Mamoru Hosoda

Mamoru Hosoda (細田 守) is a Japanese film director and animator.

Hosoda was strongly influenced by the animation works he saw in 1979, when he was in the sixth grade, and set his sights on a career related to anime.

These were Isao Takahata's Anne of Green Gables, Osamu Dezaki's Aim for the Ace! The Movie and Yoshiyuki Tomino's Mobile Suit Gundam, Rintaro's Galaxy Express 999 The Movie and Hayao Miyazaki's Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro.

Hosoda described the concentration of works in that one year that would go down in Japanese animation history as like a Grand cross (the planets of the solar system lining up in a cross on the ecliptic).

Hosoda had already analyzed the directing methods and screen compositions of Hayao Miyazaki and Rintaro in a collection of essays written by elementary school graduates.

Hosoda cited Isao Takahata's Anne of Green Gables as the most influential anime of them all.

He says that Takahata, as a 'director who does not draw', taught him that drawing is not the only way to dominate a film.

When Hosoda was in junior high school, he saw people his age making animation on NHK Educational TV's independent animation specials, and he started making paper animation using the anime magazine Animage as a reference.

Hosoda applied as a first-year high school student for the open call for animators for the Toei Dōga-produced film Shōnen Kenya (1984) and was shortlisted, but withdrew because of mid-term exams.

He majored in oil painting at the Kanazawa College of Art in Ishikawa Prefecture.

He then joined the film club at that college and produced live-action films, somewhat distancing himself from animation.

Hosoda produced nearly 50 video works: two fiction films were submitted to the Pia Film Festival and the Image Forum Festival, among others, and he also produced other video art works.

In 1989, Hosoda saw an article in Animage recruiting trainees for the production of Studio Ghibli's Only Yesterday (1991 film) and took a recruitment test.

Although he did not pass the exam, he received a letter from Hayao Miyazaki saying that he had decided not to hire someone like you because he thought it would diminish your talent.

He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Animated Feature Film at the 91st Academy Awards for his seventh film Mirai.

Hosoda was born in Kamiichi, Nakaniikawa District, Toyama, Japan.

His father worked as a railway engineer, and his mother was a tailor.

After graduating from university, Hosoda continued to look for work in the animation industry and contacted a producer with whom he had formed a connection during an open call for animators for Shōnen Kenya, and joined Toei Dōga (recently Toei Animation) in 1991.

He had initially wanted to pursue a directing course, but following that producer's recommendation, he ended up working as an animator for the time being.

Hosoda studied under Takaaki Yamashita, with whom he would later create films, and worked as an animator for six years on various TV series and films, including the film Tōi Umi kara Kita Coo (1993) as assistant animation director.

Hosoda first worked as a director on GeGeGe no Kitarō 1996 series (series director was Daisuke Nishio).

And his skills as a director in two Digimon Adventure short films, Digimon Adventure (1999) and Digimon Adventure: Our War Game! (2000), were well received.

Despite having directed only a few episodes and having no experience as a series director at this point in his career, he was suddenly chosen as the film director for a big project, a theatre film that was to be made simultaneously with a new TV series.

Hosoda responded to the wise decision of producer Hiromi Seki, who saw through his talent, with the high quality of his work, and built an unshakeable reputation.

The film production started once in 2000, but Hosoda stepped down from it in 2002 and Hayao Miyazaki took over.

At the time, Studio Ghibli was looking for a new talent, as momentum was building to appoint someone other than Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata as director.

In this context, Nozomu Takahashi, then a producer at Ghibli, was recommended Hosoda by animation researchers and writers.

Toshio Suzuki, then president of Ghibli, showed Hosoda the proposal for Howl's Moving Castle, conceived by Hayao Miyazaki, when Hosoda visited Ghibli, and he readily agreed, so Ghibli seconded him from Toei.

Studio Ghibli announced that Hosoda was to direct the film Howl's Moving Castle in September 2001.

Suzuki himself was involved in the film as producer for the first year, but when the project ran into difficulties, Takahashi took over and the team went on location scouting in the UK, but production was cancelled in the spring of 2002.

It has not been officially disclosed what kind of trouble there was.

Suzuki says that this may be due to the difference in production styles between Toei Animation and Studio Ghibli, or the pressure caused by the presence of Hayao Miyazaki.

Regarding the latter in particular, Suzuki says that Miyazaki often made suggestions about the story and pictures, and that Hosoda may have become exhausted by being told different things on different days, or that Hosoda, who admired Miyazaki, may have listened too seriously to Miyazaki's opinions.

According to Hosoda, he "was told to make [the movie] similar to how Miyazaki would have made it, but [he] wanted to make [his] own film the way [he] wanted to make it".

On the other hand, it is also said that Studio Ghibli was producing Spirited Away, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, in parallel at the time, which caused Howl's Moving Castle team led by Hosoda to be understaffed.

Hosoda said the same thing, stating that because of this he had to gather the staff for Howl himself.

Hosoda says that it was hard having to ask them to work without any guarantees because he had no authority as a producer, but what was even harder was that the production was subsequently cancelled and he was unable to fulfil his promises to those staff, which destroyed the trust he had built with them.

There are also rumors that Hosoda was unable to ask the veteran Ghibli staff to help him, and as a result, he became isolated.

This was scheduled for a summer 2003 release.

The film was originally to be directed by Hosoda, who would be seconded from Toei.