Memoir

Added 14 September 2026: Errors in several personal names have been corrected — Keisuke Fujikawa, Eiichi Yamamoto, Toshio Masuda, Shogo Hirata, Nobuhiro Okaseko, and Masanori Ito and Yasuo Shibue of the founding members of Soeisha (Sunrise) — following a correction kindly sent in by a reader, Kitajima. With thanks. Almost all anime, from the start, has something you could call a story. But speaking from the position of a man who makes his living by anime: story matters, yes, and yet what matters as much or more is the thing only animation can express — what we call animation artistry. There is a way of thinking that says the finest thing of all would be high animation artistry with a story still visible inside it. It is Mr. Hashimoto’s theme, then story, then character, read backwards. ...

At the end of my last piece on limited animation, I declared that next time I would write about “Japanimation.” The name Japanimation was a label bestowed in Europe, meaning: that stuff is not animation. After “Astro Boy,” thirty-minute series came to be produced one after another, and by the 1990s series like “Candy Candy” and “Urusei Yatsura” were airing on French and Italian broadcasters. They created a boom among children, and at the same time criticism began — and the word born of that criticism was “Japanimation.” ...

Limited animation means, as the word says, animation that is restricted. The opposite of “limited” is “full” animation — animation with no restrictions. The thinking behind full animation goes like this: an animal has a heart, and its lungs are breathing, so something is always in motion; even when it seems to be standing perfectly still, some part of it is moving — and on that premise you keep something moving. Limited animation, on the other hand, rests on a different ground: since it was a drawing to begin with, there is no need to move anything unless the movement means something. ...

There is a small reason why I chose “experimental film” as the title this time. The name “experimental film” turns up often in the curricula and study groups of Chinese universities. I’ve never actually looked into what exactly the term refers to in Chinese universities, but Japan certainly had an age that could be called experimental film, and the animation it left behind had its own influence — so my motive was simply to make it one of my topics. ...

Before I get into the story of Wolf Boy Ken, I want to say a few words about how I came to leave Master Tezuka’s studio and join Toei Animation. The original plan was for me to return to my master’s side once production on Saiyuki was finished. But as the film neared completion, someone on the Toei Animation side — Mr. Shirakawa, an assistant director — asked whether I might consider staying on at Toei. I told him I wanted to keep doing animation, but my promise to my master came first, so it wasn’t possible. ...