Latest news with #Yuasa
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Acclaimed Anime Director Masaaki Yuasa Announces Next Feature ‘Daisy's Life,' Coming in 2026 (EXCLUSIVE)
Celebrated Japanese animation director Masaaki Yuasa has unveiled the debut project from his newly established animation studio, ame pippin. Titled 'Daisy's Life,' the feature is a Japanese-French co-production based on Banana Yoshimoto's novel Hinagiku no Jinsei, with original illustrations by renowned artist Yoshitomo Nara. The film is set for delivery in 2026. Yuasa is best known for his surreal storytelling and bold visual style in films such as 'Mind Game,' 'Lu Over the Wall,' and the Golden Globe-nominated 'Inu-Oh.' He launched ame pippin in February 2025 with the goal of pushing artistic boundaries in the animation world. Backed by heavyweights Asmik Ace, Inc., Aniplex Inc. and CoMix Wave Films, the Tokyo-based studio aims to be a major force in the ever-evolving global animation landscape. More from Variety Iconic 'Mind Game,' 'Inu-Oh' Director Masaaki Yuasa Launches New Tokyo Studio Ame Pippin (EXCLUSIVE) 'Chicken for Linda!' Directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach Toon Up Mortality-Minded Adaptation 'My Stupid Intentions' (EXCLUSIVE) Kinology Boards Buzzy Animated Musical 'Ogresse' (EXCLUSIVE) 'Daisy's Life' follows the emotional journey of a six-year-old girl named Daisy, who loses her mother in a tragic accident and struggles to adapt to life with her aunt. One sleepless night, she encounters a mysterious girl named Dahlia at her window. Their days together begin to transcend time and space, bringing a cosmic perspective to Daisy's modest life in a downtown yakisoba restaurant. Of his new project, Yuasa explained, 'Even among the works of Ms. Banana Yoshimoto, this is a novel that evokes visual images throughout, and while there are parts that are vividly scary, the final passage is very happy, like something I had dreamed of in the past. I would like to depict the life of the protagonist who works for a yakisoba restaurant in a downtown area with a 100-meter radius on a cosmic scale.' Yuasa is teaming up with acclaimed screenwriter Sachiko Tanaka, whose previous work includes 'Before We Vanish' and 'Asako I & II,' in her first foray into animation. Yoshitomo Nara will lend his distinct artistic style to the childhood character designs, adding a touch of emotional realism to the film's dreamlike tone. Production is being spearheaded by Asmik Ace, Inc., a company with a storied history in both live-action and animated cinema, known for titles like 'Tekkonkinkreet' and 'Paranoia Agent.' The film is co-produced with France's Miyu Productions, which recently won awards at Cannes and Annecy for Flóra Anna Buda's short '27' and Sébastien Laudenbach and Chiara Malta's feature 'Chicken for Linda!' Miyu producers Emmanuel-Alain Raynal and Pierre Baussaron expressed excitement about their renewed collaboration with Asmik Ace and the opportunity to work with Yuasa, saying, 'After a first fruitful collaboration with Asmik Ace on Yoshitoshi Shinomiya's 'A New Dawn' we are delighted and honored to renew our partnership on the next project by Masaaki Yuasa, one of the greatest animation filmmakers of our time' Yuasa's resume more than supports such praise. Since his groundbreaking debut with 'Mind Game' in 2004, he has consistently pushed the artistic potential of animation. His previous studio Science Saru, which he co-founded in 2013, produced hits such as 'Devilman Crybaby,' 'Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!' and Netflix's 'Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.' Now with ame pippin, Yuasa embarks on a new creative chapter, one that blends deeply personal storytelling with experimental visual ambition. As anime continues its global rise across streaming and theatrical platforms, 'Daisy's Life' marks not just a new film from one of Japan's greatest living anime directors, but a bold mission statement for the future of auteur-driven animation from the country. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week What's Coming to Disney+ in April 2025 The Best Celebrity Memoirs to Read This Year: From Chelsea Handler to Anthony Hopkins
CBC
22-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
This deepsea diver was cut off from his air supply for half an hour. He survived
Chris Lemons says the day of the accident that would nearly claim his life started like any other. "It was very much a normal day at the office," Lemons told The Current 's Matt Galloway. For him, "the office" was the ocean floor, where he spent six hours each day working as a saturation diver servicing offshore oil rigs. Saturation divers live for days to weeks at a time in pressurized chambers in order to stay at the same, very extreme pressure that exists at the bottom of the ocean. This particular job found him in the middle of the North Sea, working on a large structure called an oil manifold to remove a section of pipeline some 100 metres below the surface. Lemons was inside the manifold when alarms started blaring over his communication line to the main ship. The supervisor in command of the three-person dive team told Lemons and his colleagues to get back immediately to the diving bell — a piece of equipment attached to the ship that transports the crew between the boat and the ocean floor. "You could just tell from the tone of his voice that this was something fairly … serious," Lemons said. "I don't remember really calculating what was going on, but you could tell something was afoot." Topside, a malfunction in the ship's computer system had caused the captains to lose control of the vessel. Massive waves and winds blew the vessel off course, effectively dragging the dive bell and the divers, who are attached to the bell by a 45-metre "umbilical cord" that supplies them life-giving heat and breathable air. In the chaotic moments that came next, Lemons' umbilical cord snapped, leaving him stranded without air. He eventually lost consciousness and was without oxygen for about half an hour — yet by a confluence of lucky breaks, good training and science, he walked away unscathed. The dramatic tale has since been turned into a documentary and, most recently, a feature film called Last Breath, starring Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, Finn Cole and Cliff Curtis. Running out of air on the ocean floor Lemons was working underwater with his colleague, David Yuasa, at the time the alarms sounded. Both men were able to swim out of the manifold, but Lemons quickly realized his cord had snagged on a section of the manifold and he was unable to get free. The stuck diver felt the tension on his cable grow and grow as the ship continued to drift in the rough swell above him. "All of a sudden … I'd become an anchor, basically, to an 8,000 tonne vessel," Lemons said. "And obviously there's only going to be one winner in that situation." Yuasa saw Lemons struggling and tried to swim back toward him. But Yuasa reached the end of his cable just short of Lemons. The two divers shared one final look before the still out-of-control boat yanked Yuasa away from his colleague and into the darkness of the deep sea water. Alone, Lemons says his ever-stretching umbilical cord started giving out. He opened the valve to a spare air tank carried on his back. The reserve would help Lemons breathe for an additional eight or nine minutes, he says, though he knew he'd be in trouble after that. Lemons' umbilical cord finally snapped under the pressure like "a shotgun going off," he recalls. The force sent him tumbling off the top of the manifold, a few metres down to the very bottom of the ocean floor. He says he knew his life was "on a clock" at that point. Consumed by panic, the lone diver climbed back up on top of the oil structure in the pitch dark and scoured the surface for <> the boat. It was nowhere to be seen. In that seminal moment, Lemons says he realized nobody was around to save him — and saving himself wasn't an option. "That had a strangely calming effect, I think, knowing that I couldn't do much to help myself," Lemons said. "I resigned myself quite quickly to the fact that this was probably going to be … the place that I die." Lemons lay down in the fetal position on top of the structure, where he knew he had the best odds of being found by Yuasa should they circle back for him. In what he thought would be his final moments, he reflected on his short 32 years of life and all of the things he'd never do — like travel, own a house, or have children. He imagined his parents being informed of his death, and how strange it would be to die in such an alien environment. "I grew up in a sort of middle class family in Cambridge, you know; how've I ended up dying in this dark, lonely place?" Lemons remembers thinking. His breathing became difficult and shortly after, Lemons lost consciousness. By the time the crew was able to regain control of the vessel, circle back to the dive site, send a driverless submarine with a camera called a ROV down to locate Lemons and then have Yuasa perform the rescue, the diver had been severed from his umbilical for about half an hour. That's more than enough time to cause lasting brain damage, if not death — both of which can happen in a matter of minutes. Lemons isn't much of a believer in luck or miracles, he says, but this case might fit the bill. "I use the word [luck] quite casually, I think, but yeah, it's hard to deny that," Lemons said. "I certainly feel lucky." Science and precision, not luck Jochen Schipke, a now-retired professor of physiology in Germany who co-authored a case report on how Lemons survived the ordeal, doesn't use the word luck. He says it was a matter of "perfection." Lemons would have used more of his available air right after his cable was severed, when he was feeling panicked and had to climb back on top of the manifold, according to Schipke. But once Lemons resigned himself to dying, Schipke says his breathing would have been very calm, allowing the trapped diver to extend his supply. The divers were also breathing a mixture of helium and oxygen called heliox, which allows them to maintain proper pressure on the ocean floor. Schipke says helium cools the body, and its use is why Lemons' body temperature had dropped to about 27 degrees Celsius by the time he was back in the bell. The body uses less oxygen at colder temperatures, according to Schipke, so this factor would have helped stretch Lemons' limited reserves even further. The crew's training was important, too, according to the researcher. Lemons was in fantastic physical shape and had 10 years of experience under his belt, while Yuasa, the ROV operator and other crew members all acted quickly and with precision to rescue Lemons. "This was close to perfection. Not so much luck," Schipke said. "This was training. This was knowledge. This was experience." Be it by luck, science, perfection or any other factor, Lemons says he is simply glad to be alive. No great epiphanies or life changes came from the incident, he says — aside from maybe a "more acute awareness" of death. "I've found that life takes over, really," Lemons said. "Things are quickly forgotten and you move on and the … banalities of existence suddenly take over." Within three weeks of the accident, he was back to work as a diver — a job he went on to do for 10 more years. These days, Lemons gives talks about his story at conferences. He also still works in the industry, but as a dive supervisor instead.
The Guardian
04-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
At the bottom of the North Sea, out of air and with no hope of rescue, I said goodbye to all my dreams
It was, says Chris Lemons, 'very much a normal day at the office'. Until things went wrong. But when they went wrong, they went wrong very badly, very quickly. The 'office' was actually the bottom of the North Sea, where Lemons was left without air for almost half an hour. Lemons was working as a saturation diver, living in a pressurised chamber onboard a specialised ship for stints of up to a month, and being lowered to the seabed in a diving bell to work on offshore structures. 'It is a serious business, but it is routine for us. That bell going down is like the taxi to work. I always felt comfortable down there.' On 18 September 2012, Lemons, along with colleagues Duncan Allcock and Dave Yuasa, took their diving-bell 'taxi' to work at a depth of 90 metres (295ft). Allcock, the most experienced of the three and something of a mentor to Lemons, was to stay in the bell while Lemons and Yuasa dropped out in their diving suits to repair a pipe on a manifold, a big yellow drilling structure used by the oil industry, about the size of a house. Saturation divers are attached to the bell with umbilicals, cables that provide them with communication, power and light, as well as a mixture of oxygen and helium to breathe, hot water to keep them warm, and a means to find their route back to the safety of the bell. 'Our umbilicals are exactly what they sound like: givers of life,' says Lemons, 45, on a video call from the south of France where he now lives. The bell in turn was connected to the ship, the dive support vessel Topaz, which had a crew of 120 and was positioned 103km (64 miles) north-east of Aberdeen. The ship held its place over the dive area without an anchor, guided by a 'dynamic positioning' computer system. On that day, the weather was bad – 35 knots of wind and a 5.5-metre (18ft) swell – but not unusual for the North Sea, nor prohibitive to diving. 'We don't really notice that on the bottom,' says Lemons. In fact, though it was dark, visibility wasn't too bad. 'Generally in the North Sea you can't see much. That is half the battle, being able to orient yourself. But on that occasion, we could see the bell from where we were.' They had been working for about an hour when things went wrong. There was an open line of communication to the ship and they heard alarms going off. Not unusual, but then came a message from the ship directly to Lemons and Yuasa: 'Leave everything there – get out of the structure, boys.' They dropped off the manifold to the seabed. 'That's when the confusion started,' says Lemons. 'Going up to the surface is never an option – you would die from explosive decompression pretty quickly. There is only one safe place: the diving bell.' But the diving bell, which had been 10 metres (33ft) above them, wasn't there. The Topaz's dynamic positioning system had failed and the ship was drifting off in the gale, pulling the bell with it. But the bell was still attached to the other end of their umbilicals, so they began to climb the cables. 'I don't remember processing what was going on. You're just trying to get back to that safe place, climbing hand over hand, as did Dave next to me.' But, suddenly, Lemons couldn't climb any more. A loop of his umbilical had snagged on the manifold they'd been working on. The ship pulled on the bell, which pulled on the umbilical. 'I immediately knew it was caught. You've got this 8,000-tonne vessel pulling that umbilical tight – there was nothing I could do to release it.' In fact, because the cable was caught on part of the manifold, Lemons initially found himself being pulled back into it. 'I was thrashing around like a fish trying to get out of there, shouting for slack. My next thought was that if it continued to slip, there was a small gap in the structure I was going to get pulled through, like being pulled through a cheese grater. That's not going to be a nice way to go. The first real dose of luck I had was that it stopped slipping.' It's a testament to Lemons's talent for understatement, and the absolutely desperate situation, that he sees this as luck. Soon, Yuasa noticed that Lemons was in trouble: 'He realised there was a problem and turned to get back to me. We couldn't speak to each other, but I remember our eyes meeting. I'm imploring him to help me, but he's being dragged away. I lost sight of him, but I could still see his light. Then I lost sight of that.' Meanwhile, the ship continued to pull on Lemons's umbilical. He doesn't remember hearing the cable break; it happened in stages, comms first, 'like a jack being pulled from a speaker. I lost all communication, which puts you in a very lonely place. Then [I lost] the hose which provides an infinite amount of gas – suddenly I had nothing to breathe at all.' Yuasa made it back to the bell, exhausted. On the ship, they desperately tried to get the dynamic positioning system running again. Meanwhile, Lemons did what saturation divers are trained to do. 'We carry these emergency supplies. You never expect to have to use them, but when you've suddenly got nothing to breathe it's an instinctual thing to turn the knob on the side of the helmet to open the supply. That puts you in a very different world: the moment that you open that, you've moved from a place where you have this infinite supply to one where you very much have a finite one – about eight or nine minutes' worth.' When the umbilical broke, Lemons had fallen back on to the seabed. His first task was to find the manifold, which is where a rescue attempt, if there was one, would take place. But that wasn't easy without a light. 'It was the most infinite darkness. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. It's easy to get disoriented at the best of times, with a compass and a light and someone telling you where to go. I knew this enormous yellow structure was probably only a couple of metres away, but I had no idea which direction. Again, I was very lucky – I bumped straight into it.' He climbed up the manifold, fearful of letting go and losing it again, and got to the top. 'For some reason, I expected to see Dave on his way back to me, or the diving bell. But when I got there and looked up, there was nothing but the most absolute blackness in the sea above me.' It was cold, about 3C (37F), and Lemons had lost his hot water supply. 'I would have been hypothermically cold very quickly, but I don't have a memory of that. Maybe your body has an ability to shut out unnecessary information. Or perhaps my memory is not as good as I thought. I feel I've got this fairly lucid recollection of everything up to the point where I fall unconscious.' He reckons that of the eight or nine minutes of gas he had, he'd probably used four or five. 'I won't pretend I wasn't scared and breathing hard. I realised that even if Dave had been there, the chances of him getting me back to a breathable environment before I ran out of gas were minimal. With nobody there, I decided this was probably going to be it. In a strange way, that had a calming effect; the fear, the panic drained out of me – there was nothing I could do. I assumed a sort of foetal position and was overtaken by grief. A great sadness took over at that point.' What was he thinking of in that moment? 'I was at an exciting point in my life: early 30s, getting married the following year, we were in the process of building a house … I had all the hopes and dreams you have at that stage – of children, travel – and it felt as if all of that was about to be ripped away in this strange, lonely, ethereal place. I grew up in a middle-class family on the outskirts of Cambridge, and I remember thinking: 'How is this dark, lonely place where I end my days?'' He also tells me he was worried what they were going to find on his mobile phone, but then says he's joking. Lemons is very funny – that doesn't come across in the documentary that was made about his accident. In the 2019 documentary Last Breath, interviews with Lemons, Yuasa, Allcock and others are interwoven with footage from the day and some reconstructed scenes. The most powerful, haunting footage is taken from a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), like a mini, unmanned submarine, which was launched from the Topaz. Lemons is lying on top of the structure, in the foetal position, and his arm is moving, twitching. Some of the ship's crew take it to be a sign that he's waving at the ROV, letting them know he's still alive and they need to get a move on. Today, Lemons dismisses this. 'I'm definitely unconscious at the point where the ROV finds me. We've got a few theories as to what that was.' To put it another way: he was not waving but drowning. He doesn't remember the moment he lost consciousness. He thinks it was the carbon dioxide that put him under, and that's why the 'actual moment was peaceful. I feel like a bit of a charlatan. I still get contacted all the time by people who've lost loved ones, but I don't have the right to tell you what it's like – I didn't die.' Somehow, they got the dynamic positioning system going again and relocated the manifold. Allcock and Yuasa were still in the bell. Yuasa left the bell again to get Lemons, presumably expecting to bring back a body. It had been 35 minutes since his umbilical snapped, and Lemons had just eight or nine minutes of emergency gas. They dragged him back into the bell and took off his helmet. He was bright blue. Allcock gave him mouth-to-mouth, a couple of big puffs … and miraculously, he came round. Lemons doesn't remember it, but there's a lovely moment of footage where Yuasa reaches out and holds Lemons, who reaches out and grabs on to him and Allcock. 'They're the real heroes in this story,' Lemons says, 'and everyone on the boat. I'm just a damsel in distress.' How Lemons survived – and without brain damage – for more than 25 minutes is something of a mystery. He has been to medical conferences and spoken to many experts in his search for answers, but the professionals are as perplexed as he is. He thought it was the cold that had saved him, since there are stories of people falling through ice and surviving for a long time. 'But I've learned that if my body had been so cold that I'd gone into some kind of hibernation or stasis, there is no way Duncan would have been able to resuscitate me that quickly.' He still thinks the cold was a factor. And that, because of the pressure, his tissue was saturated with oxygen. He's also been told that a buildup of CO2 in the blood – hypercapnia – can be neurologically protective. If medical tests had been performed on him immediately after he was rescued, he might have the empirical data that could provide answers; but he had to remain locked away in a pressurised chamber after he arrived back in Aberdeen. Somehow, he was fine afterwards – physically and mentally. And three weeks, later he was saturation diving again, back on the seabed in exactly the same spot. Lemons and his fiancee got married and finished building their house. They're no longer together but he has a new partner, and two kids – the hopes and dreams he had weren't lost at the bottom of the North Sea. The enormity of what he had been through took a while to sink in. It has given him a more acute awareness of mortality, and of the preciousness and fragility of life. But it's also underlined the power of human resilience. 'We sometimes underestimate what we're capable of. It's given me courage and confidence, rather than knocked it out of me.' Lemons still works in the industry, but as a diving supervisor on the ship, not on the seabed. He is also dialling down the day job and doing more public speaking. It's funny that by knocking so loudly on death's door, he has ended up opening a load of others. And now his story's being told in a thriller, also called Last Breath, directed by Alex Parkinson. Allcock, from Chesterfield, is played by Woody Harrelson, from Texas. Simu Liu, who played one of the Kens in the Barbie movie, plays Yuasa. And Lemons? Finn Cole, from Peaky Blinders. 'Lush head of hair, good-looking lad – makes complete sense,' says Lemons, who is – and was at the time – bald. Right, the taxi's waiting. He's got to go to the airport. A proper taxi, on dry land. Lemons, Allcock and Yuasa are off to New York, for the premiere of Last Breath. Last Breath is in cinemas from 14 March
