"The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese" Original: Setona Mizushiro x Director: Isao Yukisada Creator Talk [Director's Interview Vol.76]

Manga artist Setona Mizushiro, who also worked on the film version of `` Shitsuren Chocolatier, '' and director Isao Yukisada, whose `` Gekijo '' (2020) was also well-received. The first meeting between the two creators, who continue to stare at the uncertain and ungainly nature of "love," has come to fruition. The movie ``The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese'' will be released on September 11th.

This work is a love story depicting the changing relationship between a university senior and a junior who meet again after seven years. Kyoichi (Tadayoshi Okura) has been repeatedly having passive relationships with ``women who like him,'' but then his junior colleague at university, Imagase (Ryo Narita), appears in front of him. Kyoichi is confused when Imagase confesses that he has always loved her, but gradually tries to accept him.

Cartoonist and film director. Although they have different ways of expressing themselves, they have one thing in common: ``creating a story.'' If so, how do we see each other's "world" differently?

Mr. Mizushiro and director Yukisada think about the theme of "love", character design, and visual development... We will deliver plenty of ``manufacturing theory'' from two top creators.

Index

• If you don't make the audience active, you can't compete with the original work.
• Weakness and stupidity are what make us human.
• Characters speak on their own in my head
• The image of the main character in his shoes
• The freedom of “background” found in the original work depicting “human beings”
• Today is an era in which individuals make choices.

If you don't make the audience active, you can't compete with the original work.

Q: After seeing your work, it made me think about love again. What kind of existence is love for Mr. Mizushiro and Director Yukisada?

Mizushiro: I believe that only the pure part of various emotions is called "love." That's why I think of the word pure love as something like ``falling off a horse.'' I think the story is based on what you mean by love, such as "love" or "prejudice." It's hard to create a story with humanity if it's pure, that is, just love.

When a story is born, it is a desire for approval, sexual desire, or a desire to fill loneliness. Something that has some kind of “desire”. It's because of the ego that it becomes a drama.

Yukisada: As expected, you came up with a famous quote.

I still don't understand love. Even though I create all these love stories, I don't think that I am depicting love. There is nothing more diluted than the word love, or rather, there is a part of me that doesn't believe it.

In the movie ``The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese,'' I created the film with the feeling that the characters were unaware of love. When the audience sees them, they think for the first time, ``This is what we call love.'' In other words, we designed it so that the audience could actively watch it.

This is because when you read the original story, a flood of lines come flooding in. It delves deeply into one aspect of love, and a sense of impatience looms over it. I thought that this "pressure" could only be expressed through manga. However, if you do it with real actors, it will become too explanatory, and you will never be able to beat the original work. I felt that subtraction was necessary when creating a film.

I've always been skeptical about adapting manga into films. This is because manga is what creates 1 from 0 and completes it. The visuals and atmosphere are all contained in the pictures and dialogue. Moreover, in Mizushiro-sensei's case, not only his drawings but also his lines are overwhelmingly passionate. Therefore, I decided to take the opposite approach.

Now that I've made it into a movie, I feel like I've finally gotten to know the core of the movie. In that sense, I was constantly pursuing love during production.

Weakness and stupidity are what make us human.