A year into the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, one of the bright spots was a film set in the dark. The stop-motion animation feature "Junk Head" followed a hapless, amnesic cyborg as he traversed a series of underground caverns populated by grotesque (yet somehow cute) monsters and made friends with a zany cadre of artificial lifeforms called Mulligans.

The film’s blend of horror and humor helped bring in ¥130 million at the Japanese box office. Not bad for a feature made almost entirely by one person: interior designer Takahide Hori, who had decided to try his hand at filmmaking for the first time at age 40.

Hori, born in 1971, had always harbored artistic aspirations, he tells The Japan Times, producing work in fields like illustration, sculpture and manga, but despite winning some awards, he never felt there was much of a future in it for him.