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New Frontiers in Urban Innovation Explored in Second Anime Short
posted on by Eric Stimson
Asia University, a university with a pan-Asian focus based in Musashino, Tokyo, promoted its Department of Urban Innovation with a roughly minute-and-a-half-long anime short.
The video focuses on Satoshi Sakurada (played by Subaru Kimura), a graduate of the program now assigned to alleviate the epic traffic jams of Jakarta, Indonesia for a Japanese urban planning company in 2025. He thinks back to a college lecture on how big data collected from car GPSes, security cameras and traffic lights was instrumental in reducing traffic. By 2027, Satoshi has implemented these principles by installing traffic cameras everywhere and using the big data to improve traffic light timing, levy congestion charges, and designate one-way streets at rush hour. Jakarta's traffic department gets a big, fancy traffic monitoring system too. Satoshi, excited at his success, dreams of spreading the system around Indonesia. Later, he asks his friend, Nozomi Hayakawa, who works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, whether she's using big date on her job... and enjoys a beer.
Nozomi was introduced in a previous Asia University promotional video. Both videos are directed by Yū Mashimo, who also directed the 2013 web anime short series World Full News; their music is composed by yuma, who also worked on that series.
Asia University's Department of Urban Innovation strongly emphasizes study programs in rising Asian economies like China, Thailand and Indonesia, and applies Japanese solutions to common Asian problems like pollution, traffic and slums. Its motto is "Building Towns That Make People Happy."
