Mamoru Hoso­da: ​‘When it comes to the inter­net, real­i­ty has over­tak­en fiction’

Mamoru Hoso­da​’s films have always con­cerned them­selves with the lives of chil­dren, filled with anx­i­eties and con­tem­pla­tions about the effect that the old­er gen­er­a­tion has on the mat­u­ra­tion of their off­spring. He’s explored this from the per­spec­tive of the par­ent in fan­ta­sy films like Wolf Chil­dren, but also from that of the child, in that of Mirai.

Per­haps most strik­ing, is his engage­ment with how the inter­net has an increas­ing­ly unde­ni­able pres­ence in that com­ing-of-age. And so his lat­est fea­ture Belle feels like a cul­mi­na­tion of all of the above, a rav­ish­ing update of Beau­ty and the Beast which reframes the clas­sic sto­ry though dig­i­tal cul­ture, through a teenag­er find­ing her­self through online relationships.

This inter­view was con­duct­ed with a trans­la­tor, and edit­ed for clarity.

LWLies: Com­pared to oth­er films about the inter­net, Belle has quite an opti­mistic out­look about being online.

Mamoru Hoso­da: You’re right. A lot of films based on around the inter­net tend to be dystopi­an. And whether that’s in a Spiel­berg or of the oth­er direc­tors that have done that, they tend to show the inter­net as being a prob­lem in soci­ety. And then they use the prob­lems that they see there to show some some­thing about human­i­ty. But I don’t real­ly like that way of look­ing at the inter­net as sort of delib­er­ate­ly stir­ring up fear, and then using that to get a mes­sage across part­ly because I make ani­ma­tion and I have in mind, a young audi­ence, I want to make some­thing that’s going to help them. That was the same 20 years ago when I made Digi­mon Adven­ture and Sum­mer Wars. I want­ed to show the inter­net as a place where young peo­ple is a pos­i­tive place for young peo­ple. And although the inter­net in real life is now full of trolls and slan­der, and in a way, does show some of the worst of human­i­ty, I hope that young peo­ple will be able to change that and make it a bet­ter place.

You’ve spo­ken before about your fam­i­ly and per­son­al expe­ri­ences inspir­ing your past films. How much of your own expe­ri­ences did you bring to Belle?

I sup­pose it wasn’t so much of an influ­ence this time because my daugh­ter is still only five and the pro­tag­o­nist of this film is in high school. But it was part­ly moti­vat­ed by me start­ing to wor­ry about when she grows up, when she gets to be a teenag­er and she faces all these teenage issues and how will she man­age. The inter­net has changed a lot since I made Digi­mon and since I made Sum­mer Wars, which were both based on the inter­net. Nowa­days, there’s all this trolling that goes on online and par­ents, I think, tend to want to keep their chil­dren away from the inter­net if they can, but it’s some­thing that young peo­ple today won’t be able to live with­out in their lives. They will need to be able to express them­selves, and assert them­selves in this space and we can’t stop them from using the inter­net. So we should try to encour­age them and make it a pos­i­tive space for them.

Speak­ing of Sum­mer Wars – your pre­vi­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tions of vir­tu­al real­i­ty, like OZ in that film, it appeared as some­thing like a blank can­vas, rather than the den­si­ty of Belle.

It is very dif­fer­ent to the inter­net world that I cre­at­ed in OZ for Sum­mer Wars and in Digi­mon, and it’s dif­fer­ent because the the posi­tion of the inter­net in our lives has changed a lot since then. In Digi­mon and in Sum­mer Wars, the inter­net was designed as this blank space because it was still a new fron­tier. There was still gaps to fill in. It was still being devel­oped and it was the world of the future. But now it’s extreme­ly linked to our dai­ly lives. Also OZ had one bil­lion mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty. Face­book at that point had few­er than one bil­lion. But now Face­book, I think has got two bil­lion mem­bers. So real­i­ty has over­tak­en fic­tion, and I need­ed to make a world that was big­ger than that. So you have five bil­lion mem­bers, but this is now where the inter­net is a sec­ond reality.

And how we go about show­ing that is to be this com­plex city scape. Of course, the one who has come up with the design for that com­plex city scape is the Lon­don archi­tect Eric Wong. I found his port­fo­lio online – I had no idea where he was, how old he was, what he did. It wasn’t until I con­tact­ed him that I found out that he was based in Lon­don. He was an archi­tect, 28 years old, nev­er worked in film, but he is so, so tal­ent­ed. The way we went about find­ing peo­ple to work on the film kind of mir­rored the sto­ry in a way, because it’s a sto­ry about an unknown tal­ent that is revealed online, and that’s exact­ly what hap­pened with Eric Wong. He was exact­ly what we need­ed. I think if the Meta­verse is going to take off, there’s going to be a lot of mon­ey out there. And if any big com­pa­nies need a real­ly good design­er for their sec­tion of the Meta­verse, drop me a line, I’ll give them Eric’s number.

The Beast’s cas­tle stands apart from the rest of the film’s look. Did you and Eric dis­cuss that as well?

I thought it would be bet­ter to sep­a­rate the cas­tle from the world of U and didn’t want to bring Eric’s con­cep­tu­al design across to the cas­tle. Because I want­ed it to be apart, so I asked some­one else to design that for me. That was Isamu Kamikokuryo, who was the art direc­tor on Final Fan­ta­sy 14 and 15. Peo­ple look at the cas­tle and they say, oh, it’s very rem­i­nis­cent of Beau­ty and the Beast, it’s very Dis­ney-like. But actu­al­ly it’s more of a video game ref­er­ence. And that’s why I asked him to do it.

About your work with the char­ac­ter design­er, Jin Kim. Belle is quite rem­i­nis­cent of a Dis­ney princess as in the 1991 film, what lead to the oth­er avatars look­ing so eclec­ti­cal­ly different?

So most of the avatars, a num­ber of dif­fer­ent design­ers designed them. And then we would pick the best one. Includ­ing with Belle and U, most of the design­ers involved, all had a go at design­ing Belle and U. And peo­ple say, ​‘Oh, Jin Kim designed Belle, did you want a Dis­ney-like char­ac­ter?’ Tomm Moore from Car­toon Saloon said, ​‘Well, it’s very rem­i­nis­cent of Glen Keane, the design­er of Belle.’ But it wasn’t Glen Keane, it was Jin Kim. Though I don’t think that Jin Kim designs Dis­ney-like char­ac­ters. I think Dis­ney is Jin Kim-like! Because he had such an influ­ence on their work. And it was real­ly excit­ing to see what he would design out­side of that. Were there any par­tic­u­lar avatars that you liked?

I loved Kamishin appear­ing as the dog hold­ing the canoe.

Yeah, I won­der why Kamishin is a dog. It’s like, there’s no con­nec­tion, but some­how through the avatar, you learn more about the char­ac­ter. It’s like, I was talk­ing about this ear­li­er, it’s like going to karaōke, the songs peo­ple choose tell you an awful lot about them. And some­times you start to see them as a dif­fer­ent per­son because they choose par­tic­u­lar songs. It’s like that. And they’ll choose a cer­tain song and you think, whoa, there’s a lot more to this per­son than I thought.

Speak­ing of songs, how did you decide what Belle’s music should sound like, as some­thing that might find viral fame?

Just like Eric Wong cre­at­ed this new world in design­ing in U, in the real world, we have coun­tries, we have cul­ture gaps that are quite dif­fi­cult to over­come, but I thought if I was cre­at­ing an online world of five bil­lion peo­ple, there would be no coun­tries and no bor­ders, and it would be a world where peo­ple shared com­mon val­ues and where peo­ple could agree on what was beau­ti­ful, what sound­ed beau­ti­ful, what music was with­out any kind of bias. The music real­ly need­ed to fit that idea. So be beyond any sort of bor­ders and be some­thing that peo­ple from any coun­try, any age could enjoy. That was what would allow Belle to become real­ly the focus of this online world.

But if you give that brief to musi­cians, it’s actu­al­ly some­thing real­ly, real­ly dif­fi­cult to do. They start think­ing, well, do we go for inspi­ra­tion to the US charts? But you can’t do that because then you’re going to get some­thing that sounds very Amer­i­can. They real­ly need­ed some­thing much more uni­ver­sal. The ques­tion was how to go about doing that. I think they need­ed to come up with some­thing new, but I think it was def­i­nite­ly not an easy thing to do.

Belle uses more CG ani­ma­tion than in any of your past films, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the char­ac­ters. How did you man­age the balance?

With this film, I’ve used hand draw­ing and CG, but I’ve dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed along con­cep­tu­al lines. So the real world is hand drawn and then the vir­tu­al world of U is done using CG. So the tech­nique I’ve dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed the tech­niques based on the two dif­fer­ent worlds. I can’t think of any oth­er films where that’s been done either in Japan or in the US. Nor­mal­ly what you do is you use hand draw­ing for the easy bits, and then when it gets com­pli­cat­ed, you start to using the CG. But some­times that ends up being a bit like try­ing to get a square peg in a round hole, and they don’t quite gel, but from the out­set I knew I was going to be using CG.

I thought that it matched real­ly well with the sto­ry, the way that the hand draw­ing and the CG can sit side by side in these two worlds. The method of expres­sion match­es the con­cept of the film. Hav­ing said that it’s not some­thing I’ll be able to repeat in what­ev­er I do next, I’ll have to think of a new way of working.