S.E.E.S.

I’m surprised there hasn’t—to my knowledge—ever been an promotional interview between Hideo Kojima and Hideaki Anno.* Fans love ascribing the label ‘auteur’ to these two, and boy, do they share a lot in common. Maybe it was growing up in an increasingly bureaucratized Japan cast in the shadow of military defeat. Whatever the case, there are so many parallels one can draw between their works: the desolation of post-industrial landscapes, a fetishization of military minutiae, and a love of bullshit acronyms (compliment).

*This is a common publicity stunt of Japanese media outlets. See: “Hideaki Anno vs. Yoshiyuki Tomino” (1994) and “Hideo Kojima x Mamoru Oshii” (1996).