The Saturday drama “17-Year-Old Empire” will be broadcast on Saturdays at 10:00 pm on NHK Sogo.  The driving force behind always taking on the newest and most outrageous challenges  What was your impression of Mr. Sano when you worked with him for the first time?  “I was intimidated by his energy, purity, and technique, and he is an extremely talented person. But I was also surprised and pleased to find that his distance from the scriptwriters and actors, and the way he takes responsibility for them, seemed very similar to my own.  I am a person who accompanies and stands by the scriptwriters and actors, but Mr. Sano’s methodology is very thorough, and I was surprised by his core strength as a producer who stands by them without question.  He also has a sense of speed. For example, when I would say, “Let’s think about it in two days,” Mr. Sano would say, ‘In six hours.’ How much time should I spend on the task at hand? is a super important part of a producer’s decision-making process, and having people in the same profession in the same situation at the same time was a very happy, albeit daunting, experience.”  Nevertheless, I am very happy to have had the opportunity to work on such projects as “Vulture,” a gritty economic entertainment drama; “Amachan,” an NHK television series and NHK historical drama “Idaten: Tokyo Olimpic Banashi” written by Kankuro Kudo; and the juvenile science fiction and dark fantasy “Kirei no Kuni,” written by Takuya Kato, a spirited playwright in his twenties. Mr. Kei Kunha continues to create dramas that have never been seen before, such as “Kirei no Kuni” (The Land of the Beautiful), a juvenile science fiction and dark fantasy scripted by Takuya Kato, an up-and-coming playwright in his 20s. Why does he continue to take on the newest and most outrageous challenges?    “I am probably a very ordinary person. I am not a wonderful creator who is always looking for new things and watching a huge number of works.  When creating something, I think everyone has the desire to see something that has never been seen before. The starting point is the feeling that if you are going to make something, you have to make it anyway. However, for me, the most energetic part of my work is thinking “I would never do this combination” or “What would happen if I combined these two” to create something I have never seen before.  The way my mind works is very normal, like traveling to a new place or feeling the excitement of encountering something new amid a routine life. Another reason is that I was raised by NHK, which allows me to express myself in new and interesting ways, so I feel the need to keep doing new and interesting things.”