My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.

Personally I am very pessimistic. But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can't help but bless them for a good future. Because I can't tell that child, 'Oh, you shouldn't have come into this life.' And yet I know the world is heading in a bad direction. So with those conflicting thoughts in mind, I think about what kind of films I should be making.

Since I am a person who starts work without clear knowledge of a storyline, every single scene is a pivotal scene.

We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation.

Plants exist in the weather and light rays that surround them - waving in the wind, shimmering in the sunlight. I am always puzzling over how to draw such things.

Its not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances. I want my young friends to live like that, and I think they, too, have such a wish.

I like underwater life.