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Mitsuyasu Sakai: Japanese scriptwriter behind the short Sci-fi movie ‘Orbital Christmas’

Sakai’s work on ‘Orbital Christmas’ came from a dream he had one night. (Supplied)
Sakai’s work on ‘Orbital Christmas’ came from a dream he had one night. (Supplied)
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29 Sep 2021 05:09:27 GMT9
29 Sep 2021 05:09:27 GMT9

Amin Abbas

DUBAI: Japanese professional scriptwriter Mitsuyasu Sakai has recently directed and produced a short -sci-fi film called ‘Orbital Christmas.’

Sakai has been working in the industry for a while, with his work ranging from writing reviews for magazines, translating English novels and comics to Japanese to developing scripts for anime. He worked for over 20 anime shows and movies like “Martian Successor Nadeisco”, “Outlaw Star”, “Eureka Seven AO” & “Promare.”

In an exclusive interview with Arab News Japan, Sakai said he was very much inspired by the first “Mobile Suit Gundam” TV show.

“It was the true revolution of Japanese anime. I was 15 years old when Gundam started and I thought all TV anime shows were not for me but for children,” he explained. “Then, I saw the third episode of it on TV by chance and I was shocked by its reality that I had never seen anything like it on any other TV show except Star Trek and its world that was much closer to our world than Star Trek.”

Sakai said he had established his career in 1996 after he had quit his job at a Japanese IT company.

“Martian Successor Nadeisco and Outlaw Star were my first gigs for animation,” he explained. “Both shows’ people looked for someone who knew both science and science fiction as a sci-fi supervisor and they chose me, because I had the master’s degree of technology and I am a science fiction fan well known in the Japanese sci-fi fandom.”

He said his first science fiction supervising job was for a short live action movie called ‘REMNANT 6,’ which was like Poseidon Adventure in space.

Sakai’s work on ‘Orbital Christmas’ came from a dream he had one night.

“I dreamt of a huge Christmas tree flying around the Earth just like the last scene of the [Laputa: Castle in the Sky] movie. After I woke up, I started making a story about the tree,” he told Arab News Japan.

Sakai said the message from the movie was that praying for world peace should be done regardless of one’s religion.

“I created the story about a gentle Muslim engineer and a small Buddhist girl spent Christmas together on a small space station,” he added.

The director is currently submitting the movie to major international film festivals, and he is waiting to hear back from them to finalize the release date of the project.

Sakai said as a science-fiction supervisor, he sometimes found it difficult to ensure the “the leap of faith from fact to fiction to keep the consistency of the story.”

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