Mamoru Oshii picked up a chicken meatball.
"From a purely commercial standpoint, this film was a failure," Oshii chewed the food, his tone calm as if discussing someone else's work. "They complained that audiences were falling asleep in the theater. They complained that the plot was obscure. These complaints are reasonable."
He put down his chopsticks and picked up his glass.
"Information overflow," Oshii used a technical term. "I pushed the narrative density to the limit. The background signs in every frame, the philosophical metaphors in every piece of dialogue, the mechanical clicking sounds during Motoko's cybernetic body assembly—all this information added up, far exceeding the average audience's reception threshold within one hundred and twenty minutes."
He took a sip of his drink.
"The audience's brains couldn't process this information, so a protection mechanism kicked in, forcing a shutdown. That's why they felt sleepy."
Takuya Nakayama looked at him.
It seemed Oshii had his own very self-consistent logic.
"You anticipated this result long ago," Takuya Nakayama stated as a fact.
"I realized there was a problem mid-production," Oshii admitted frankly. "But I didn't hit the brakes. The core of cyberpunk lies in exploring the boundaries of the soul. Optical camouflage, cybernetic bodies—these are just visual anchor points."
"Cut out those philosophical lines, edit it into an action movie from start to finish, and the box office might be better. But that wouldn't be Ghost in the Shell."
He paused, reaching out to stroke Gabriel's ears.
"The long take of Motoko surfacing in the water, the ripples on the surface, the distortion of the city's reflection. I demanded the animators render the light and shadow for every single frame. When the people from Shochiku saw the rushes, they asked me what the budget was for those few seconds. I gave them the number, and they smashed their cups on the spot."
Mamoru Oshii leaned back in his chair.
"Regrets, there certainly are," Oshii's voice dropped. "Getting Kenji Kawai, Hiroyuki Okiura, and that whole crew back together to make another film to such an uncompromising standard... it's hard. Investors aren't philanthropists. The face of the film is already set in stone; it can't be changed."
It was a helpless compromise, but one that also contained an incredibly strong personal persistence.
Takuya Nakayama picked up the sake flask and filled their cups.
"As an investor, I have to say, the money wasn't wasted," Nakayama raised his glass. "The VHS distribution rights for North America have already been signed. Hollywood has a much sharper nose for this sort of thing than Shochiku ever did."
"Blooms inside the wall, fragrance outside—the life cycle of this film has only just begun."
Mamoru Oshii didn't respond, treating it as mere pleasantries.
Takuya Nakayama changed the subject.
"What you find regrettable might not actually be the audience's reception, but rather the inherent limitations of film as a medium."
Oshii looked up.
"One hundred twenty minutes." Nakayama tapped the table with his finger. "That is the iron law of theatrical film. You forcibly compressed a grand cyberpunk worldview into this time frame. The audience are passive receivers. They sit in a dark theater, images flashing before their eyes at twenty-four frames per second. They don't have time to stop and think."
Oshii lit a cigarette.
The smoke rose under the warm yellow light.
"You've seen our Ghost in the Shell game prototype developed at Sega HQ," Nakayama continued. "Current 3D polygon technology is still very rough. The textures on the characters' faces aren't as detailed as your hand-drawn cel artwork. The character movements created by motion capture still feel somewhat stiff."
"But, games have a dimension that film can never reach," Nakayama placed his glass on the table, "Interactivity. And the extension of time that comes with that interaction."
"In a game, players don't need to digest all the information within two hours." Takuya Nakayama shelled another edamame bean. "They control Motoko Kusanagi as she walks the streets of New Port City. They can stop under a neon sign and observe the ripples of rain hitting a puddle. They can take the initiative to browse through the background data on a terminal. This kind of environmental storytelling hands the control of information reception over to the player."
A glint appeared in Mamoru Oshii's eyes.
It was the instinctive curiosity of a creator toward a new medium.
"Those philosophical expressions that require immersion and fine-tuned self-insertion might actually be experienced better in a game," Nakayama concluded. "Because a game can be designed to be less compact. You can break down your information overflow into countless fragments and scatter them across dozens of hours of gameplay. Players will piece together that world themselves through exploration."
The customers in the izakaya had turned over.
At the table next to them, a few office workers were loudly complaining about the unfair distribution plan for their year-end bonuses.
Oshii stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.
"Sega has the underlying engine support. Yuji Naka's technical team is very strong," Mamoru Oshii said. "The logic of making games is completely different from filmmaking. I don't understand level design."
"Someone does. And he has been trying to fuse these two kinds of logic." Takuya Nakayama picked up a tissue and wiped his mouth.
"Who?"
"Hideo Kojima." Nakayama stated the name.
"Hideo Kojima?" Oshii repeated the name.
He was not completely insulated from personnel changes in the gaming industry. "That producer who was kicked out by Konami and defected to you at Sega?"
"Correction, I personally went to poach him," Nakayama poured himself a cup of sake. "It turned out to be Sega's most cost-effective personnel investment in recent years."
Nakayama picked up an edamame: "You can find a Jupiter console and play 'MGS2', which he led the development of. It was just released this year, and as of last month, cumulative global sales have already approached three million units."
Three million units.
In the 1995 Japanese entertainment industry, this figure was a concept with significant weight.
Even for a nationally renowned animated film, reaching a corresponding number of viewers was by no means an easy task.
This number was a concept of great significance in the Japanese entertainment industry in 1995.
Even for a nationally renowned animated film, reaching such a corresponding audience size was by no means an easy feat.
Mamoru Oshii flicked the ash from his cigarette, remaining silent, his attitude showing signs of softening.
"Sales are only one aspect," Takuya Nakayama said, putting down his chopsticks. "The key lies in the themes he explores. He packs his games with hardcore concepts like nuclear deterrence, genetic engineering, and information control. This is essentially the same narrative ambition as your Ghost in the Shell, which explores the boundary between soul and shell."
Mamoru Oshii looked up, his gaze passing through the rising smoke to rest on Takuya Nakayama.
"Kojima is a hardcore film fanatic. His desk is piled high with Hollywood movie videotapes, and he constantly talks about John Carpenter and Stanley Kubrick. He has an extraordinary obsession with the framing of game camera shots and the arrangement of cutscenes," Takuya Nakayama continued. "He even demanded that his team simulate camera depth of field and lens flare effects within the game."
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