Berlin: Toei Animation’s Yoshi Ikezawa on Ambitious New CGI Feature ‘Hypergalactic’

Instrumental in bringing anime to the world through properties such as Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball and One Piece, Toei Animation is now on a mission to reach even wider audiences by combining Japanese aesthetics with storytelling and themes from around the globe. 

The storied studio, where Hayao Miyazaki began his career, landed a huge hit last year with high school basketball story The First Slam Dunk, based on a popular manga and anime series. The animated feature took the 2023 Japanese box office crown and around $280 million globally, racking up a $56 million four-day opening weekend in China and finishing with $38 million in South Korea. However, its numbers were exponentially smaller in the North American and European markets, territories that Toei Animation is aiming to make bigger theatrical inroads into. 

Yoshi Ikezawa, who joined parent company Toei in 1997 and has produced live-action features as well as numerous anime films and series, is helping to lead that charge. 

If timing is everything, then this may be the perfect opportunity as Japan basks in the rising sun of a pop culture moment. From the box office success and critical acclaim of Godzilla Minus One to FX’s remake of the iconic Shogun series, a new season of One Piece from Netflix and Miyazaki finally winning a Golden Globe for The Boy and the Heron (to say nothing of the tens of millions now visiting the country annually), Japanese content is thriving.

Before the Berlinale, The Hollywood Reporter connected with Ikezawa from Tokyo while he was visiting Toei Animation’s Los Angeles offices and asked him about the company’s global goals and its new animated CGI feature Hypergalactic, which Charades is repping at the European Film Market.

Audiences in the U.S. and elsewhere have become more open to non-English-language content. Why do you think that is?

The pandemic kind of opened up the market because everybody had to stay at home, and they watched all the Hollywood dramas. And then what they saw in the corner of Netflix was maybe an anime. They watched it and found, “Wow, this is good.”

From your perspective, what are some of the big differences between Western-style storytelling and Japanese anime?

I studied film at USC Film School, and the biggest shock was the three-act structure and script theory. I was so fascinated, I wanted to go to grad school to study screenwriting more, but I didn’t have a lot of money, so I gave up and went back to Japan. In the West, there are certain — maybe not rules, but structures. Some cultures don’t share that. When I tried to introduce this structure while I was producing in Japan, a lot of the writers said, “You’re so American,” and that’s half true. Japanese have their own way of telling a story, which is kind of like circling around; whereas in the U.S., you go direct to the point.

In terms of combining Japanese aesthetics and Western storytelling, do you worry that you might lose some of what makes Japanese anime attractive? 

It is quite a tricky balance. There is, say, the audience of Crunchyroll, who only watch anime with subtitles that were a hit in Japan. But you also see a lot of other properties, for example, Netflix did Castlevania; it’s in an anime style. The Legend of Korra is another example. They use anime aesthetics but Western storytelling. So, if it tells the right story, the audience will respond.

How does Toei’s Hypergalactic fit into this?

It’s a project that we have been working on for a little over seven years. We’re trying to bring [anime] aesthetics into the movie so that our anime audience enjoys it, and also those who’ve never experienced Japanese anime. For the characters, we teamed up with the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog [Naoto Ohshima]. He’s a big contributor to this project, bringing all his expertise, experience and skills. The story is after Earth is invaded by aliens, a 12- or 13-year-old girl and her baby brother are separated from their parents. To search for them, they need the help of a mysterious sentinel called the Ocon, which is very mischievous and untrustworthy.

Toei Animation has a big back catalog, going back a long way. Are there plans to use some of that IP for remakes or partnering on projects?

Of course. We’ve announced several titles with different teams and partners. Our library is one of the treasures that we have. And we respect our predecessors, all the filmmakers, animators who created all the legends, the episodes, going back almost 70 years now. We get a lot of calls from Europe, especially France, and then from Asian countries, too. We are always looking for partners.