Art Direction
Nitobe and Sakamoto are childhood friends who now work at the front desk of a capsule hotel. Nitobe has a particular fondness for philosophy and crustaceans. Sakamoto, meanwhile, is fixated on suicide. The capsule hotel draws a variety of guests, including a Finnish mother who has lost her child, a fugitive woman, and a researcher studying Daphnia. None of their lives ever intersect. They exist, but never cross, like cells in a capsule hotel. The themes of life and death are explored through a fragmentary view of the characters’ lives.
Art Direction
Two eight-year-old boys compete in a game of childish bravado. Ken is a Ninja, Nito a child soldier from the Congo who was forced to kill his own mother. Their naïve game addresses cruel realities, and they talk about their differences and what they have in common. Accompanied by contrasting graphics, the film explores the types of acts of which humankind is capable.
