Journey to the Japanese Anime Industry (Part 1/6) Sho Follow Jan 14 · 8 min read

Hello everyone!

I’m Shō, a director/2D animator/software engineer in Tokyo.

I just wanted to write a bit about my ongoing journey to the Japanese anime industry as someone not originally from Japan, and provide a bit of insight on how difficult yet fun it has been which hopefully would give an idea to aspiring animators or just plainly inspiring all you awesome people to pursue your dreams. Also you can AMA in the comments! I’ll be super happy to provide information about the things that I’ve learned so far.

This 6-part article includes:

Introduction and coming to Tokyo temporarily for the first time (this article) My first ever short animated film, being able to come back to Japan more permanently and getting by working long work hours at a classic Japanese company to rushing to JLPT N2 Overcoming being broke and almost homeless to getting into an international AI startup and diving into but temporarily pausing research on 3D to 2D techniques and deep learning for 2D animation, Getting to more in-depth drawing/directing/animating to trying and failing multiple times applying to a studio in Kyoto to passing at a studio in Toyama but failing to secure proper documents, Getting into international film festivals after directing/animating/voicing my third short film alone, to meeting Japanese film and anime industry professionals, And finally *starts huffing*, animating ~80% of a full pilot episode of an indie anime series mostly alone while directing professional performers/composers/voice actors and a 2D animator friend from California to registering my pen name Akiyama Shō officially in the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs

So, without further ado,

Introduction

This “looking back” started last Monday (January 13th) when I decided to go with a friend to a small town in Tokyo called Kunitachi, which was not an entirely tourist-y area nor would it be the first thing you’d think of when finding a good place to hang out at. I used to live there in January 2018 as a broke, almost-homeless guy on the verge of extinction after leaving my job in Yokohama and trying to survive until my next job in Tokyo starts.

While I toured the nostalgia wonderland that is Kunitachi, the self-consciousness just hit me:

Hey it’s January 2020 and I’m now this strange 「AI startup full-stack engineer, UI・UX designer *slash* director, 2D animator 」working with awesome international tech industry people for my day job while directing professional performers/composers and animating my own short films. Hell, I’m good friends with awesome Japanese film directors and at this very moment, I’m walking with this amazing actress friend who used to be a Miss World Japan finalist!”

My face at that exact moment the thought “you’re walking with a beauty queen!” came into mind. (props to my sister’s dog Riley for this accurate depiction of my expression)

Disclaimer: I am by no means popular nor would I would call myself a professional and I still have a long way studying production-level 作画 (animation), 演出 (direction), and even native-level Japanese, but looking back, it felt like there were so many things that happened since I started.

What the hell just happened? Honestly, I never get nervous meeting celebrities/performers even at my home country but this is the first time I got star-struck thinking about all the amazing people I know.

Here’s a recent photo of the wonderful staff/cast I worked with on my latest work

As we walked past my old Sakura house apartment, I asked myself, how the hell did I get here? How did this weird nerd from some tropical island in southeast Asia (born and raised in the Philippines, baby) just decide to leave his hometown and pursue Japanese animation? Where did my director name 秋山翔 (Akiyama Shō), which is now in the process of being officially registered in the Japanese 文化庁 (Agency for Cultural Affairs), come from?

So many questions.

And It all started in 2015.

Hang on tight, this is going to be a long, bittersweet ride, but more on the sweet side towards the end definitely. It has been five years and I feel like the whole experience is difficult to sum up in one post, hence the division to 6 articles.

Rekindling my animator dream and the first real Japan experience (2015–2016)

I was a 21-year old human and a 1-year old 社会人 (working adult) and just recently quit my first job as a web developer and started this new job as a mobile app developer at a company that sends select employees to Japan. This was the time when I audited my experiences, skills, the things that I enjoy and the things I can currently and potentially provide value at (much like finding the “hedgehog concept” in Good to Great, which I honestly have not yet read nor heard of at the time). Mixing in previous film/theatre acting experience at university, a little bit of 3D knowledge with Blender, a computer science degree, and my extreme love for Japanese animation, I decided to take this opportunity to try creating animations on the side while working as a software engineer. At that same time, I started writing down experiences and imagined stories about the life of a software engineer, and was considering starting an animated web series circling around this theme despite having zero animation and drawing skills. Below is my first attempt to create character designs for that series in 2015:

Drawing skill zero

While I collected these stories and started studying drawing from DrawABox and Betty Edwards’ books, I simply worked hard at my job, learning what I could about mobile development and user experience, and was fortunately selected to be sent to Yokohama for a 3-month business trip in early 2016.

Japan was everything I thought it would be and more. Especially coming from renting a ~1.5x2m room with loud, drunk neighbours, frequent *pardon the imagery* cockroach and rat visits, and occasionally dripping ceilings in said room in Manila, living at the company apartment in Yokohama was already paradise.

My room in Manila. I can’t believe I lived here for more than 2 years

Just for comparison, one of my old rooms in Nakameguro, and this is already considered budget-class in Japan. I have no photos of the company apartment in Yokohama anymore, unfortunately.

There were no issues with traffic, the train commute is brilliant, everyone was extremely polite, and the nights were extremely quiet. One major issue, however, was I could not speak nor comprehend any Japanese at all. I prepared with memorising Hiragana and Katakana before the flight, but of course it was not enough. I ended up being a prisoner inside my own home, spending most of my first weekends just going through basic Japanese textbooks called Genki and not really experiencing Japan. I was too timid to go out and talk to people and would always wear a flu mask, especially after hearing stories about the image of non-white foreigners here in Japan. Boy, was I an insecure lad back then. Even buying from the コンビニ (convenience store) and taking the train to anywhere unknown, outside of the Yokohama blue line, sends me panicking.

Until one day, a friend invited me out to go to Ueno for a meetup event. Unfortunately, he got extremely pissed that I was following him like a puppy due to my extreme cowardice. You know that whimpering Kaneki in the first chapters of Tokyo Ghoul?

I was way worse than that. My friend almost left me at Ueno to fend for myself, but after feeling awful about it, he reconsidered and decided to fetch me. After that, he taught me how to use Google Maps, which was sort of the bible of going around Japan. It had all the train and bus times, including where and when to ride and get off, which was basically all you need.

That was my turning point. That was also the same time when I finished the first Genki textbook, and I was at the level of skill where I can introduce myself and ask “お名前は？” (Your name is?) and “元気ですか” (How are you?), which would always get a rather sweet “上手ですねー” (Your Japanese is so good!) from locals. Equipped with Google Maps and this newfound courage from finishing one textbook, I told myself not to be weak anymore, and planned out a bar crawl. I bought a full business suit at Uniqlo and budgeted my meagre savings for a night of adventure. I ended up arriving at a bar at 7pm, getting extremely drunk while painstakingly talking to the bartender with my broken Japanese, and ending up moving to a snack bar singing Careless Whisper with random salarymen. I still remember (or dreamt?) I was sitting on the floor on my train home, laughing with another drunk guy, who at the time was also sitting on the floor. On another night I joined a pub crawl but unfortunately, this was also the time when I discovered that my stomach gets super acidic after drinking alcohol, which led me to stop drinking completely.

Hibiya Station (Oedo Line), if I remember correctly, circa March 2016

After that I simply joined random meetups and met my first friends in Japan. We would go to different places and just jump on to adventures like going to an island in Yokohama or some tea farm at Saitama on a whim.

Tea Farm in Saitama

When the business trip ended in March 2016, as a gamer I thought “this is so much more exciting than playing an RPG” .

I simply had to come back. I just had to.

See part 2 here.