Kino's Journey - The Beautiful World. Were there any experiences from those series that helped you when it came time to put together
Akudama Drive?
I've actually been involved with director Taguchi since before
Persona. I've been with him for around ten years. I heard from my mentor that there was an active unit director in the same generation as me, so I met him. I think that was the first time. After that, there were many cases where I worked as a unit director on things that Taguchi had storyboarded, some of them by sheer coincidence. Maybe we grew accustomed to each other, but the visuals Taguchi envisioned wouldn't differ too much from the final look when we worked together. I think that's one of the reasons why I ended up working on his storyboards.