Interview with Kazuya Sakamoto, director of the TV anime "Her and Her Cat -Everything Flows-".

Everything Flows" is an animated television series based on "Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko" (Her and Her Cat), a short animation series that director Makoto Shinkai created during his independent production days. How will Shinkai, who later created "Hoshi-no-Koe" and "Kotonoha no Niwa", re-imagine his masterpiece, which can be said to be his starting point, for the television medium? Fans have been eagerly watching since the production was first announced.

The director of the TV animation adaptation is Kazuya Sakamoto, who has worked on numerous hits including "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" series and is currently the general manager of Leiden Film Kyoto Studio. He talked extensively about his feelings about making his directorial debut, his directing intentions, and the significance of making animation in the Kansai region.

Depicting the World from the Subjective Viewpoint of a Cat

Could you tell us about your involvement in "Her and Her Cat -Everything Flows-"?

Director Kazuya Sakamoto (SAKAMOTO Kazuya ): It all started when I was offered the chance to direct a film for which Leiden Film Kyoto Studio was the prime contractor. Kyoto Studio was established in 2012, and its policy was to establish a system that would enable it to act as the prime contractor for production within a five-year period, so I thought it would be a little while before I became a director. However, "Her and Her Cat -Everything Flows-" is a short animation, so Kyoto Studio might be able to take on the prime contract. With that in mind, I decided to participate in the project after consulting with all the staff.

─ What was your impression of the original work by Makoto Shinkai?

SAKAMOTO: I felt that the work had more of Shinkai's taste condensed in it than "Hoshinokoe," and that it was a suitable starting point. I was surprised that he was able to create such a world view and visuals despite being an individual production. When I started working on the TV series, the existence of the original was a big pressure for me. However, as a condition before accepting the request, I told the planning side that I would decline if the order was to create a "Shinkai work. Only Shinkai-san can make a "Shinkai work," and if we were asked to create in that style, there would be no point in us making the film. If that style is demanded of us, there would be no point in making the film. We did not want to aim for a "Shinkai work," but rather to follow Shinkai's taste and let Kyoto Studio direct the film and create the pictures. When we told them this, Comics Wave Film, to which Mr. Shinkai belongs, said, "As long as it is a story about a woman in her 20s and a cat, you can make it however you like. As long as they cherish the theme of the original story, it doesn't matter if it is a period drama or science fiction (laughs). (Laughs.) So I was able to create the film quite freely.

─ How did you decide on the direction of the film?

SAKAMOTO: The first problem we faced was how to delineate the end of each episode. The story had to be concluded not only in the entire four-episode series, but also in each seven-minute episode. We wanted to create a work with a sense of life, as if we were capturing a slice of "her" life, so we decided not to divide the story into four parts, but rather to depict the changes in her emotions as she goes about her daily life. In the initial proposal, each story was structured to progress through the seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter, so there may be some traces of this in the finished film.

─ Is the impressive use of scenery in the key visuals and in the film also due to your awareness of the seasons?

Sakamoto: Yes, that's right. But I decided not to show scenery as much as possible. The cat she keeps, Dal, lives only within the values of herself and her girlfriend. Basically, he is a boy who thinks that all he needs is her. He even doesn't care for her mother, who found him (laughs). For Dar, the room he lives in with his girlfriend is his whole world, and the scenery outside is just something unknown to him, seen through the window. In order to express the world through Dal's subjective view, I only depicted the scenery through the window of the room and in the reminiscence scenes.

─ So you aimed to create a screen that was close to the character's mental image?

Sakamoto: Yes. The story is told from Dar's point of view, so I tried to keep other people out of the story as much as possible. However, in the first half of the final episode, I wanted to depict the story not of the cat but of her and her mother. Therefore, the direction regarding the scenery is also different. In the scene where she leaves her room in the first episode, I used light to make the outside of the door invisible. On the other hand, in the final episode, the mother's point of view is interrupted, so I drew outside the door to show the world of the mother and daughter, which is not Dal's subjective world.

─ ─ In this film, the story takes place in a room. Were there any points that you kept in mind when cutting the storyboards, which are limited to certain scenes?

SAKAMOTO: I tried not to create a flat picture. Since I draw by hand, the layout inevitably contains falsehoods, but I tried to avoid killing the perspective and depicting the rooms as flat. As a result, we ended up with a very difficult design, and the staff was afraid to ask, "Are you sure you can do this? (laugh).