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Anime Expo - Tomoki Kyoda - 2006 The Eureka Seven series about a teenaged sky surfer, running at the time of Anime Expo on the Cartoon Network, mixes the delights of flight with the lives of youth just moving into high school. Director Tomoki Kyoda sees a link between the aerial scenes of Eureka Seven and the battle scenes of Superdimensional Fortress Macross. "Unlike the image of flying in Ghibili movies, Eureka Seven is nothing like this," Kyoda said at an interview session. "It's more like the Macross idea of flying. I grew up with Macross and I liked the way the missiles moved in Macross." One of the members of Eureka Seven's animation staff was inspired by the animator who created the circular, corkscrewing motions of Macross' aerial weapons, and that style was reflected in the newer series' flying scenes, he said. But beyond that, the flying scenes were a result of Kyoda's directing style. Anime directors are as much supervisors as artists, and Kyoda prefers to let his fellow artists alone and have them bring their own creativity to his series - while giving them only general guidelines. "If the director specifically keeps on giving orders to the staffers, it won't be a good series, because they screw up the balance of the entire team. I let the staff work on  their own, but I also pass on my image of the project to the division heads and let them work with their own teams," Kyoda said. "I don't think directors should do every little bit.   There's also a link between Eureka Seven and another series on which Kyoda worked, Rahxephon. He sees the roles of the lead characters, male and female, as being reversed between Eureka Seven and Rahxephon. Eureka Seven looks at teens who are moving from middle school to high school, and it "...shows that there are good sides and bad sides to Japanese kids. That's why it might seem more awkward to you."  Pictures Panels and Interviews Anime Expo Main Page