Director Shoji Kawamori talks about the real, the surreal, and the symbolic in his film about a high school girl who dreams of stardom but struggles to capture attention until she gets trapped in her smartphone and her charismatic alter ego emerges; from GKIDS, releasing in US theaters May 10.
For decades, anime artist, writer and director Shoji Kawamori has operated in the surreal and symbolic. The worlds he’s helped bring to life – like Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell, Shin'ichirô Watanabe’s Cowboy Bebop, and Kawamori’s own The Vision of Escaflowne and Macross franchise – present alternate versions of reality, some futuristic and some fantastical, that speak to deeper truths about humanity and the current state of the real world.
And Labyrinth is his most pointed and abstract story yet.
The first original feature film from the legendary Kawamori, releasing in US theaters by GKIDS May 10 and 11, follows character Shiori, a typical high school student who dreams of online stardom, but struggles to capture attention. After an embarrassing video of her goes viral, she gets trapped in her smartphone and replaced by a charismatic alter ego. As the doppelganger charms the internet and devises a nefarious plot to replace mankind with brain rot, Shiori must partner with other online outcasts to stop her digital counterpart and reclaim her life in the real world.
Check out the trailer:
Featuring the voice of Suzuka from music sensation Atarashii Gakko!, Kawamori's Labyrinth is a wildly imaginative adventure about finding oneself while navigating the perils of social media. The film’s animation is produced by Sanzigen with Slow Curve handling production management and production design by Barnstorm Design Labo.
AWN sat down to talk with Kawamori about the dreams and psychology that inspired his film’s story, the subtle symbolism woven into the art, as well as his thoughts on the future of technology and its effects on society.
Victoria Davis: It’s great to meet you, director Kawamori-san. I’ve loved your work, from The Vision of Escaflowne to Last Hope. The stories you’ve helped bring to life have always operated in the surreal space, but Labyrinth is probably one of your most abstract stories yet. It’s also your first original feature film. How did this story come to you? Where did the idea come from?
Shoji Kawamori: There was a time, I think about five years ago, where I kept losing my phone or even dropping and breaking my phone a lot. During that time, when I was sleeping, I also dreamt about finding these phones. It got me thinking about the relationship we have with our phones. Everything about you, all your personal information, is inside your phone. It has your search history, the pictures that you took, your emails, your notes, your contacts… everything is in there.
When you think about it, it’s like our phones are ourselves, but a different version of ourselves. So, breaking my phone or losing my phone is like breaking my heart or losing a part of myself. That’s when I started to think about a story of a person being trapped in their own phone and then another version of themselves breaking out.
VD: How did you imagine what the world inside the phone would look like? Did your dreams play a part in that as well or did that inspiration come from somewhere else?
SK: I'm really interested in deep, psychological things and I think that interest started when I was working on Macross Plus or even The Vision of Escaflowne. I looked into what it means to dream and how the brain processes thoughts when you’re dreaming and what different kinds of dreams, like flooding, represent about your psyche. That became a big element in my movie and dictated a lot about what the world inside the phone would look like. And then I combined that research with the look of the underground parts of Yokohama, trying to get even the details of the escalators to look like how they actually do.
VD: Knowing all the elements that would make up this film, going back and forth between reality and a surreal place while also exploring that deep psychology you mentioned, was that what ultimately led you to this hybrid 2D and 3D animation style?
SK: Yes. I also thought the hybrid method depicted the current state of society that we live in much better than doing this in just 2D.
Because we were using modern CG technology, it would have probably been possible to create more realistic looking characters, like what you see in video games or something. But I purposely made them more simplified character designs, like what you normally see in 2D, because I thought it would depict the philosophical and psychological aspects of the story a bit better.
VD: When you have more cartoony worlds and characters in a film, it lends itself more to symbolism. And, in Labyrinth, I noticed little things, like how the outlines of the real Shiori Maezawa are colored in red and blue while her alter ego has pink and blue hair. The cell phones in the surreal space also parallel the architecture and buildings in the real world. Were all those things intentional? Was the ability to establish a color language and create symbolism also part of what led to this film’s artistic direction?
SK: So, first of all, I really want to thank you and tell you that I'm really happy that you recognized these little things because it was on purpose and for you to find that out makes me really happy.
When I was a student, I used to watch a lot of movies, and I did notice that movies would have a lot more visual storytelling versus television shows. Visual cues are so elemental to the experience of watching movies. But I noticed now there's more short-form video consumption and there's a lot more dialogue coming back into the visual storytelling. There’s more telling than showing happening in film. So, I really wanted to get back to using more visuals to tell a story and, instead of so much dialogue, having the art and music speak to what’s going on.
In psychology, there’s a theory that says every character that appears in your dream is a version of yourself. Whether it's a friend, an enemy, or even the colors and objects you see in your dreams, they may be all representative of you. That’s another reason I wanted to lean into the visuals and show there are reflections of Shiori and Komori in this alternate world, which speaks to the story.
VD: As a writer and director, do you feel, as you were making these characters, that there were parts of them that were reflections of you as well?
SK: I do think so. But they are not just reflections of me, but also our scriptwriter Taichi Hashimoto, our character designer Risa Ebata and also the cast. I really think the characters are the accumulation of all of us in production combined and then transformed and then materialized. I hope that you can see them that way.
VD: I've talked to a lot of writers and they say, as they're writing the script and working on the story, that their views will change and shift, and they even go through the emotions the characters are going through. I'm curious how you've observed social media affecting the younger generation in Japan and what your thoughts are on the positive or negative for its future now that you’ve completed this film?
SK: To me, smartphones and the internet are really important and even necessary. Like this interview. We wouldn't be able to conduct this interview without the internet’s ability to bridge time and space. So, I do think it is a useful tool. But it’s not a replacement for reality.
While I was working on Labyrinth, I was also working on the 2025 Osaka Expo, which has all these workshops and activities meant to help people explore global issues, future technology, and culture. I was selected to become one of the producers of the Signature Pavilion. Working on that simultaneously with the film did have an effect on me.
The theme of the Osaka Expo was about how life is shiny, sparkling and glorious. And I’ve always believed that what makes life great is the ability to experience and feel the world directly. When I thought about the technology we have, especially within the little tiny frames of our smartphone, where it’s become hard to discern what’s reality and what is not, what is art and what is an AI deepfake, I realized life right now isn’t sparkly or glorious like what we’re depicting at the expo. We’re more connected than ever but are so affected by what someone on the other side of the world says about us based on what they see on these little phones.
Technology is useful, it connects us, but can it accurately represent us and the world? There’s the world our technology depicts, and then there’s the natural world, the one made up of plants and animals and that exists within us as human beings. I’d like audiences to think about that and remember that while watching Labyrinth.
VD: Yes. You can have both technology and genuine connection, but only if you remember how to have that connection separate from the technology. You can't replace one with the other, otherwise you lose the goodness of both. I hope that message reaches audiences, too. It certainly reached me, so I think it will.
SK: Thank you so much.
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
