Interview: Michael Arias (Tekkonkinkreet)

Michael Arias has been working in Hollywood for a while. He started out doing special effects for films such as The Abyss, later he would develop software that would help turn Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke into an international success. It was this plus producing The Animatrix that landed Michael in a position to be the first western director of a Japanese anime. Michael is no stranger to Japan, in fact, he’s lived there since he was 24 and speaks fluent Japanese. He currently lives in Tokyo with his wife and two children.

Tekkonkinkreet is based Taiyo Matsumoto’s manga published in the United Stated under the title Black and White (the names of the two lead characters).  It takes place in an alternate universe in the colorful city known as Treasure Town, where gangs of flying children protect their slum from cooperate corruption. 

The film blends a unique mix of animation styles and is an incredibly visceral experience without sacrificing emotion.  It’s one of the year’s most unique films. I e-mailed Michael some questions concerning his directorial debut, here are his answers:

Benjamin Crossley-Marra: What inspired you to become an animator?
Michael Arias: Actually I'm not an animator. Many directors of animation do have animator roots, of course. But there are others, like myself and Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop: The Movie), who are barely competent draftsmen, much less animators. Having a non-animator director of an animated film can have some interesting benefits. Not being able to draw it all myself makes me a much more open collaborator, I'd like to think. Also, I tend not to refer much to animated films or to think of my shots in terms of their animation building blocks.

BCM: Could you explain your experience on The Animatrix and how this led to Tekkonkinkreet?
MA: In 1999 I made a short computer-animated pilot film for TEKKONKINKREET, working with animation director Koji Morimoto (my mentor in traditional animation). So I was already very serious about TEKKON by the time Andy and Larry (Wachowski) reached out to me. And the financing for TEKKON had just fallen through when they asked me to produce Animatrix. So over the next 3.5 years or so, I was always on the lookout for anything that would get me closer to making TEKKON. During the last months of Animatrix Anthony and I were already having very serious discussions about TEKKON's screenplay. And it was just after finishing Animatrix that Eiko Tanaka (president of Studio4C and my Animatrix co-producer) asked if I'd want to direct TEKKON with her producing. So I guess Animatrix was fairly vital to getting TEKKON made. It really did help me put many of the necessary pieces in place.

BCM: There's a misconception in the West concerning animation: that it's for children. Do you think this will ever change?
MA: Well the Japanese certainly do have a much wider vocabulary when it comes to traditional animation. There's an amazingly rich field here, encompassing every imaginable genre, style, subject, and level of quality. On the other hand the West really has only Disney features and then television animation. The Disney features are amazing technical and artistic achievements but they have much more in common with musical comedy theater than they do with cinema, per se. And television animation is, for the most part, of limited quality and treats subjects much the way television sitcom does. So it's no surprise that many Westerners would think twice before going to the theater to see an animated feature. They've really only been exposed to a very narrow range of the possibilities and potential of traditional animation.

BCM: What changed from the manga to the anime?
MA: The manga, though not incredibly long, has a very rambling poetic feel, filled with subplots and background detail that would be tough to squeeze into a standard feature film. So Anthony and I had to make some difficult choices about what elements to emphasize and which to downplay or cut altogether. I also wanted to make a movie that did things you could only do in a movie, as opposed to a manga – you have so many more tools available (sound, motion, color, etc.). So I very deliberately tried to expand the physical scale of the story. The manga's Kiddie Kastle, for example, takes up just a small streetcorner, while the film's is actually very over-sized relative to the “island” of Treasure Town. Also, I made a great many changes during storyboarding – stuff in the script or manga that I could think of more effective or efficient ways of accomplishing with the film.  That all said, I think most viewers, even fans of the manga, would appreciate our efforts and understand that the job of an adaptation like this is not to translate verbatim, but to preserve the “spirit” of the original.

BCM: Do you feel that the characters have become more “westernized” because they were filtered through you and Anthony?
MA: No. The dialog, in the English translation, has kind of a “hard-boiled” edge to it – that's deliberate – but there's some of that in the Japanese original as well. Talking to Taiyo (TEKKON's manga author), I've never felt any kind of cultural gap. And I could say the same thing about the other artists who worked on TEKKON. We spend most of our free time hanging out and talking about our favorite b-movies. A lot of 1970's sci-fi.

BCM: There are many more story lines in the manga, do you think you'll adapt any more?
MA: I can't actually think of any story lines that we eliminated wholesale. Not enough to make an entire movie out of. I'm not a huge fan of spin-offs anyways (except for ANIMATRIX, of course).

BCM: Although this is labeled as anime, there appears to be a blend of animation styles, was this your intention?
MA:  Sorry if this just sounds didactic, but I've no idea what “anime” is. Is it just Japanese animation? In Japan the word “anime” just means any traditional (hand-drawn) animation – you might refer to something as children's anime or Disney anime, for example. But in the US and elsewhere the term seems to have much more specific connotations – big eyes, sexy robots, Japanese (of course)… But yes, I did want to use distinct visual styles to help explain the shifts between external reality and Black's and White's “mindscapes”.

BCM: I've seen quite a few anime's lately that have blended 2D and 3D animation (Paprika!, Samurai 7, GITS: Innocence).  Do you think this is the future for serious animation?
MA: 3D computer graphics are just another tool available to the cel animator (just as it is for the live action filmmaker!). There are very few purists in our industry (and, for that matter, no one uses real acetate cels any more). That said, I think TEKKON achieves the most seamless integration and the most meaningful blend of traditional and digital techniques to date.

BCM: There is an elegiac tone that runs throughout the film, was making this an emotional experience for you?
MA: Absolutely. There's no doubt that making the movie was a very dramatic journey for me and at least some of that journey runs parallel to the story being told in TEKKON. And many of the revelations I had while making TEKKON are mirrored in the movie. It's that kind of story.

BCM: Although this film is more expressionistic than realistic, it deals with very common themes such as love, loss, friendship and alienation.  Is this something that drew you to the project?
MA: Very much so! One of the things I liked most about the original was that it stayed in my head long after the first reading and that every subsequent reading revealed new layers of story and further metaphysical dimensions. All of that stuff – love, loss, friendship, etc. – is so easily cliched, and yet here was a new way of expressing things: seen through the eyes of children, as a kind of magic realist allegory. I also felt that TEKKON explored all these themes without being tied too much to the Japanese cultural idiom; that it was accessible while still being original. I'm not a fan of Japanese cinema that relies on the West's fetish for exoticism (or on the Japanese obsession with nostalgia), and here was a story that actually harnessed the nostalgic and the exotic and did some new things with them.

BCM: Do you think that children like Black and White actually exist?
MA: Yes – I have two in my house! Actually I think all children of a certain age are object lessons in the struggle between creative, nurturing impulses , on the one hand, and destructive impulses on the other. Just watch a child build a tower of blocks and then knock it down. But on a more superficial level also, I do think such kids exist. I was very moved by two Brazilian movies – City of God and Pixote – that tread similar territory (street children in Rio slums). There's also a great Canadian movie called Léolo that also affected me deeply. It's got a very “White-like” character as its protagonist.

BCM: Do you think anime is becoming more innovative or cliche?
MA: Well there's good and bad in any art – animation is no different. It's always a challenge to make something with soul. But animation – traditional animation I mean – is an interesting example because there's a very direct link between the artist, pencil in hand, and the final image. And the pressure cooker atmosphere of an animation studio is a pretty good place to encourage clever ideas. So I guess I think, all told, animation still holds a great deal of potential.

BCM: Who are some directors/animators that you admire?
MA: Koji Morimoto has been a huge influence on me. Also Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira). Renee Laloux (Fantastic Planet), rest in peace. And there's a ton of live-action filmmakers whose work has affected me: Leone, Kubrick, Imamura, Kurosawa (these four also no longer with us). One of my favorite animator/directors is a guy named Takashi Nakamura – his Tree of Palme is just wonderful, as is Catnapped (art directed by Shinji Kimura, who did my movie as well).

BCM: Do you think you'll ever work in live action?
MA: Heaven willing. Yes, I'd very much like to try live action.

BCM: What are some of your next projects?
MA: I'm currently finishing up a one-minute chapter of an animated series running on Japanese public television, Ani Kuri. I'm working with several of the folks who made TEKKON with me so it's been a breeze so far.

Destination Films releases Tekkonkinkreet  at the Quad in New York and Landmark in Los Angeles on July 13th.