Usually, people tend to see someone on the surface and think that that's who that person is.

The process of producing a project is one long string of delight and anxiety, but I think the real thrill of animation would have to be drawing the pictures.

It struck me that when we read picture books to children, we parents, and people as a whole, do not appear in them very much, and that they are more constructed to be a world of children and animals.

I think the inner and outer aspects of the self together make one person.

One may not be able to fulfill a fatherly role with one's own child, but on the other hand, and this goes for me as well, one might still be a "father of choice" to someone else out there in the world. Fatherhood is something that can be shared worldwide. Meaning that in terms of the substance of a father's role, perhaps we are all pseudo-fathers.

I was deliberately trying to express how possible it might be for unmarried men and adults not blessed with biological children to become "fathers of choice." In an old-fashioned, traditional world, this might not matter. But I think that it's probably going to become terribly relevant as time goes on.

We are on the verge of losing the traditional idea of the family, especially in Japan, where the declining birth rate shows no signs of stopping. This is precisely why I think we should consider with a sense of urgency what the new image of "family" should be like, and not fall into the nostalgism that days gone by were just better.