Director Mitsuo Iso of this year's most notable anime "Extraterrestrial Boy and Girl" reveals why he chose "space" and "the future" as the themes of his work.

It has been a while since a film has appeared that makes one want to believe in the power of animation. Comprised of six episodes, "Extraterrestrial Boy and Girl" is a completely original work written and directed by Mitsuo Iso, a well-known animator who also wrote the original story and script. A boy and girl born on the moon join forces with their friends from Earth to face the crisis that has hit the commercial space station. While it is a lively adventure story that anyone can relate to, it also incorporates a variety of today's elements such as AI and the Internet, making it a work that sincerely considers the future one step ahead.
We interviewed Director Mitsuo Iso, who took on the challenge of directing his first film in 15 years, since "Dennou Coil" (2007).

A work that no one else is making at the moment is worth making.

─ ─ Before "Dennou Coil," you wrote the script, storyboarded, and directed the 15th episode "Children's Night" of "Rahxephon" (2002). I think that episode may be the roots of Director Iso?

Iso: The episode I worked on was an original work born from my worldview, but "Rahxephon" itself is someone else's work. Even if it is similar to that episode, the roots are probably a kind of prototype for the story that I have in my mind.

─ ─ The story of children from complicated backgrounds trying their best to live their lives with a sense of tragedy is the same in the new "Extraterrestrial Boy and Girl," isn't it?

Iso: I can depict such a story with more realism. If the main characters are fresh, cool people walking around with surfboards, I don't know what I should depict. I think that what should be depicted in a work is concentrated on what the artist has always held in his/her heart, so I think it would be good if people who feel the same way would watch my work.


─ ─ Even though it is an anime about children's adventures, it has a depth that makes it impossible to say that it is for children.

Iso: When I was working on "Dennou Coil," I was often told, "Children cannot understand such difficult words. But when I was a child, I didn't mind one bit if there were words I didn't understand in the works I was watching. Even if I didn't understand the words, I could understand the fun. The term "for children" has a disparaging nuance, as if to say, "Children are idiots anyway, so just make it easy for them to understand. This is because I am of a generation that has witnessed the change in the reputation of a genre that was once regarded lightly because it was said to be for children. It probably started with "Ultra Seven," and I think "Mobile Suit Gundam" is in that vein. Therefore, I tried to make the film interesting even without previous knowledge, so that children would not be bored. In that sense, "Extraterrestrial Boy and Girl" is for all ages.

─ ─ Why did you choose space as the setting?

Iso: In the past, there were many space stories, but in that era when everyone was focused on space, I think it would be very valuable to depict small, everyday events. Nowadays, on the contrary, everyday life is more important, and there are almost no anime that aim for space. I thought it would be valuable to create something like that now, when no one else is doing it. Kenichi Yoshida, whom we asked to do the character design, was also a person who never forgot the feeling that "this is interesting just because it is not popular now. He had the sense that he wanted to create something that no one else had created, not something similar to what everyone else was creating. Therefore, from the beginning, I knew that Yoshida was the only choice for character design. Sure enough, even when we presented him with other projects, he chose "extraterrestrial boys and girls" without hesitation, saying, "I want to do this.
This time, not only space but also AI is involved, but if we were to take the research too seriously, it would become like a documentary, and the meaning of making an animation would be lost. To make it interesting, we sometimes lie, and sometimes we embellish things to make them look like something else. Yoshida-kun never forgets the value of hand-drawn characters that are not only realistic, and in that sense, he was perfect for the "extraterrestrial boys and girls" work.