25 years of Production I.G. - Mitsuhisa Ishikawa

Written by A. H. on 26 Nov 2012

Ask most anime fans to name a Japanese animation studio off the top of their heads and Production I.G. are likely to be one of, if not the, top response - such is the reputation of a company that has produced so many notable works and also embraced the popularity of anime outside of their native homeland.

With the studio now on the brink of reaching their 25th anniversary, we were incredibly privileged to be able to spend some time talking to Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, one of Production I.Gs founders, as he attended the Christmas 2012 edition of the Hyper Japan event at Earl's Court in London.

While covering a quarter of a century in the business was never going to be possible in ten minutes, there was no shortage of insight to be found in our discussion with the thoughtful and frank Mr. Ishikawa - to find out what he had to say about a number of topics relating to Production I.G, read on!

First of all, welcome to the UK and many thanks to giving us some of your time - is this your first time in the country, or have you been here before?

Mitsuhisa Ishikawa: It's my fourth time.

To start right at the beginning, what drove you to found Production I.G, and what were the goals you set out for the studio upon their inception?

Mitsuhisa Ishikawa: About twenty-five years ago when I started to create the company, I saw around me lots of people who had really great talent and were really capable.  What I didn't see was a place where these people would be able to express, use and explore that talent - I saw so many people who had so much potential but they had nowhere to use it and nothing to do with it.  Giving those people a place to use their abilities was really the main objective, and the main thing I wanted to achieve with founding Production I.G.

I have a certain policy, or a motto as it were, that you should have small objectives but big dreams - a dream should be something unlimited, something massive that you keep looking like you're about to achieve but you never will; I think that's dreams have to be.  The thing about objectives or small short-term goals is that if you start with goals that are too big they become something else, and then you can't really achieve them - you're always looking towards them but you never find them.  So, I think it's much better to have small goals - if you want to call the big objective you need to reach "100", you can divide that up into one hundred small blocks of "1"; lots of tiny little objectives that you can slowly build up.  Then, when you're in the middle of building up these goals - around 20 or 30 or 50 - you realise that in doing that you've achieved something and you've grown as a person or creator or artist or whatever.

It's that kind of process that we work towards - to have small objectives and lots of them that build up, but big dreams to aim for all the time.

With Production I.G. about to reach its 25th anniversary, what would you say are the studios greatest achievements over that time?

Mitsuhisa Ishikawa: In reaching a history of twenty-five years now, probably the most important thing I want is to return to where we started and go back to that early feeling when we first started the company - we just want to make things, and make productions, but we maybe didn't have the money to always do so back then.  It's important for us to return to that kind of attitude and the feeling that we had back then.  You might say "to celebrate our twenty-five years of history we could have a big party, spend a lot of money on it and have fun", but that's not so important - we really just want to go back to the original idea and ideals of the company.

Obviously, we've gotten bigger in that time - you can't change that and it's a good thing - but to go back to the ideals and the attitudes that we had at the start and keep that alive is important.

Having been around the anime industry for so long, what do you feel are the major changes or shifts in the industry that you've seen in the industry in that time?

Mitsuhisa Ishikawa: From a technical point of view, the biggest change I've seen is moving from analogue to digital - that is the biggest over the years, for sure.