People :
The winner of Grand Prize of The Tokyo Anime Award 2006 (Open Entries)
Mr. Kazuo Ebisawa

Born in Ibaraki in 1980, graduated from Ibaraki Higashi High School. After enrolment at Bunsei Art University, he graduated from Kawaguchi Art School this spring. Joined the Sixth Annual Yuri Norstein Award Workshop as one of the 2005 finalists, and won the Grand Prize of The Tokyo Anime Award (Open Entries) in 2006. His current passions are cars and bikes.

“I didn't really expect to win the award. I heard that Yuri Norstein, an animation creator whom I admire, was coming to Japan. I worked hard to complete my production before he arrived here.” His sincere approach and the way he expresses his ideas reveal not only his poise and maturity but also the passion he has for animation.

He used to major in oil painting, and first encountered animation at university. “A painting contains one scene only. For instance, if you want to show ‘anger’, you stick with showing ‘anger’ as one static scene. Animation, however, has to cover the whole process of anger-how it begins and ends.” For Kazuo, the settings and the psychological descriptions of the characters are crucial. When making his award-winning “Dressed Crow”, he spent days observing crows. His four-year-old niece, Kaon, was the model for the little girl in the story who befriends a crow. “When I told her that she was the model,” he said with a laugh, “she got sort of embarrassed and mumbled ‘I don't know about things like that.’”

As he was raised in the North Kanto area, he likes rural places. Hence, when he came to a city with no mountains, he was shocked to find that different things were taken for granted. “My experience of living in Tokyo led to ‘Dressed Crow’. I wanted to show the inherent contradiction of people hating crows but at the same time putting out garbage for them.”

Many of his works are in black and white, fitting his monochromatic image of Tokyo. However, he is eager to try color animation as well. “I went to Nikko when I was studying at university. I was so amazed by the beauty of the color of the autumn leaves. Even though I'll never be able to come close to the real thing, I want to share such beauty with many people through animation.” Though he has a bright future and many opportunities await him, he still maintains his gentle and reserved attitude. “Even if I win prestigious prizes, unless I continue producing works, people will forget me and my animation. I would like to learn the production of animations in professional studios and continue my own work in the future.”

Kazuo Ebisawa, full of consideration and politeness during the interview, gave us a smile as heart-warming as his creations. “When I showed one of my animations to my niece and she said, ‘I want to see it again!’ that made me so happy.”

From the award winning animation, “Dressed Crow”