Screenwriter, author and newly minted anime director Mari Okada shrugs and smiles as she and her entourage burst through a door behind me 15 minutes late for our meeting. We're in a conference room on the ground floor of The Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Suites, a downtown Los Angeles hotel famous for its cameos in hit films and TV series ("True Lies," "CSI") and for its bewildering interior layout.
"We didn't know there was another entrance to this room," explains one of her handlers. Okada, sporting a floral print dress, puts a hand to her lips and emits a giggle.
It's not what I'd expected. In her autobiography, "From Truant to Anime Screenwriter: My Path to 'Anohana' and 'The Anthem of the Heart,'" recently published in English by J-Novel Club, the 42-year-old Okada tells her coming-of-age story as a rural hikikomori (shut-in) in Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture. She was awkward and unhygienic, endured sporadic bullying, got into fights with boys, dropped out of school, and was nearly knifed to death by her divorced and disapproving mother.