‘Odd Taxi's' Baku Kinoshita on His Melancholic Feature Debut ‘The Last Blossom,' Premiering in Annecy

There's a deep melancholy emanating from 'The Last Blossom,' Baku Kinoshita's anime feature, playing in competition at this year's Annecy Animation Festival.
Kinoshita's directorial debut tells the story of Minoru Akutsu, a former yakuza dying in a solitary prison cell after a life sentence. His only company is a potted balsam flower. The filmmaker puts a whimsical twist on a rather dark tale by having that flower converse with Akutsu, who tells it the story of his life before imprisonment. The flower is animated with expressivity and liveliness, speaking to Akutsu and questioning why he didn't take certain paths, as if his own conscience were talking back to him.
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Variety spoke to Kinoshita about the adjustments of making a first feature following the film's screening at the festival.
When 'Odd Taxi' came out, many people compared it to Martin Scorsese's work. I wondered what character dramas you had in mind for 'The Last Blossom.' A friend told me it reminded them of Takeshi Kitano.
Exactly that. I love Scorsese and Takeshi Kitano has been a big, big influence on me, and so I guess with this, yeah, I was influenced by [Kitano]'s worldview and the way he structures his stories, the way the shots are pieced together. With Takeshi Kitano's films, you might have a blue sky and lovely sunny sky and some beautiful greenery, and then behind the bushes someone's being murdered, 'cause it doesn't matter what the weather's like or if someone's being murdered. It gives you a sense of truth or reality.
It's quite a sorrowful story. Why did you want to tell it?
I like this idea of finding release from something restraining you psychologically. It was the same in 'Odd Taxi' and in 'The Last Blossom,' and I got to share that with the screenwriter [Kazuya Konomoto] as well.
So, while this film is about a yakuza, the heart of the story is showing the life of someone who's kind of gone off the rails in society. So yes, his job is being a yakuza, but I wanted to focus on his life and, you know, the space that he lives in, how he talks to his family, what his interests are.
The animation is very reserved; in much of the film, there's a lot of stillness, but here you have this character of a very animated balsam flower. Since the rest of the film is more realistic in tone, I wanted to ask what inspired you to have this kind of character.
I wanted the flower to be the opposite character to Akutsu. I thought it would be an attractive contrast if I made this huge gap between their characters. Well, maybe it's obvious, but Akutsu doesn't change shape or take different forms; he's very quiet, whereas the flower is funny and flexible and has a lot of freedom, very animated, as you say.
I thought the freer I made the flower, the bigger the contrast with Akutsu, and the more his particular characteristics would stand out, which in turn makes the characteristics of the flower more obvious. And so for me, it was very important to create the atmosphere of the film by making the flower very elastic.
Speaking of that atmosphere, I remember in your work-in-progress session from last year you spoke about the film being about 'stillness, movement and stillness' in its rhythm, and I wanted to ask your thoughts on the most important way of creating that rhythm.
I think – and this is sort of instinctive – but you'll see that after there's a really still scene, sometimes I'd put in a burst of action without anything in between. So just quiet, quiet, and then action. I've done that on a few occasions throughout the film, to stop the audience getting… bored? That's intentional, and it's also kind of instinctive, but it's very important, I think, for the rhythm of the film.
Zooming out a little bit, were there any major adjustments from directing a series to directing a feature?
A film is just much shorter, and that means that you can focus much more on every single shot, which makes it feel like you're doing something worth doing, because you can put so much energy into the quality that you're creating.
Was there a moment during the 'The Last Blossom' production that made you realize that?
Well, with this film, I checked every single frame. All the background art, all the character movement, every inch of every frame I checked myself. So it was just a different level of detail in the checking that I did, a different quality and a different quantity.
'The Last Blossom' is grounded and original. In animation, it's often difficult to get an original drama, let alone one this understated, off the ground.
Well, I do feel that I was very, very lucky to get the opportunity to make an original animation like this. I've always wanted to make animation that doesn't exist in Japan or hasn't existed in Japan in the past. I also thought that I had a chance with this and that there was probably someone out there who wanted to see this film.
Going back to the process of making the film, you spoke before about referring to anime from the '80s in terms of the tone of the sequences set in the past. Could you discuss how you went about that?
For example, with the background arts, I used vivid, close-to-primary colors. I wanted to rely as little as possible on filming effects, so with the background colors I referenced films like – well, it wasn't from that long ago – but 'Lilo and Stitch' and its use of strong color.
A lot of this process sounds like you wanted to be quite restrained in the techniques you're using, you wanted to be economical and straightforward. I can imagine that there's the temptation to keep adding elements.
It's tricky for me. Trying a whole bunch of different things is quite risky. My philosophy is to try not to overreach, to make the most beautiful thing I can within my abilities.
I did get told off quite a bit from the team for changing things partway, though. For example, after I'd drawn Akutsu's face quite a bit, it gradually got more refined, and I quite liked the way it changed, so then I went back to the beginning and said we had to change him from the beginning.
Because this film runs on a theme that's so personal to you, what were you hoping an audience would take away from it?
This idea of being released from something that's holding you in. I think, to put it another way, quite simply, it's change, and I see value in people changing. For example, if you have a boy at school who's really shy, really inward-looking, and then the next day he manages to say 'hello.' There's change. It's the same idea that I'm getting at – the opportunity for huge richness, which applies to everybody.
No matter how small the change is.
However small the change, I think it's beautiful and worthwhile.
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