One of the biggest things that intrigued me about Tekkon Kinkreet is not just the reception it already received in Japan, nor the fact that it was produced by Studio 4ºC (Though that is the major reason I first took notice of this movie), but the fact that it was directed by an American. A rookie American director, at that. Though Micheal Arias has lived in Japan for 15 years and has worked with Studio 4ºC in the past on projects like the Animatrix, this is the time a westerner was at the helm of a Japanese animated feature.

And, more importantly, AniPages Daily has an excellent interview with the man! There's also information after the interview about the premier of the movie in New York City on April 25-30 for those who are in the area.

There's some very interesting tidbits in there, like that the original script was written in English from the English and French translations of Taiyo Matsumoto's manga, Black & White. But most telling of all was when this statement:

At one point I shopped the project around Hollywood and, though everyone liked the pilot, I got some very strange suggestions: change White to a girl, make the characters older and make the story a romance, etc.

I guess the biggest reason I'm excited about seeing an American directing a Japanese animated film is that I know that American artists and writers can just be a creative and imaginative as their Japanese counterparts can be, but the American business world seems to have a culture of telling designers and creators how to design and create instead of letting them do their jobs.

Well, I'm getting off-track here. In any case, Tekkon Kinkreet is on my "must see" list. And make sure you give that interview of Micheal Arias a read-through.

Here's the Japanese trailer for the movie (A Youtube link, as the embedding option was disabled for this video).

And here's what looks like the 4-minute CG pilot for the film:

I can't wait to see this film in full!

UPDATE: Here's another trailer: