"It’s like a monolith to me, that movie. Every time it’s re-shown in theaters, I always go. Star Wars was a big hit in 1977 which created a big sci-fi boom. So 2001 came to Japan, and I saw it in theaters when I was in middle school. Before experiencing that, I was just listening to radio dramas. I read the original novel, but the movie was totally different. I didn’t really understand it the first time. Now, I have a different interpretation every time I watch it. As a creator, I have periods of difficult times, but whenever I feel particularly in need of a pick-me-up, I watch 2001. It’s a perfect movie for me. It was a real space experience. Exploration even before man went to the moon. I always wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, but Japan doesn’t have NASA. You had to go either to USSR or China. Although I felt like I had to give up on the dream of becoming an astronaut, when I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, I felt like I really went to outer space. It’s a life-changing movie because it made me feel like I accomplished a dream."

"I think a lot of ’70s films, like later ’70s films seem to be some of my favorites. I’m going to say, I’m going to go with Star Wars. I don’t know what it was. It may have just been the time when I saw it, the time it was, with childhood, but everything about that film just makes me feel good. I just, I love it. I never get tired of it. Even back when I was a kid and I saw it in the theaters, I was just… Maybe just because it was so new and fresh, and it was just so original, and so inspiring. The Force, it just made you feel good. It made you think that miracles could happen, or there was just this higher power that could give you this energy, only positive things, and you could defeat evil with it. Everything about it, the movie, and I mean, the sounds of the film, the music, and the toys, and just everything about it. It might have been just that time, but everything about it just brings me right back to 1977 when I was a child, and so I just love everything about it."

"I’m going Empire Strikes Back, 100 percent. My favorite of all of them, hands down. Yes, the dark undertones, but I think you get some of the greatest lines out of it. I think coming up with the idea for Hoth and the wampa and the AT-ATs was unbelievable during that time. It still holds up, which is tough, and I say this as a diehard Star Wars fan. A New Hope gets a free pass because it’s the first one we saw, but you go back, and of course we’ve all seen a lot of the gaps, and some of the stuff is so cartoony and over the top. You don’t get that in Empire Strikes Back. You get a group of guys who came back for the second one with a new director and were like, “Alright, we’re in it to win it.” We’re going to get deeper into these relationships; we’re going to see them kiss, and how awkward that is; we’re going to see Han save his buddy and throw him inside a tauntaun in the first 20 minutes. And you’re like, “Whoa! We’re going very deep here.” And I’m not even talking about the ending. That’s just the first 20 minutes."