The director and creator, Kunio Kato, was born in 1977 and studied at Tama Art University in Japan. At university, he encountered experimental animation works that were completely different from the Disney animations he watched as a child. Among the works that influenced him are *When the Day Breaks*, co-produced by Wendy Tiby and Amanda Forbis and released by NFB in 1999; *Father and Daughter* by Dutch animation director Michael Dudok de Wit; and *Little Hodgehog in the Fog*, released in 1975 by Russian animation master Yuri Norstein (all three works are included in the "Animation Century: 100 Representative Works" selected by the Annecy International Animated Film Festival). His graduation work in 2001 was *The Apple Incident*, a short film that won the Best Work Award at the 2001 Laputa Animation Festival. That same year, he joined ROBOT Corporation, which operates in multiple fields including TV commercials, film, animation, and CG, and is currently one of the company's animation directors.