Mamoru Oshii

Upon learning that Yuriko Hishimi would attend the premiere of a Mamoru Oshii film, Kojima wrote to Kenji Kamiyama pleading that he introduce him to her. Onstage at the premiere, Oshii confessed through a megaphone his own youthful love for Anne, and Kojima felt relieved, as if Oshii were speaking for him; although Kojima did not get to speak with Hishimi backstage, after forty years he saw his first love as a real woman, and at age forty-four he wrote the essay as the love letter he should have mailed forty years earlier.

“I have been knowing Mr. Oshii for 26 years now. It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen him, partly because of the pandemic, so I really enjoyed today’s recording. This will be broadcasted on the Spotify program “Hideo Kojima presents Brain Structure”. Please look forward to it. So tonight, I re-watch “PATLABOR THE MOVIE” for the first time in 33 years.”

“I really respect Mr. Oshii as a creator, but as a person too. I've known him for 26 years and owe him for a number of things. Thanks to this show, I was able to meet with him again.”

“I came to Tokyo in 1996, not too long after going through the Kobe earthquake. At that time, I was making a game called Policenauts, and when we were working on the Sega Saturn version, Mr. Mamoru Oshii and I met and had our first conversation.”

“At one point, Mr. Oshii called me up and said, "I'm with Cameron in America, and we're going to go shoot some guns. Do you want to come with us?" At that time, I couldn't go though, but that's what our relationship has been like for 26 years.”

“At that time, actually, we had a plan for Mr. Oshii to come to my studio and get a 3D scan done of him so he could appear in Death Stranding. But he had a broken bone at that time, so I didn't get to see him.”

“I was already involved in the game industry, but at the beginning, I was staying in a boarding house and was watching VHS tapes. That's when I first encountered Mr. Oshii's mystery article file, 538. I was really surprised.”

“That first scene with Motoko and Ghost in the Shell is like one of my favourite movies, Melville Samurai.”

“It's a little presumption of me to make a commentary on it, but things really changed before and after Mr. Oshii's animation style.”

“Mr. Oshii remixed it very precisely and I do that with my games too. It's that sort of thing that makes Mr. Oshii really special. He just builds up all the tiny details.”

“The whole place was crazy. I saw it and thought, great things can be made here. The lunches and everything were crazy too.”

“And then I made Metal Gear, and I really didn't think it was going to do that well. And it flew off the shelves, and Mr. Oshii was like, "Hideo, you can't make something like that."”

“I can't just be like, whoops, sorry about last year. That's the scariest part of it all.”

“Usually games are different from real life. You can fly, run at high speeds, get really powerful. A lot of people grew up on those kind of games, but this game is the opposite.”

“I can't really recommend it either. Mr. Oshii says that you should play offline and just watch the story on YouTube.”

“Then for episode 1, I'll direct the opening and you'll direct the rest of the story. For episode 2, you'll direct the opening. And I was like, what kind of nonsense is this?”

“I've been wanting to make one, but I don't have any time. I might be able to do just a screenplay.”

“I went to see Blade Runner because I had already read and was a fan of Philip K. Dick's original work, and I was a fan of Ridley Scott from Alien, and then I found out that Vangelis was doing the music.”

“Yes, he visited and we got to do the long-awaited 3D scan of him. […] He could be someone just walking around and you run into him if you're playing offline. He won't be part of the story.”

“Your name will be Seventeen. […] There'll be an oi oi button. If the players press that, they get a like. But they have to press it at just the right timing.”