MAMORU OSHII
Writer/Creator, JIN-ROH |
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JIN-ROH: THE WOLF BRIGADE is written by a man whose more usual role is to helm as director. The 49 year-old Mamoru Oshii is best known to Western audiences through his most recent film to date as an anime director, GHOST IN THE SHELL. Praised by no less than TITANIC's James Cameron, GHOST IN THE SHELL during its 1995-96 tour was the most successful theatrical anime release in English since AKIRA, and in their January 19, 2001 issue, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY chose GHOST as one of the 50 "must-have" DVDs–the only anime to be included.
Almost as soon as GHOST wrapped in 1995, however, Oshii began work on a script for a theatrical anime to be directed by a protégé, Hiroyuki Okiura. The script was for JIN-ROH, and it begins with a line holding resonance for those familiar with Oshii: "This thing is like a wolf…Thus it is a thing to be banished." JIN-ROH is a new incarnation of Oshii's interest in the symbology of wolves and men. It is the fourth time he has come to this image–having portrayed the world of JIN-ROH in earlier manga he wrote, and in live-action films he directed (1986's THE RED SPECTACLES and 1991's KERBEROS PANZER COPS: STRAY DOG)–but the first time he has addressed it in anime.
Mamoru Oshii, like both AKIRA's Katsuhiro Otomo and NEON GENESIS EVANGELION's Hideaki Anno, works as a director in either live-action or animation as suits the needs, possibilities, and even the limitations of the production (Oshii satirized many aspects of his own approach in the 1992 live-action film wryly entitled TALKING HEAD–a murder mystery set in an anime studio). Oshii's unusual visual versatility–which deserves the term "total filmmaking"–is comparable to American animation-trained directors such as Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam, and it should be no surprise that their films are also rarely uninteresting.
Oshii's many works are conscious and informed; yet he makes the claim that his central theme is the confusion of dreams with reality. While his films can fully delight in the roundabout of modern life, he is nevertheless compelled by how easily reality plows under those very insubstantial qualities that animate it: faith, love, ideals…and with inevitability, history itself. And so JIN-ROH's dream conjures much of the real Japan Oshii himself was born into. Oshii chose the right director to anchor that history–confident young man attuned to it, Hiroyuki Okiura.
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