The World of Koji Morimoto – By Thomas Zoth and Chris Kirby
A simple glace at Koji Morimoto’s resume reveals a legendary career. He worked as key animator on Dirty Pair: Project Eden, Dagger of Kamui, Fist of the North Star TV, Golgo 13: The Professional, GoShogun: The Time Stranger, Harmagedon, Roujin Z, Space Adventure Cobra, Macross: Do You Remember Love, and Kiki’s Delivery Service. He also served as Assistant Chief Animator on Akira, directed and designed the Franken’s Gears segment of Robot Carnival, and the director for the concert sequence of Macross Plus.
And this is all before he co-founded Studio 4°C.
It would be impossible to fit such an impressive body of work in just an hour-long panel, and so, unfortunately, a lot of things had to be skimmed over. A brief technical issue with Mr. Morimoto’s computer and the projector cut the planned panel time even further. Still, he was able to share a brief summary of his career and share some of his most important works. Like many of the other panels, Morimoto’s panel had a question and answer format with a moderator, and the information is reproduced below:
Q. How did you get started in the anime industry?
When I was young, I really loved to draw. I was also a big fan of manga, movies, and TV anime. I was a fan of Space Battleship Yamato and Future Boy Conan, and that’s what really pushed me into this field. I got started working at Studio Madhouse, working on projects like Ashita no Joe, Golgo 13, and Cobra. I also had the opportunity to work as animator on Kiki’s Delivery Service. Miyazaki Hayao was an inspiration for me, and I decided I wanted to direct as well.
I had always been interested in manga, so I was very excited about Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga Akira. I became interested in working with Otomo through the Akira manga, and we were able to work together on the movie Genma Taisen (translated in English as Harmagedon –ed). From there, I was able to be transferred to the animation project of Akira, and with that film I really got to start moving into more director-oriented types of roles.
I started Studio 4°C with Tanaka Eiko in 1986, and in starting this new company, we wanted to really be able to work on the kind of anime we wanted to make. Our first work at Studio 4°C was Memories, which was another collaboration with Mr. Otomo. I also worked with Kon Satoshi on the segment Magnetic Rose.
Q. How was it working with Kon?
Kon was also a big fan of Katsuhiro Otomo. Kon, Tatsuyuki Tanaka, and I were very big fans of Otomo, comprising almost an Otomo “faction” in the industry. We were also friendly rivals with Otomo, and we decided to work at Studio 4°C to do our own works to rival those of Otomo.
Q. How long were you at Studio 4°C?
I was with Studio 4°C about 20 years, from the age of 30 to when I was 50.
Q. Are there any special projects that stand out to you as fond memories?
I would say The Animatrix, and Genius Party were some of my favorites.
Q. Why did you decide to leave Studio 4°C?
For those 20 years the main problem was that I tend to smoke a lot. When I first started my own office had a smoking area, but as the studio grew, less and less space was smoker-friendly. So then I decided it was time to leave?
Q. So social pressures pushed you out of your own company (laughing)?
Yes! Exactly! (laughing)
Q. What did you do after you left 4°C?
Starting two years ago, I started a new team called Phy. This new team was different than Studio 4°C in that there is not just a sole focus on animation. We also work with music, web design, and merchandise. I got the idea when I was on a trip to Germany. I met some people who were evolving in the same direction, and I decided to do so as well. We’ve done a lot of things with music, and live action, and not just animation you see on a screen. Whatever we as a team feel is interesting, or we feel like we want to try, Phy will make it happen.
We have a new work, actually, and we’re hearing it will be released this year. It’s another collaboration with Mr. Otomo, and it’s an omnibus-type project with many other directors, like Morita Shuhei. Ours is a piece inspired by Alice in Wonderland. It’s a short piece, but I hope you look forward to it.
*NOTE: At this point, Morimoto showed some music videos that he had worked on.
This is a work from 1996, which is one of the first pieces where I was told to just do whatever I liked. It is a music video for Ken Ishii. I basically went with anything that came to mind. I was inspired by the French comic artist Moebius, and from that starting point added my own motifs. I had recently visited France, and so those surroundings inspired the backgrounds. After this, I decided it might be easier to do things inspired by my own town of Kichijoji, so later it’s geared toward that.
This was a video by a British techno group called System 7. You may recognize the Phoenix from the manga by Osamu Tezuka. To the Japanese, Tezuka and the Phoenix are very special, so we spent an extra long time to work on it, about a month. That may seem like a short time, but it’s quite long for a music video. I would have preferred to have 3 months to work on it.
*NOTE: The floor was opened for Q&A.
Q. Philosophically speaking, how do you define art?
(laughter) That’s a very difficult question. I feel very lucky that I’m able to be involved in this work. As an expressionist, I would say that art is a place, my place, where I can express myself and my thoughts.
Q. Do you prefer symmetry or asymmetry in your visuals?
This is also a difficult question! I would say I really don’t have a preference. I don’t know about other artists, but I don’t really want to lean one way or another. It depends on the individual piece I’m working on, and the personality and preference of the client.
Eternal Family
One the special bonuses from the different Japanese Guests of Honor at AnimeFest 2012 was the reunion of Koji Morimoto, Tatsuyuki Tanaka, and Dai Sato. These three guests had all previously worked together on a project by Studio 4°C called Eternal Family. Koji Morimoto worked as Director, Tatsuyuki Tanaka as one of the animators, and Dai Sato had his first ever screenwriting job in the anime industry. Eternal Family was created in 1997 as a series of 52 30-second commercials for NTT, a Japanese telephone company. According to Mr. Sato the three men had not completely reunited since Eternal Family (Mr. Morimoto and Mr. Tanaka had since worked together frequently while at 4C°). In order to celebrate their reunion and share their past with the convention, a panel dedicated solely to Eternal Family was held.
For the panel, the trio simply played the entirety of Eternal Family on the projector for the audience to watch (without English subtitles of course, as the film has never been released in America) while they talked with each other about the series and their experiences. As Mr. Sato put it, “It’s like a DVD commentary 15 years later!” Since we cannot just play the whole series while you read this article, below will simply be some of the most important comments made about the series. Many of the comments made by the trio while the video was playing are short quips where they are laughing at a particular segment or making simple comments like “Dancing again!” We hope you can find some value in the information provided and make the effort to seek out the series. While each episode is only 30 seconds, for a grand total of 28 minutes in length, you can really see the fun they had creating it. Eternal Family is one of those special shows that is often referred to as an “animator’s playhouse”, and that is truly what it is. A fun, experimental, insane show that was as much a joy to watch as it sounded like it was to create.
Key points:
In Japan, there’s a long series called Sazae-san. It’s a really long running show we watched growing up. In it, the people never grow old; so we decided to use that as a concept, pretending “maybe they’re robots”. So these people, who aren’t aware they’re robots, are put together as a family for a reality show. One of the things we think we can be proud of… we created a reality TV series 15 years ago. And of course, after that it became popular and took off everywhere else in the world!
All 3 of us are Monty Python fans; it’s a very silly work.
A lot of animators worked on this. Usually on a series, there are only a few people, who are more concentrated on specific things to work on, but this was worked on by so many different people! Another interesting aspect is that different musicians were used as well. One of them was DJ Crush who became really famous after working on this.
Q. How successful was this commercial campaign?
Morimoto: We’d like to think it had a pretty good impact, maybe in that it was very memorable. This show was made 15 years ago, before many people had hard drives, so the fact this show still remains and was put on a disk is kind of amazing. For many people it’s kind of a phantom series, they’re not sure if it existed or not, or if they’re just misremembering. But it’s real!
Sato: This was my first experience writing a script for anime, so it’s no wonder I’m kind of a little twisted. Although this work also taught me how much fun anime could be.
*NOTE: Once the series finished playing, the floor was opened up for an audience Q&A
Q. Was it intentional that Eternal Family has similar themes to Mind Game?
As were working on it, we didn’t really think about it, it just happened to end up that way. Everyone who worked on the series liked similar things, like Monty Python, so that’s possibly an influence.
Q. How was this supposed to sell a telephone company?
Sato: Yes, tell me director!
Morimoto: We actually never heard whether this worked positively or negatively. As the story goes on, we just hoped it was able to grab your attention. In 1995 in Japan, when this was made, animation in Japan was kind of re-imagining itself, being re-invigorated. Around then some of the earlier works like Akira and Ghost in the Shell were brought over to America as Japanimation. Overseas attention to “Japanimation” or was just starting to get noticed. That overseas aspect had a reverse-import sort of effect: If anime was cool overseas, maybe it would be cooler in Japan as well. So Dentsu, the #1 advertising company, started to wonder why not use anime in commercials in Japan, as well?
Sato: So in a way, anime left Japan, and then became re-imported in a slightly different format.
Morimoto: At the beginning, we were approached with creating a 1 minute commercial and we said “How about we do a series of 1 minute commercials?” “Can you really create a series of many stories for the same budget?” we were asked. So we said, we’ll create a whole long series, if you give us creative freedom, if you let us do whatever we want. Now that’s a successful negotiation!
Here is a link to Koji Morimoto’s website where you can view a 3 minute clip of the series to get a good flavor of the show itself. Enjoy!
Also, one of the works of Phy that Mr. Morimoto brought with him to AnimeFest was a series of iPhone cases. Chris purchased on of these cases, in particular the one with the dog character as Mr. Morimoto said that character will be featured in a future project. If you would like to look at these Morimoto designed cases, and maybe buy one yourself, they can be viewed at his website www.kojimorimoto.com under Phy Shop. Also on his site are multiple videos and clips on his various projects. So much content you will lose hours! Take a look and marvel and this mad genius.