Interest

BBC Radio Documentary on American Co-Founder of Anime Studio D'Art Shtaijo

On November 18, BBC World Service presented a 40-minute radio interview with Arthell Isom, who co-founded the Tokyo anime studio D'Art Shtajio with his twin brother Darnell. The episode is available on the BBC website here. It is part of the "Outlook" series of programmes which cover "True stories of ordinary people and the extraordinary events that have shaped their lives."

Interviewed by Mobell Azhar, Arthell Isom describes how he and his brother were budding artists from childhood. As teenage high-schoolers in New Jersey, they encountered "Anime Saturdays," a series of anime broadcasts on the Sci Fi Channel (now Syfy) in the 1990s. Isom remembered watching such titles as Lensman and 8 Man After. However, the film that made the deepest impact on him was the 1995 film of Ghost in the Shell. Isom was especially taken with the realistic city backgrounds, where it "looked like I could walk into the TV screen."

That passion would eventually lead Isom to travel to Japan, with no experience of the country and at first no ability to speak Japanese. Against all odds, he would successfully learn the language, enroll at Yoyogi Animation Academy and then be taken on by Ogura Koubou, the studio run by Isom's hero Hiromasa Ogura, the Art Director on Ghost in the Shell. Isom describes working at the studio, convinced he would soon be fired, but ending up a full-fledged animator.

Subsequently, Arthell and Darnell Isom co-founded the D'Art Shatijio studio in Tokyo, established in December 2016. Its work includes the music video for the Weeknd song "Snowchild" (above), as well as contributing to Tokyo Ghoul, Attack on Titan, One Piece and Naruto. The studio is now making the feature film MFINDA, a film about a young Congolese girl who travels back in time and must stop a war between humans and gods. Arthell Isom is co-directing the film, which was the subject of an ANN report here.