Feature Article

No stranger to NTUSA readers thanks to his "Howling At The Moon!" columns, the director of Ao no Rokugo ("Blue Submarine No. 6") and Final Fantasy: Unlimited is forthcoming, articulate and humorous in conversation. We meet him at Studio 4°C to talk about The Second Renaissance Parts 1 and 2, his entries into The Animatrix.

"I thought it was fantastic. It was sci-fi for the new generation," says Maeda Mahiro about The Matrix. It wasn't the first time cyberspace had been addressed in movies, but he felt that the Wachowski brothers had gotten the balance right. "Hardcore sci-fi fans could really enjoy it, plus it managed to reach the masses."

He was particularly taken by the method of entry into the virtual world. "In films like TRON and Johnny Mnemonic, there are these special effects they have to show. Of course I personally enjoy that sort of thing, but I thought the coolest part of the film was when they were going back and forth between the Matrix world and the real world. They'd use their modems, and they'd just be there immediately. It seemed like nearly all those scenes were just regular cuts-none of those funny little wiggly effects. Just a crisp, clean cut."

Despite being renowned for CG-intensive works, Maeda has confessed that he's not a technical person. On his digital debut, Ao no Rokugo, everything the director wanted to do as CG was conveyed through gestures and remarks while viewing the footage. After making comments like 'More splash!' 'More bang!' 'More water!', the rough footage would be revised and the process would start again. From these early experiences with CG, fast-forward to 2003 and the jaw-dropping mainframe access that opens The Second Renaissance Part 1.

"The Matrix was inspired by anime, and now it is returning to Japan," Maeda remarked at an Animatrix press conference in Tokyo. "For my role, I think my part is the introduction. It should be the entrance and the exit."

Newtype USA (NTUSA): How did you become involved with The Animatrix project?

Maeda Mahiro (MM): The first time I heard anything about it was at an after-event party with Koji Morimoto, who was working on The Animatrix. Morimoto asked me, "So What's next for you?"

He then started to tell me what he was doing. "It's very secret!" he said [laughs], and I was all, "Wow, that's cool. Really? Sounds fun." It was the usual chit-chat, but a few days later I got a call directly from the president of Studio 4°C. "We've got this little, and we'd like you to come on board, so what do you say?" So I accepted.

NTUSA: Your segments, The Second Renaissance Parts 1 and 2, are regarded as the epic that fleshes out the back-story leading to the first movie. Part 1 was also the first to be shown on the Internet. Was it a daunting task to be in charge of the 'entrance' into The Animatrix?

MM: Instead of pressure, it was more like I got to work with all these really talented people, and I was able to do some interesting things. As far as scheduling goes, like making impossible demands on the staff, that kind of thing always brings its own pressure, of course.

Initially, I reviewed the plotline from Andy and Larry, and it was pretty hard for me to see what The Animatrix project would be as a whole. I worried about whether the viewers would be able to see it. So I tried to rewrite it, but they wanted to keep the original story because they told me that from the start, this was the entrance into The Animatrix, and it represented a very large and important link to the main movie. For Andy and Larry, it was a crucial part of the plot, so they didn't want me messing with it. All the pressure just faded at that point, and I thought, "I can do this!"

NTUSA: What was the collaborative process like with the Wachowski brothers in adapting the pre-Matrix world to animation?

MM: Once the plot was decided, we jumped right into doing the storyboards. No drawing up of scripts. We stuck the narration on the margins of the storyboards. Once we were able to see the whole thing coming together through storyboards, I went to a meeting with them [at Eon Productions] and asked how it looked. That was the only time I actually met them in person. After that I just stayed in Japan and worked on the rest of the project. In the beginning we had a few conference calls, but that didn't actually work all that well, so we settled on sending designs back and forth for reviews. We managed to move forward-with far fewer than I'd expected of the big mistakes I worried about in the beginning.

NTUSA: You're well-known as a mecha designer and have worked on robots from two cultures from Hiroyuki Kitakubo's Robot Carnival. For The Second Renaissance, what was your design approach, and was there anything outside of what was portrayed in The Matrix that inspired you?

MM: My biggest model was in the Matrix comic that's running on the web. There's an episode featuring a robot done by the original designers. It shows up in The Second Renaissance; it''s called something like RB-1163, the one with the simplest design.

RB's a robot that helps people out-he was basically created to be a slave. They had human form and human size because they're designed to be easier for humans to understand. But by the end [the time setting of The Matrix], they were these sentinel-like octopus things; it's almost like they're some kind of grotesque bug. And what I did is bridge that gap. Gradually the machines start to distance themselves from [human] civilization and band together, which is how they develop their own brand of intelligence. At that point there's no longer any need for them to toll in human society.

NTUSA: So having human form becomes meaningless.

MM: Right, and so they start to take shape appropriate to their function. The upshot of all this is that there are sentinels who are fighting machines, and there are harvesters who raise [humans] on the human farms, and those are the kinds of machines you see in the movie, so somewhere along the way they gradually "evolved." That's what I had in mind as I was designing the films.

The Second Renaissance is divided into two parts. Each part has it's own look and feel, but if you watch them together, you get something more than just the history. What I wanted to do is make it seem like you were watching an epic or myth. This is the Book of Genesis from the robot's point of view-so I decided to fill it with that type of mood. I didn't want it [the designs] to be just about functionality, with nothing else. I wanted it more like a kind of god, like one of those strange Hindu gods or something, with all the heads and the arms and a human body. I was always conscious of the desire to imbue it with a strange nuance like that.

NTUSA: Typically in Western science fiction films, humans fight enemies with heavy artillery like in The Terminator or in spacecraft, whereas in anime in general and Part 2 of The Second Renaissance, humans use powered robot suits to fight the machines. What do you feel are some other unique points or similarities between Japanese and Western science fiction cinema or literature?

MM: I think this is true about more than just science fiction: things that Japanese and other Asian people make tend to be vague in a way. Maybe "fuzzy" is how you'd put it. For example, if you climb inside a robot, then what that means is that your body has just expanded, right? You're stronger, you can move faster, you can fly through the sky. But [Westerners think], why do you have to have a humanoid shape to do those things? Why not just get in a plane and be done with it? Maybe the Western approach to that is correct, or at least it has a certain kind of correctness. There's consistency and rationality.

We [Easterners] just got the wrong idea somewhere along the line, and we're using it to…well, we're riding around in robots is what we're doing. There's something there, something larger-than-life. What I think of is stuff like Manzinger Z. "Mazin," right? [in Japanese it means "devil."] That's a god. It's a holy object where a god resides. An idol, a moving idol. I mean, this is something on a very primitive level. We don't consciously think of it like that. But when [Japanese] kids go to the toy store, what's the first thing they want? They want dolls and robots. It's just a matter of human cognition. We like things that look human. I'm sure there's something like that at work here. So it's just that we [Easterners and Westerners] are thinking of things from different angles.

In China, of course, they have things like Feng Shen Yan Yi [Creation of the Gods] and Xi You Ji [Journey to the West]. When I went to Singapore, I stopped by one of the Hindu temples, and the gods depicted there are just like anime-heroes and heroines flying through the sky, lifting heavy boulders with their superhuman power, shooting beams of light from their eyes and skewering devils-it's exactly the same. It just happened that this particular instance was in a Hindu temple, but basically it's the same thing, and they keep doing it over and over, till now it just so happens that these [ideas] are circulating as commercial goods.

NTUSA: The Second Renaissance expresses conflicts between man and machines, and you adapted imagery from real wars and various incidents throughout history. How did you decide on that approach?

MM: This story itself, the story of downtrodden robots taking up arms against their human oppressors, is actually a very typical kind of story. We've had those kinds of stories for a long time now-for as long as we had the word "robot." Was it Karel Capek-a Czech author? He came up with "robota" or "robot"-I don't remember which it was, but at any rate he came up with the name, and ever since that time we've had stories just like this one.

In fact, the reason he came up with that name wasn't because he was writing sci-fi stories or anything. He was just trying to come up with a good metaphor that would capture his thoughts about society, like how the capitalists were oppressing and exploiting the workers, and the man vs. machine is just how he ended up expressing that. So I think it's safe to say that this a very essential theme, this robot metaphor. We've been watching this kind of stuff here and there since we were kids, what with Tetsuwan Atom and shows like that. But even if we have seen it a million times already, when you think about it, you realize it's actually an important story. If you delve deeper, it addresses things like, what is humanity?

Even for me, it was something I needed to take another look at. You get the impression from history that people have been doing the same things over and over, ever since the very start of civilization; that's why this story sticks with us. This video archive is just another way of doing it. So I tried to avoid injecting too much anime-esgue or ordinary manga-like things into my direction; the camera work was very objective, sort of pulled back away from the action. I tried to include some things that make you feel sick to look at; it was almost like I wanted you to feel disgusted. That's the kind of thing I was shooting for.

NTUSA: You mentioned that the entire production process took over two years. Were there any memorable happenings or experiences that come to mind?

MM: Just that or process plodded steadily along. As far as challenges go, the whole thing was, in a number of ways. Like how does it work once we look at it all together, or will it all come together once it39s finished? Those kinds of things were always somewhere in the back of my mind, but whether you could call that a "challenge" or not, I don't know. Will this look decent, you know, smooth, and will the ideas come across?

Other than that-and this isn't funny by any means, but-the 9/11 incident was so huge, it affected our work. We were well into production, about at the point where we were ready to fix the storyboards and go with them, and we'd already started up with the key animations. And then suddenly the 9/11 incident happened, and it freaked us out. [Skip the next paragraph if you haven't seen The Second Renaissance Part 2 yet]

I mean, the last part of the film had this mechanical terrorist, the ambassador. He went to the UN as a suicide bomber, and all of Manhattan goes up in this huge explosion, and at the end, you see the city in ruins, right? So we were all, hmmm, wondering whether this still OK to do. The shock of what happened was so huge, we were just afraid the scene might not be appropriate as it stood. It did make for an uneasy work environment. In the end, Warner came back with the decision to go ahead with it.

NTUSA: Ao No Rokugo was one of your groundbreaking works, using 2-D and 3-D digital animation, and it was the first time I think you used computers in the production. So, from Ao No Rokugo to now, how do you feel your directional style and 3LjD techniques have evolved?

MM: It hasn't changed a bit [laughs]! What I mean is-I can't keep up with it. I'm not really very good with all that technical stuff. I get my amazing staff to help me out-that's how I'm able to do it. It was the same GONZO. Let me put it another way. Instead of it being "we've got the technology, so let's use it here," it's more like we sit down and build it one step at a time, just like we always did, just like we still do. For the 3-D stuff, we have a 3-D guy, and we'll say something like, "OK we're thinking of doing something like this…and can you do it? If you can, then how will you do it, exactly? Should we maybe do this by hand instead? If we're going to split this up in pieces, then how should we do that?" It doesn't feel like anything's changed at all.

NTUSA: When you access the file, it's a computer interface, but you're using an Asian motif. How did you come up with that idea?

MM: There's a place in Kyoto called the Touji where there's a very old mandala. Before doing this job, I finally got to see it for the first time! I was blown away. I felt like I could stand there looking at it all day long without getting bored, and so I decided I was going to have to make a mandala sometime myself.

In fact, I'd been wanting to ever since I'd started getting interested in CG. The thing that really got me thinking was the concept that CG is all just a visual lie. I say "visual lie"-what I mean is that it's not the real thing. Every single image has been generated, but it looks so real. So when I think about how we could best use this [technology], I think of things like myths, or maybe stuff on the ultra-micro level, for example going into a person's body like that popular CG Fujitsu did-Universe-where they take the camera inside an individual cell and you get to see what's going on inside. It's black and white using 3-D CG, but I really like things like that.

For example, the concept of a mandala-on the surface is drawn an assemblage of diagrams, but actually it's a three-dimensional structure. What it is trying to show is the world itself. From the largest graphic to the smallest, everything's analogous…how should I say it? Like if you look at molecules and atoms, it's similar to the structure of the solar system. Follow me? Like the micro and macro spheres are equal in some way, like from here to here to here, that image is in there; it's a multi-layered structure.

That's the kind of thing I wanted to do, and I thought this was my chance. So I called this guy over at GONZO named Soejima who does 3-D work, and I asked him if he could help me out. I said I'd just gotten the chance to do this thing, and I was envisioning something in glittering gold, so could he please make me something beautiful, and we talked about it and then made it.

I thought it really fit with the basic idea of blending "the whole world" with "the archive." It's kind of like an integrated circuit in a way. I thought this idea of going down into all these intricacies would fit in so naturally with The Matrix as an introduction because it looks so beautiful. Plus, in the original plotline, they had so there'd be an "instructor"- basically a narrator-with a woman's voice all the way through, appearing throughout the segments, and the idea was that there's a woman at the core of the mandala, and she's the one who tells the story.

NTUSA: In the game industry, there have been comments that graphics are of such a high quality now, it's kind of reached a plateau. Do you feel the same about using computer graphics in anime, or do you feel that there are other promising technologies yet to be explored?

MM: No, I think there are still possibilities…I feel like we"ve finally arrived at the entryway into the world of really "expressing." Throughout the history of Western art, there's been this idea of portraying things just the way you see them-they really focused on recreating the lighting of the scene and all that, at least until the advent of real photographs. After photographic technology appeared, there was this period of wondering what to do next, and they came up with all these other functions like using it to express ideas, and from there it went a bunch of different ways with everyone trying different things in the name of expression. I think that's where we are right now.

You know about Hoshi no Koe ("Voices of a Distant Star"), right? Shinkai did it. It's where things start going back to where they were before. Commercial animation at the moment is like, if you have two years, then you'd better do your one movie within that two years' time or else, so the only thing you can really do is break it up into pieces and share the burden of production. But now with the powers of computers, it's changing. All this used to be just flip books. That's all anime is-something you do to kill time when school sucks. Draw yourself a little flipbook and then watch it as you flip the pages. It's a really personal kind of thing. That's why I think it's going back into the hands of individual creators. It'll be a chance for individuals to find their own creative sense and exploit it.

NTUSA: The Animatrix is a landmark collaboration between Japan and Hollywood. How do you see the anime industry in Japan developing in the future? And how do you feel the increased global audience affects the way anime will be created?

MM: Some things will take off and others won't. For example, take Hayao Miyazaki. I think there are always people like that. And those films coming out of China right now that are getting so much good press-the folklore-ish local stories are very colorful and distinctive, and that's what makes them so superb. On the other hand, you have all these directors coming out of Taiwan and Hong Kong and moving to Hollywood, where they end up putting out some really good Hollywood movies.

It'll be a question of how flexibly you're able to think about each particular work. It is possible that the most nationalistic [ethnically distinct] works might be the same ones that achieve international status? I think that might be at least one answer. Isn't that what all those Hollywood Blockbusters are all about? Throw all this money at it, trying to reach a wider mass market. I think there are projects that operate on such huge scales that failure cannot be an option. Of course they can talk big all they want to, but that's what it all comes down to, and I don't think there's any way they can escape thinking about it. I also get the feeling that it'd be a good if we could take that kind of thinking and pair the money up with the right projects.

For me, it becomes a process of bringing things out from my side of the fence; I'm conscious of the fact that it's coming from Asia and reaching the [rest of the] world. I love my roots, the land I was born and raised in and it's culture, and I can't help but focus on that. Even if I didn't, when I do a script written by a foreigner, like The Animatrix, for example, you still see me coming through.

NTUSA: Genius Party is you next project. I know it's very early in production, but is there anything you can tell us about the story or the themes that you want to express?

MM: In The Animatrix, we did such a huge story, the kind where you can have a mandala and talk about the world, something heavy an weighty. So this time I want to do the complete opposite. I thought I'd like to make a cute little story. It should be something that fit my own interests, something really personal…just a cute little story, I guess. The Renaissance was so cynical, you know. Part 1 had people treating robots like just things, and Part 2 had the robots treating people like just things. In a way it's so horrible. Doing it kind of wore me out, so I wanted to be in a world with a little love in it for a while.