Studio Ghiblis movies aside, its relatively unusual to see Japanese anime get a screening in UK cinemas.

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As manga and anime, 009 has been around in Japan since the 1960s.

So what made you want to revive that property, and make a movie based on it?

I thought it would be worth making a film of this property using todays technology.

As you said, its very contemporary.

Was that something you had in mind when you came to write it?

Was that your intention, and what is the films underlying message?

What I wanted to say was, what is the common justice in the whole of humanity?

And if God wanted to destroy humanity, how should we react?

That was mainly what I wanted to get across, and not the political message.

But it does seem to be inspired by the War on Terror; its very post-9/11.

Those are topics that are still present in peoples minds in the west.

But what did those events mean to Japan?

What impact did they have in Japan, do you think?

What happens in the US economy affects the Japanese economy.

Where is the world going now?

Where does that put us?

That had a big impact.

The 3D graphics in the film are quite extraordinary.

I dont think its going to go in that direction.

I think it would be difficult to go 100 per cent 3D CG.

The techniques used in this film, are they as labour-intensive as 2D animation?

But because it was in stereoscopic CG, it was much tougher.

Theres no room for mistakes with CG, even if youre a tiny bit off.

If you see a mistake in a 3D CG film, it scrambles your brain and its horrible.

Youve a big animation industry in Japan.

They are still coming in, especially for 3D.

But there are fewer and fewer artists coming in as 2D animators.

This is because there are more possibilities for them if they go into 3D animation.

Is that a statement youd agree with?

They want to do their own thing.

They want to do their own thing, even if its small scale.

Even I feel that: the young staff dont necessarily want to work for me.

But if you were to interview the young staff, theyd probably say that Japanese animations going very well!

Is that likely to happen?

Unfortunately, I dont have any specific plans at the moment.

That would be really interesting, I think.

Kenji Kamiyama, domo arigato.