The Mori Ghibli Museum in Mitaka City, Tokyo, is currently holding the first special exhibition since director Hayao Miyazaki's retirement, the "Nutcracker and the King of Rats Exhibition" ("クルミわり人形とネズミの王さま Exhibition"). Taking advantage of this opportunity, Eiichiro Oda, a well-deserved king and model worker in the current shonen manga industry, also gave a speech and talked about his feelings about Hayao Miyazaki in all aspects. Excerpts from the testimonials are as follows:

I'm a fan of Hayao Miyazaki, so as long as it's something he creates, I want to see anything. This time, the "Nutcracker and the King of Rats" exhibition is said to have been carefully planned by Mr. Miyazaki without even attending the Oscar ceremony. I also heard the news from Toshio Suzuki's radio program. So I wondered: what kind of job can make Mr. Miyazaki so engaged? Interest was also aroused. After seeing the exhibition, I felt very satisfied. I was really happy to see Mr. Miyazaki's words.

To be honest, the original work of The Nutcracker and the King of Mice (by the German romantic writer Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann) has seen it before, but I can't understand it (laughs). I've tried to follow the plot while drawing on my own, but to no avail. Therefore, I was very interested in how Mr. Miyazaki would represent this work. On the touch screen of the display, I was relieved to see Mr. Miyazaki's comment that said "I don't understand". Ah, that's great, Mr. Miyazaki can't understand it, Mr. Miyazaki is also an ordinary person.

As far as I'm concerned, The Nutcracker and the King of Rats is actually a comic strip. I think the point is that you have to create a story with the mood of a serialized manga in order to build such a story.

If you talk about the weekly shonen comics I read when I was a child, it basically feels a little bit of a sense of logic that doesn't make sense. The same is true of my favorite "Muscle Man". At that time, the manga had a large number of characters who appeared as "new characters" last week, and sometimes they disappeared the next week. The cartoonists also wanted to focus on the fun of the work without considering the logical rationality, and the children were completely unaware of this problem and accepted the work calmly. This is the comic book of the past. So, when I became a manga artist, I wanted to be able to create a logical story. The work that connects the past and the future and expresses one's personality is the manga "ONEPIECE".

At this time, everyone seems to be getting rambling. Nowadays, it seems that "people who can point out the contradictions of the plot in detail are great". In the past, "Shonen Jump" was only for teenagers, but now adults can read it too. And in order for adults to be able to accept the work, the creators have to sort out the logical problems well. I think that's one of the big reasons for today's trend. But at the end of the day, rules such as linking the plot together well and fully recovering the foreshadowing should not exist. A work that makes everyone happy is a good work. In this regard, stories such as "The Nutcracker and the King of Mouse" are very free to express imagination.

My personal opinion on the movie is: as long as the world view is established, then it doesn't matter how it is written. If I were asked what I liked about Miyazaki's work, it would be that he made scenes that impressed us. Even if the story isn't very logically rigorous, just seeing the plot is enough to make people happy. Therefore, after "Spirited Away", if you only look at the plot, I don't understand what the next few Miyazaki works want to express. "Howl's Moving Castle" and "Goldfish on the Cliff" and other works, after reading them several times, I just had my own interpretation, and it took me a lot of time to get to this point.

When Mr. Miyazaki made the movie, he didn't decide the entire plot from the beginning, and all the staff members did it without knowing the ending, right? So, I think Mr. Miyazaki is a serializer. And he did exactly the same thing as the great masters I liked when I was a kid. "As long as the plot is interesting", Mr. Miyazaki weaves the story little by little with this concept.

And if we simply pursue the interest of the work, then this practice will naturally be formed. If he becomes a person like Mr. Miyazaki, then as long as he wants the plot to make sense, he can still do it. That's for sure. It's just that he didn't. I've always wondered: why didn't he do this? Why do you deliberately make the work difficult to understand and understand?

I have an answer of my own. I think Mr. Miyazaki has a huge image in his head, and he can't draw them all in his life. In this way, if everything has to be logical, then he has to reduce the time he spends painting. So Mr. Miyazaki doesn't care about logic. It doesn't matter if it's inconsistent, as long as you can draw everything you want to draw. And the sublimation of this mood gave rise to movies after "Spirited Away".

I'm currently drawing the story of the Toy Soldier in ONEPIECE. When it comes to toys, they tend to give the impression that they are very easy to spoil. Unlike people, toys won't recover if they break. And usually when a toy breaks, people don't repair it, right? I think it's a great feeling of melancholy.

I'm thinking about the picture in my head first, and then I'm going to work in the type. And I'll draw something first, similar to the impression sketches that Mr. Miyazaki made when he was making a movie. If I talk about the plot of the current serialization, then I first drew a picture of the toy soldier walking hand in hand with the petite girl on the note. After that, the imagination is expanded from this image. My impression of these soldiers is, to the extreme, the dead. This may be a different feeling than the era of "The Nutcracker and the King of Mouse" and Mr. Miyazaki, who experienced war. I think that before Kamen Superman and the Sentai series were born, the soldier was a symbol of heroes.

And drawing a girl next to a soldier's toy is my wish as a man. If girls can get help, then it must be a good thing. Maybe it's because I have a relationship with my daughter that I think so crankily. The environmental impact really can't be ignored. For example, when it comes to myself, I was ashamed to draw the stories between parents and children before I got married. What do you want to ask me? Because when I was single, if I wanted to talk about my parents and daughters, then it was just me and my parents. Therefore, until "ONEPIECE" was serialized to a certain period, I would not have depicted the relationship between blood and parent.

I have a female character named Nicole Robin, and when I drew her story, it was actually the first time I had described parent-child relationships. I was surprised by that. Because I've never thought about this aspect of the plot before. And when I looked sideways, I had a wife and a daughter by my side. As a result, my impression of parenting has unconsciously shifted from "myself and my parents" to "my wife and children".

When I was interviewed for this interview, some people felt that both Mr. Miyazaki's "The Nutcracker and the King of Mouse" and the toy soldiers I drew were essentially from the perspective of "toys". But in my opinion, if there is any template for my toy soldiers, it is not "The Nutcracker and the King of Mouse", but "The Determined Tin Soldier". In the story, it tells the story of a puppeteer with only one foot and a ballerina's toy. As for "The Nutcracker and the King of Mouse", it was only when I watched it again this time that I found the similarities.

Mr. Miyazaki and I used "toys" as the theme at the same time, but what was this for? I don't know very well myself. It's just that in terms of comics, sometimes I have similarities with manga artists I don't know at all. And as long as the serialization lasts for a long time, this kind of thing is not uncommon. I think it must be because of the events that happened around us and the reflection of the background of the times that we reflected the same theme in the work.

There are some things that I think come to mind naturally, but they are actually influenced by society. In times of recession, positive comics are popular. Because works that are contrary to the times, they are the easiest for readers to accept. It is only in times of pain that people want to witness the imaginary ideal world.

In this exhibition, even a poster is one of the warmer paintings of Mr. Miyazaki. The stylus for drawing lines is light. And not overexerting force. So, it's great. The younger the painter, the easier it is to draw lines with great force. No one can draw a soft, comfortable picture from a young age. Therefore, if we really master the art and enter the state of "being able to draw anything", we will feel as if the painting has popped out of our minds. I won't feel tired anymore. But no one can do this.

I hope that the materials that have been written in the past (such as sketches and storyboards) will be published in a book. "Hayao Miyazaki's Wild Thoughts" released by Dainippon Pictures has been read by me countless times. Even if it's a handy doodle, Mr. Miyazaki is able to draw a great result. Seeing such a work will also make you feel relaxed.

No matter what form Mr. Miyazaki creates, I love that he can continue to paint. I'd love to see his work again.