Shoji Kawamori, the anime creator whose name is synonymous with Macross and giant robots, is fascinated with smartphones. Despite decades of involvement in sci-fi anime, either as a creator (the Macross and Aquarion series) or a mechanical designer (the aforementioned series, Eureka Seven), the 65-year-old currently finds the device to be as impressive, if not more, than any mech he has come up with.
“The fact is, in today’s modern society, we have a situation where millions and millions of people possess these so-called super robots in the palm of their hand. But they’re totally unaware of the power that they wield,” Kawamori says via interpreter.
Kawamori is in Malaysia to promote Labyrinth, his upcoming new film that deals with smartphones and social media. About two hours before our 20-minute chat, he was on stage at the highly popular Comic Fiesta ACG event, introducing the movie to attendees. Later that night, he will be participating in a Q&A session with Labyrinth’s early-screening audience. It’s basically half a day of talking about smartphones and the internet, yet Kawamori’s enthusiasm and fascination on the subject never seems to wane.
©『迷宮のしおり』製作委員会
In Labyrinth, an incident causes teenager Shiori, who aspires to be internet famous, to become trapped in a mysterious smartphone world and replaced by another version of herself (both are played by SUZUKA of the music group Atarashii Gakko!). The inspiration for the movie came from the idea of the smartphone as another us, one that contains all sorts of data, past and personal. This ability to store and accumulate readily accessible information, and its ability to connect us with people from all over the world when tethered to the internet, is something that awes Kawamori. He says that working on Labyrinth caused him to “reaffirm and recognize that” having smartphones, linked to the internet has “really expanded the range of what humans are capable of doing.”
Kawamori goes so far as to call the smartphone “a device that helps me travel through time and space, because it lets me have access to past records, and at the same time, be connected to something or someone on the other side of the world.” He thinks that the smartphone “has the same capabilities as the super robots that I’ve featured in my past works, like the Valkyrie from Macross and Aquarion’s Aquarion. It helps expand the capabilities of regular humans.”
Of course, Kawamori is also aware of the downsides of our interconnected age. The point he brings up is the ability to hurt others through our screens. Getting positive reactions from others is easier than before, but so is getting bashed. At the Comic Fiesta stage panel, Kawamori amusingly opined that a critical post is deadlier than the extravagant missile volleys you see in anime, because it’d always hit its target.
©『迷宮のしおり』製作委員会
When Shiori finds herself in the smartphone world, she quickly meets an inhabitant, in the form of a rabbit sticker, who refers to her new surroundings as a labyrinth. It’s the word that also serves as the film’s English title (the Japanese title isn’t a singular “Labyrinth” in katakana, but it does contain the word). Why “labyrinth?”
“Compared to nowadays, compared to back when I was a child or a student, the amount of pressure that you can’t see but you feel today is so much greater. There’s a possibility that someone on the other side of the world would start criticizing and picking on you. And so I wanted to put my focus on that kind of world,” Kawamori explains.
“Before, you could challenge yourself to do something, and even if you fail, you just simply got feedback or critiqued by the people immediately around you. But nowadays, you can get picked on by people who don’t even know [you], and also get likes from people you can’t see. And as a result, you end up pursuing and getting caught up with trying to get more and more likes. So, it’s a very different scenario.”
©『迷宮のしおり』製作委員会
Kawamori finds that “in this world of mobile phones and SNS, we’re living in a kind of artificial world where it has become even more difficult for us to be able to find yourself, to figure out who you really are. And it’s become like a maze.” Hence, labyrinth.
Identity is another subject that Labyrinth tackles. While Shiori is trapped in the smartphone world, in the real world — the real Yokohama, to be precise about the movie’s setting — an alter ego, SHIORI, has taken her place. Where Shiori is timid and insecure, SHIORI is bold and unrestrained, factors that aid her in her goal of achieving internet fame.
“On one hand, the Shiori that’s trapped, she’s too self-conscious, she’s not really good at selling herself or marketing herself to other people,” says Kawamori. “So the flipside [of that] would mean to come up with someone who’s more pushy, who isn’t afraid to go about revealing her qualities.”
©『迷宮のしおり』製作委員会
Kawamori didn’t look at specific influencers or internet personalities when creating SHIORI, but he notes that “they really do wield this incredible power. Just a small, off-the-cuff comment can instantly have an impact globally. So I do see the smartphone as an amplifier that really has this tremendous influence.”
Adding to Shiori’s troubles, an ambitious tech entrepreneur named Suguru Kagami, who seeks to connect human minds with smartphones, has world-changing plans that involve the two versions of herself. “I was very much inspired by these global IT startups, how they really are fast when it comes to putting their thoughts to action, how could they respond and so on,” shares Kawamori. He refrains from offering specific names when I ask if there’s anyone who reminds him of Kagami, only saying that the character reflects “the common traits that you see among the leaders of these top IT companies.”
When Labyrinth was announced in July, another project of Kawamori’s was already being shown to the world. At Expo 2025 in Osaka, which ran from April to October, there was a signature pavilion by Kawamori called Live Earth Journey. Among its exhibits was one where visitors “put on VR goggles with built-in cameras and embark on a cosmic adventure through the food chain as the main character,” and another that sought to immerse “all five human senses” with projections, “dynamic 3D sound,” a vibrating floor, and music from Cowboy Bebop’s Yoko Kanno. While a very different sort of project from Labyrinth, I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of link existed between the two. What inspired Kawamori to deliver these creations? What do Live Earth Journey and Labyrinth say about the man himself?
Image credit: Abnormal Studios
“In terms of personal interests, whether it’s the Osaka Expo or Shiori, I do often ask myself what am I, or what is the purpose of me actually existing or living,” Kawamori shares. “At the exhibit, I picked up on the theme of living things which breathe, eat, and also gather various information. And although they are individuals in their own right, they’re also actually part of a greater network, a part of a chain reaction.”
In the case of Labyrinth, “you have these human relationships via the internet, SNS, mobile phones. And also, likewise, there’s this chain reaction that happens. But these individuals are not fully aware of the impact that it has. And so, because of this gap in awareness, they sense a tremendous amount of pressure and difficulty.
“I am very interested in the relationship between these two different entities, which is myself as an individual, and myself as part of a global universal network of various things connected to each other.”
Special thanks to Comic Fiesta and Abnormal Studios for the interview opportunity. Labyrinth will begin screening in Japan on January 1, 2026, with Malaysia to follow on March 5, 2026. Abnormal Studios will also distribute the movie in locations like Brunei, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Australia, and New Zealand in 2026.
