“The noise in music can be perceived as a color. Using that color…” Music director Kensuke Ushio’s colored work “Your Color” produces sounds, and the colors that the sounds project. The creative resonance [Interview]The heroine, Totsuko, sees people by their “colors.” Happy colors, joyful colors, calm colors. And her favorite colors.

Director Yamada Naoko’s latest original animated feature film, “Your Color,” will be released on Friday, August 30, 2024.

This is a “music x youth” story unique to Director Yamada, who has worked on “K-ON! The Movie” and “A Silent Voice.” It won the Golden Goblet Award for Best Animation at the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival and was entered in the Feature Film Competition at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2024 in France, attracting attention from all over the world.

The musical director for this work is the talented Kensuke Ushio. While working under the name of “agraph” and as a live support member for Denki Groove, he is also active in many other fields, including directing Naoko Yamada’s films such as “A Silent Voice” and “Liz and the Blue Bird,” as well as the soundtrack for the TV anime “Chainsaw Man.”

What does Director Yamada mean to Ushio, who has teamed up with various creators and works to create new sounds?

*This article touches on the core of the music that colors the story. We recommend that you read it after watching the movie.

–In a previously published interview, you mentioned that the appeal of Director Yamada’s work is the gentleness and down-to-earthness of the way he looks at the characters. I feel that these elements are also common to Mr. Ushio’s music and philosophy, but what aspects of Director Yamada and his work do you personally sympathize with?

Kensuke Ushio (hereafter, Ushio): That’s exactly what you say. That’s what I felt empathy for when I worked with Yamada. The down-to-earth nature of it isn’t an abstract spiritual theory. For example, I compose music on a computer, but I always come up with really difficult things to do, and I end up doing them reluctantly.

–So you’re reluctant (laughs).

Ushio: Because it’s a hassle (laughs).

–But I think that’s true. Still, since you came up with the idea, you have no choice but to do it.

Ushio: It’s really hard. We work on it in units of milliseconds, even 0.0 seconds, putting together whatever comes to mind. It takes a whole day just to make 8 bars, but we make dozens, even hundreds of bars. It’s like working hard on those small, intricate details in just our underwear in the summer, sweating (laughs). We crawl forward, crawling on our hands and knees, with sheer determination. That’s something that Yamada and I have in common.

Yamada-san creates incredibly beautiful things, but there are no shortcuts to it. He just does it honestly, and I feel a sense of sympathy for him.

–It may seem like a glamorous world, but you have to move forward steadily and honestly.

Ushio: That’s what it seems like. In fact, when I was a Yamada fan, it looked glamorous, but now I think, “They’re doing something really tough again” (laughs). It makes me feel daunted.

–I had the opportunity to speak with Director Yamada the other day, and he told me that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the production. How was this in terms of Ushio’s music production?

Ushio: I basically make my music alone, holed up at home, so it didn’t have that big of an impact. However, I did have some mental worries about what would happen if I were to meet Yamada-san face-to-face and I were to infect him with something. But I don’t have any friends now, so I’ve never really had any.

-No, no (laughs).

Ushio: I basically just stayed at home (laughs). In any case, music production is something you do alone, so it didn’t affect me that much.