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Yōko Kanno Composes Music for Shōji Kawamori's World Expo 2025 Hybrid VR Short
posted on by Anita Tai
Self-described "vision creator" Shōji Kawamori announced on Friday that he is collaborating with Yōko Kanno for his new hybrid virtual reality short film "499-Byō Watashi no Gattai" ("499 Seconds: My Gattai" or 499 Seconds: My Combination), which will play at the "Live Earth Journey" pavilion at Expo 2025, this year's World Expo event at Osaka. Kanno composed the film's soundtrack and title track "499 seconds," and co-wrote the song's lyrics with Kawamori. Megumi Nakajima and Haoto sang for the short, and Maaya Sakamoto narrated the short.
The film is an experience tailored for 30 audience members, who wear virtual reality goggles to experience the food chain on a cosmic scale, while switching between virtual reality and mixed reality. Kawamori serves as the short's general director with Isao Nishigori as director. Tim Jensen co-wrote the theme song's English lyrics.
World Expo 2025 will run from April 13 to October 13 on the man-made Yumeshima island in Osaka Bay. This will be the second time Osaka has hosted a World Expo after Expo '70, 55 years earlier (a remnant of that expo includes the famous Tower of the Sun as seen in 20th Century Boys and other stories in Japanese popular culture.)
Kawamori is one of 10 co-producers of Expo 2025. (Kawamori cites the first World Expo at Osaka with inspiring his lifelong exploration of world culture, science, and science fiction.) The "Live Earth Journey" pavilion will feature the latest interactive technologies "to make visitors realize that they are part of the ecosystem." In particular, Kawamori teased that although he avoids revisiting his earlier stories in the same format, he is open to exploring them in a new format, such as hypothetically presenting the climactic scene from a Macross story in an experience such as those being planned for Expo 2025.
Kawamori announced at his Q&A panel at Anime Expo in July 2024 he will direct a new original animation film unrelated to existing franchises slated for a 2025 opening.
Kawamori is perhaps most famous for being a key creative planner in The Super Dimension Fortress Macross anime series. He designed most of the franchise's iconic transforming Variable Fighter mecha, and oversaw most of the main installments in the franchise, including the latest, Macross Delta.
Kawamori has also created the Aquarion, AKB0048, and Arjuna series, and was chief director on Jūshinki Pandora at Satelight, the anime studio for which he serves as a board director. He has contributed mechanical design work to Patlabor: The Movie, Patlabor 2: The Movie, Eureka Seven, Outlaw Star, Ghost in the Shell, and more. He is credited as the original creator of The Vision of Escaflowne, Basquash!, and Nobunaga The Fool. He has worked in anime production as a director, screenwriter, mechanical designer, and storyboarder.
Sources: Shōji Kawamori's YouTube channel, Shōji Kawamori's X/Twitter account
