"Time of EVE the Movie" (2010) is a film adaptation of a six-episode anime series about interactions between humans and androids. "Patema Inverted" (2013) is a story about a world where many people and things fall upwards toward the sky because gravity is partially inverted. The two main characters live in two different worlds, with gravity pulling them in opposite directions. These two films by Yasuhiro Yoshiura will be streamed as part of the JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL ONLINE 2022 to be held in 25 countries worldwide by the Japan Foundation.

We spoke with the director to get some more background on these two works. Where did he get such original ideas? Yoshiura touches on everything from being inspired by classic sci-fi novels to his thoughts on communication breakdowns and the importance of logic in translating ideas into reality.

Text: Moe Ishizawa Edit: Goshi Kuno & Satomi Hara (CINRA, Inc.)

CG production gave anime its first big push

-- How did you first get into anime production?

Yoshiura: I actually started out in CG, not animation. I fell in love with exploring the 3D island in the computer game Myst (1993) when I was in elementary school. I was especially taken by the game’s scenery and its artistic sensibilities. It made me want to create my own game, so I spent all the money I had saved to buy a computer and started designing things with computer graphics.

-- What made you switch from CG to anime production?

Yoshiura: I got to college right around the time that the technology for integrating hand-drawn animation with 3D graphics was taking off. Watching the films that were being made with that technology made me realize that you could create anime features just by putting characters and stories into the 3D worlds I already loved.

Plus, I had always loved movies and had acted with the drama club in high school, so I knew how important things like an interesting script and actor chemistry were. It was only natural for me to start getting into telling stories. Being able to incorporate all the things I loved into the anime features I made was a blast, and my work got some positive attention at my university. It was great to see everyone enjoying it so much. Those successes got me thinking that I should probably try moving towards anime.

I wanted to tell a story where robots and AI machines aren’t seen as "monsters"

-- Instead of pitting humans and androids against each other, "Time of EVE the Movie" offers a fresh take by showing them talking and interacting with each other in search of common ground. Where did you get the idea for this setup?

Yoshiura: When I was little, my parents bought me an illustrated science fiction book series for kids ("SF Kodomo Toshokan" published by Iwasaki Shoten). One of the books was the famous sci-fi novel "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov.

Asimov is known for his Three Laws of Robotics. His sci-fi novels were unique at the time in that they didn’t portray robots as “monsters”. Instead, robots lived by those three laws—so even if their actions appeared strange to humans, there was actually a logic behind them. It put a kind of mysteriousness at the core of his novels. I found his approach to be incredibly clever, and "Time of Eve" came out of my desire to tell a story like Asimov’s.

I also wanted to take a more lighthearted approach, so I incorporated things like the emotional fog of adolescence that is so characteristic of Japanese anime, plus some sitcom elements from one of my favorite Japanese dramas, "Osama no Restaurant" (Written by Koki Mitani, 1995).

Summary: "Time of EVE the Movie" is adapted from a six-episode series released online. Rikuo is a high school student who has grown up in a world where androids are everyday conveniences. One day, he visits a café, "Time of Eve", that forbids people from making any distinction between humans and androids. Rikuo eventually changes his mind about robots thanks to Nagi, who keeps the café running, and to his interactions with the regulars there.

Yoshiura: I’ve always self-produced my works, so while I patterned it on commercial anime to some extent, I also felt like I needed to make something that pushed the boundaries a bit beyond what the industry would normally tolerate. Everyone has their own way of doing this, but my youthful aspirations drove me to incorporate elements that are considered innovative in commercial features—things like an indie-style dramatic pace or telling an entire story in a single setting.

-- But there are still characters in "Time of EVE the Movie" who are afraid that robots will take people’s jobs. Even in the music industry today, for example, there are increasing concerns about AI songwriting. When you directed this movie, did you ever anticipate a future like this one?

Yoshiura: Even back when I originally created it, Time of EVE the Movie was based on classic themes. Back then, a lot of people still felt that AI was no more than fiction. Few believed that it would take over people’s jobs, and I was often told that the story felt like an old sci-fi novel. So it’s interesting that ten years later, people are seeing the film as a kind of social commentary.

-- Your latest work, "Sing a Bit of Harmony" (2021), also features robots and AI.

Yoshiura: Yes, but there’s a big difference in the approaches I took to "Time of EVE the Movie" and "Sing a Bit of Harmony". The first is a fictional story that grew out of my personal interests. I made the second story as something nearly realistic.

Summary: A mysterious girl named Shion transfers to Keibu High School, where she quickly becomes popular due to her exceptional athletic ability and open-hearted nature. But she is actually an AI robot. One day, Shion breaks into song in front of Satomi, one of the loners in the class, and attempts to make her happy using some unconventional tactics.

The hardest thing was getting the production team to understand a world where the earth and sky are reversed

-- The idea of having people with sky and earth switched in "Patema Inverted" came from a childhood experience of yours, right?

Yoshiura: I grew up in Hokkaido at the northern end of Japan, where there’s often so much space that the sky looks like it stretches out forever. One day, when I lay in a field looking up at the sky, I got the sensation that I was falling right into it. That’s a pretty normal thing for a Hokkaido kid, but when I started talking to other people about it, they told me that they’d never once felt like they might fall into the sky. That’s when I realized that I might be able to tell a story that would seem fresh and original to a lot of people.

Summary: Age lives in Aiga, a world that shuns the sky. One day, Age discovers Patema, a girl who is upside-down and looks like she will fall from the earth up into the sky. The two teenagers, pulled by opposite gravities, team up to change the destinies of Aiga and the underground world.

-- Did you have any problems translating your idea to the screen?

Yoshiura: The hardest thing was actually getting the production team to understand the premise of the story. I couldn’t quite explain that it wasn’t the typical story where they arrive somewhere and gravity suddenly changes, but that the heroine Patema was the only one who always had gravity reversed for her. One person who saw drawings of Patema sitting on the ceiling even asked me why her hair wasn’t falling towards the ground. So the staff and I took a lot of time with the image boards at first, walking through the concept.

And even after everyone was on board with the premise, it was hard to animate a dimensional look and get a sense of height with the sky and ground reversed. Those poor artists really had a tough time of it (laughs). The key visual (where Patema and the other main character, Age, are clutching each other) shows them nearly slipping as gravity pulls each of them in opposite directions. We took a lot of time to make sure that we got the details right in scenes like these.

-- Did everyone on the team think about consistency in the gravity settings?

Yoshiura: Actually, I did most of that by myself. The idea of switching gravity is scientifically outrageous, but within the rules of the story, it’s consistent. There’s a rule, for example, that when an object being pulled up grabs an object being pulled down, the heavier object will pull the lighter object—and the more similar they are in weight, the more they will slow the fall.

What’s important is allowing things to be different, not trying to just assimilate them

-- It seems like the difficulty of communicating when you don’t see eye-to-eye is a common theme in both Time of EVE the Movie and Patema Inverted. Did you intend for these films to touch on that theme?

Yoshiura: It seems pretty common for artists to create work without consciously addressing any particular theme, and I’m no different. It’s not like I set out to make movies about breakdowns in communication. So I have no idea why it seems to come up every time (laughs).

-- As a director, what do you think is the key to getting people with different worldviews to understand each other?

Yoshiura：What I try to keep in mind is that there is no way for things that are fundamentally different to completely understand each other. Instead of thinking that we can completely understand things that are different from us, or trying to assimilate them into our own world and make them the same, we have to start by just accepting the differences as they are.

If you’ve got a human and a robot, for example, it would be dangerous to think that the robot is no different from the human. You’ve just got to accept that the robot exists in the world as a robot, and never try to push it out. I mean, what choice do we have but to live with it? It’s when we start trying to make everyone like us that things get dangerous. If we start trying to pull different things into our world, we may start rejecting their differences.

You often see stories about robots wanting to become human in science fiction. But my thought was always, “What’s wrong with being a robot?” So I make sure that the robots in my films don’t say they want to be human without having a very good reason.

One of the reasons I love the Pixar movie "Finding Nemo" (2003) so much is that even though Nemo has one fin that’s smaller compared to other clownfish, his friends never treat him differently or exclude him because of it.

A focus on logic that’s reminiscent of a Hollywood script

-- Both "Time of EVE the Movie" and "Patema Inverted" have been popular overseas. As the director, what aspects of your work do you think appeal to foreign audiences?

Yoshiura: It may be that my stories aren’t driven by sentiment or emotion. I’m a logical person, so neither of those films have many emotionally charged or tear-jerking scenes. The fact that the characters have reasons for everything they do and try to act logically probably makes their stories more like a Hollywood script. Time of EVE the Movie in particular was intentionally modeled on a Western sci-fi novel and sticks to robot logic, so that may be why foreign audiences found it appealing.

-- Did you always intend to release these films overseas?

Yoshiura: There are two schools of thought on that. One is that if you make a hit movie in Japan, it will naturally catch on overseas. The other is that films have to be geared towards foreign audiences from the beginning. Personally, I take a kind of hybrid approach. For example, people all over the world are used to seeing Japanese scenes and student life on the screen, so they’re not going to miss the point of the film or be turned off because of it. There’s no problem there.

But I do know that humor doesn’t always translate across cultures, so I am more cautious in that area. Even with the gags, I make sure they don’t rely too heavily on nonverbal cues. I think the more convoluted things are, the fewer laughs you’re going to get. Personally, I think the best humor is intellectual, but simple. Like The Simpsons, animated series in US.

-- "Sing a Bit of Harmony" also started showing in US and other theaters in January 2022. How do you want it to be received by those audiences?

Yoshiura: "Sing a Bit of Harmony" has a lot of musical elements—for me, it’s actually kind of a love letter to foreign musical films. It’s a little embarrassing to say it out loud, but it’s a film I made just hoping people would enjoy it, so if they have a good time watching it, I’ll be happy.

* "I am a Robot": At the time, Iwasaki Shoten called it "The Crazy Robot"

Yasuhiro Yoshiura

Yasuhiro Yoshiura is an animator and animated film director originally from Hokkaido. He began making animated films in college, and released the self-produced Pale Cocoon after graduating. Yoshiura made his directorial debut in 2008 with the original animated film "Time of EVE". Since then, his primary focus has been creating, scripting, and directing original features. Notable works include the animated films "Time of EVE the Movie", and Patema Inverted, both of which he created, directed, and scripted.

JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL ONLINE 2022

Organizer: The Japan Foundation (JF)
Time Span: February 14, 2022 - February 27, 2022 (2 weeks)
Streaming titles: total of 20 films including Time of EVE the Movie and Patema Inverted (not available in some countries)
Streaming Platform: Japanese Film Website “JFF+” (managed by The Japan Foundation)
Fee: Free (User registration is required before viewing.)
List of Countries: South Korea, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, United States, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Italy, Spain, Germany, Hungary, Egypt (25 countries) (Films cannot be viewed in Japan.)
Subtitle Languages: Maximum of 15 languages