, and at just 24 years old, I directed Wolf Boy Ken, Toei Animation’s very first TV anime series, also serving as original creator. I was right at the heart of the birth of Japanese television animation. ...