Biography

I want to work on something with a particular feeling: something with a sensitive yet heartbreaking touch, the kind of emotion that one can only experience during their adolescence. I want to keep drawing for an anime that resonates with this kind of emotion. I will hold that feeling close to my heart.

It's not just a matter of art; it's also a matter of having the right feel. The basic concept is that everything is composed of light and shadow. You can't convey light without shadow, and you can't convey shadow without light. I suppose my job is to convey the backgrounds using those common sense principles. A person who looks at a blank white screen wouldn't think of the light as bright. But a single point of light in the middle of a pitch-black space would appear dazzling. That sort of concept is on display consistently. When I try to draw the shadows precisely, that means drawing the lights precisely as well. It's tricky when the attributes on the screen affect how the characters appear, but I think that even when it's tricky you still ought to do it.

Everything the eye can see is influenced by other objects, and that's how things obtain their color. I don't think that anything has its own unique essence or that they must be shown in a certain way. By being depicted in relation to the backgrounds, the object naturally takes on its particular form.

Whenever I find myself wondering what sort of images people get moved by, about what sort of atmosphere inspires people to feel things, I find myself thinking back to my memories and trying to express what made me experience the same emotions. For example, the school, the classroom, the road back home from school, the town, the hall-those sorts of locations might be a common motif in anime, but that's because it's easy to relate to them.

I wanted to make something that would wow and inspire others like it had inspired me. I want to move the hearts of today's children. That feeling is one of my main motivations for doing this job.