An Interview with Anime Director Michael Arias

Date: 2016 June 06 15:59

Posted by Lee

Lots of anime fans aspire to join the anime industry. Very few from the west make it. Even fewer people go on to direct well known titles like Tekkonkinkreet, or produced the Animatrix. Michael Arias was a guest at the MCM London Comic Con this May 2016. We were lucky enough to catch him for an exclusive interview, while he was here to promote Harmony, his latest feature film, it's due for a home video release in the UK sometime in Q4 2016 thanks to Anime Limited.

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You're living the Otaku dream, living the dream of anyone who wanted to go to Japan work on anime, and you are one of the few people who has actually done it and have been really successful, so how does it feel?

*laughs* I don't want to blow the dream *laughs again* I just like living in Japan.The work, to be honest for me maybe it's not the best of all places to be working as a filmmaker, though it's certainly one of the best places to be doing traditional animation. I kind of got into traditional animation,I wouldn't say by accident, but by a series of not entirely self directed moves.

If you don't mind of asking, what were they?

Oh just a series of events and people I was hanging out with, because I have a background in visual effects and there's a lot of overlap between animation and visual effects and although it's a little difficult to summarise the many years, one thing I would say is that I think it would be hard to duplicate my path to what i'm doing now. A lot of it was just good luck, meeting the right people, because at the time that I was there, there weren't really many foreigners there so this kind of thing was unique. Being a foreigner who could communicate in Japanese but had experience doing visual effects on some very well known movies opened a lot of doors in ways that I think they might not these days. There's a lot of good fortune involved and I think it would be very difficult to deliberately map that out.

I mean, when I try to even plan out, to plot out a timeline of what the last 26 years since I first arrived in Japan, half my life really, It kind of emerges as more of a random walk with a lot of tracing back on itself, repeating the same path a couple of times. It does not seem like a rational plan and if I had to say, I really envy people who are able to have a theme to their life, like this is where I want to be in ten years or twenty years. Everyone has ambitions or dreams to a certain extent but to actually be able to visualise like what the moves are to get you there or whether it's career or life, you know, personal stuff and that's eluded me and at this point i'm not going to try and figure it out.

It's interesting to hear you say it's the Otaku Dream. On the one hand it's gratifying to know that someone would think that my life's worth living.

Are you surprised there's not more western directors / animators moving to Japan?

No I'm not surprised. A big reason for that is it requires a lot of effort to communicate in Japanese and collaborative enterprise like filmmaking and animation relies so much on the ability to communicate with people that, I just think that that's just a very practical and pragmatic reason. I think most people who want to make movies are more focussed on making movies than they are on learning Languages so that's kind of a big commitment and then also there's kind of a dark side. The pay isn't great and the working conditions are hard by the standards of...well I wouldn't say Hollywood anymore.

There's what you would imagine the work is and there's the reality. You know, sitting in a desk seven days a week a lot of times, in a smokey office, there's a reason that .a lot of the guys working in animation are guys my age , probably single, can't support a family. It's a great place to be if all you want to do is draw, and then, you're there! But it's hard work and the really good animators, that's what they live and breathe. It appeals to people who can only express themselves through their fingertips.

But would you say it's worth it in the end once you see the finished product?

Yeah for me it's enormously gratifying, when it's gone well, to see something that you've worked on whether directing, or whatever you're role is, if you like making movies, the payoff is definitely, at least for me, in the shared experience of maybe seeing the movie with friends or a regular audience at a nice theatre. It goes a long way and although It doesn't necessary pay the rent, it's very cool.

You made the amazing Tekkonkinkreet, which is brilliant

Thank you I'm very proud of it.

And we now have Harmony which is just releasing in the States later this year?