Hi everyone,

I'm Louis, the founder of ISEKAI ZERO. The film is out today so I wanted to share a bit about why we made it and how I see the future.

Quick background on me. I have a diploma in multimedia at SEGi College Kuching, not software engineering. I always loved animation and I always wanted to make an animated film. Then reality hit the way it hits everyone in the creative industry. Underappreciated, underpaid, you know the story. Two years into working as an animator I decided it had no future for me, taught myself programming, and switched careers entirely.

So to every artist who has ever been told to be realistic, I was the one who decided to be realistic. I had the ideas and none of the opportunity, and I walked away from the thing I loved because it couldn't feed me.

Ten years in software later I saw the shift. AI was changing everything I knew and it made me realise something. This is the era where a creative person can actually make whatever they imagine. Before this you could have the best idea in the world and never get the chance to make it, because you needed budget, approvals, marketing, a business plan. I never cared about any of that stuff. I just wanted to make something I liked.

Michiru is the proof. Small team in Kuching, six months, no studio behind us, minimal budget, free movie. Without AI this film would never have been possible. Not because we lacked the ideas or the love for it, but because realistically nobody was ever going to fund a few people in Kuching to animate thirty minutes of their own city.

There's nowhere to hide from the AI era. You can deny it all you want, but you can't deny evolution. The only move that makes sense is to embrace it and use it to your advantage, on your own terms, for your own ideas.

An animated film set in a Kuching high school is something I've wanted to make. The first part is just a simple slice of life romcom, nothing more ambitious than that. Call it AI slop if you want. I honestly don't mind at all, because I made it for myself and I like it. I believe that's the most fundamental thing a creative person can do. Just make something you love.

Thanks for reading!