BODY: When Tom Cruise walked into a room full of Jujutsu Kaisen key animation drawings, the first thing out of his mouth wasn't about the characters. It was about the framing.
Cruise and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu visited "MAPPA EXPO 15th Anniversary" during their Japan promotional swing for DIGGER, which opened in Japanese theaters on October 9. "This is really wonderful. I've been looking forward to it," Cruise said on arrival, while Iñárritu admitted the personal angle: "My son is a huge fan of MAPPA's work."
In the Jujutsu Kaisen section, the pair pored over rows of original drawings — Cruise noting "this style, this hair… and the framing," with Iñárritu adding, "and this angle." Cruise then turned process nerd, asking animator Tadashi Hiramatsu how much of the work is still done by hand, and whether younger animators draw on paper or go digital. Hiramatsu, who came up with pencil and paper, said younger staff mostly work digitally but that starting on paper still matters. Cruise agreed: "It feels more like artistry. It's the same with recording — the artist's voice stays in it." Iñárritu, meanwhile, wanted numbers: how many people does a single episode take?
The conversation moved to the Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc display, where Hiramatsu — who watched DIGGER twice — praised its camera work, color, music and sound design. Iñárritu revealed the film was shot entirely indoors, with three walls erected in a studio and footage from the actual production camera and lenses used as storyboards. "The way we made this film is similar to animation," he said. "Every scene, every frame, built the way animation is."
Hiramatsu presented both with a hand-drawn illustration of protagonist Digger Rockwell, captioned "There is TRUTH within a LIE." Cruise, startled, asked, "You drew this?" before a firm handshake. The pair toured an Attack on Titan: The Final Season Rumbling recreation on the way out. Cruise's parting verdict: "I love it!"
The insider take
Studio pilgrimages by visiting Hollywood talent are nearly ritual in Tokyo now, but the questions Cruise asked land on a genuinely live nerve here. Paper-versus-digital isn't nostalgia talk inside the Japanese industry — it's an ongoing argument about training pipelines, with veterans arguing that animators who never learn on paper lose a feel for weight and timing. That Hiramatsu, a Yuri!!! on ICE character designer with roots stretching back to Evangelion-era production, was the one fielding it says MAPPA wanted its 15th anniversary framed around craft lineage rather than its recent run of blockbusters.
Originally reported by はてなブックマーク (Japanese).